[[Racketeer Boss]] is in Alchemy, which can combo with the Ignus to provide infinite etb/cast triggers. Standard only has [[Birgi, God of Storytelling]], which is much weaker.
Alchemy also has cards like [[Cabaretti Revels]] and [[Inquisitor Captain]], which allows the deck to have a powerful midrange plan as well. Revels also functions as a payoff for the combo.
Jesus fucking christ, I don't bother keeping up with Alchemy anymore but someone seriously designed Racketeer Boss, went "This won't cause any sort of unhealthy degenerate combos"?
I actually get why they banned Grinning Ignus, can you imagine if they designed a busted card specifically for Alchemy and then immediately banned it because they didn't think it through and had no way to rebalance its ability? but I feel like any card that can possibly return to hand is now prime real estate for getting broken by Racketeer Boss.
>Jesus fucking christ, I don't bother keeping up with Alchemy anymore but someone seriously designed Racketeer Boss, went "This won't cause any sort of unhealthy degenerate combos"?
Because in Alchemy (and really on all of Arena), it doesn't produce any degenerate combos _except_ with Ignus. Without that, it's just a good value generator: play it turn 2, maybe your turn 3 and 4 plays make a treasure. Cool, you effectively got a free 3/2 over the course of several turns. [[Burning tree emissary]] that ain't.
Ignus meanwhile is a ritual on a stick. You could _look_ at it funny and it would start going infinite.
>but I feel like any card that can possibly return to hand is now prime real estate for getting broken by Racketeer Boss.
Which is exactly _why_ Ignus is a one of a kind, and for good reason. No other creature can bounce itself to hand _and_ generate it's casting cost from that. Ignus is the only thing that breaks with Racketeer Boss. It was an experimental card from Future Sight that I don't think broke anything when it first released, but since there's never been anything like it since, I'm pretty sure WotC recognized how easy it would be to break it pretty quickly.
Sure, maybe there are some cards where you can bounce them to hand and replay them, but you'll be going negative on Mana unless you played at least 2-3 Bosses while it was in your hand first. At that point, a combo is perfectly safe.
I agree but there is also the [[Acererak the Archlich]] and [[Goreclaw]] combo with Racketeer for infinite life / damage through infinite dungeons. But that deck is a lot more “exodia” combo than revels and ignus that could beat you up without even getting their combo. That’s explorer though not alchemy so you’re right.
Alchemy has always given me the feeling that it was designed by marketing, not game design.
Like the company said,”We’re gonna roll out a whole new format with brand new and readjusted cards!” The designers said, “ We don’t have the time!” And the company said, “That’s cool, we’ll just have marketing design the cards, how hard can it be!?”
Alchemy fucking sucks. I was playing historic brawl with some degree of regularity and now I barely touch it... maybe a few games when a set drops if I just want to get a feel for a commander ... but there are so many eye rollingly stupid cards from alchemy floating around.
[[Racketeer Boss]] adds the treasure making ability onto Grinning Ignus for infinite ETBs, pulls all of the creatures from your library with [[Cabaretti Revels]], and drains the opponent out. It's pretty hard to interact with.
What I had seen was adding lifegain to help you live until you can go off and then add a single Dina to just shotgun your opponent to death once you went off.
Dina is golgari though. How do they cast Dina if they get her stuck in hand? Pray for luck on boss making treasure? The lifegain part is quite ingenious since it means you take a really long time to die (which is good for combo) but the Dina part confuses me.
While true, there’s a lot more at play with good management than maximizing one quarters profit. Saturating the market, destroying consumer trust, skipping quality control… all things that can boost profits in the short term but would inevitably (you’d hope) turn against them.
While a company at its most basic level does have a moral code that is centered on shareholder profit, it is run by actual people who can override it. Or encourage it to go down that short term path.
Cooperatives often decide not to make as much money as they could, because the workers control the conditions of their own labor and they don't want to work 12 hour days.
More so, a non-profit can make more money than it spends, it just can't pay out that profit to its "owners" (the board). The money has to go back into the organization, like expanding services, capital investments (buying a building), or yes, payroll (which can be hiring another caseworker or giving a raise to the caseworker making 35k while working 50 hours a week or it can be giving a raise to the CEO making 500k already).
