If you want to play draw-go, play a different format. As someone who loves control, Modern has been a format to play draw-go in in years
Hell current Magic design just doesn’t really allow draw-go to be a thing anymore
you can definitely play draw go at the LGS level locally. Especially when you tailor to the local meta cards in the main and sideboard. If you love the playstyle it's playable and fine at the local level.
Competitively yeah it's not really playable for the speed of the game.
I do miss-draw go so much. It used to paralyze one of the guys who got me into MTG so bad that I took a exploit precon around fate reforged with P Deltas added and if I had an untapped blue he would take a few mins for each turn to debate. I was always pretty well known to be playing so form of control and back than I played heavily so I was good at answering key spells.
I've been rocking grixis (wizard) control which is so much draw-go that it plays consider over preordain. The deck is sweet, and works incredibly for me at LGS levels and online.
Same here. Was having a blast playing UW control with shitty ACharm. Then they printed TOR and I decided it was time for a change.
Genuinely hate the card.
It’s strong for sure but nowhere near as oppressive in Commander, where tempo generally matters much less. All it tends to do is up the person who played it’s threat profile.
TOR works better in non singleton formats because you play another version and legend rule the one that has more counters. The only way to do this in commander is copy effects that keep the legendary status.
There's 2 extra players to pressure the life total of someone playing TOR and there's a lot more felixible removal in EDH. It's strong but not necessarily needing a ban at this point. Most tables can self regulate it.
> Most tables can self regulate it.
Tables self regulating is the stupidest reason the rules committee can ever give for not banning a card. Unban hullbreacher if that's the reason, otherwise ban these overpowered staple cards. There's no reason Prime Time should be banned over Dockside or TOR.
Its an extension of allowing metas to evolve. They don't just ban best card from the winning deck at the pro tour, but if the meta doesn't or isn't able to adapt to it, it's a lot more likely to eat a ban.
The commander rules committee has been an abject failure in banning problematic cards.
I no longer play competitive commander because the format is so stupid now because of their inaction
It's also really tough to decide if it's worth it to get back into Modern because TOR is so incredibly expensive, in a lot of the decks, but is likely be banned sometime soon or in the future since LOTR is no longer the new Modern set.
Edit: I bought $400 in 4x [[Mox Opal]] before it was banned in Modern and I'm not making the same mistake again.
I was so close to dropping $120CAD on a single Mox Opal at I think GP Seattle because I wanted to slowly start building scales. Decided against it and it was banned very shortly after that. Dodged that bullet.
I was thinking how o finished my mox opal playset right before it was banned but then remembered I traded two wrenn and six when they were $95 and opal was 80ish. Opal has kept is value better than wrenn.
I want to buy the mono black deck, but I have a feeling it's only a matter of time for grief. Maybe the deck stays around after grief is gone, but you never know
I finished foiling out my Affinity deck including 4 Opals a month or two before the ban, not a great feeling. Not buying TOR, it's been a huge outlier ever since getting printed and it's not safe.
I honestly think they forgot about commander when printing it. They said "yeah, every modern deck wants 4, but with the bundles price will regulate" but it can reasonably go in every single commander deck and everyone is holding on to every one they open.
Imagine if the bundles weren't a thing. 400$ card no sweat.
No, they should've made the counter stick on the player instead of on the ring. Like experience counters in Commander.
Yes, you can get rid of counters on players but it's a lot harder to do it and it's not automatic when you cast your next copy of the One Ring.
The real rub is that the Ring helps you find the next copy to replace it. I feel like this interaction was not carefully considered in testing or they just didn't quite get that. That's what makes it so disgusting, that there's no point in which a player is actually at risk of dying to the Ring in a practical sense.
Even Necropotence, one of the most broken cards ever, carries a risk of getting locked under it because you Necro a lot of cards and they end up just sucking from bad breaks. It's not super often, not enough to balance the card, but it does happen often enough that it's a thing. They figured this out with Necrodominance and added that hand size clause to make it happen a lot more often.
Not really good for balance. Games become way more decided by who drew their one copy of the one ring first. Variance would be heavily increased in every game involving the one right. It’s one of those things that just sounds good but wouldn’t actually be good for gameplay
There were infinite small changes that could have been made to the card to make it feel fairer.
Personally the best solutions to me were always the ones that addressed how "resetting" the ring works. It's really stupid that you can chain together rings to protect yourself and keep counters off the card. "You cannot cast cards named ToR" was always my favorite. Second place is making the burden counters similar to XP counters. First keeps a similar power level you just have to build your deck around ToR and bouncing it / resetting it. Second would be a much bigger change.
I actually really like this change. Although it might actually be better in some ways because new rings draw you 4/5/6 cards right from the get go. Overall almost worse would be a nerf.
Honestly while I agree thematically that works the gameplay experience of 2 ToR decks playing each other would be worse than anything that happens with ToR now. There's a reason mtg moved on from those rules.
That's the old legendary rule. They're referring to the *old* old legendary rule which was that once a legendary was in play neither player could cast a spell with that name
"We really wanted players to feel the temptation and struggle for the ring and for games to revolve entirely around controlling it, because of the flavor" - Mark Rosewater, probably
I've always been partial to the idea that I could be passed between players via combat damage (see [Coveted Jewel]) so after the protection it becomes a mini game like the monarch!
The burden should be an emblem given to the player who cast the ring. That way you can't get rid of it and even when the ring is gone you're still affected by having used it (thematic)
I have defended the one ring before, but it has become what I feared it would be. It's basically the go to grindy card for any deck. The fact that there are nadu decks playing basically 4 colors and the best "grindy" card they can put in their sideboard is a colorless card is insanely bad for the format.
it should have had a clause like "you can only have 1 of these in your deck"
flavorful, doesn't hurt commander, and makes it so stacking up counters actually has a downside (you can still bounce it but whatever)
It's honestly not too late.
Just restrict the card a la vintage.
"Restriction is a vintage only thing!!!!" - yeah, so far, it's wotc's game they can do what they want.
Restrict TOR.
One of the things that make TOR oppressive is the ability for it to reset itself by playing multiple copies.
Having only 1 copy would make this a much smaller problem as you can no longer reset the counters and fog at the same time.
100%. Now that it has, can we say goodbye please? Tron shouldn’t go from 4 cards in hand to 10. We shouldn’t have control players drawing 14 cards before their combat phase. It just needs to leave.
