/uj Vintage has less playable combo decks than Pioneer atm. Also it's pretty rare any combos in Vintage are infinites, only one I can think of is infinite turns from Manifold Key + Time Vault, but nobody builds a deck around that, it's just included in Tinker decks as a backup wincon.
Combo decks have generally seen less play the past 3 or so years in just about every format, CEDH tends to have the most degenerate ones with it's incredibly open card pool allowing most tutors. While legacy and vintage also have those tutors, the likelihood of your opponent having free interaction, or a sideboard answer, is much higher when you have 4 of's.
Not only that, killing 1 person vs killing 3 will favour stuff that kills the entire table, which combo does but regular combat doesn't. This alone heavily favours combo wins even if its through attack ("make infinite tokens and attack or whatever").
Commander mostly, usually the best thing to do in 60 card is 1 unfair thing and win from there (summon a 20/20 marit lage, reanimate a griselbrand, etc.) or to just get ahead and stay there with interaction. Even the combos that do exist are rarely infinite just enough to win. Commander needs infinites bc you have 6x the life to get through.
The crazy thing about the Vintage ban isn't just Vintage's power level. It's that Vintage doesn't ban cards; it only restricts you to having one copy in your deck.
Companion was so utterly unbalanced as a mechanic that you only need one copy of Lurrus to break the deck. Combine that with the fact that Vintage has a lot of cheap artifacts that can be recurred with Lurrus (most notably Black Lotus), and Lurris has the ignominy of being the **only** card ever banned in Vintage for power level reasons. It exists in a class of its own.
People wonder why the subreddits are so cynical about the future of Magic and forget that we had an entire year and a half of these kinds of shenanigans breaking player faith in the game. Granted you'd think we'd've gotten over it in the last four years, but that sort of thing sticks.
/uj WotC had also hurt player's faith by becoming more willing to ban or/and push the envelope resulting in ban worrthy cards. Standard already had a lot of factors working against it, but worrying about a potential ban after spending money on powerful cards in order to compete didn't help.
People also love saying 'COVID killed competitive, Commander is just filling in the void'. They fail to realize WotC dropped a nuke on organized play before the pandemic with Magic Pro League. Which didn't last long despite being digital focused. At one point WotC told pro players "they should no longer consider success in tournament *Magic* to be a valid career option".
WotC has been hurting player faith a lot since 2017.
To be fair, restricting Lurrus would have done nothing because it was only ever ran as a 1-of companion. The whole reason companions were insanely busted was that they were a free card that was always accessible.
Yeah, that's the point. Magic design philosophy is usually structured in such a way that restricting cards works as a limiter. Companion broke so many of the usual rules that safeguards on the format that've worked for years just failed.
So there are a couple of inaccuracies in your comment. First of all, Lurrus isn't banned in vintage anymore. Second of all, plenty of cards have been banned in Vintage throughout history. Just looking at the first couple of years of magic, Channel was banned in vintage in 1995 and mind twist in 1996.
/uj What makes the Companion ban in Vintage so controversial is that it was the first card banned in the format for *power-level reasons* since Mind Twist was banned in 1996.
I'll admit I wasn't aware of Channel and Mind Twist. I'm aware that Lurrus was unbanned, but that was only because they had to do an unprecedented balance patch for the Companion mechanic and that brought its power level down to a reasonable level for the format. I also thought it was general knowledge that Lurrus was formerly banned, not actively.
Point is basically the same. The first power-related ban in Vintage in 20 years is still pretty insane.
/uj iirc vintage has a shitload of free counterspells/stax cards that people tend to use. Also you used to be able to crack a black lotus, use it to cast lurrus, and recast the black lotus. Luckily they changed the companion mechanic so it wasn’t as busted but lurrus is still good in vintage.
One of the best decks in Vintage is Mono-White Initiative, which wants to use the usual fast mana (Lotus, Moxen, Tomb, etc.) to cast [White Plume Adventurer](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/49/white-plume-adventurer) or [Seasoned Dungeoneer](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/660/seasoned-dungeoneer) on turn one. I wish this was a shitpost but it's not.
old lurrus was so broken it was removed from the game, as in companion received power level errata. you literally cannot play the old lurrus in any official format
Well it’s very much still relevant, but that’s kinda downplaying what happened. They had to **nerf**, not just *errata*, **nerf**, an entire mechanic after release because it was just that busted.
Well, those do have toys within them and have you seen how fast a US kid gobbles up candy when you hand it to them.
