Sensei's Divining Top is banned

As of today. Discuss.

Why in the FUCK would they ban TOP!!! That's got to be one of the most retarded ban/restrictions ever!!! Ban Counterbalance!!! Not top!!! Fuck I'm pissed!!!

Okay... I'm a little more calm... FUUUUCCCKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Decks to beat

Affinity
PLB
Swan Combo

Look Ben! The tier1 deck pool got much smaller so your decision will be that much easier!

Wizards must have found a few cards from Alara that are utterly broken with Top. That is the only explanation that makes sense as to why they would ban top and not CB.

Banning Top makes plenty of sense to me. It makes games take too long, and pushes players to play extra shuffle effects, which take longer still. Banning Top does the same thing as banning Counterbalance, plus more. I'm not saying I'm happy that it's gone, but there are definite upsides.

So what happens now? Ancestral Visions probably goes into every non-Tron blue deck, and Loam looks much more interesting. I know my first project will be to work on an updated version of Dredge-a-Tog.

I hated that card. Glad to see it go.

tulsatrey wrote:I hated that card. Glad to see it go.

I think I have to agree with you here.

Yes, Top contributed to longer games yet they did not ban it last year at the height of its popularity. Top is not broken. It is only good in a deck with shuffle effects and therefore is not great on it's own. Jitte at it's peak was broken! Hell, you can use its counters without a creature and it was not banned! I remember every competitive Aggro and Aggro/Control decks packing 4 Jitte(legendary) and even Kusari Gama in the SB to help win the Jitte war! Look at Scepter! That's an un-fun and un-fair card! I'll imprint Counterspell, Orim's Chant, Terminate, etc. Wow?! I don't get to play anything?! How fun! I honestly believe that Shards will bring cards that make Top broke as hell and therefore contributed to its preemptive banning.

There are upsides as I mentioned before and here is one more... a discard deck may be possible! Perhaps my beloved B/g TarmoRack! Wait! I have to beat Affinity!... again?!... jeez!!!

In my opinion, there doesn't have to be anything in Shards that would make Top better. I mean, how would that even be possible? The number one reason, as was stated, is probably that it makes games, matches, and tournaments take too long. On the other hand, almost every deck in the format is getting worse because of the rotation, and Counterbalance+Top would probably just dominate. For instance, Loam was awful in a metagame with a decent amount of Counterbalance, and now one of the great cards in the format has a chance to live up to its potential.

Say what you will about Affinity, but I don't believe it will win the Pro Tour. There are just too many strong, splashable, low cc hate cards.

I suppose that the powers that be were chomping at the bit to ban Top since they felt they could not do it at the height of CounterTop's reign because of the uproar it would cause. It is better to ban it now before the start of the Extended season.

Thinking about slow cards, why don't they ban Gifts Ungiven? Have you ever played Gifts vs. Gifts? Talk about sloooowwww.

And who's to say that Shards won't bring something in that makes Top better? C'mon, anything is possible. But in all seriousness, I hope the explanation on Sept 5 is a good one.

Gifts vs Gifts shouldn't be that slow when you're not Topping every turn, popping fetches, and Topping some more. It may take a couple of minutes to actually resolve Gifts, but it's not much worse than splitting FoF piles.

The reason they didn't ban it last season was that it wasn't that dominant really. It was just one of several Tier 1 decks. And now there's a good break in the action before the PT, so it's as good a time as any. (Basically. I would have preferred a month ago, but whatever.)

As far as affinity goes, it might not win the pro tour, but I definitely think we'll see it do really well at the PTQ level.

agree, any monkey can vomit their hand onto the table and hope to get there. not all monkeys can stop them.

aceben3 wrote:agree, any monkey can vomit their hand onto the table and hope to get there. not all monkeys can stop them.

As the resident monkey, I now have a plan for the extended PTQs.

@klinkman-

@aceben3-Now that I think about it, maybe it's the combination of Gifts and Top! Combo seems like the way to go.

I think anyone who bothers to read Magic forums is selling theirself (themselves?) short if they resign to be a monkey and play monkey decks.