Problems Have Solutions or Blue Still Has The Best Everything

Carsten Kotter had a pretty great read on True-Name Nemesis, which is a card that I would have 100% expected to see ten years ago and never expected now.

Exxxxxxxxxxcept when Wizards is able to make cards without having to consider the Standard format and the modern design philosophies that have guided the past few years, which, as much as I criticize those sets, have often lead to some interesting, diverse formats.*

*Except when blue is involved. Hmm....

The color problem Carsten points out is the big issue: why is TNN blue? The argument that TNN should be white is dead on and rock solid.

He's blue because WotC, in the absence of other rules about balancing a format, will gleefully handwave away their own guidelines in order to make blue the best color. The place where they can let those guidelines slide? Legacy, which is a format that all the cards from the Commander sets are legal and blue is already insane. WotC has even suggested that Commander is an area where they can release cards that might be interesting in the Eternal formats, without mucking up the much more carefully balanced Standard and now Modern arenas.

So: all True-Name Nemesis is, is a throwback to the days of yore when they could throw all kinds of awesome at blue and nobody could really do anything about it. That's worrisome. And yes, I am aware that in the 2011 Commander product, the "best" card was a green one (also used in Legacy) but it's clear to me that the 2011 product was one where they used modern design principles in order to try and get a grip on a format they didn't entirely understand yet. The proof: Scavenging Ooze was printed in M14 and nobody batted an eye about design issues. Instead we were excited that a very expensive and difficult to acquire card would be widely available!

There is no way in hell TNN is printed in a Standard legal format. While I appreciate that the game isn't just about me, I do wish that colors that were not blue got the kind of boost to their repertoire that TNN gives to blue decks. White would have gotten a huge boost out of that card, helping to push Hatebears and White Weenie decks in a huge way.

On the other hand, when you have a deck that needs help and blue is even close to being in reach, then why not use blue?

In my games with Fuz, one thing I noticed was that on many occasions I wanted multiple copies of my enchantments. Duplicates under many circumstances could be helpful: more Fertile Ground to keep the mana production going, an extra Sphere of Safety to keep creatures off my back or even another Curse of Thirst. Sphere of Safety seemed especially useful to duplicate, because I cannot search it up with a Curse of Misfortune.

So I found a duplication device. It's perfect for this deck because it's splashable, cheap and has a swiss-army knife level of utility. It may even be worth cutting the Mesa Enchantress for multiple copies, because I don't know that I need the card draw in this style of deck, and having no creatures blanks so many opposing strategies, that it's possibly worth making that choice.

Can't > Can

That's one of the baseline rules in Magic when it comes to figuring out how cards interact with one another.

It's also one of the most powerful strategies in the game and Blue has the lion's share of that mechanic. Testing Eraser this week has been an exercise in butting up against this problem, the problem that Blue represents as a whole as a matter of fact, and failing. It finally came together for me last weekend, playing against stonethorn's U-Tron-Karn deck. Cards like Wildfire didn't matter, because they would be countered. Even Obliterate didn't matter! Because Gifts Ungiven would be played in response and he could recover faster than I could do anything about that.

And so many of the decks I've been testing against are running some Blue; Remand is an especially popular spell and Snapcaster Mage is still the best 2/1 creature ever. In a format like Modern, Snapcaster virtually guarantees the extra use of cards like Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt-a card that should be 'difficult' for Blue to access but because mana bases are so powerful, a lot more is within reach. On top of all of that, the card draw in Blue allows it to reduce randomness and boost the timetable of it's win, while finding answers to any problem.

Seriously: there is not a permanent in Magic that Blue cannot handle, which coupled with the stack tricks-specifically countermagic which is all but exclusively Blue- and the affinity for artifacts Blue has, all but doubling the possibilities for the color, presenting a very steep hill to climb.

Eventually, the whole exercise became moot last night while testing with Fuz because I could not beat Affinity. In the image on the left, I knew the game was over on turn 2, when my Sudden Shock was Thoughtsiezed. If I can't win versus blue and I can't beat the best aggro deck in the format, it's time to change.

So where does this leave me? The first possibility is to go back to aggro-either RG or Affinity or anything that can get set up before turn 2, cast multiple spells in a turn, or cast creatures as instants so I can force my opponent to do things on my terms instead of theirs.

The second is to tweak Eraser into cards that always present problems, that can never be allowed to resolve, because I can win off them. That is: cut Wildfire for Gaea's Revenge, Great Sable Stag or something similar. Use them to force over committing to the board then Obliterate and enjoy anything I have left over that they do not.

Finally, I can run discard. Discard has two benefits: it is cheap enough that I can cast a discard spell and then another spell in the same turn and it trumps not just countermagic but anything that isn't an instant. I'm running out of time and I need to pick something soon.