Hi,
I am the original author of the article. I am thankful for any kind of feedback, so I feel the urge to respond. I will try to reply to most of the points you raised in chronological order.
Just to give another point of view on this article or whatever this is ...
"This" is an excerpt of an article I have written for metagame-masters.eu, a website that for a long time now has been publishing many interesting articles about EU-Hl and for which I have also written in the past. The original article is much longer, and this take on the bannings is just a tangent to the actual topic. I am under the assumption that you haven't read it in its entirety, because some issues you have would have been resolved if you had read them in the context in which they belong. The creator of this threat has just copy-pasted this passage because they seem to like it; i have no relation to her/him/them and did not ask for it to be posted here.
Which "straight up" BAN? 'Tolarian Academy' was on the BAN WATCHLIST for how long? 1 year, 2 years or longer?
I am aware it has been on the watchlist for a long time. But this is kind of the point i want to make - in those two years, no one thought of an alternative to weakening a supposedly "oppessive" deck other than banning its namesake card/ centerpiece? Like, aren't there other ways to make the deck less powerful instead of outright dropping the hammer on it?
Banning out oppressive Combo-Decks opening up the format for more "fair" decks, so in the end it offers more deck diversity.
So tell me, then: which fair deck is now better off in the format? Does one less bad matchup automatically lead to increased playability of your deck, especially if the restricted deck was so infrequently played as Academy Combo? If you think it through, banning one combo deck in particular does not restore the balance between combo and the remaining archetypes. Hermit Druid, Oracle Breach and also Reanimator are still more powerful and consistent than most decks people bring to a tournament and expect to be competitive. On the other hand, there are decks that regularly beat up on them, so its definitely possible to do so.
Affinity decks relying on 'Tolarian Academy' as keycard? As far as I know Affinity trying to operate on a very little amount of mana. Are you sure, you aren't talking about Stax builds
Yes, I am aure that I am not talking about stax-builds for i haven't seen this archetype ever in my life. Having Academy/ Expedition Map allows these small aggro decks to gain a lot of tempo by dumping their whole hand of attackers on the board early, which sometimes enables them to effectively race other strategies. Academy also powers up Ballista and what have you.
'Thassa's Oracle' and 'Underworld Breach' are already on the BAN WATCHLIST, the future will show if they will remain in the format.
Again. I would love to have this and other combodecks in the format, a point that i stressed earlier in the article. The only issue I see is that unless you really commit yourself to beating them, they are too consistent. So unless we adjust their consistency level to a point where more than tempo decks and other combo decks can compete with them, we will just keep banning combo deck after combo deck.
In my opinion BANNINGS are not bad for a format. They just need to be done correctly to protect the format from decks which use an oppressive playstyle or enforcing players to play specific cards to be competitive
This is such a general statement that its not even debatable. I wouldn't and in fact do not argue against it, if you read the piece carefully.
The first point I can agree to a lttle bit. Cards like 'Mystical Tutor' and 'Treasure Cruise' are not BAN worthy cards in my opinion. If you want to hurt the BLUE dominance BAN cards like 'Dig Through Time' and 'Mana Drain' Some long time BANNED cards should be reconsidered again, too. For example 'Strip Mine' or 'Umezawa’s Jitte'
The way blue is played currently, Mana Drain is rarely more than a glorified Counterspell and Dig Through Time often a bit slow/ resource-intensive for what it actually gains you in terms of card quality. I do like Strip Mine/ Jitte though.
Here I disagree again. You hurt more different decks with a BAN of certain tutor cards than you hurt with the specific keycard BANs. In my opinion BANs need to be as specific as possible to take out or hurt the least amount of decks in the format
Which deck would cease to exist because you take away Demonic Tutor? Correct, none. "I need DT to find my hatepiece against combo" is basically no argument, because unless you get lucky and draw DT (so a 'two-outer', very low probability of actually happening), you don't match up to their consistency. The discrepancy in powerlevel between DT in a Combo deck and DT in a non-combo deck is extremely wide, and I would argue that all the established combo decks are already pretty saturated on deck-specific tutors that they don't also need the best generic tutor at their disposal.
For me this text shows only a bias point of view. I don't see any valid points for an UNBAN of 'Tolarian Academy' here.
of course it's a biased point of view- is a thinkpiece, an opinion. You are equally prone to being biased and subjective, so this is no accusation that invalidates my point.
My wish for the future of the format is "make it fair again".
Or just make combo a bit less "unfair" overall and/or the fair decks a bit more "unfair".
Again, thank you for engaging with my article, but I couldn't let this stand as is. Maybe our philosophies regarding the format are simply incongruent, which is a positive and productive observation!
Have a good one