I remember that

Razor is the best

NGA's first season had its first round like that. I won by looking at an old Mothership season and stealing razor's tech. (The deck actually uses Strip Mine, so it can beat lands decks, too.)

Yeah, you still tied with all the Channex decks.

I'm still really impressed with Rush's WUBRG deck. Cleverest exploitation of the rules I think I've ever seen.

You are the worst.

calm down

I unbanned the most "op" (emphasis on the quotation marks) thing I saw on the list where I thought people would get creative with it.

Barren Glory is a very boring card to unban. So are channel, dark depths, foil, force of will, flash, show and tell, and shelldock isle. I didn't see much of the point of unbanning blackmail, inquisition of kozilek, phyrexian revoker, thoughtseize, or ghost quarter. Just given with what we can already do, I didn't think it would be that much of a big deal to unban any of those (i.e. I really don't like meddling mage ha-ha I win first decks). I wanted to make a change that would directly affect the meta, and I didn't think I could do so by banning since I only had 1 change available...... That left unbanning strip mine, leyline of anticipation, and chancellor of the annex. Out of those 3, I thought Channex would achieve the best mix of "PLAY ME **** IT" and "well what can we design around this card". Strip Mine would just basically have made wasteland decks do better vs niche things like daze and that one swamp deck Razorborne used round 2? Meanwhile I don't really want to deal with leyline of anticipation + black lotus. And..... I don't feel like waiting for black lotus to get banned over frost titan if that's realistically what is going to happen.

I don't really like banning anything, but if forced, this is what I take...especially given my limited options.

I feel bad about it though since Bridge also took a hit. I don't like Tabernacle because I think it's an easy pick that works against a disproportionally large amount of the field and is Uncounterable. Bridge is fine in my opinion because its easier to interact with and more difficult to get out and therefore leaves creative options available. There isn't much cheap land destruction (outside of Wasteland, which should pretty much be banned whenever Lotus is banned.) and what exists is limited, so just picking Tabbie seems mathematically reasonable each round.

Tabby's the right call

Doesn't it seem a little strange that we all know that if anyone but mjack had unbanned Channex, mjack would be leading a seven-page crusade about how that unban warps the game and makes it an unplayable mess of rock paper scissors that he's already solved before the round began and the unbanner is being ridiculous in allowing their decisions to wreck the game and on and on and on.

He allows himself to ban the most OP card for the fun of it but I don't expect he would allow anyone else that level of whimsy without bringing the forum discussion up to a cat-5 ****storm.

Dang, I thought I found my revenge deck with Kiora, the Crashing Wave, Black Lotus, Dryad Arbor but it would have only boosted me to 27 points in the first round...curses. Why can't Kiora work!!!

Does someone want me to doomsay a bit. ....... Mkay.

Let's see....... several people are going to try to use Channex. Everyone else is going to be completely **** paranoid to its use, to the point where I expect to see a very large number of decks with things like city of traitors, storage lands, or anything that means they don't automatically die to channex. My unbanning of Channex has directly warped the next two rounds of vanilla around that one card, and we can fully expect it to be meta-defining. And I knew all of this ahead of time but did it anyways. I wouldn't say any of these rounds have been unplayable, but I again think I have a large part of the meta solved before it's begun.

The card is also "op" to the level where a large part of the above statement is obvious, and I do not have to lead a seven page crusade on the unban because a few other people have already done a fine job of starting one.


Does that work for you?

Because it's going to take you two turns to cast Kiora and even then that's not a very good win con?

Just going all man lands would actually be faster.

I have the Season 4 post all ready, but I'm delaying as much as I can to give Keeper a chance to choose a ban. I'm leaving in two hours to catch a flight, so if I run out of time, I'll just choose the ban myself.

Also, if I post the new season and then immediately post a link to it here, we'll have two 3CM threads at the top of Magic General, and that feels spammy, so I'll probably just edit a link into the OP. As long as people remember to check Magic General for the new thread, we should be fine.

We need to do some doomsaying for the other two unbanned cards too. Okay um.....

Foil ...... It's a free counterspell with chancellor of the forge? Again, a metawarping thing, but anything that can put down two threats without relying on black lotus wins this exchange. City of Traitors + double Chonomaton is very strong vs both. ......It's like force of will without the misthollow griffin.

Phyerexian Revoker - city of traitors + double revoker? Is that a thing? It looks very powerful.

Fow-Griffin is a bad deck. they just don't do anything, then you tap out to play Griffin eventually and then they do whatever you wanted to counter while you can't counter it. lots of 2-2s.

yeah, it's the one turn delay that makes it not viable. Its interesting how some 2-2's become 0-6's and leave the deck in this strange middle ground.

I find it interesting how many decks could be improved with a one card swap upon reflection, and even more interesting how some of those swaps could make those decks weaker with the new ban list.

The real strength of channex is that you have to act as if you will need excess mana. Thus, black lotus becomes criminally slower and you can't double lotus . You also can't have JUST one land in a format where wasteland is a thing, unless you are planning to race with something like city of traitors + double chronomaton

I'm responding on the meta thread

thanks