[WotC] Tom LaPille takes his hat!

[Lemnear]

]http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/169]

At the end of the article Tom explains that the leaves Magic R&D and will be working for Dungeons & Dragons R&D from now on. I feel bad for our dear D&D friends.

Tom's great achievements in the last three month's only:

- destoryed single-handed Modern with his B&R Management
- banned Mental Misstep but complained about Dredge and Storm combo
- insulting the Intelligence of the players

We'll never forget the "Gentleman's Agreement", mindless bannings and unbannings in Vintage, killing survival of the fittest, Vintage Apocalypse and many shit more in his 3 years in charge.

I'm looking forward ...

[Joblin Velder]

"Magic Missile is now banned because of the number of level one wizards that rely on it."

[Troy_Costisick]

I can't see this as anything but a positive development for Magic.  That is, unless, Gavin Verhey takes his place and continues the same philosophy.  Gavin's interviews in the podcasts leading up the latest and most disasterous Modern bannings suggests he is just as much in favor of a heavy-handed DCI as LaPille was.

[Norm4eva]

I can't believe how quickly Modern got flushed down the toilet with this dude at the wheel.  I don't think I've ever gone from being that excited about a new, supported format to being completely dejected and pissed and honestly quite sad about the turn of events.  The periphery price hike on Modern staples was just poo icing on the crap cake; the experiment of Modern has done little in my mind besides prove the point that the best answer to the combo archetype isn't banhammers, but good, reliable control magic.  When Negate and Spell Pierce are your format's premier counterspells, you shouldn't sit there wondering what to ban next when (crap_2_card_combo_that_always _works_because_no_one_can_shu t_it_off_remotely) is making Guys And Burn a bad deck.

[Godder]

Commandant has been placed on Restricted Posting for a series of infractions. Any further infractions will likely result in a ban.

[Cruel Ultimatum]

banned Mental Misstep but complained about Dredge and Storm combo

The combo decks don't get to play misstep also? In my opinion misstep is a good banning, because otherwise the format turns into every deck playing 4 missteps 56 other cards.

I can't see this as anything but a positive development for Magic.  That is, unless, Gavin Verhey takes his place and continues the same philosophy.  Gavin's interviews in the podcasts leading up the latest and most disasterous Modern bannings suggests he is just as much in favor of a heavy-handed DCI as LaPille was.

Yeah, I wouldnt trust the guy that basically invented modern and has more experience with it then anyone else either...

[Lemnear]

1) Misstep was banned in Legacy because it counters Nacatl, Lackey and Vial not  for Brainstorm/Dark Ritual/StoP/etc. The crowd agreed that misstep would have been fine if it only targets Instants and Sorceries. So in conclusion this was a very One-sided ban in favor of a certain lobby.

Misstep in Combo isn't nearly as good as playing it against. Most of the decks harmed by misstep could have sidesteped it by proper deckbuilding except a few archetypes like Storm and Vial Goblins (Zoo can as results Show)

2) Even if he created modern doesn't mean He has a deeper understanding of it. Garfield created Ancestral Recall but failed to imagine the outcome. Tom sure had a Vision of modern being a slow battlefield-focused format but missed some aspects:

- He ensured that control is a very weak archetype in modern due to the exclusion of mercadian maskes and the "Lack" of decent Control Cards in the following sets compared with the creature power creep and bannings like Jace and Visions which are not explainable (Standard is no comparison).

- Combo being a problem without decent control elements. It's unlikely that there's any format imaginable without any combos that put you massive ahead in gamestate; true in modern too. But again he decided to pull the emergency button and banned EVERYTHING instead of pushing solutions via development or targeting the problem itself. Result: Twin is still a dominating Force!

What happend?

He did the Necro-misttake! Instead of banning the problem (Splitter Twin in my example), he banned the enabler (rites, ponder, etc.)! It's like banning Dark Ritual because of Necropotence but leave cabal ritual there... Ban Twin and the Deck is ok, Ban emdakul and Cloudpost is ok, Ban pyromancers Ascension and the "Storm-Problem" is no longer but to harrow a narrow (lol) format down to only One Powerful cardtype is wrong

That's the professional reason I think He needed to go except his "aggrogance" (lol again) and dumb shit He wrote.

[DubDub]

- He ensured that control is a very weak archetype in modern due to the exclusion of mercadian maskes and the "Lack" of decent Control Cards in the following sets compared with the creature power creep and bannings like Jace and Visions which are not explainable (Standard is no comparison).

Haha, wow, I had just about forgotten that Ancestral Visions is banned in Modern.  That's glorious.  "Guys, the format is too fast, let's ban something that can't possibly help you win unless it's turn four or later!"