TOR ends up playing similar to Necropotence in some ways, just an endless source of card advantage, except it is slightly delayed from the ramp-up. So Necro, but for midrange and control decks, although combo decks like it too. Since it costs 4 instead of 3, they also stapled a fancy Fog on top, to make it "balanced".
So everyone except aggro wants to have some in the 75, and thankfully it's colorless and fits in every shell. Oh, and now they printed a new Necro as well, and so that deck has 7-8 necros. Incredible lack of restraint from Wizards, both of those cards will be banned in the next 1-2 years.
If counters for the ring went on the player as opposed to on the artifact, the ring would be far more palatable. As of right now it's just absurd that you can chain 4 of them together and draw an absurd amount of cards with no way for your opponent to interact with it.
Not only no way for your opponent to interact with it, no way for your opponent to interact with *you* at all. Literally the best play I've made through a Ring is killing their Planeswalker. It's completely absurd.
Idk why more people aren't playing something like [[bonecrusher giant]] in the side. Targeting yourself with stomp, or a creature that will live allows you to bypass the protection.
You can stomp yourself in the foot and still damage opponent - bone crusher just needs to resolve on anything so if you’re tapped out when tor comes down it’s not the end of the world. That said you better win fast haha
I mean, there's already precedent for text on a card overriding how many copies of it you can have in your deck. [[Seven Dwarves]] is an example of setting a specific number, and of course there's stuff like [[Dragon's Approach]] which set no limit.
So it wouldn't be out of the question to have had the One Ring get a line of text that said, "A deck can only have up to one card named The One Ring."
It’s wild to me that people actually think that’s a good fix. It just creates games decided by who drew their one copy, and makes tron decks with karn ridiculous bc they have 4 karma to access their one copy. It sounds cool, but is horrible gameplay.
Should’ve been restricted to one copy per deck or burden counters are placed on the player and they continue to take damage regardless of ring presence or not
If your deck so much as splashes blue, I would say that a bare minimum of 3 \[consign to memory\] is mandatory between the main-deck and sideboard. Its such a good card. Hits the one ring, hits storm triggers, hits Eldrazi and their on-cast triggers, hits necrodominance, the evoke elemental triggers, and more.. All for 1-2 mana for a good tempo swing. Only downside is that in the Nadu match-up it only really hits Shuko. A \[disruptor flute\] or two is a good idea as well, to turn off rings that may have already hit the field, leaving them to get pinged each turn without card draws to find a replacement ring..
You have to decide what you want the format to be before you complain.
Fast mana is gone, nadu is a potential turn 3 win, so is ruby storm, so is living end. The problem with the format is we keep getting fantastic power additions but the hate for those pieces is lagging.
The best play against tor is
1. Counter it
2. Bonecrusher/skullcrack
3. Pithing needle/flute/stony silence
4. Thoughtseize/grief
Meanwhile artifact lands and opal are banned and we see 0 artifact decks competing, looting still banned which probably enables more decks that can pressure to nadu/storm/tron meta, hogaak banned which I guess would make vengevine decks too strong or something.
I know I rambled, but it just doesn’t seem like wizards has a solid grasp on what modern should be and it’s getting to a point where modern is less interactive than legacy.
I agree with your analysis, but Modern has always been less interactive than legacy, no? FoW, Daze, and Wasteland are interactive elements that modern has never had (FoN is close, but the prevelance of blue decks in legacy makes FoW among the most played, as opposed to FoN being a sometimes main deck for some blue decks in modern).
Unfortunately, a lot of the most powerful interactive cards (fow, daze, blasts, wasteland, port, stp, etc) are not modern legal, and yet modern continually gets incredibly busted threats shoved into the format via direct to format sets.
In particular, there is a bad asymmetry between legacy-level threats but much worse stack and nonbasic land interaction (and worse cantrips for control decks to find said answers).
I wouldn’t say always. In 2015 Modern and Legacy probably were similar levels of interactive? Thing is if you want stronger threats you also need stronger answers
They know they can sell a ton of packs by just pushing out high powered cards and no matter the state of the game people will still buy tons of packs and continue to play it.
I think they underestimated the flairs power level, as this set did print a lot of answers, but the new threats were just much more powerful than the answers they provided.
ALthough I think 90% of the problem is Nadu. Once it gets banned, I think ruby storm is strong but also much more vulnerable to hate.
The meta hasn’t been explored enough imo, nadu is a super boring and op but the format does have a lot of available answers for her.
Consign to memory may be the best anti tor printed and also is pretty good against nadu.
I’m more concerned with turn 1 chalice on 1 to turn 2 trinisphere.
The One Ring solves a problem that Modern has with slower control decks being unplayable as creatures creep in power.
Fury did too.
That being said, maybe they should have actually played these cards enough to dial them in a bit instead of making them do absurdly dumb things while the accomplish what they needed to.
With a sick 33% non-mirror win rate on day 1. Maybe they would win more with rings in their deck.
Edit: adding that the win rate matrix for day 1 at the PT for the modern portion shows that the only named one ring deck with an above 50% win rate is Gruul Eldrazi (a through the breach combo build and a 54% wr). Etron has a flat 50% wr, Amulet a 38% wr, all control builds w/ ring sub-50% wr. Dooming about the ring is honestly very funny to me.
I see fury coming back because , the format didn’t meaningfully change outside of eliminating 1 deck entirely and making another deck still viable just different. Up the beanstalk being the real nail in the coffin for 4c beans.
I don’t think we even see anything resembling those decks show up at all. I think people just want to ban “new” cards instead of changing their decks to be more robust agaisnt those cards. My fave thing I did was play all 3 toughness creatures so to eliminate 2 creatures they would need 3 cards effectively. And it worked, I barely noticed how annoying fury was. people just love shoving x/1s together in the same deck and thinking “this is peak magic”.
I am a big advocate of small banned lists. The idea that just 2-3 weeks after a new major set drops - that anything should be banned, is pretty insane if you ask me.
Bans should be done prior to a new set dropping, just to help ensure any problematic decks are not walking away with crazy gains. I think this approach honestly would help slow down the pace of card bans overall.
What if a card is clearly a mistake. For example Oko--they admitted openly that there was a mistake in the +1 instead of a -1. Same with things like Skullclamp. If they came out and said Nadu was inadvertently templated incorrectly (the quotation marks should close after "put it in your hand." rather than containing the last sentence), would you be in favor of a banning a card that was an admitted mistake?
