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[Mystical Tutor:]

Mystical Tutor: It basically is a 2nd copy of your best spell at the expense of discarding an additional card. The problem is that there are game-ending instants and sorceries (especially problematic: Price of Progress) which are worth the card disadvantage. Who cares if you have one less card, if your opponent is already dead. Terminus and Entreat the Angels did not convince me. Both cards are hilariously bad when in your hand early or drawn at a bad time. The thing happening the most is my opponent getting price and then "punishing" me for greedily having 4 non basics out of 10 lands... I dislike the unbanning.

Gifts Ungiven, Stoneforge Mystic, Natural Order: No... please no... Unlike other cards of that category, they do not require you to bend your decklist. You would play redundant spells, Batterskull or Green Creatures and Titan anyway. Having those "oops, I just won!"-buttons in a deck comes at virtually no cost. They are good in almost any stage of the game and allow for the creation of gamestates where one cheap spell creates a problem so big that it can only be solved by investing multiple cards and a lot more mana. They either are against the idea behind highlander times four (Gifts), are a two mana gamewin engine or a four mana cardadvantage and boardpresence machine. Just brutal and lame cards that are almost impossible to play around or outrace. TNN is in almost every regard a worse card.

There is a ton of pretty retarded cards out there. For me the question is wether or not it can be handled by various decks through various means. TNN seems okay to me. It is a silly card and pushed beyond belief but it still is easily beaten most of the time I see it in play. The decks just adapted. There are other crazy cards that most decks are absolutely incapable of handling even with changes. It is always hard to draw the line, but you have to draw it somewhere. And to me TNN is at the fringe of what is acceptable and I would not be sad to see it go but the cards mentioned above are just so game-breaking, that I would be really displeased to see them back in our format.

@tonytahiti: Cut the weak ad hominem arguments. What rubs me the wrong way is that the quintessence of your posts is: "I am so smart. I found a card that is awesome. I convinced others that is awesome. You are stupid because you do not agree that it is awesome. I want my credit for being awesome!"

Instead of a discussion you started a chain of vapor circlejerk. And what bothers me the most is, it does not even have anything to do with the topic that reporting decklists is beneficial or not. What you say is "People read my few decklists, they are not impressed enough. Because they do not drop everything and do as I do, sharing deck lists has no point." That is just plain silly. Sharing Decklists is not sharing absolute truths but inspirations.

I can come up with realistic examples how certain cards just flat out won games too. Does it make playing them correct in every circumstance? I think not.
Two overexaggerated examples:

1) My opponent has one life, no cards in hand, only lands in play. I play Squire. My opponent draws a land and plays it. I attack for one and win. Your opponent having one life and drawing dead is not uncommon.
2) I have six cards in hand, 10 life and my opponent attacks with Stormbreath Dragon. He activates Monstrosity. I play One with Nothing. Next turn I attack with my Creeping Tar Pit for lethal damage. Stormbreath Dragon is a card that is played in some decks. So it is not an unrealistic example.

And I could add scenarios where opponents straight up misplay, like you did with the player who played Shriekmaw without necessity and then did not bounce his own TNN. That does not make the card great but your opponents screw up devastating.

What is relevant is not, what this card does, when it shines, but what it usually does. And I have my reasonable doubts, that it is as good as you want to make it seem.
Strangely enough Cyclonic Rift does for me, what Chain of Vapor seems to do for you. Normally it is an okay card but sometimes it just flat-out wins games. It is only playable in control decks where you realistically hit 7 Mana in most of the games. But it does make for great comebacks/resets.

Some cards are obviously best in slot (Mana drain, Demonic Tutor, True Name Nemesis) while other cards are debatable. You claim that Chain of Vapor is such a best in slot card. While it is obviously great in clutch tempo matches and has added benefits making it a solid card, I just can not see, given your deck has another plan/enough mana to cast spells for more than one blue, why it should be one such card.

You copy the spell including the copy clause. So as long as you sac lands you can copy it. You can not sac multiple lanes to copy it several.Times at once.but each copy lets you generate another's copy.

Well it may not  be magical Christmas land but those.cases are incredibly rare. And apart from those it is lacking in power. Other bounce spells are not as cheap but come with added benefits or without drawback.
What if your opponent just bounces.his etb trigger guys?  Aside from constructed examples, what is it it regularly does? Rift allows you to come back from a lot of unfavourable board states. Venser beats down and can carry swords. Command is nuts.

I am not saying this card isn't good. But jamming it in every blue deck seems a bit too much.

