Banlist for the 3rd quarter?

[Kristian]

I don't know if they (control) will be better or worse, but there will certainly be more variation of control decks.
Without LFTL you probably won't splash for G. As for splashing for U with or without LFTL intuition and gifts are still great cards.

I've gone back to my old 5cc without loam. All suns' dawn is simply too fun not to play. Along with stuff like Naya Charm, Regrowth, Bant Charm, Violent Ultimatum, Garruk and a few other goodies.

All suns dawn was an awesome card, but a bit high on CMC, so i dropped, but i quite fancy it. Violent ultimatum seems a bit colored intensive for a 5c.. even then i'd prefer cruel ultimatum.

@Dreamer: intuition is still very powerful card, even without LFTL. Now, IMO, it just makes card piles more differently than just LFTL + lands.

Most of the decks I play with and against isn't made for competitive but for casual. Lots of big and fancy spells. It's quite fun ^^.

[Kassow-Rossing]

Now that's just plain silly.

The opposite is true! Banning LftL makes playing control decks much more viable, because now you can afford to play non-green control decks, which simply lost to LftL before... This will imho have the effect of more control decks being played!

Frank is absolutely right there in my opinion, I have several control decks and in most of
them you have to splash green to be competitive, even if it's the only green card you really need, and even
if you do it only to have this hard intuition/gifts/loam/landtoolbox minicombo in the deck.
I think the banning of loam will give more control decks the option to be playable and decrease the number
of bant decks (control ones).

If you weaken control decks by taking away two of their strongest cards and don't weaken aggro by taken any of their cards, then you - on average - weaken control more than you weaken aggro. Even though you don't have to splash for green any longer in your Grixis deck (or whatever), you still won't get a better deck. Obviously it will be worse because you also had the opportunity not to splash for green before the new bannings.

Edit: But yes it is true we will see many more different control decks as of now.

[Tiggupiru]

Let me tell you a story.

This is a story of a qualifier tournament for the Finnish nationals. There were 32 players, and about 28 of them were playing control or combo (no joke. I saw grand total of three aggros). Finnish aggro problem is that nobody is playing them. =/

Among these 28 decks there were huge number of unfocused control decks with no real game plan. I think the right definition is something like four color goodstuff or something similar. In those decks, especially when they play against each other, the Loam would have been a bomb. This is because those decks lay down lands every turn and most often than not, are unable to use it properly. They tend to use sensei, cast Impulse, or whatever, but they were tapping like 2 of their 12 lands each turn. When Loam gives you unlimited land drops, makes you use all the man you have every turn, and eventually finds you threats to actually win the game with, it's a good card.

The moral of the story? Loam is good if you have no focus, or your focus is on the lands. If you have a reasonable game plan, possibly something like a combo kill, the loam is significantly worse than tutors (or card draw for the tutors/combo pieces) that will win you the game. You could argue that Loam wins you the game as well, but once you've been playing against control-combo or aggro decks who like nothing more than see opponent getting bunch of lands and tapping out, you change your mind.

I expect control decks to got better now when the card they thought was auto-include is no more, and they might even add some reasonable focus.

[Kassow-Rossing]

Sounds like some bad players to me

If people were playing Life from the Loam without any strategy around it, it's their own fault. I really don't hope LftL didn't get the cut so noob players could learn to think for themselves.

[Georg B]

OMG, you did not get the point, right?

Controldecks are not getting worse just because you cut two auto includes.
Because these two cards have been cards only (mostly) for the control mirror, tey made this mirror more random (cause everyone plays them, and the one who gets them first, wins).
So, if your deck is not getting worse against aggro by banning the two cards (or not mutch) and the control mirror is not that random anymore, it could become more attractive to play a control deck.
Sounds wiered, cause they just banned two good cards, but think about it, it makes sence.

Its like Jitte. It maybe would decrease the will of many players to play aggro, for the same reasons.

Well, all these facts are true only for good players of course. Because a bad player surely likes it when it gets random.

[so_not]

Sounds like some bad players to me

Stop the trolling already. Nobody is listening any more. About everything you ever comment on is just wrong, stupid or sounds so weird that you must be a troll. Why do you think you are so good even though you obviously are not?

[Kassow-Rossing]

so_not you are really far off Get some sleep

[coldcrow]

Actually Loam did help control vs aggro by having a secure Maze of Ith + potentially Vesuva to copy it.

[Mythrandir]

Actually Loam did help control vs aggro by having a secure Maze of Ith + potentially Vesuva to copy it.

well, didn't help that much. With that you're probably talking about a 3rd/4th turn intuition/gifts for maze + vesuva + LFTL. By that time a good aggro deck will probably have you in the red zone. So wasting those kind of tutors for maze + vesuva is a bit slow... I'd probably go for some "mass removal". But it'd depend a lot on the current state of the game.

But yes, if aggro didn't have an explosive burst or if the  control deck could slow it's initial moves, fetching maze(s) would be very helpfull.

Also a small remark: If i knew i was facing aggro and LFTL was in my initial hand, i'd spoil mulligan it (allmost everytime).

[Kassow-Rossing]

I would too (unless I had Wasteland in opening hand as well)