[Smmenen]

He did the Necro-misttake! Instead of banning the problem (Splitter Twin in my example), he banned the enabler (

Just wanted to clarify that this is not actually a mistake.   That's a common misunderstanding in Magic.

It's only a mistake if the engine card continues to be a problem.  If you can neuter the engine card by cutting out its enabler, then it's not a mistake because you've just diversified the format without having to ban the engine.

[Lemnear]

He did the Necro-misttake! Instead of banning the problem (Splitter Twin in my example), he banned the enabler (

Just wanted to clarify that this is not actually a mistake.   That's a common misunderstanding in Magic.

It's only a mistake if the engine card continues to be a problem.  If you can neuter the engine card by cutting out its enabler, then it's not a mistake because you've just diversified the format without having to ban the engine.

Stephen I hope we agree that banning Twin (watching the actual metagame) would have been smarter instead of banning Rite, Ponder and Preordain to achieve similar but without hurting control Even more.


Oh, I forgot to mention the joke that they banned Mental Misstep but complained about Combo being present and instead of unban misstep they banned the mentioned 3 1cc "enabler"

[The Wolf]

There is no difference between banning a engine or an enabler.

If necro and ritual are dominant in a format something needs to be banned.
If you functionally reprint necro in the next set, the ritual was the correct ban. If you functionally reprint ritual in the next set, necro was the correct ban.  
Engine vs enabler is completely based on what's printed in the future.
The only difference is, enablers are waiting for something to break, while engines are waiting for something to break it.  


Remember, having an engine thats too slow to play is not more diverse then the ability to power out a turn 1 gray orge.  There just different

On topic: No tears shed here.  Hopefully the replacement will shake stuff up a bit.

[Meddling Mike]

What's up with the expression "takes his hat"? I gathered from the context that it meant he is moving on to other opportunities, but I have never heard this expression. I thought it might be an expression that's more common in Ireland/United Kingdom, but I'm usually on top of most of those being Irish myself and my wife having grown up in London. Is it a German expression that didn't translate precisely to English? I guess it works from a logical perspective since if one were leaving a job you wouldn't want to leave your hat behind.

[DubDub]

Did you change your handle so that people stop calling you Chris?

[Joblin Velder]

At first I was all "Oh man, Mixing Mike?"

[Meddling Mike]

Did you change your handle so that people stop calling you Chris?

Yes, I'm tired of people thinking I'm a better player than I am.

[Godder]

It's short for "I'll take my hat and leave" - "I'll get my coat (and leave)" is another, similar expression.

[Lemnear]

What's up with the expression "takes his hat"? I gathered from the context that it meant he is moving on to other opportunities, but I have never heard this expression. I thought it might be an expression that's more common in Ireland/United Kingdom, but I'm usually on top of most of those being Irish myself and my wife having grown up in London. Is it a German expression that didn't translate precisely to English? I guess it works from a logical perspective since if one were leaving a job you wouldn't want to leave your hat behind.

It's a expression not uncommon in roman languages and I heared the phrase in several other languages including english so I was using it here because it describes that "you have choosen to go and leave nothing behind". He said that he wasn't fired or something like this but wanted to switch to D&D (regardless if this is the truth or not).

Godder is right about this being a shortform. At least the fact itself was clear ... even if I never thought this thread turns into something educational  ^_^

[DubDub]

Tom's replacement, today (you may have to hit 'Transform' at the bottom of Tom's last article):

Regarding Delver of Secrets

This little guy has been tearing up Legacy as of late, and made a decent name for itself last week at the World Championships as well. Its stats are certainly generous: you get a full three mana off your Moon Heron if all goes right, and can start attacking as soon as the second turn. Cards like Brainstorm and Ponder allow you to manipulate the top card of your library and flip this guy much more frequently than would ordinarily be the case. So how did we allow this to see print?

Let's see, a flying, blue, wild nacatl... that's a good question!

What we found was that in Limited it tended to flip so infrequently that oftentimes including it in your deck was actually a liability. After all, no one is scrambling to cram Fugitive Wizard in their 40-card decks. Occasionally it'd come out early and turn the game around, but when that happens rarely enough it's a fun moment. What you don't want is for the format to start revolving around a random effect like that. Later on in the game the Delver is such a poor topdeck that we felt like printing it with these stats added texture to the Limited environment.

Irrelevant to Legacy.