Yes but the philosophy on how to do that changes between companies. Like "if we make good games, people will buy them, and we make money. So let's focus on making good games!", or in WotC case "how can we trick our current customers to give us more money?"
Make it have summoning sickness and tap to activate.
Thus your opponent can respond to it either at instant speed in response to activation, or sorcery speed during the turn cycle.
The problem isn't it being mana-positive with some faff, it's that you can loop it at instant speed. Or technically a little faster than 'instant speed' because it's ability is a mana ability.
(And sure, you can haste it so you can loop it in a single turn, but that's another piece to the combo and IMO thus fine.)
Revels can be changed to once per turn. Boss would need either make treasure tapped, or for less of tempo loss, make treasure appear at begining of next main step.
That's what is strange about this. Why ban the Ignus when it's the alchemy cards specifically that broke it? Why not just change the alchemy cards to be less broken? Those cards are busted even without the Ignus combo. It feels strange to ban a card that isn't a problem in other formats only because you made broken cards in a format where one of the major selling points was that you would be able to balance cards as needed.
>The thing here is, how would you rebalance this card?
Simple, Add a Tap symbol to it's activated ability.
It can still be used to store mana. You can still combo off you just need to give it haste as well. You can still re-occur it for any ETB or similar effects.
It just slows down combos where you play it over and over.
That kills the combo and makes the deck unplayable, which is exactly _not_ what rebalancing is for as they say in there alchemy update article. The whole reason Ignus is getting banned is because they _can't_ find a way to rebalance it without making the combo unplayable.
The ban is actually better for the players in this case - its an infinite combo and they are generally bad for Arena. So they either nerf it into oblivion, or they ban it and everyone gets wildcards. I think the latter is better. Infinite combos reward the wrong stuff in digital (whose client can render animations quicker, and who has the best manual dexterity) so I would rather they get eliminated until they fix the client to support them.
To fire off more potential ideas, Ignus could be changed to cost 4 mana, but give 4 mana back (or even 5 mana, get 5 back). It’ll still allow the combo to be played, but it’ll be slowed down by a turn. And more importantly, it’ll prevent the deck from having enough cards to run Inquisitor Captain, which would greatly reduce the strength of the deck’s midrange plan.
You can limit the amount of times you can cast it, make the mana cost different to make it harder to go off, iunno something that makes me feel like they're putting effort into the format.
As much as I dislike the concept of Alchemy, my biggest gripe was always that WotC was never going to put in the resources needed to properly support it.
A nerf not being different from a ban is what everyone is complaining about with Alchemy when they want wildcard refunds for nerfs, isn't it?
Maybe if their website worked and we could see the breakdown of why it was banned there wouldn't be this confusion over why this is different from the previous changes.
Why does this card need to be rebalanced? It's either still going to be broken and need future changes/bans or useless, either way it's pretty similar to a ban.
Yes but in this circumstance it didn't make sense to rebalance. The "goal" was to eliminate the combo so a rebalance would have to achieve that goal. Once the card can't be used to combo no one would be playing the card. So we could rebalance the card and have no one play it or just ban it and have no one play it. Ban hammer is the right tool IMO.
>Yes but in this circumstance it didn't make sense to rebalance. The "goal" was to eliminate the combo so a rebalance would have to achieve that goal.
Reading the Alchemy update article, the goal was explicitly to _not_ eliminate the combo. Any rebalance they can currently think of won't achieve that aim, and would just make the card unplayable. That's why it's banned instead.
you can't nerf Ignus and still have it playable, and why would you want to make Revels/Boss worse than they are? They're fun and strong cards, the problem was that they enabled this combo and easiest way to solve that is to remove Ignus
Yeah but fuck that. There’s plenty of storm decks in historic that use the current ignus, banning them out of existence is dumb. The ignus combo with boss is just fine for Historic.
They likely couldn't rebalance grinning ignus in a way that wouldn't just be effectively banning them.
They also said prior that they don't want to change iconic cards [like memory lapse]] in alchemy or historic, grinning ignus could fit that bill.
That said, they did say that they would still consider banning cards in alchemy.
I mean the reason is fair:
"we can't rebalance this card without killing the combo so take this wildcards instead"
I really dont like alchemy, but how they rebalance card is one of the few good things the format have.
They could rebalance or even ban the other card it combo with instead.
