First Post Hopefully of Many

Some tips for fighting time stretch without blue would be:
1. Attack the mana: it's a 10 mana sorcery we're talking about. I for one am ramping to it with primarily artifact ramp. In 5 months of playing this deck I've had my caged sun destroyed after resolution less than 5 times. That's not an exaggeration.
2. Attack the library. Rory ran a deck with 3 total win conditions in the entire deck to incredible success for months. the rest of his deck was disruption and card filtering/draw. Jester's Cap anyone? his deck had no way to win if a Cap resolved on him.
3. Stranglehold
4. Win first.

Time stretch doesn't even win the game by itself.
Disrupt the players hand or board or both and you can end up with a 10 mana draw 2(i've been there).
At the end of the day people need to take a hard look at their decks and start stream lining their strategy while adding disruption for their opponents. too many games i've sat there COMPLETELY unimpeded while i ramped out a board full of draw and mana, cast a few of my own disruption spells to stop myself from losing first, then resolved time stretch to win. At the end of these games i hear a lot of people moaning about the card and yet do nothing to try and stop me. the reality is i could of resolved MANY "game enders" at this point and closed it out. You could ban time stretch and I'd just swap it out for a jin-gitaxias and i doubt i would even lose any percentage points. People in this group need to look at their deck construction.

i mean, you say the only way to stop it is counters and i know of 2 blue decks at the table that don't even RUN counters. Maybe you don't want to for whatever reason but magic is a game designed around decks interacting and fighting with one another. If you know what your opponents deck is doing but still choose to not run any cards to fight that and buy your own strategy time to win; is banning even an appropriate response? I personally will not vote to ban any cards until it feels like the group has truly exhausted it's efforts to counter that card. Anything else is going to lead down a slippery slope where a lot of cards end up getting banned for no reason other then they can effectively race what other peoples decks want to be doing.

Yeah seriously, I can't even believe banning combos is on the table right now, when we play Halo do we ban the sniper rifle because someone is rocking us with it? How about since the robber is so brutal in Catan we ban it?

Ill honestly quit magic before ill ever agree to widely sweep and remove all combo wins. It's a part of the game, it's some people's favorite part. What if I said that aggro decks were boring and slow and we should ban that? If magic is seriously all about who can go off and make the biggest army than we're only playing a small part of what this game has to offer. If combo wins were broken would wizards not ban them? Or is it possible that our group doesn't like running answers? A single jesters cap could honestly fuck over any of our combo decks but instead of trying answers we ban combos?

It's even insane we're even talking about this without even trying out the new cardpool first, and I'm already regretting even making a ban list when in the first week instead of treading carefully down this slippery slope we're being handed crazy carpets and being asked if we'd rather barrel down that slippery slope instead.

"We don't want to ask aggro decks to run answers for combo decks, but we have no problem banning all combos" doesn't that seem like a double standard? If 4 people sit down to play, and three aggro decks can't beat the combo deck who's fault is that?

While I agree with you, Burton, about your assessment on combos, (and I would think most of us do) what did you expect? I imagine only a few of us had input on the ban list, and now the rest are chiming in. Nothing is wrong with that, that IS why you started the forum after all. I know we haven't had any games since its introduction, but are we supposed to have no discussion in between? Of course not. Different people will have different ideas, good and bad.

This is true, and I didn't mean to seem short, this is why I shouldn't go on Forums at 6:00 AM before work on day 7 of a 10 day shift.

Anyways it's not that I don't want people to have input, it's just that through plaything Modern vs Legacy there were obvious cards that tipped the balance (ie; all the artifact ramp and early green enchatments) and before banning any cards simply based on how powerful they are I hoped we would playtest first, let the dust settle on our new format and everyone would a chance to plead their case to the whole group about banning certain cards after say a 2 month review (wizards reviews their formats every 3 months but we figured every 2 would be better for us).

Honestly though back in the day Rory beat us over and over with a deck that had 2 cards to win in it and a million ways to disrupt, if people had had their way back then Time Stretch would have been banned but in hindsight none of us, not me and not anyone, changed their decks to beat Rory.

I don't want people to have to change what they like about their decks and what they think makes their decks awesome but I think changing your deck to stop your opponents at what they do best is a great part of the game, an it's a part of the game that even I'm reluctant to do.

Actually I DID put a jesters cap in my old Glissa deck specifically for that damned deck of Rory's. It was just too slow. I also have a creeping corrosion specifically for Mike's deck. But barring help, or Boseiju, it is most likely getting countered. Maybe I can do more, but like you said, its hard to change a deck you've come to love.

Hold on thier cowboy, I never said I wan't to ban combos, it was just a suggestion to try and aid in solving some peoples complaints. At any rate, All i need to know is one little thing, I am all for playing combos, infact, I have some amazing combo decks I love playing. I am starting to fine tune my decks, downsizing my collection and all that jazz., I just want to know before I go spending a ton of cash on more tutors, fetches, and all that good stuff, I think we should be certain of what should be banned. I currently have a deck that runs the following; Mystical tutor, enlightned tutor, vamipiric tutor, demonic tutor, cruel tutor, personal tutor, a buch of transmute spells, e.t.c. the deck goes for a 2 casting spell that literally wins me the game on the spot when activated. I run pact of negation, force of will, and daze.

So far so good with the new ban list. Last night was a blast gentlemen! Oh, and Burton.

Lol I am indeed far from a gentleman. I'm excited with how Melek performed, expect a much more fine tuned deck next time.

Oh yay...

I honestly don't think Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone should stay banned. Your not receiving their benefits until turn 4 or 5 anyways, and by then everyone else is casting spells too (or should be).

I don't think Time Stretch is broken, it's just super annoying because it usually involves a ton of solitaire and decksterbating. I don't think it needs to be banned though

A thought occurred to me the other night when thinking of the artifact ramp in our game. I think that adding Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone is still a mistake, partially because I don't think our Metagame needs more artifact ramp. It's not because so think either are particularly broken on their own, but if you managed to draw all 3 (these are three cards that can do in any deck with plenty of ways of looking for all of them now) you can have 13 mana by turn 5. Now I admit that I recently Gilded Lotus and Sculpting Steeled in a match, but that was turn 5 that I managed that and that still only put me at 12 mana on turn 6, in fact is the absolute but draw would include sculpting steel and having 16 mana by turn 5. And and none of these calculations even consider Coalition Relic.

If everyone votes to give us the access to that kind of mana, I'll honor what the group decides but I don't want people to think it isn't going to effect the speed of the game just because these cards are only arguably better than Coalition Relic and Gilded Lotus. This is a big change from modern, even just these two cards so please think about that.

It feels to me that I'm already adjusting my decks to have more and more artifact hate in them. We all know how crazy it can get. I, for one, am okay with keeping some of the more powerful ones out of the meta for now.