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I agree with the above posters - Goodstuff decks just play good cards. Ban a tutor and combo gets hit 10x harder than a goodstuff pile because the goodstuff pile just wants good cards, combo wants very specific effects. Without tutors you're drawing random Nantuko Husks and that won't win you any games against pure raw quality. Realistically threatening to kill does.

With that:

Unban: Natural Order
Ban: Primeval Titan

The rationale for NO ban is always NO=>Titan, and how it sees play in Goodstuff decks as a blowout play. So eliminate that specific play. Goodstuff isn't going to run random uncastables the way combo decks do and if they do it's much more of a cost than running a top-of-the-curve Prime Time, and Ramp decks have more than enough bombs to choose from. Losing Titan hurts both combo and ramp, but far less than losing NO hurts Hulk decks for example.

I think in that case you switch. At some point keeping NO in the playable pool will be holding more playable cards out of the format than the weight of the strategies it enables and you ban it. Not hard. I just don't like the take on automatically banning the strategies when atm the main big problem is Titan, not the petdeck combo lines for which the card is critical.

I still don't get the NO ban, just like I didn't get it the previous time. If NO=>Prime Time is a problem in midrange mirrors, ban the Titan! It's not like ramp decks are lacking in bombs to play, and it's not like midrange decks are going to go all in on clunky targets like Hulk and Progenitus with the dearth of cantrips in the format. NO=>Titan is played because it's backbreaking and Titan is hardcastable. If you remove the pure X-for-1 value play, NO will be profiled more as a combo card that you play because you have a plan, as it should be, instead of an extra cheapo copy of a goodstuff creature.

A better way to categorize decks than the usual metagame wheel:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/sculpting-formats-circle-predation/
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/circle-predation-part-2-indepth/

I get to play Pattern with the fun cards again.

Those Pattern decks :O

I personally quit around the time of the NO ban. Just didn't have the interest when the fun cards were getting banned left and right. It was harder and harder to justify playing Nantuko Husks over goodstuff anyway, let alone when the supporting engines got banned one after another.

Might not kill the deck (the real thing killing the deck is the neverending tide of goodstuff printings), but going from 3 Hulks to 2 does hurt. NO also used the least amount of pieces. Rector=>Pattern=>Hulk burns all your potential. NO=>Hulk leaves both Pattern and Rector online, leaving you with a much better late game.

Was just trying to point out that the NO ban is probably the wrong way to solve the problem - Titan-less NO is a specialist tool for decks with a plan, Titan is just one more fatty for Ramp decks to slam on the board.

Anyone have opinions on:

NO+Titan Legal, available strats:
1. Ramp
2. NO=>dedicated combo (f.ex. Hulk)
3. NO=>Titan(=>Stage-Depths) <--problem

Ban Titan:
1. Ramp (all the fatties in the world anyway, no need to be green)
2. NO=>dedicated combo (f.ex. Hulk, without Titan backup option anymore)

Ban NO:
1. Ramp (with Titan=>Stage+Depths available)
2.

I'd like to note that there's a reason the change was watchlisted. The whole point is to get people to test to see if it is actually good. In a game as varied as Magic testing by a small group of people is never enough. If it turns out that the change is really bad for the format, it can be rectified as soon as the next ban announcement. But to have anything to base that on, we need play, not theorycrafting. This game is pretty famous for theorycrafting being inaccurate.

That said, NO ban
I don't deny that even Hulk.dec fetched Primeval Titan with it a lot, about as often as Hulk itself. But in that case, wouldn't ramp, ramp, Titan be just about as nasty, especially as noted in a slower format? I feel that the decision that's being made is kind of Vengevine vs. Survival ban type - NO-Hulk is interesting (in my highly biased opinion), and ramp doesn't really care that the fatty happens to be Primeval Titan - there's tons of good fatties to play, but Hulk gets hurt unnecessarily as splash damage. Basically:

Current:
1. NO-combo
2. Ramp
3. NO-Titan <--The problem, as I understand it.

Ban P-Titan:
1. NO-combo (w/o Titan option, and thus more a tool for dedicated combo/toolbox decks)
2. Ramp

Ban NO:
1. Ramp
2.

i am not unhappy with my list. i am unhappy with the outlook of a more boring metagame. i have made a low curve naya list that looks very good and i don't see how control strategies are supposed to keep up with aggressive low and midrange strategies. i have stated everything before, so i am not gonna repaet it. meta bores me already though. congrats to the council on giving hl a severe push towards 60 card deck ratios and eliminating a good portion of archetypes and playables.

And in tournaments with 60 cards deck only the aggro/mid range deck win...

60 card deck ratios, maybe. Maybe.

Actual 60 card singleton, though, allows for a lot better control decks and actual combo/synergy decks to exist.

For me it's not so much the price. For me, it's just the goodstuff. Average card power is rising so fast that actual engine/synergy decks (the type I enjoy playing the most) become harder and harder to build. At some point you just have to ask why are you not casting Karn or playing some relatively narrow, dull Emralolol/Griseltard deck. Or in control, why win with some cool interaction when retarded things like AEtherling exist.

You can see it in Tiggupiru's and Triack's Pattern builds - More Goyf, more Smiter. Less zany synergies, less combo kills.

I went to Legacy, and found it fun to Hoof people. I found it fun to cast Llanowar Elves, except that it's actually Dark Ritual and Ancestral Recall stapled into one card. The sort of thing that feels decidedly criminal but comes together from cards working together. It's just a thing that's bloody hard in this format.

And most things that could be done to help it (bringing back Survival/Pod/something) would just power up goodstuff in equal measure, probably more.

I do like the idea of a singleton format, but I think in the pressures of three-colour manabases being simply the best, more and more goodstuff seeing print, and deck sizes being huge, something has got to give.


EDIT: Also, Wasser, the only thing you're succeeding in by writing in German is making me think you're an ass who just wants to troll instead of communicate.

That Varolz is both GSZ-able and hardcastable is pretty huge for Pattern decks.

Hands with Black Vise would become less common as red player can't any more keep hands with one land, Vise and five random cards.

The point is, Vise is typically roughly a Bolt or something if the opponent has a good hand. Not exactly remarkable, easily substituted, especially in time with new printings. The other end is if the opponent has an awkward hand that could be fine barring Black Vise with chumpers to slow the opponent down and so on. With Vise such hands just turn into torturous, drawn out exercises in futility with a near certain loss because the clock from Vise is inevitable, fast and hard to stop. Deals about 10 damage easy. Because of one singleton that's generally speaking not worth mulliganing around. A bit like early Wasteland, which at least is a one-time event and the resultant death is typically quick.

That's the point. Not that the games aren't rare - they are, thank goodness. It's that the card serves no other function than occasional, random torture.

Just one thing on Tiggupiru's suggestion. Black Vise. That thing consists of pure unfun on those "stumbling draws" mentioned earlier in the page.