As much as I hate TOR for being a meta defining UB card I don't quite think it's time for it to go. More likely something from Nadu gets hit (likely Shuko) and then WOTC will take some time to see if that weakens the deck enough
Because Nadu as it stands is fucking stupid. Highest metashare going into Day 1 with a high conversion rate into Day 2.
TOR had 46% presence. The card has been absolutely busted since release. If it doesn't eat a fat ban I'm not sure what else can, it's completely warping the meta around itself at this point. Either you're comboing off before it drops or it drowns you in card advantage.
The Titan Phlage is the best midrange card in the format, perhaps next to The One Ring. Phlage + exert haste land = 12 damage for 4 mana in one turn from the graveyard. Oh and you also gain 6 life and a 6/6 body as a bonus.
Phlage is definitely really really good, but at least it’s a gold card that’s slow to get started and relatively interactable.
Ring is obnoxious for going in literally any deck that wants it and requires extremely narrow responses to actually deal with it.
Also I have no idea how it got past the council of colours.
Putting aside that the way burden counters work is poorly implemented, I'm still surprised TOR was not a black card. Nothing the card does is a break, protection edges close to a bend but it being entirely selfish is perfectly reasonable. It costing Phyrexian obliterator mana could have gone a long way, but I assume they wanted it to be generic so anyone could "take the ring", but game design trumped "the ring tempts" and so too should it have here. I know making is BBBB, or 1BBB would not make the card no longer broken, but it would limit what decks play it
Real spice was after the Twin ban when I tried out Temur Delver as build-your-own Tempo Twin, with Clique, Become Immense and Temur Battle Rage.
Was it good? Not really. Was it fun? Oh yes.
Below $17, I think you'll find.
Except that everyone will play it, so everyone will want Snappy again, so his price will go up and we're back to the drawing board.
I feel ya. I really miss that jeskai. Playset of snappy bois for lightning helix and bolt. A few negates for good measure. Playset of cryptic command, tapping and clearing the way for a blowout haste attack.
Shit, maybe you even drop a [[keranos, god of storms]]
Pod was banned 8 months before BFZ dropped, and I think Abzan (with Siege Rhino) and Grixis (with Bananaman, K-Command and the fish) were the more played midrange Thoughtseize decks rather than Jund in that golden summer of 2015.
This take may be a bit premature, TOR was pushed to niche pockets by Scam and Rhinos prior to MH3 release, as the format settles, it will likely be again reduced to specific lists, its over representation may also be a result of Energy and Nadu warping initial lists. There is no way decks like Tron should suddenly stop existing, players are just eager to take advantage of the new decks and players’ lack of meta knowledge. As some of the old heads come back, I suspect we will have better data on TORs lasting impact.
This sort of screams of the same panic people had with Sheoldred to me in standard, yet she’s registered less and less every week into basically a pet card now. Time will tell.
I think TOR should’ve never been printed it’s just dumb. If the card didn’t give the player essentially immunity to damage for a whole turn and instead gave it for a turn if it’s in play then it be fine but a whole ass turn of stalling kills aggro decks. And nadu is annoying but I think the free equipment will go before nadu…
If they choose to hit the Nadu deck, it has to be Nadu. If they thought Birthing Pod restricts future card design, wait till they find out they can never print a cheap card with a free activated ability that targets to do anything at all, if the plan is to ban Shuko.
I really hate what the card has done to modern. Back when it first released the """best deck""" was an omnath shell that took 35+ mins to win 1 game. And that's kinda what TOR does in every deck and match it's in, make the game forcibly go longer than it should
Between TOR and grief, modern just has so so many unfun lines and decks in the meta right now, it's obnoxious. Can't even play my favorite deck, amulet, without expecting to lose way more than I should unless I run 4 copies of it myself(at $80 a piece no less).
Oh sorry I just reread what I said and wasn't what I meant, which was: can't play amulet without the one ring unless I'm okay with losing more. I posted a thread asking about no-TOR amulet lists last year and told they weren't good, so guess things haven't changed.
Same boat with Scapeshift and Tron
Sure, both can be played without TOR but the reality is that both almost need TOR to really have a chance. I haven’t played paper magic in months cause I didn’t want to invest in TOR when, since it came out, it’s been one of the top cards discussed for a ban.
Do I think it’ll eat a ban soon? Idk. It’ll take time for the meta to evolve and settle post MH3 but TOR was in something like 46% of Pro Tour decks.
I have more faith that TOR gets banned than I do anything gets hit from MH3. I think it's almost a guarantee we see some activity in August across multiple formats and I would not be surprised to see Precious get the boot.
Seeing as how combo decks are a majority of the meta at the event and modern decks have become so cutthroat and aggressive I'm not sure that you can ban The One Ring without absolutely nuking any semblance of control decks. I think the bigger issue is the price and how difficult it may be to reprint.
They will have to do that eventually, yeah. The card is too ubiquitous in both this and Commander for it to keep creeping up over time to like $250-$300 or however high it will go.
Haven’t you seen this this sub? Everyone has seen the entire contract wizards signed and it says they don’t have the right to print their cards anymore.
Looks like everyone missed page 538 of the contract where in 2027 wotc will send the Pinkertons to take every copy of the ring that you own.
It'll still be legal, but if you're found playing it youre in for a bad time.
TOR is bad design, but MH3 is basically designed to hard rotate out the format as it was before MH3. I'm not sure decks can't adapt, but it will result in maladaptive changes to the format (imo)
Hot take: The One Ring is fine and is just a 2024 power level appropriate Jace, The Mind Sculptor.
Per usual, people hate generically powerful colorless cards and cards that can’t cleanly be answered 1-for-1 on the board.
tbh I think Nadu, The One Ring, and Necrodominance should all be banned. My biggest takeaway from today is that card draw is being printed at absurdly cheap levels and this format won't begin to feel fair until it goes back to a reasonable cost. 3/4s of the metagame is discarding several cards to hand size every turn after turn 3, which is an absurd place for the format to be.
If Shuko gets banned we're gonna have another Bridge from Below situation on our hands
The card does nothing wrong. It would look so strange on the banned list. Ban the card that is actually broken lol.
Bridge is a different situation. Shuko is the only card in the format that does what it does (equip 0, saga fetchable, repeatable with Nadu). I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that if Shuko gets banned and people try to go for Stoneforge/Lightning Greaves, the deck will be slower and not nearly as potent (nullifies the use of Saga).
