blkdemonight wrote: ↑3 years ago
I'm wondering if Lurrus dominance with Mishra's bauble for consistency over multiple decks is comparable to Brainstorm's influence in Legacy except serving different colors while serving different zones for gameplay resolutions?
I doubt it. Brainstorm works just well enough to keep a casual meta from homogenizing around a couple of top tier decks. Legacy is far more broken than is believed, but no one really wants to break it, and if someone does... there's not enough of a push to get everyone to adopt the broken deck.
Also, Brainstorm doesn't really invalidate any card in your deck. Lurrus is awful for Magic going forward because it means any permanent with a CMC of 3 or higher gets invalidated. This is why I believe they'll ultimately be forced to ban it, even if we have strategic diversity, Wizards cannot sell the idea of sending cards to older formats like Modern, Legacy, or Vintage, and especially not the home of old standard decks (Pioneer) when a card like Lurrus exists.
Practically every marquee card is 3+ CMC permanent, and Lurrus invalidates them all. That is a look that Wizards isn't going to want, because not only does it mean they can't have those memorable cards live on, but it also destroys any concept of effective removal in the future at higher CMC's due to the tempo loss, that whole threats vs answers thing they already struggle with.
Essentially, if Lurrus continues to exist, then the only way to correct the metagame is to introduce several 3+ CMC permanents that are so powerful that you would rather play them over Lurrus. And given the difference in consistency, as well as color requirements, that would mean a whole slew of cards that are a couple steps above things like Liliana of the Veil, Urza, and JTMS at those 3 and 4 slots. That's just not something Wizards can reasonably do.
Simultaneously, the existence of Lurrus would limit how powerful anything that's 2 or less CMC could be, due to the potential for recursion. They won't make a Snapcaster Mage mistake again, which resulted in significantly lowering spell power going forward, and making cards like Cavern of Souls.
This is why Lurrus will be banned. It wipes out absolutely massive chunks of design space. It doesn't matter if the meta is diverse or not, we've got strategic diversity right now. It becomes very difficult to make new cards that people get excited about when Lurrus exists.
Also, when Reid Duke of all people is being snippy over a card, you know you've goofed. His streams with his modern pregame action line is the equivalent of Kibler (another popular player known for a great attitude that Wizards has gone to extensive lengths to promote) doing his F6 thing against eggs at a GP. Lurrus will absolutely be banned.
idSurge wrote: ↑3 years ago
He knows (knew!) it was a %$#% up. He just ran with it, and nobody on the balance side even pretended to stop him.
Are we sure about this? If he knew it's power (and he's not great at power level, but he may have known), he would 100% be against a card like this. He frequently says that one of his main duties is to preserve design space. Lurrus almost completely eliminates all future design space. All permanents at 2 CMC or less have to account for Lurrus recursion. All permanents over 2 CMC need to be absurdly powerful to ever warrant consideration. All spells that interact with permanents need to do so assuming those permanents cost 2 or less.
I really, can't imagine him ever believing this would be acceptable. That assumes he was aware of the power level at print. If he wasn't, I would put good money on the fact that he is aware of it now, and knows as the lead designer that they need to eliminate this card in the interest of future design space. Even if they were willing to ignore Modern, Legacy, and Vintage... Pioneer absolutely 100% would still need a ban due to this reason, and if they're banning it there they might as well ban it everywhere else because the social cost is negligible at that point, and people would likely prefer it. We're also in a unique period where card sales are much less of a factor than normal, making bans of new cards easier.