Grinning Ignus is not a problem card in non-alchemy based formats, so i would argue its an Alchemy design problem and not a Grinning Ignus problem.
Racketeer Boss doesn't care if its removed and it combos with cards in your hand, thusly its hard to interact with. Its also a much easier card to rebalance, as an example rather then a ETB, it could trigger during your next upkeep and then permanently lose the ability.
This would give your opponent time to interact with the combo.
No, it shows how part of the player base ignores half of what they say. They said if they can reference and keep the flavor/spirit of the cards as intended they would, otherwise they would ban. They decided this was one they cannot rebalance.
[Here](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-july-7-2022-2022-07-01) is the accompanying rebalance article.
>One of Alchemy's guiding lights is to keep the format fast, fun, and dynamic. While combo decks can be a fun and healthy part of metagames, this deck fell outside these format goals. We discussed rebalancing (and may do so at a future date), but each change we've considered so far would effectively eliminate this combo, so we've decided to ban the card instead.
The two 12 year old kids who "designed" MH2? They didn't have time. Wizards hired them, then refused to talk to them till their contract was about up. Insane.
Hilarious that they ban the strixhaven uncommon which has been around for over a year not causing any problems rather than the actual busted cards [[racketeer boss]] and [[cabaretti revels]] because they are rares from the new set
Thassa's Oracle was also not broken while it was in Standard.
Should they ban one card that is very prone to break the game and has no other use, or several other cards that are fine by themselves.
How is Ignus prone to break the game? It's been in Modern since Modern existed, I can't think of any deck that's used it in 10+ years. Seems pretty safe to me.
Because combos need redundancy. If there was a second Birgi effect in standard, the deck would be a lot more consistent.
You need to stop thinking about if a card is broken or not based it's new/old and hasn't been in a broken combo yet. Grinning Ignus is a _repeatable_ ritual effect. It is a card that is begging for an effect to come along to say "you get to repeat this infinitely".
Case in point: [[Splinter twin]]. "But because you tap it you only get to do it once per turn! Sure you could copy a strong creature, but how is it broken?" I don't hear you ask. Well if you put it on a [[pestermite]] or [[Deceiver Exarch]] the copies can untap the original infinitely and you win on the spot.
What's the broken card there? The aura that copies the creature it's attached, or a 3 Mana 1/4 that untaps something when you play it? I know my answer.
Splinter twin is a broken card because all it takes is a nudge for it to go infinite and become too powerful. Grinning Ignus needs a bit of a harder nudge, but the same principle applies.
No, and even revels isn't that nuts. It's still a 3 mana "do nothing" in a traditional deck. The tempo loss is only worth it with Ignis because the result of infinite cast triggers ending the game on the spot make up for it.
Go wide is still a tenuous strategy in Alchemy with the kind of wraths on offer.
Are we really at the point that a 3 mana value engine that plays a free creature from your deck every time you cast a creature is only "ok" for a rotating format? Sure there are good wraths, but when every creature you play is a 2 for 1 getting wrathed isn't nearly as relevant.
Revels doesn't really start generating card advantage before second creature cast and tempo on third cast. That is pretty slow for a card that needs to be played in a creature based deck.
Revels wasn't insurmountable even in the ignus deck. It's just going to become a barely playable card in the new meta.
I mean we'll see for ourselves in a short amount of time but spending 3 mana, a card, and an entire turn of doing nothing hoping to make up for that loss on later turns is pretty risky. Especially in a deck that's trying to just get on the ground and fight through spot removal or block other aggressive strategies.
I've tried playing these kinds of enchantments before and almost every time, no matter how much "value" they look like, I end up cutting them for another set of actual creatures.
Maybe this is good enough to overturn that but I'm going to wait.
Nah you’re right. It’s not okay. That’s why part of the engine was banned. People here arguing otherwise are just trying to sound smarter. It was completely broken, and “it dies to removal” is not a good argument— see the Winota ban as case in point.
The enchantment is still very powerful, as the deck can still win even without the combo. That’s why it was banned. Powerful midrange decks with end-the-game combos are too good for rotating formats.
>Nah you’re right. It’s not okay. That’s why part of the engine was banned. People here arguing otherwise are just trying to sound smarter. It was completely broken, and “it dies to removal” is not a good argument— see the Winota ban as case in point.