Well it sure is a nice card. But without having it tested extensively it just seems a bit lackluster. Sure it only costs U, which is nice, if you strive for board presence, your opponent will probably bounce one of your permanents too. That is why this card is usually used in combo decks that do not have board presence until they kill you. So the problem for me is understanding why this card, contrary to my chain of thought, is supposed to be superior to, let's say Cyclonic Rift.

I have never considered the card, although I have seen people play it because I just fail to understand why it would be better than other options.

@MMD: Shots fired!

Well it would add a lot of data. Something that is in short supply in our format.

As far as I understood it:
4c-Blood just was the first truly teched out deck after the mulligan changed. It was there before but not overly present, the numbers were right and it was just the deck that coped best with not being able to spoil into the perfect curve. And as people said when it was "the deck everyone talks about", it does not do anything inherently unfair. It "just" pumps out good cards.
So almost a year later, we have other decks that have their numbers right, quite the diverse meta (with 4c blood going down in numbers the UR deck has a harder time sneaking wins, which opened up the possible deck choices a bit) and playing the best cards without much synergy just is not broken in itself. It is still a good deck, but never was unfair and is not overpowered now. Also people of course understood how to play against it.

The fact that Utter End is an instant makes it really good in Esper flash decks. I know, this is obvious, but keeping mana up for counters while still being able to handle pesky permanents if nothing of consequence happens is quite useful compared to the sorcery speed solutions for 3. It is definitely not the best card ever, but one that deck has waited for. Kills off Obzedat too, which is actually quite the beating. On top of that, Mystical Teachings finds it. I would give it a 3, as it is going to be played in some archetypes.

Dig Through Time seems to be a monster. But it instilled more fear into my testing partner than it actually seemed great to me. But that most likely is because in a deck full of counters you do not get to look at too many sick spells. It still is insanely powerful. Treasure Cruise on the other hand I am not yet sold on. Sorcery speed makes this a lot less likely to be cast for 6 if things go wrong. Tapping out always sucks. It is bad early and later on only good if you pillage your yard. But further testing might prove me utterly wrong. I mean waiting 4 turns to draw 3 is brutally strong, so paying 2-5 or just waiting for it to be just U might still be powerful as hell. Especially since most blue decks only have Snapcaster Mage as their graveyard synergy. Both Cards are probably pretty unreal in Decks with actual business cards as opposed to the pile of counters and removal I call esper.

I still do not care. The card is capable of unfair wins and punishes some decks. But there are other cards in the format that do the same. Most decks have adapted to TNN and are capable of handling/racing it. There are worse "oops, I win!" cards present that I would like to see gone first but I will not miss TNN, when it is gone.

That being said, I still see no reason to ban it. The card is an annoyance, but if everything that annoys me made me cry for the banhammer, I would sound like a MMORPG scrub who constantly whines about his class being too bad because it only wins 90% and demands the skills/classes that take his 10% to be nerfed. I feel we already pretty much got that here with people whining about TNN but others wanting to unban Gifts Ungiven. Same goes for the mulligan.

That was meant as a humoristic exaggeration. I just can not understant what the notion behind moving it to unban watchlist is. The card was banned for good reasons and I do not believe those reasons have become invalid by now. Control Decks seem strong enough to me. They do not steamroll everything but they are between fair and very good. No reason to unleash the devil to get rid of some demons.

As much as I hate the fact that TNN exists, I still do not see a viable reason to ban it. Not being fun is not one of them. There are a lot of brutally unfun cards that make the game about protecting them or getting them handled and they are harder to remove (Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Sylvan Library, Oath). Yet I hear no one being as adamant about banning them.

I think that unbanning Mystical Tutor reduces the variety in Blue-White Control Decks. Before the unbanning you could play Terminus and Entreat at your own risk because Personal Tutor was so clunky (giving away Information, waiting a turn). Now I feel you are forced to play this three card set because it is so damn strong. There still is no viable combo deck and this one Tutor will probably not make it better. I already dread EOT Tutor on Price of Progress from the UR Decks. There is nothing greedy in a balanced three-color Manabase with lots of nonbasics, yet those strategies are easily hosable. But PoP is an insane game ender that oftentimes deals 10 damage out of nowhere and wins otherwise unwinnable games. So you basically doubled the number of this card in the UR decks.

Unbanning Gifts would be pretty crazy in my opinion. The worst thing you get is an instant tutor that gets you 2 cards. The best thing is a card combination that either lets you grind out your opponent (Life from the Loam packages), lets you set up Reanimation with Unburial Rites and your silver bullet fatty or just gets you a graveyard based combo (Recurring Nightmare etc.). This card does way too many unfair things in this format Unbanning it would be a folly. The fact that it even is considered for unbanning makes me wonder who in the council lost his mind to suggest that and get through with it. I hope that person/these persons come back to their senses before they try to murder the format with this card.

