The Tarmogoyf question

[TheAmericanSpirit]

This is tangential, but when I was first starting out, a guy named Palmer really taught me a lot about the finer nuances of magic. Palmer's marquee deck was Canadian Threshold, with Werebear, mongoose, and Flametongue Kavu and all the fancy blue trimmings. I played against that deck a lot, lost every game and loved every minute of it because Palmer was such a cool guy.

Palmer quit Magic shortly after Tarmogoyf got printed and became ubiquitous, pushing out Werebear and Flametongue from the realm of playability. He told me that Tarmogoyf was a bridge too far, blatant powercreep and an inauspicious sign of things to come. I think about that a lot now that Tarmogoyf has been crept out of Modern and sees fringe play in legacy. I wonder what he'd think of Delver, Ragavan, and Darcy. I wonder if he was unwilling to change or had seen too much change already.

[ISBPathfinder]

This is tangential, but when I was first starting out, a guy named Palmer really taught me a lot about the finer nuances of magic. Palmer's marquee deck was Canadian Threshold, with Werebear, mongoose, and Flametongue Kavu and all the fancy blue trimmings. I played against that deck a lot, lost every game and loved every minute of it because Palmer was such a cool guy.

Palmer quit Magic shortly after Tarmogoyf got printed and became ubiquitous, pushing out Werebear and Flametongue from the realm of playability. He told me that Tarmogoyf was a bridge too far, blatant powercreep and an inauspicious sign of things to come. I think about that a lot now that Tarmogoyf has been crept out of Modern and sees fringe play in legacy. I wonder what he'd think of Delver, Ragavan, and Darcy. I wonder if he was unwilling to change or had seen too much change already.

Magic is a game that is pressured to constantly push the envelope and things we think are obscene now are doomed to be one upped. They spent a very long time trying not to allow scope creep to come on too hard and then in the last few years when they did Fire design they said to hell with that and we are still sorting out all of the brokenness from that while still creeping yet.

Things we think are too far today are doomed to be one upped down the road.

[Moonlighter]

Palmer was a prescient man, and a hero. [paraphrased]

Magic is a game that is pressured to constantly push the envelope and things we think are obscene now are doomed to be one upped. They spent a very long time trying not to allow scope creep to come on too hard and then in the last few years when they did Fire design they said to hell with that and we are still sorting out all of the brokenness from that while still creeping yet.

Things we think are too far today are doomed to be one upped down the road.

Makes me wonder what things can look like as we go forward. I put that I wouldn't play a vanilla for any reason and it's not 100% true (some decks excepted by theme or commander, as others have noted), but the thing is, if I were playing a deck I hadn't designed (playing a loaner for whatever reason) and I pulled a 7/8 for two mana, it's not like I would regret having it. It's hard to imagine me making the choice in building a deck - not my style, but if I ran into it in the wild I would make use of it. I think when we theory craft, use cases look a lot different than actual play, because games have a different logic depending on who you're playing, what the board looks like, etc. So there are going to be board states where a vanilla beater could absolutely mean something. Our goal in play is to make it mean something. Might look different at different tables. With my group, I can think of a few decks where a vanilla beater would scare me, but it depends on context, and the context is what makes the game enjoyable. When someone turns your stuff into a 3/3 beast you can make them regret it if they can't stop you from making use of it, and sometimes a combo piece needs to chump block. These things happen. Good players can make a plain beater scary, even if most of us wouldn't run it unless we had to.

So yeah I think the question is a good theory one but is less relevant to the idea of commander as a beautiful game.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@Moonlighter my friend, you truly know your way around a good paraphrase.