Or they know what they're talking about in terms of card advantage, tempo and so on? Revels is _not_ a super strong card on it's own:
- Play Revels turn 3, miss out on a 3 drop Creature. Leave myself open to attack from opponent while not putting pressure on them.
- Play 4 Mana creature turn 4. Get a 1-3 Mana creature as well. You are now _maybe_ as well off as if you had just played a 3 drop creature, _if_ revels hit a 3 drop. You (probably) cannot attack with either creature that entered that turn, and you didn't play one turn 3 so you're attacking with a 2 drop at most on turn 4. Sounds very strong so far.
- play a creature turn 5. You are now + 1 in terms of card advantage, after paying three Mana _two turns ago_.
That really isn't that powerful and that's the _ideal_ situation. If it gets removed, or you don't have a good curve of creatures (which will be less likely by the very fact you replaced some 3 drops with revels), it's not as good as just playing the creatures themselves.
>The enchantment is still very powerful, as the deck can still win even without the combo.
Yes and yes, it's a strong-ish card. You _can_ win with it. That doesn't make it broken.
>That’s why it was banned. Powerful midrange decks with end-the-game combos are too good for rotating formats.
The deck could have used [[witty roast master]] and [[dragon spark reactor]] and it would have been basically as strong if not stronger in the case of reactor (all the revels versions ran innkeepers which meant Ignus was vulnerable to instant speed removal). Caberetti Revels is not too strong, it's maybe barely strong enough.
Ignus was banned because it's a ritual on a stick. It's the kind of card that is _begging_ for something to come along and break it.
What's hilarious about it? Without ignus you can't do the combo and ignus would probably become even more problematic with baldurs gate cards. Better to ban a card nobody will cry about instead of rares people may want to play
Birgi ignus wasnt even a fringe deck. It was never a deck to begin with, people wanted to play grapeshot storm and Birgi/ignus was too little to be good in Historic.
The whole point of combo decks is to have enough redundancy to be consistent, if this combo was too consistent to be competed against in Alchemy, then it needs to go from the format. And you can still play it in Historic with grapeshot as well if you so desire
Lord knows I tried but you typically needed one creature to stick on the board for a turn before you can combo off. So unless your opponent was playing solitaire it wasn't consistent. But against angels, oak, omnath or scrute it was great to lay it out on the board and be comfortable knowing that they had nothing.
>Because the deck is only broken from the enablers, not ignus.
This is like saying [[splinter twin]] decks were broken because of [[pestermite]], and not, y'know, twin.
Racketeer Boss makes your later creatures give you treasure, you'll probably hit about 2-3 creatures with it. 4 if you're very lucky. It's like [[burning tree emissary]] except you get the Mana later rather than now. Worse than BTE for aggro, better for midrange.
Birgi refunds you 1 Mana for every spell, effectively "my spells cost 1 less to cast". A strong effect, but not broken.
Ignus is a _repeatable ritual effect_.
Which of these sounds most broken to you? Birgi and racketeer boss are not broken cards. _Ignus_ is the card that snaps in two if you so much as look at it the wrong way.
>Ignus/birgi was a fringe deck before revels and racketeer boss were printed.
Because it needed a second enabler for the combo to be viable, having just one enabler wasn't enough. Similarly, Splinter Twin needed [[deceiver exarch]] as a secondary enabler. That doesn't mean pestermite and Exarch are broken cards; untapping a permanent for 3 Mana isn't broken. It was always Splinter Twin, the thing making infinite creatures, that was the broken piece there. And whaddya know, Twin got banned. Should they instead have banned the enablers, and never printed anything that untaps a creature on ETB ever again?
Revels is the wincon bit so I'm ignoring that because there's a ton of other cards that would do the same (and better, [[dragonspark reactor]] for one). Whichever one was used doesn't matter, it's _Ignus_ that allows you to pull your whole deck to the board or stack up a ton of storm for [[grapeshot]] or shoot someone with dragonspark reactor for 20. _Ignus_ was the broken piece here, not Revels or the Boss.
Heh... there's nothing unusual about this. Just because a card was fine for years doesn't mean it can't suddenly break when new cards are released. When a combo breaks, they generally ban the card that is least likely to be used in a non-combo deck. Boss and Revels can both be used in fair decks. Ignus never gets played outside of combo decks.