Let's see how we all think about this in three months/half a year. I will play other peoples decks for more test results, as to gather more information.

@ Tiggipuru: You are just exaggerating now. Flash-Hulk? Come on man!
And trying to attack me in ad hominem arguments is poor form. I will not answer those.

You and vazdru both seem to not understand what the implication with being counterable or hit by sweepers is. It does not mean the card is bad because it can be removed or countered, it means that most decks do indeed already pack viable answers. That is my point and nothing else. Birthing pod yet again is a different card type and defeats the purpose of the format like survival of the fittest did. I do not have a problem with comparisons but in this game there are a lot more realistic cards to compare it with than those. TNN does not manage to win you a race and it lacks the utility of Pod. And it is not creating an insane position over the course of the next few turns like pod and Survival will usually do.

@Vazdru: Yes, I understood. And I chose to still counterargument it. If you used a silly exaggeration that was not serious, why complain if I answer it? I mean what was your point going to be? Get me to agree to the silly exaggeration and then conclude that I should be against TNN too because I said Anc is OP?

@MMD: I get your point but this would be like giving in to the child at the checkout that wants one of the sweets there. As soon as he gets them once, he wants them every time. I think we are unfortunately reaching a point where it starts to get personal and we fight over positions as both sides brought their arguments and one or the other side just does not see it in the same way and therefore assumes the other side must be wrong. I think the thruth lies in between. I could not care less about TNN being banned or not tbh but I think you can not justify banning it that easily.

@Tiggupiru: Most of the cards I mentioned are not needed to keep an archetype alive. They are just plain good or even overpowered. I understand the question but I do not think it helps us in any way because you can ask that of so many cards where the answer just is "because it was printed and is legal in legacy".

It does not give us a new Deck, but which cards do? Usually combo pieces or the much needed card that gives critical mass to a strategy. Aside from that I think that proves your argument invalid. There are a lot of cards that I do not care if they are legal or not. As they are, I play them. TNN is one of them. If it is gone, it is gone but to me the reasoning behind banning it is really problematic.

And then I have to applaud you for giving us the best argument why we should not ban it at all. It is just not that widely played. Thank you for making that point against your case. If you are unlikely to face it and you do not have to adapt to it, why even bother? There is just a really small number of Decks that get thrown off course by Nemesis. For combo and staxx, maybe reanimator it is just another creature that will not manage to race them. For control it ist just another dude to be wrathed away. Only a select few decks can not handle him when he is resolved and is it too much to expect those guys to play around TNN sometimes?

@Vazdru: One is an Instant that costs U which has an effect that can not be counteracted easily, the other costs 1UU, is a creature and can be handled in ways a lot of decks already play. It is hard to play around the one mana Instant which can hit at any time and you can not take away the three cards at ease (I mean the best discard costs BB and is sorcery) but you can be prepared to counter a 1UU creature or wrath him and his peers for 2B or 4CC with card advantage. Softcounters do not lose their value as fast (having 4 mana to pay for mana leak and Ancestral Recall is easy, having 6 for True-Name Nemesis and paying for it is way harder. Having 3 for Anc and counter backup is much easier than having 5 for TNN and backup which would leave you untapped in your own turn anyway). Resolving Vendilion Clique is a lot easier at the same cost.

The better question would be: "Why would we keep this card in the format?" I mean, I don't see any reasons.

That is probably the most useless question you can ask in this context. Why should we keep any strong cards in the format? Why should we keep Tarmogoyf, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Restoration Angel, Maze of Ith, Counterspell, Mishra's Workshop, Preordain or any other card in the format? Either you find good reasons why it should go (which I think there aren't enough) or accept it. Most arguments as to why it should go so far are premature and made because people are too lazy to adapt to it.


Almost every Deck can or does already incorporate cards that easily beat TNN. Toxic Deluge comes to mind, because you do not even have to wipe your own guys with it. And since you are already playing black, you probably have tutors. It can be countered if you are not in black. And there is hardly a relevant deck in our format that does not play counters and/or black. Golgari Charm is a flexible and very good answer too. If you can not make room for good answers to one card in 100 you seem to hate so much, then your deck must be really badly designed.

And lastly Wasser reasoning with the cost is plain bullshit. I can not put it any other way. This Format requires several cards that are a lot more expensive. Tarmogoyf is a must if you play green. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a staple in blue Decks. Fetches cost 30-80€ and you need several. Duals are not cheap either. And you are against a single card that costs about 30-40€? You must be out of your mind even trying to approach this matter from the financial side.