Banned in Standard - Ravager, Disciple, all artifact lands

[ComerPerro]

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

[lazarus]

1. sounds like my old addiction

Magic.

I remember back in the day (right after Alliances came out), they promised that Type II would no longer have restricted cards, and they'd play test extra hard and never have to ban a card again.

Three sets later, they had cards out they needed to ban. I quit, for that and other reasons.

I still miss it, though. A lot. Too much, actually.

[ComerPerro]

2. Yep.

They don't ban too often. Its pretty rare. But there was one deck that was dominating type 2. Every tournament had at least four of this deck in the top 8.

Plus, its more funny than anything else. The people who played this deck were pretty uncreative. Now they will have to find something new.

[lazarus]

3. Did it dominate like Necro?

Of course, very few people understood that Necro was a control deck. So you had very good Necro players, and then a bunch of people who treated it like a black weenie deck.

My all time favourite is still Turbo-Stasis. Gods what a deck that was. Lim-Dul's Vault had the be single coolest and most powerful uncommon card in the game.


I quit when a guy won a Pro tour with a deck his friends built. He learned the game on the drive to the tourney. At that point, it was no longer the fun of slowly building a deck, fine tuning it, working on the sideboard, etc. It was just throw a bunch of stuff together and hope.

They may as well have changed the rules to: Each player draws 10 cards. Whichever player has his combo in hand wins. :eyes:

[ComerPerro]

4. They developed something called Affinity for Artifacts

Which means,this artifact costs 1 less to play for each artifact you control.

Nice idea, but it resulted in some very quick games. With the right hand, you could have two 2/2 and a 4/4 attacking on turn 2.

Affinity was helped by artifact lands. This is a cycle of lands that are also artifacts, and can produce one of the five colors. This doubles the effectiveness of affinity. Example: One of the creatures with affinity is a 2/2 with a casting cost of 4. On your first turn, if you drop an artifact land, two artifacts with a casting cost of 0, and an artifact that costs 1, you can play this creature for free, because you have four artifacts in play.
Or, if you drop an artifact land on your first turn but do nothing else, and do the same on your second turn, the cost for your 2/2 becomes 2, and you can play it because you have two lands out.

That is bad enough.

But in the second set of Mirrodin block, they came out with something called an Arcbound Ravager. Arcbound creatures are artifacts, and instead of power/toughness they have a set number of +1/+1 counters. When they are put into the graveyard, you can move the counters onto another artifact creature you control. The Arcbound Ravager had this ability. But it also had another nasty ability: Sacrifice an artifact to put a +1/+1 counter on Arcbound Ravager.
Ouch. That means that you can swing with however many creatures you wish, and wait to see what goes unblocked. Let's say that your opponent decides not to block your 1/1 artifact creature. You sac a bunch of artifacts to the ravager (which includes your artifact lands) and suddenly your Ravager has 10 +1/+1 counters on it. You sac the Ravager to itself, and since it goes to the graveyard, you can move the counters to any other artifact creature you control, which will be your unblocked 1/1. So, now, your unblocked 1/1 is an 11/11.

And if you thought that was bad...

Discpile of the Vault. Black creature, costs one black to cast. its a 1/1, so not that impressive. But, its text is the real pain in the ass: Whenever an artifact is put into the graveyard from play, target opponent loses 1 life.

So if you have a Disciple out, and your opponent is at 15 life, killing them becomes quite easy. As long as you control enough artifacts, just sac them all to the ravager. With each one you sac, the Ravager gets bigger and your opponent loses a life.

And, considering that even lands are artifact in this deck, and given how fast this deck plays out cards, odds are pretty good that a player will have at least ten artifacts out by turn five.

[lazarus]

5. Lord, that's just stupid

The final straw for me was the Lands they came out with, one for each colour.

Remember these? The Blue one was tap for a blue mana for each artifact, the white one gave you a white mana for each enchantment, etc.

At the time, there were 6 0-casting cost artifacts, IIRC, including the beautiful Mox Diamond.

I set up a deck that, 70% of the time, could deck my opponent in three turns. That's just silly.

I think Weatherlight was the end of Magic. After that set, things just got crazy. Heck, I still miss the old Ice Age/Alliances days.