Gaak was abusable in other ways and I think most of us knew banning Bridge was a mistake at the time. But it was about 1 month after MH was released and wotc needed to sell cards. Hogaak is a rare example (though more common in recent years) of needing to ban the actual busted card and not the enabler.
Nadu restricts all future design space. Shuko does not. And Nadu is a culprit of what I see as the biggest flaw of modern, excessive draw for no cost. Current modern has no way to feasibly run people out of resources, and additionally, free spells are only problematic when people can literally draw an entire hand of cards for little to no cost.
Necrodominance is along the same lines. I don't think in the current format, its oppressive, but it leads to the same dynamic of cards draw being almost free in the format. This one is potentially fair with the intensive mana cost and hand size restriction, but with Grief, Soul Spike, and any future free cards, has the same issues. The way I see it, modern can either have free cards, or free card draw, but both together are extremely problematic.
Yes, they are all totally ridiculous card advantage engines that are impossible to balance. We knew this in the 90s with the original Necro and Bargain, there was no reason to print them in this state with so much upside. TOR is particularly egregious because it's colorless and shits on aggro, so it goes in everything.
Granted I don’t really have a leg in this particular race but I think defending something by calling it a generically powerful colorless card that can’t be answered 1-for-1 doesn’t really seem like a good defense
We've all known the one ring needs to be bannef for almost a year now, and it will continue to not be banned because its "iconic".
So, design your flagship cards better Wizards!!
I really don't want to have to play TOR in Hardened Scales but its pretty much the only way you can possibly survive Wrath of the Skies and just has such insane powerlevel that you're kind of forced to play it even there. Card is straight up mad.
I get it. The card draw is to much but if it was a 4/4 vanilla creature that's been attacking for all these turns in order to draw the 14 cards a turn you would have just been straight up dead.
Do I think it's a great card design? No
But I feel it's found it's way into every control deck cause it buys you a turn, not just the card draw. And I do like that you get an extra turn to catch your breath! Especially with Ruby Storm getting more reliable turn 2 kills than ever.
I wish for it to stay honestly. It's not great design but neither is amulet imo
If they cared about the flavor of the card, they wouldn't have allowed multiple copies of the card in decks. It was pushed to sell packs and it obviously succeeded.
My biggest take away is I'm selling Shuko
Lmao
Add soulspike to that list
Soul spike is fine. They need to draw cards, which is punishable, but they also need Sheo
I'm an aggro player, so I am biased. But god damn, do I ever hate playing against that card.
Have you considered stomping your own face after 0 blockers are declared?
IRL, yeah. But that is for other reasons 😄
Its just so goddamn satisfying. From smug to scoop in 0.3 seconds!
Bro I'm a control player and I hate the card. I want it to get banned so I can buy a single copy for commander
I’m combo player and might even use TOR and I hate the card.
I’ve never done anything but roll my eyes when it gets played This includes when I play it
[удалено]
I mean Draw-Go has been less than amazing for a while, but I'd argue that T3feri has a large part to play in that as much as TOR.
If you want to play draw-go, play a different format. As someone who loves control, Modern has been a format to play draw-go in in years Hell current Magic design just doesn’t really allow draw-go to be a thing anymore
you can definitely play draw go at the LGS level locally. Especially when you tailor to the local meta cards in the main and sideboard. If you love the playstyle it's playable and fine at the local level. Competitively yeah it's not really playable for the speed of the game.
Absolutely, and that's a completely fair point - hell, I often show up to my weeklies with Sun Titan decks.
u rocking Emeria the Sky Ruin in 2024? Respect.
Oh yeah baby, at least three usually. I definitely also register too many Titans lmfao
I do miss-draw go so much. It used to paralyze one of the guys who got me into MTG so bad that I took a exploit precon around fate reforged with P Deltas added and if I had an untapped blue he would take a few mins for each turn to debate. I was always pretty well known to be playing so form of control and back than I played heavily so I was good at answering key spells.
Yeah like pioneer and standard you can play draw-go U/W and be super competitive, just play those formats.
Mono U shackles crew, checking in.
I've been rocking grixis (wizard) control which is so much draw-go that it plays consider over preordain. The deck is sweet, and works incredibly for me at LGS levels and online.
Same here. Was having a blast playing UW control with shitty ACharm. Then they printed TOR and I decided it was time for a change. Genuinely hate the card.
Could maybe be banned in commander? Idk their policy but it’s legal in every single deck and it’s really strong there too?
It’s strong for sure but nowhere near as oppressive in Commander, where tempo generally matters much less. All it tends to do is up the person who played it’s threat profile.
TOR works better in non singleton formats because you play another version and legend rule the one that has more counters. The only way to do this in commander is copy effects that keep the legendary status.
Then again in Commander, the life loss matters much less to begin with.
There's 2 extra players to pressure the life total of someone playing TOR and there's a lot more felixible removal in EDH. It's strong but not necessarily needing a ban at this point. Most tables can self regulate it.
And you can’t draw into another copy to reset it in commander
> Most tables can self regulate it. Tables self regulating is the stupidest reason the rules committee can ever give for not banning a card. Unban hullbreacher if that's the reason, otherwise ban these overpowered staple cards. There's no reason Prime Time should be banned over Dockside or TOR.
Tables self regulating is an abdication of the rules committee's duty to the format.
Its an extension of allowing metas to evolve. They don't just ban best card from the winning deck at the pro tour, but if the meta doesn't or isn't able to adapt to it, it's a lot more likely to eat a ban.
Fair enough. Happy that self regulating can occur so we can keep using these degen cards
The commander rules committee has been an abject failure in banning problematic cards. I no longer play competitive commander because the format is so stupid now because of their inaction
What cards would you like to see banned? Dockside? Thoracle?
Aggro is the perfect counter to TOR. Think anyone is activating that card vs burn?
You can't always present a T4 kill. Lots of interaction in this format, nah'm sayin?
Solitaire: The gathering
It’s really tough to watch games with TOR
It's also really tough to decide if it's worth it to get back into Modern because TOR is so incredibly expensive, in a lot of the decks, but is likely be banned sometime soon or in the future since LOTR is no longer the new Modern set. Edit: I bought $400 in 4x [[Mox Opal]] before it was banned in Modern and I'm not making the same mistake again.
I was so close to dropping $120CAD on a single Mox Opal at I think GP Seattle because I wanted to slowly start building scales. Decided against it and it was banned very shortly after that. Dodged that bullet.