In Standard, although it's correspondingly easier to transform Delver of Secrets into Insectile Aberration than in an average Limited game, it's also far easier for opposing decks to recover from the tempo advantage an early 3/2 flier provides. Enough decks have to be concerned with killing early creatures that the size advantage relative to other creatures of comparable cost becomes a mild upside, not a back-breaking game-changer.

Irrelevant to Legacy.

In older formats like Legacy and Modern, creature removal spells are proportionally less powerful because the diversity of viable strategies in these formats renders removal more of a liability in creature-light matchups. It therefore becomes easier for a card like Insectile Aberration to take over a game—particularly when there are so many efficient ways to protect it, and when cards like Brainstorm virtually guarantee an early transformation.

Oh dear goodness no!  I'm having flashbacks to when Zac's predecessor banned like a dozen cards in Modern to try to ensure creature-light matchups don't occur.  Please don't formatscape Legacy into Zoo vs. Blue Zoo!

Fortunately, these formats tend to be robust enough to adapt to a creature that, for all its power, simply attacks and blocks.

...wait, what?  A reasonable conclusion to come to?  That's not what I expected at all.  Given a diet of LaPille's justification for things I was expecting something more like "So we're banning Lion's Eye Diamond, Brainstorm, Jace and Moat to reign in decks that don't play creatures." to come next.

It's a whole new era already guys.

/Delver of Secrets still should have been a card, and probably should have had a drawback once flipped too like losing a life on your upkeep.

[Norm4eva]

Tom's replacement, today (you may have to hit 'Transform' at the bottom of Tom's last article):

Regarding Delver of Secrets

This little guy has been tearing up Legacy as of late, and made a decent name for itself last week at the World Championships as well. Its stats are certainly generous: you get a full three mana off your Moon Heron if all goes right, and can start attacking as soon as the second turn. Cards like Brainstorm and Ponder allow you to manipulate the top card of your library and flip this guy much more frequently than would ordinarily be the case. So how did we allow this to see print?

Let's see, a flying, blue, wild nacatl... that's a good question!

What we found was that in Limited it tended to flip so infrequently that oftentimes including it in your deck was actually a liability. After all, no one is scrambling to cram Fugitive Wizard in their 40-card decks. Occasionally it'd come out early and turn the game around, but when that happens rarely enough it's a fun moment. What you don't want is for the format to start revolving around a random effect like that. Later on in the game the Delver is such a poor topdeck that we felt like printing it with these stats added texture to the Limited environment.

Irrelevant to Legacy.

In Standard, although it's correspondingly easier to transform Delver of Secrets into Insectile Aberration than in an average Limited game, it's also far easier for opposing decks to recover from the tempo advantage an early 3/2 flier provides. Enough decks have to be concerned with killing early creatures that the size advantage relative to other creatures of comparable cost becomes a mild upside, not a back-breaking game-changer.

Irrelevant to Legacy.

In older formats like Legacy and Modern, creature removal spells are proportionally less powerful because the diversity of viable strategies in these formats renders removal more of a liability in creature-light matchups. It therefore becomes easier for a card like Insectile Aberration to take over a game—particularly when there are so many efficient ways to protect it, and when cards like Brainstorm virtually guarantee an early transformation.

Oh dear goodness no!  I'm having flashbacks to when Zac's predecessor banned like a dozen cards in Modern to try to ensure creature-light matchups don't occur.  Please don't formatscape Legacy into Zoo vs. Blue Zoo!

Fortunately, these formats tend to be robust enough to adapt to a creature that, for all its power, simply attacks and blocks.

...wait, what?  A reasonable conclusion to come to?  That's not what I expected at all.  Given a diet of LaPille's justification for things I was expecting something more like "So we're banning Lion's Eye Diamond, Brainstorm, Jace and Moat to reign in decks that don't play creatures." to come next.

It's a whole new era already guys.

/Delver of Secrets still should have been a card, and probably should have had a drawback once flipped too like losing a life on your upkeep.

If there's one thing that draws me to Eternal formats time and again, in spite of there being such a dearth of players around these parts, is the "we're all adults here" theme; that is to say, the players are generally older than the guys in Standard and the format is significantly older, and is much like the sort of players you wish you'd sit across from; grown-ass men and women who can take care of themselves.

I don't necessarily like the execution of Delver - I like the "if you're stacking your deck (doing something very Blue), this turns into something better" but I don't like his p/t ratio, it's just not okay with me to see such an efficient creature in 'the wrong color'.  But Zac Hill is right, he is just a dude.  And Zoo decks still beat up on the Blue player even if they think one little 3/2 for U makes them a beatdown deck too; fundamentally they are just more redundant and still a pain in the dick for a counter-based control deck to deal with.

I like this Zac Hill character.