Subject: The Academy deck banned!? Reply to C. Otwell's post Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 12:07:36 +0100 From: Andreas Pischner To: otwellc@jntf.osd.mil, magician@zedat.fu-berlin.de, fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Dear Christopher, I see you have reasonable concerns about the DCI's fast decision to ban Windfall and Tolarian Academy. However, I think there are a few more points you may want to consider. First, while you emotionally refer to the banning of the Academy deck, the DCI didn't ban a deck - they banned 2 cards. Yes, the impetus was clearly the immense success of that deck, and yes, the outcome will be that this deck ceases to exist. Still that division should be made. Windfall and T. Academy are broken in itself. Windfall is, for many purposes, a Wheel of Fortune - and a BLUE one to boot. While it is of less use in some situations, it is even stronger in others. The major point is that it is an excellent, cheap card drawer, which can (and will most times, if you chose to use it in a deck) provide you with a net gain of 4 to 6 cards on turn 1 or 2. Thus it violates one of the most important balancing principles of MAGIC: Cards that give/remove lots of resources must cost you an adequate amount of resources. This is why Stroke, Spiral and Braingeyser are not banned (anymore) - although that doesn't mean I like them: They cost you lots of mana to give you lots of cards (and other goodies). Windfall's sheer power is just NOT balanced by its resources requirements, and it is not nearly as situational as it might look at the first glance. The Academy, on the other hand, violates the same principle by giving you too much mana too easy. BTW, Gaea's Cradle is almost the same case - almost. The important differences are: Extremely cheap artifacts are more plentiful and, more imprtantly, generally more useful than creatures in combo-oriented decks. Also, the Cradle doesn't give blue mana, and Blue is the color that can capitalize the most on mana resorces, or at least the most reliaby, because it has the strongest game effects (Stroke, Time Warp, T. Spiral, MOM are just examples), especially card drawers, AND the ability to search for cards and counter almost everything - invaluable for combo decks. So, while I can't predict if the Cradle decks which will no doubt crop up during the next months will prove Cradle to be overpowered as well, I am absolutely sincere that the Academy is way over the top. Also, while IMHO you assume correctly that ways to foil Academy are not fully explored yet, you should realize that the possibilities of the Academy ain't explored either (The same goes for Academy's SB options). Checking the few deck listings from PT Rome on the WOTC Webside, I found already three widely different versions (Lauer, Hovi and Hacker) which all worked great. I think this tells us a lot about the power of T. A. as well as suggests that the "strongest" Academy deck version may not even be found yet. In your article you suggested that decks with intelligent countermeasures might be the downfall of Academy. However, an environment where everybody plays either the dominant deck or a devoted countermeasure deck like during the black summer or in Tempest-only constructed seems not very desireable to me. Lastly, even if the Academy problem would smooth itself out over the course of the next months and editions (which I don't believe ), we would still be stuck with an environment that drives casual tournament players away in droves for several months. That can neither be in the interest of the DCI nor in the interest of us tournament players. 2 questions remain: Why did WotC produce those cards in the first place - were they playtested by the same team which, as it is rumoured, tested Cursed Scroll in Blue control decks? And will Survival really be that dominating as anyone assumes? What do you think? ANDREAS PISCHNER magician@zedat.fu-berlin.de "42."