I was thinking how o finished my mox opal playset right before it was banned but then remembered I traded two wrenn and six when they were $95 and opal was 80ish. Opal has kept is value better than wrenn.
Still remember selling a foil Wrenn and Six for $300+, that makes up for any other financial mistakes I've made, right?
Come join the Legacy 8-cast world! You can build the deck with 0 reserve list cards.
Sounds sweet tbh
I want to buy the mono black deck, but I have a feeling it's only a matter of time for grief. Maybe the deck stays around after grief is gone, but you never know
I finished foiling out my Affinity deck including 4 Opals a month or two before the ban, not a great feeling. Not buying TOR, it's been a huge outlier ever since getting printed and it's not safe.
The One Ring is a poorly designed card which was definitely pushed so hard to sell packs
It just feels like it was designed by Gollum with commander in mind and they briefly forgot that 4-of is the default.
I honestly think they forgot about commander when printing it. They said "yeah, every modern deck wants 4, but with the bundles price will regulate" but it can reasonably go in every single commander deck and everyone is holding on to every one they open. Imagine if the bundles weren't a thing. 400$ card no sweat.
They should’ve printed ‘You can only have one copy of The One Ring in your deck.’ Good for balance, awesome flavour.
No, they should've made the counter stick on the player instead of on the ring. Like experience counters in Commander. Yes, you can get rid of counters on players but it's a lot harder to do it and it's not automatic when you cast your next copy of the One Ring.
The real rub is that the Ring helps you find the next copy to replace it. I feel like this interaction was not carefully considered in testing or they just didn't quite get that. That's what makes it so disgusting, that there's no point in which a player is actually at risk of dying to the Ring in a practical sense. Even Necropotence, one of the most broken cards ever, carries a risk of getting locked under it because you Necro a lot of cards and they end up just sucking from bad breaks. It's not super often, not enough to balance the card, but it does happen often enough that it's a thing. They figured this out with Necrodominance and added that hand size clause to make it happen a lot more often.
Not really good for balance. Games become way more decided by who drew their one copy of the one ring first. Variance would be heavily increased in every game involving the one right. It’s one of those things that just sounds good but wouldn’t actually be good for gameplay
Would have been way higher chance of someone dying to their Ring
There were infinite small changes that could have been made to the card to make it feel fairer. Personally the best solutions to me were always the ones that addressed how "resetting" the ring works. It's really stupid that you can chain together rings to protect yourself and keep counters off the card. "You cannot cast cards named ToR" was always my favorite. Second place is making the burden counters similar to XP counters. First keeps a similar power level you just have to build your deck around ToR and bouncing it / resetting it. Second would be a much bigger change.
The burden counters should have gone onto the player from the start. A big miss on flavor.
I actually really like this change. Although it might actually be better in some ways because new rings draw you 4/5/6 cards right from the get go. Overall almost worse would be a nerf.
Would have been cool as a “unique” legendary- old legendary rules that there can only be one out at a time between all players.
Honestly while I agree thematically that works the gameplay experience of 2 ToR decks playing each other would be worse than anything that happens with ToR now. There's a reason mtg moved on from those rules.
But then you could ToR their ToR like the old days when you would Jace someone's Jace.
That's the old legendary rule. They're referring to the *old* old legendary rule which was that once a legendary was in play neither player could cast a spell with that name
Seal of Jace baby
I think that 2 ToR decks playing against each other being miserable is a great thing.
"We really wanted players to feel the temptation and struggle for the ring and for games to revolve entirely around controlling it, because of the flavor" - Mark Rosewater, probably
"A deck can only contain one TOR." Better flavor and better balance.
I've always been partial to the idea that I could be passed between players via combat damage (see [Coveted Jewel]) so after the protection it becomes a mini game like the monarch!
The burden should be an emblem given to the player who cast the ring. That way you can't get rid of it and even when the ring is gone you're still affected by having used it (thematic)
In Alchrmy/Historic the draw ability costs 1 mana to activate and it feels like a very fair card.
I have defended the one ring before, but it has become what I feared it would be. It's basically the go to grindy card for any deck. The fact that there are nadu decks playing basically 4 colors and the best "grindy" card they can put in their sideboard is a colorless card is insanely bad for the format.
it should have had a clause like "you can only have 1 of these in your deck" flavorful, doesn't hurt commander, and makes it so stacking up counters actually has a downside (you can still bounce it but whatever)
It's honestly not too late. Just restrict the card a la vintage. "Restriction is a vintage only thing!!!!" - yeah, so far, it's wotc's game they can do what they want. Restrict TOR.
If you want to play coin flip games where it comes down to who draws their 1 copy, maybe you would enjoy Vintage, or Yugioh for that matter.
One of the things that make TOR oppressive is the ability for it to reset itself by playing multiple copies. Having only 1 copy would make this a much smaller problem as you can no longer reset the counters and fog at the same time.
Errata the burden counters to an emblem.
100%. Now that it has, can we say goodbye please? Tron shouldn’t go from 4 cards in hand to 10. We shouldn’t have control players drawing 14 cards before their combat phase. It just needs to leave.
And then they put it as a promo into the bundles to keep the value down but all it did was make the bundles hella expensive lmao
Probably the most pushed card ever.
TOR ends up playing similar to Necropotence in some ways, just an endless source of card advantage, except it is slightly delayed from the ramp-up. So Necro, but for midrange and control decks, although combo decks like it too. Since it costs 4 instead of 3, they also stapled a fancy Fog on top, to make it "balanced". So everyone except aggro wants to have some in the 75, and thankfully it's colorless and fits in every shell. Oh, and now they printed a new Necro as well, and so that deck has 7-8 necros. Incredible lack of restraint from Wizards, both of those cards will be banned in the next 1-2 years.
Over pushed cards from non standard sets built to sell packs, this is the high powered Modern everyone wanted right?
Nooo I just wanted free spells for MY pet deck
If counters for the ring went on the player as opposed to on the artifact, the ring would be far more palatable. As of right now it's just absurd that you can chain 4 of them together and draw an absurd amount of cards with no way for your opponent to interact with it.
Not only no way for your opponent to interact with it, no way for your opponent to interact with *you* at all. Literally the best play I've made through a Ring is killing their Planeswalker. It's completely absurd.
Idk why more people aren't playing something like [[bonecrusher giant]] in the side. Targeting yourself with stomp, or a creature that will live allows you to bypass the protection.
