[SCD] Chain of Smog

[maeos]

with all the magecraft cards coming in strixhaven, will chain of smog become too strong and require a ban?

my friend has been advocating for a ban since he saw professor onyx since it spoiled the magecraft mechanic saying that Chain of Smog is going to break half of the sets cards.

[Wallycaine]

I doubt it very much. Chain of Smog "combos" with exactly 1 type of Magecraft triggers: one's that win you the game immediately on an empty hand. Archmage Emeritus? Doesn't combo with Chain of Smog, cause you'll end up discarding all those sweet cards you drew. Storm-Kiln Artist? Only combos if you've got an outlet for those infinite treasure tokens, otherwise you're just sitting on a bazillion tokens waiting to draw something cool. Not to mention it's sorcery speed, so you can't even catch someone out with Eager First-Year unless they've got absolutely no blockers. And the cost of "discard your entire hand" is quite real. I think people will get overly hyped for it, try to jam it, and realize that it actually only works with a narrow cross-section of cards.

[maeos]

archmage wouldnt actually be bad cause you can stack triggers so that you draw cards after you resolved the chain of smog x number of times

edit: im dumb and dont think properly. archmage would put the trigger before you get the chance to copy it

[DirkGently]

Milling your deck is still an easy way to win the game. Especially since you get madness and whatnot.

I doubt it'll get banned. For one thing, if someone does have a counterspell, you're 100% rekt since they'll wait for you to discard your hand and then own you. Second, 2-card infinites are already aplenty and aren't considered bannable under the "dirtbags gonna dirtbag" clause.

[pokken]

Cards like this usually don't get banned (hence Thassa's Oracle) unfortunately. I wouldn't mind if they went through and mauled all the 2 card stack based combos at some point, there really are not that many.

But by and large the RC has given up policing stuff like this with the unban of Staff of Domination

[onering]

Its lame that, just with so few cards released so far, there are 2 that Chain of Smog automatically wins with, while Archmage provides another mill your deck combo, and even Silverquill Apprentice sets up a win with a little more work (a creature for each opponent that said opponent cannot block). The latter is super fair, but even setting her aside that's almost 1/3 of the spoiled cards with the mechanic having a game winning combo with Chain of Smog. I don't think the RC will have to react, because its a glass cannon and you need to have the magecraft card out first, somewhat telegraphing the play. You can even, as Dirk said, wait until they discard their hand before interrupting the loop so they get completely boned by it. Professor Onyx is likely the biggest problem, as since she's a walker she's the hardest to interact with when you cast her and chain on the same turn, but that's an 8 mana play so that limits it a bit. She also combos with Chain of Plasma targeting yourself, as the net result is your opponents lose 2 life while you gain 2 then lose 3 for a -1 life net, so as long as your opponents die before you run out of life you win. This happens if you have more life to start with, but also works so long as you have 0.5X+1 life, where X is your opponents' highest life total if X is an even number, or 0.5X+1.5 if it X is odd.

[umtiger]

Another chain already combo'd with Ral Zarek

[cryogen]

If the RC banned a card based solely on its potential as half of a two card combo, the ban list would be a lot longer and look like it did 15 years ago.