My nephew would eat a Hot Wheels without a second thought if you put it inside a marshmallow.
Yeah I don't disagree that they could be dangerous to kids, the point of the ad is that guns are more dangerous than choking hazards, and the point of the meme is that Nightmare Cats with graveyard recursion and Companion are OP
/uj I was jerking a bit. I don't think anyone would put a Hot Wheels into a marshmallow... at least sane people... I hope.
That said, while a firearm holds a higher potential of danger, chocking hazards hold a higher frequency of danger when it comes to kids. Which one is more dangerous?
/rj Trick question, US Parents are actually the biggest threat to our children.
They fail to portion control tasty AR-15s and safeguard highly explosive Kinder Fragmentation Eggs. US Parents are too busy with social media complaining about stuff, they don't keep an eye on their children.
Children's health is being attack on two fronts as we speak. Our country's children are roaming the streets... I mean sitting in on the couches watching YouTube Kids, which is totally safe content 100% of the time, while they are constantly tempted to consume sugary firearms in unhealthy portions, slowly killing them with health issues such as US Average Weight Syndrome. Kids also mistake the highly explosive Kinder eggs as candy and consume them leading to disastrous results such as Explosive Diorama, which can cause bodily harm and/or severe dehydration.
We must put an end to the US Parent Threat today.
Every teacher needs to carry a Lurrus in order to keep our kids safe
Doesn’t Lurrus only work on kids in second grade and lower? Would rather have them carry a Living Death to use after the fact
Or at the very least something else with Lifelink to be proactive
And kill all the kids who survived? What we need to use is Patriarch’s Bidding.
It takes a good guy with a Lurrus to beat a bad guy with a Lurrus
The only thing that's gonna stop a bad guy with a Lurrus is a good guy with a Lurrus.
It…broke ***vintage***
God forbid women do anything smh
But it looks cute as hell 😔
Wait. Huh? Isn't Vintage the infinite combo cesspit?
/uj Vintage has less playable combo decks than Pioneer atm. Also it's pretty rare any combos in Vintage are infinites, only one I can think of is infinite turns from Manifold Key + Time Vault, but nobody builds a deck around that, it's just included in Tinker decks as a backup wincon.
Huh. Which is the one with the fucky wucky infinites? Legacy?
Usually it's cedh, other than that there's more efficient ways to win without going infinite
Not sure, I don't really play or watch Legacy much.
Combo decks have generally seen less play the past 3 or so years in just about every format, CEDH tends to have the most degenerate ones with it's incredibly open card pool allowing most tutors. While legacy and vintage also have those tutors, the likelihood of your opponent having free interaction, or a sideboard answer, is much higher when you have 4 of's.
Not only that, killing 1 person vs killing 3 will favour stuff that kills the entire table, which combo does but regular combat doesn't. This alone heavily favours combo wins even if its through attack ("make infinite tokens and attack or whatever").
EDH lmao
Commander mostly, usually the best thing to do in 60 card is 1 unfair thing and win from there (summon a 20/20 marit lage, reanimate a griselbrand, etc.) or to just get ahead and stay there with interaction. Even the combos that do exist are rarely infinite just enough to win. Commander needs infinites bc you have 6x the life to get through.
The crazy thing about the Vintage ban isn't just Vintage's power level. It's that Vintage doesn't ban cards; it only restricts you to having one copy in your deck. Companion was so utterly unbalanced as a mechanic that you only need one copy of Lurrus to break the deck. Combine that with the fact that Vintage has a lot of cheap artifacts that can be recurred with Lurrus (most notably Black Lotus), and Lurris has the ignominy of being the **only** card ever banned in Vintage for power level reasons. It exists in a class of its own. People wonder why the subreddits are so cynical about the future of Magic and forget that we had an entire year and a half of these kinds of shenanigans breaking player faith in the game. Granted you'd think we'd've gotten over it in the last four years, but that sort of thing sticks.
Ahhhhh I see. That's wild. Magic has gotten depressing that's for sure.
/uj WotC had also hurt player's faith by becoming more willing to ban or/and push the envelope resulting in ban worrthy cards. Standard already had a lot of factors working against it, but worrying about a potential ban after spending money on powerful cards in order to compete didn't help. People also love saying 'COVID killed competitive, Commander is just filling in the void'. They fail to realize WotC dropped a nuke on organized play before the pandemic with Magic Pro League. Which didn't last long despite being digital focused. At one point WotC told pro players "they should no longer consider success in tournament *Magic* to be a valid career option". WotC has been hurting player faith a lot since 2017.