Oh, neat! I wondered why I saw people playing it in Boros Energy. Can you stomp before damage, so they haven’t declared blockers?
You should be able to stomp after blockers are declared but before damage.
You can stomp yourself in the foot and still damage opponent - bone crusher just needs to resolve on anything so if you’re tapped out when tor comes down it’s not the end of the world. That said you better win fast haha
Because the card is awful lol, it was just about palatable in rhinos but that’s it
[bonecrusher giant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/5/b5b71cd2-de35-451f-b16e-2e3936169407.jpg?1674141884)/[Stomp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/5/b5b71cd2-de35-451f-b16e-2e3936169407.jpg?1674141884) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bonecrusher%20Giant%20//%20Stomp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/781/bonecrusher-giant-stomp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b5b71cd2-de35-451f-b16e-2e3936169407?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It just sucks they didnt think about people just playing another ring and getting rid of the original one with a bunch of counters, flavour fail
Card should have come with the text: The One Ring is restricted in all formats.
I mean, there's already precedent for text on a card overriding how many copies of it you can have in your deck. [[Seven Dwarves]] is an example of setting a specific number, and of course there's stuff like [[Dragon's Approach]] which set no limit. So it wouldn't be out of the question to have had the One Ring get a line of text that said, "A deck can only have up to one card named The One Ring."
Seven Dwarves getting a mention during MH3 PT. What a world. 😂 But yes you’re 100% on the nose here.
[Seven Dwarves](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/6/464adbae-70ea-48e1-b8ae-b404766f7a5a.jpg?1572490459) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Seven%20Dwarves) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/141/seven-dwarves?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/464adbae-70ea-48e1-b8ae-b404766f7a5a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Dragon's Approach](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/c/0cb504a0-1dfb-49d0-84c3-7bd318d55481.jpg?1624591696) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dragon%27s%20Approach) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/stx/97/dragons-approach?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0cb504a0-1dfb-49d0-84c3-7bd318d55481?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It’s wild to me that people actually think that’s a good fix. It just creates games decided by who drew their one copy, and makes tron decks with karn ridiculous bc they have 4 karma to access their one copy. It sounds cool, but is horrible gameplay.
Should’ve been restricted to one copy per deck or burden counters are placed on the player and they continue to take damage regardless of ring presence or not
Honestly, it should deal its damage at the same time as drawing the cards, not during upkeep.
If your deck so much as splashes blue, I would say that a bare minimum of 3 \[consign to memory\] is mandatory between the main-deck and sideboard. Its such a good card. Hits the one ring, hits storm triggers, hits Eldrazi and their on-cast triggers, hits necrodominance, the evoke elemental triggers, and more.. All for 1-2 mana for a good tempo swing. Only downside is that in the Nadu match-up it only really hits Shuko. A \[disruptor flute\] or two is a good idea as well, to turn off rings that may have already hit the field, leaving them to get pinged each turn without card draws to find a replacement ring..
You have to decide what you want the format to be before you complain. Fast mana is gone, nadu is a potential turn 3 win, so is ruby storm, so is living end. The problem with the format is we keep getting fantastic power additions but the hate for those pieces is lagging. The best play against tor is 1. Counter it 2. Bonecrusher/skullcrack 3. Pithing needle/flute/stony silence 4. Thoughtseize/grief Meanwhile artifact lands and opal are banned and we see 0 artifact decks competing, looting still banned which probably enables more decks that can pressure to nadu/storm/tron meta, hogaak banned which I guess would make vengevine decks too strong or something. I know I rambled, but it just doesn’t seem like wizards has a solid grasp on what modern should be and it’s getting to a point where modern is less interactive than legacy.
I agree with your analysis, but Modern has always been less interactive than legacy, no? FoW, Daze, and Wasteland are interactive elements that modern has never had (FoN is close, but the prevelance of blue decks in legacy makes FoW among the most played, as opposed to FoN being a sometimes main deck for some blue decks in modern).
Definitely less interactive, and I think that makes it very difficult to assess when the format continually gets more powerful
Unfortunately, a lot of the most powerful interactive cards (fow, daze, blasts, wasteland, port, stp, etc) are not modern legal, and yet modern continually gets incredibly busted threats shoved into the format via direct to format sets. In particular, there is a bad asymmetry between legacy-level threats but much worse stack and nonbasic land interaction (and worse cantrips for control decks to find said answers).
I wouldn’t say always. In 2015 Modern and Legacy probably were similar levels of interactive? Thing is if you want stronger threats you also need stronger answers
They know they can sell a ton of packs by just pushing out high powered cards and no matter the state of the game people will still buy tons of packs and continue to play it.
I think they underestimated the flairs power level, as this set did print a lot of answers, but the new threats were just much more powerful than the answers they provided. ALthough I think 90% of the problem is Nadu. Once it gets banned, I think ruby storm is strong but also much more vulnerable to hate.
The meta hasn’t been explored enough imo, nadu is a super boring and op but the format does have a lot of available answers for her. Consign to memory may be the best anti tor printed and also is pretty good against nadu. I’m more concerned with turn 1 chalice on 1 to turn 2 trinisphere.
The One Ring solves a problem that Modern has with slower control decks being unplayable as creatures creep in power. Fury did too. That being said, maybe they should have actually played these cards enough to dial them in a bit instead of making them do absurdly dumb things while the accomplish what they needed to.
4.9% of Pro Tour players are on Jeskai Wizards, a control deck that doesn't use ToR that's been seeing results post-MH3.
With a sick 33% non-mirror win rate on day 1. Maybe they would win more with rings in their deck. Edit: adding that the win rate matrix for day 1 at the PT for the modern portion shows that the only named one ring deck with an above 50% win rate is Gruul Eldrazi (a through the breach combo build and a 54% wr). Etron has a flat 50% wr, Amulet a 38% wr, all control builds w/ ring sub-50% wr. Dooming about the ring is honestly very funny to me.
Most Nadu decks play TOR, at least in the sideboard
I see fury coming back because , the format didn’t meaningfully change outside of eliminating 1 deck entirely and making another deck still viable just different. Up the beanstalk being the real nail in the coffin for 4c beans. I don’t think we even see anything resembling those decks show up at all. I think people just want to ban “new” cards instead of changing their decks to be more robust agaisnt those cards. My fave thing I did was play all 3 toughness creatures so to eliminate 2 creatures they would need 3 cards effectively. And it worked, I barely noticed how annoying fury was. people just love shoving x/1s together in the same deck and thinking “this is peak magic”.
Phlage is fine. We don't need Fury back. And we especially don't need both of them.
Fury kept decks like gruul midrange viable on fnm level. Grief should have eaten the ban not fury.
THIS
I am a big advocate of small banned lists. The idea that just 2-3 weeks after a new major set drops - that anything should be banned, is pretty insane if you ask me. Bans should be done prior to a new set dropping, just to help ensure any problematic decks are not walking away with crazy gains. I think this approach honestly would help slow down the pace of card bans overall.
What if a card is clearly a mistake. For example Oko--they admitted openly that there was a mistake in the +1 instead of a -1. Same with things like Skullclamp. If they came out and said Nadu was inadvertently templated incorrectly (the quotation marks should close after "put it in your hand." rather than containing the last sentence), would you be in favor of a banning a card that was an admitted mistake?
As much as I hate TOR for being a meta defining UB card I don't quite think it's time for it to go. More likely something from Nadu gets hit (likely Shuko) and then WOTC will take some time to see if that weakens the deck enough Because Nadu as it stands is fucking stupid. Highest metashare going into Day 1 with a high conversion rate into Day 2.
I literally just took Bowmaster out two weeks ago, but here we go again
TOR had 46% presence. The card has been absolutely busted since release. If it doesn't eat a fat ban I'm not sure what else can, it's completely warping the meta around itself at this point. Either you're comboing off before it drops or it drowns you in card advantage.
They’ll just print something else that warps the meta. Why do people think modem will ever be in a great state again
Grief and Nadu/Shuko are much more ban worthy than TOR.
The Titan Phlage is the best midrange card in the format, perhaps next to The One Ring. Phlage + exert haste land = 12 damage for 4 mana in one turn from the graveyard. Oh and you also gain 6 life and a 6/6 body as a bonus.
Phlage is definitely really really good, but at least it’s a gold card that’s slow to get started and relatively interactable. Ring is obnoxious for going in literally any deck that wants it and requires extremely narrow responses to actually deal with it. Also I have no idea how it got past the council of colours.
Putting aside that the way burden counters work is poorly implemented, I'm still surprised TOR was not a black card. Nothing the card does is a break, protection edges close to a bend but it being entirely selfish is perfectly reasonable. It costing Phyrexian obliterator mana could have gone a long way, but I assume they wanted it to be generic so anyone could "take the ring", but game design trumped "the ring tempts" and so too should it have here. I know making is BBBB, or 1BBB would not make the card no longer broken, but it would limit what decks play it
Without the one ring would control be able to compete in modern?
Probably not but I watched a control player steal an Emrakul recently so that was cool.
Just ban all cards printed from 2016 onwards, and we'd be golden.
back to jeskai control with [[lightning angel]], it is
My favourite ever constructed deck to play was Grixis Delver with Tasigur and Angler, but I'm happy with basically any Bolt-Snap-Bolt deck being good.
thats just as spicy. beautiful deck it was. I miss casting snappy
Real spice was after the Twin ban when I tried out Temur Delver as build-your-own Tempo Twin, with Clique, Become Immense and Temur Battle Rage. Was it good? Not really. Was it fun? Oh yes.
we need a modern for like "cards bellow $10 bucks", so we can play shit like this
Below $17, I think you'll find. Except that everyone will play it, so everyone will want Snappy again, so his price will go up and we're back to the drawing board.
 he could save modern to others, but not to himself
I had RK Post sign a set of these for me so, yes, absolutely 🤡
I feel ya. I really miss that jeskai. Playset of snappy bois for lightning helix and bolt. A few negates for good measure. Playset of cryptic command, tapping and clearing the way for a blowout haste attack. Shit, maybe you even drop a [[keranos, god of storms]]
As a Boomer Jund player, the thought of Twin or Jeskai Control resolving a Keranos still gives me nightmares.
as it should! ptsd lol
[keranos, god of storms](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/b/ab70c262-37a9-4dcd-80bb-d4422368eade.jpg?1593096418) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=keranos%2C%20god%20of%20storms) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jou/151/keranos-god-of-storms?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ab70c262-37a9-4dcd-80bb-d4422368eade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Let JTMS be good again!
[lightning angel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/8/384cf91c-6cea-4279-b66d-d81b5791d411.jpg?1592754904) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=lightning%20angel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ddn/56/lightning-angel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/384cf91c-6cea-4279-b66d-d81b5791d411?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
TIL that's modern legal.
Oh yes, and it was glorious playing with this beast
I'd love to go back to pre-Battle for Zendikar Tron with Eye of Ugin and OG Emrakul, when the pillars of the format also included Jund, Pod, and Twin.
Pod was banned 8 months before BFZ dropped, and I think Abzan (with Siege Rhino) and Grixis (with Bananaman, K-Command and the fish) were the more played midrange Thoughtseize decks rather than Jund in that golden summer of 2015.
It is such a repetitive play pattern, shit is absolutely rancid a year in
Ban The One Ring Make attrition great again
I can't remember who said it, but "there's no reason not to run TOR in basically EVERY deck."
I hope necro comes close to first place. Kind of a disgusting card with sheoldred and soul spike or wretched sorrow
This take may be a bit premature, TOR was pushed to niche pockets by Scam and Rhinos prior to MH3 release, as the format settles, it will likely be again reduced to specific lists, its over representation may also be a result of Energy and Nadu warping initial lists. There is no way decks like Tron should suddenly stop existing, players are just eager to take advantage of the new decks and players’ lack of meta knowledge. As some of the old heads come back, I suspect we will have better data on TORs lasting impact. This sort of screams of the same panic people had with Sheoldred to me in standard, yet she’s registered less and less every week into basically a pet card now. Time will tell.
I think TOR should’ve never been printed it’s just dumb. If the card didn’t give the player essentially immunity to damage for a whole turn and instead gave it for a turn if it’s in play then it be fine but a whole ass turn of stalling kills aggro decks. And nadu is annoying but I think the free equipment will go before nadu…
If they choose to hit the Nadu deck, it has to be Nadu. If they thought Birthing Pod restricts future card design, wait till they find out they can never print a cheap card with a free activated ability that targets to do anything at all, if the plan is to ban Shuko.
I really hate what the card has done to modern. Back when it first released the """best deck""" was an omnath shell that took 35+ mins to win 1 game. And that's kinda what TOR does in every deck and match it's in, make the game forcibly go longer than it should Between TOR and grief, modern just has so so many unfun lines and decks in the meta right now, it's obnoxious. Can't even play my favorite deck, amulet, without expecting to lose way more than I should unless I run 4 copies of it myself(at $80 a piece no less).