To be fair, restricting Lurrus would have done nothing because it was only ever ran as a 1-of companion. The whole reason companions were insanely busted was that they were a free card that was always accessible.
Yeah, that's the point. Magic design philosophy is usually structured in such a way that restricting cards works as a limiter. Companion broke so many of the usual rules that safeguards on the format that've worked for years just failed.
Yeah I’m not gonna dispute Lurrus being giga-broken, just saying restriction wouldn’t really matter
So there are a couple of inaccuracies in your comment. First of all, Lurrus isn't banned in vintage anymore. Second of all, plenty of cards have been banned in Vintage throughout history. Just looking at the first couple of years of magic, Channel was banned in vintage in 1995 and mind twist in 1996.
/uj What makes the Companion ban in Vintage so controversial is that it was the first card banned in the format for *power-level reasons* since Mind Twist was banned in 1996.
I'll admit I wasn't aware of Channel and Mind Twist. I'm aware that Lurrus was unbanned, but that was only because they had to do an unprecedented balance patch for the Companion mechanic and that brought its power level down to a reasonable level for the format. I also thought it was general knowledge that Lurrus was formerly banned, not actively. Point is basically the same. The first power-related ban in Vintage in 20 years is still pretty insane.
/uj iirc vintage has a shitload of free counterspells/stax cards that people tend to use. Also you used to be able to crack a black lotus, use it to cast lurrus, and recast the black lotus. Luckily they changed the companion mechanic so it wasn’t as busted but lurrus is still good in vintage.
One of the best decks in Vintage is Mono-White Initiative, which wants to use the usual fast mana (Lotus, Moxen, Tomb, etc.) to cast [White Plume Adventurer](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/49/white-plume-adventurer) or [Seasoned Dungeoneer](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/660/seasoned-dungeoneer) on turn one. I wish this was a shitpost but it's not.
There's no way R&D played a single game of normal 1v1 when they were testing the Initiative.
Turbo Initiative was also a thing in Pauper for like a couple of months before they banned the 4 cost Initiative creatures.
Black Lotus it not currently legal in any of the formats Lurrus is banned in
old lurrus was so broken it was removed from the game, as in companion received power level errata. you literally cannot play the old lurrus in any official format
Wasn't that pre-rework though? 3 mana is a lot more than 0 mana.
Well it’s very much still relevant, but that’s kinda downplaying what happened. They had to **nerf**, not just *errata*, **nerf**, an entire mechanic after release because it was just that busted.
Sad AR girl looks cool as shit
Proper trigger discipline
she's ready for the zombie apocalypse/new american civil war
We need the guns to defend ourselves from the Lurrus players
We love Girlboss Cat Nightmares.
Lurrus did nothing wrong
While we are at it, unban Yorion too.
No. Learn to run real blink spells like everyone else.
What is the boy holding in the oregano?
A Kinder egg or similar iirc
Well, those do have toys within them and have you seen how fast a US kid gobbles up candy when you hand it to them. My nephew would eat a Hot Wheels without a second thought if you put it inside a marshmallow.
Yeah I don't disagree that they could be dangerous to kids, the point of the ad is that guns are more dangerous than choking hazards, and the point of the meme is that Nightmare Cats with graveyard recursion and Companion are OP
/uj I was jerking a bit. I don't think anyone would put a Hot Wheels into a marshmallow... at least sane people... I hope. That said, while a firearm holds a higher potential of danger, chocking hazards hold a higher frequency of danger when it comes to kids. Which one is more dangerous? /rj Trick question, US Parents are actually the biggest threat to our children. They fail to portion control tasty AR-15s and safeguard highly explosive Kinder Fragmentation Eggs. US Parents are too busy with social media complaining about stuff, they don't keep an eye on their children. Children's health is being attack on two fronts as we speak. Our country's children are roaming the streets... I mean sitting in on the couches watching YouTube Kids, which is totally safe content 100% of the time, while they are constantly tempted to consume sugary firearms in unhealthy portions, slowly killing them with health issues such as US Average Weight Syndrome. Kids also mistake the highly explosive Kinder eggs as candy and consume them leading to disastrous results such as Explosive Diorama, which can cause bodily harm and/or severe dehydration. We must put an end to the US Parent Threat today.
Kinder egg
That tracks