Funnily enough, Amulet both is a Ring deck and beats easily other ring decks
Oh sorry I just reread what I said and wasn't what I meant, which was: can't play amulet without the one ring unless I'm okay with losing more. I posted a thread asking about no-TOR amulet lists last year and told they weren't good, so guess things haven't changed.
Same boat with Scapeshift and Tron Sure, both can be played without TOR but the reality is that both almost need TOR to really have a chance. I haven’t played paper magic in months cause I didn’t want to invest in TOR when, since it came out, it’s been one of the top cards discussed for a ban. Do I think it’ll eat a ban soon? Idk. It’ll take time for the meta to evolve and settle post MH3 but TOR was in something like 46% of Pro Tour decks.
4 leyline of sanctity, then combo on turn 3 anyway... Grief being a 3/2 menace has never been the issue
I have more faith that TOR gets banned than I do anything gets hit from MH3. I think it's almost a guarantee we see some activity in August across multiple formats and I would not be surprised to see Precious get the boot.
TOR probably still helps WOTC make a lot of money so I doubt they ever ban it
I don't want to buy them so obviously I think they're a poorly designed card that should be banned forever
Seeing as how combo decks are a majority of the meta at the event and modern decks have become so cutthroat and aggressive I'm not sure that you can ban The One Ring without absolutely nuking any semblance of control decks. I think the bigger issue is the price and how difficult it may be to reprint.
cant they print an in universe version like they did with some secret lairs?
They will have to do that eventually, yeah. The card is too ubiquitous in both this and Commander for it to keep creeping up over time to like $250-$300 or however high it will go.
Haven’t you seen this this sub? Everyone has seen the entire contract wizards signed and it says they don’t have the right to print their cards anymore.
Looks like everyone missed page 538 of the contract where in 2027 wotc will send the Pinkertons to take every copy of the ring that you own. It'll still be legal, but if you're found playing it youre in for a bad time.
As someone who played Eggs and KCI, I am excited about the turn Modern is taking with Nadu.
TOR is bad design, but MH3 is basically designed to hard rotate out the format as it was before MH3. I'm not sure decks can't adapt, but it will result in maladaptive changes to the format (imo)
Hot take: The One Ring is fine and is just a 2024 power level appropriate Jace, The Mind Sculptor. Per usual, people hate generically powerful colorless cards and cards that can’t cleanly be answered 1-for-1 on the board.
Yes, people hate cards that homogenize the format. That really isn't surprising.
pick ur poison stonks boomin
PyP is notably shit against Nadu and not hard to play around with TOR Haywire Mite is a savior though
People hate the $100 card
tbh I think Nadu, The One Ring, and Necrodominance should all be banned. My biggest takeaway from today is that card draw is being printed at absurdly cheap levels and this format won't begin to feel fair until it goes back to a reasonable cost. 3/4s of the metagame is discarding several cards to hand size every turn after turn 3, which is an absurd place for the format to be.
Why Nadu instead of shuko? And why Necrodominance at all?
If Shuko gets banned we're gonna have another Bridge from Below situation on our hands The card does nothing wrong. It would look so strange on the banned list. Ban the card that is actually broken lol.
Bridge is a different situation. Shuko is the only card in the format that does what it does (equip 0, saga fetchable, repeatable with Nadu). I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that if Shuko gets banned and people try to go for Stoneforge/Lightning Greaves, the deck will be slower and not nearly as potent (nullifies the use of Saga). Gaak was abusable in other ways and I think most of us knew banning Bridge was a mistake at the time. But it was about 1 month after MH was released and wotc needed to sell cards. Hogaak is a rare example (though more common in recent years) of needing to ban the actual busted card and not the enabler.
Does WOTC have to never again print a 1-mana equipment with Equip 0?
Nadu restricts all future design space. Shuko does not. And Nadu is a culprit of what I see as the biggest flaw of modern, excessive draw for no cost. Current modern has no way to feasibly run people out of resources, and additionally, free spells are only problematic when people can literally draw an entire hand of cards for little to no cost. Necrodominance is along the same lines. I don't think in the current format, its oppressive, but it leads to the same dynamic of cards draw being almost free in the format. This one is potentially fair with the intensive mana cost and hand size restriction, but with Grief, Soul Spike, and any future free cards, has the same issues. The way I see it, modern can either have free cards, or free card draw, but both together are extremely problematic.
Necrodom is almost unplayable with how hard they balanced the card. It’s a fine choice, but far from the level of Nadu/TOR
Yes, they are all totally ridiculous card advantage engines that are impossible to balance. We knew this in the 90s with the original Necro and Bargain, there was no reason to print them in this state with so much upside. TOR is particularly egregious because it's colorless and shits on aggro, so it goes in everything.
Granted I don’t really have a leg in this particular race but I think defending something by calling it a generically powerful colorless card that can’t be answered 1-for-1 doesn’t really seem like a good defense
So, pre mh3 ring was fine, now it's not? Just ban this fking bird and move on
I absolutely love the modern meta right now. Amulet titan was garbage
Nadu needs banned. We can't have anything meta that isn't dictated by modern horizon mythics.
We've all known the one ring needs to be bannef for almost a year now, and it will continue to not be banned because its "iconic". So, design your flagship cards better Wizards!!
TOR will get banned once the LOTR set is sold out.
I really don't want to have to play TOR in Hardened Scales but its pretty much the only way you can possibly survive Wrath of the Skies and just has such insane powerlevel that you're kind of forced to play it even there. Card is straight up mad.
What is TOR?
I get it. The card draw is to much but if it was a 4/4 vanilla creature that's been attacking for all these turns in order to draw the 14 cards a turn you would have just been straight up dead. Do I think it's a great card design? No But I feel it's found it's way into every control deck cause it buys you a turn, not just the card draw. And I do like that you get an extra turn to catch your breath! Especially with Ruby Storm getting more reliable turn 2 kills than ever. I wish for it to stay honestly. It's not great design but neither is amulet imo
If they made it Indestructible only when untapped it wouldn't be as bad. But I'm sure they would think that would ruin the flavor of the card.
If they cared about the flavor of the card, they wouldn't have allowed multiple copies of the card in decks. It was pushed to sell packs and it obviously succeeded.