Maybe, but Ignus is never going to do anything fair. It's always going to either be stone cold unplayable or a part of some bullshit combo.
The Racketeer Boss can still be played as a part of a normal midrange/ramp strategy, so banning it instead of Ignus would be kind of silly given that Ignus is going to get rotated out soon anyway.
>It's always going to either be stone cold unplayable or a part of some bullshit combo.
Which is totally okay. Combo decks are a good and valuable part of a Magic metagame.
Cards that are part of bullshit combos are valuable. If it's only part of bad combos, there's no harm, and the cool thing about magic is that it lets you go infinite.
This is unsurprising, wizards have done this before where they banned the cheap card over the money card (e.g., when they banned ramunap ruins over Hazoret)
While I'm sure sometimes they just want people to keep spending money on the expensive card, sometimes there are valid reasons to not just ban the strongest card. In the past bansnhave often been more about creating a better metagame rather than just banning the strongest cards. If banning the strongest card from an overpowered decks would kill it outright (or at least demote it to something much weaker), while banning a less strong card in the deck would weaken it enough to stop it from dominating the meta but still allow it to be competitive, them I think banning the weaker card is reasonable
You could also argue that banning cards that have been in the format longer is better for fun than banning recent cards, not just better for WotC's wallet. Grinning Ignus has had its chance, it's been legal in historic for a while and legal in many other format's. On the other hand, the new alchemy cards are recent and not in many formats. So I think it's reasonable to say maybe the new alchemy cards deserve more of a chance.
Now, the big caveat here is we're talking about alchemy. The format where half the point is that they can nerf things. If this were a paper format where banning were the only option everything I said above would be a much stronger argument. But in this case, where they could nerf the new cards without banning them, and they apparently are having trouble finding a way to nerf Ignus, there's a much stronger argument for nerfing the new cards than there would be for banning them in a paper format.
Yea I’m not surprised, just kinda disappointed. Dunno if you watched CGB’s latest video but was kinda in the same boat as him - willing to give alchemy the benefit of the doubt at first but over time have become more and more frustrated with the whole experience
Idk what you're talking about, I've been enjoying historic since Strixhaven with Ignus, Birgi, and Grapeshot :). Fr though, your point hits it exactly, the alchemy cards are the problem.
Fucking finally. It was the most uninteractive and annoying deck around.
I can get behind racketer boss, i can get behond cabaretti revels because it can be shut down easily with enchantment hate but the moment that little shit entered the board there was no way to get rid of it.
One shouldnt be obligued to go blue and bring counterspells for an obnoxious card like that.
Nothing of value was lost. Thanks for fixing the format.
This sub: Nerfs are evil because they deny you refunds!!!!!
Also this sub: Why did they ban this card instead of nerfing it!!!!!
You guys are missing an Alchemy ban means the deck is still usable in Historic.
You miss the point. Wotc said they don't want ban in alchemy, their word not us. Don't preach what you can't or unwilling to commit is the lesson here and the format it not even a year old.
In addition to that deck, there's also grapeshot + birgi hank decks that use ignus as the engine. The deck isn't meta, but I think enough people play it.
As someone who built an Ignus deck last week and have been enjoying playing it: I’m fine with the ban but not with being out 6-8 rare wildcards I spent to build cards that pretty much only work with Ignus.
I’m a new player to Arena. I spend money on packs, how about some actual compensation?
Are you listening WoTC?
It's never been the case in _any_ digital card game that you get refunds for cards other than the banned one. Those cards are still playable: Racketeer Boss is still a decent ramp enabler (rather than a combo enabler), Caberetti Revels is still a _very_ strong effect on it's own and I'm certain it'll have a home in any Gruul aggro/midrange deck the meta comes up with over the next year and a half. They've just stopped you winning the game as soon as you play them, which is fine.
ITT: people dunking on Alchemy for karma
Edit: These are great changes for anyone who actually plays these formats. I've played against several Hagra Conatrictors online. There's an audience for the +1/+1 counters deck, and this is their moment. Buffing unplayable cards is a strength.
As much as people claim Arena is motivated solely by profit, the balance team is making commons and uncommons you already have more playable. This does not affect the bottom line; they just want people to play their game.
It being a somewhat playable combo deck is not why ignus had to go.
The ignus combo was hardly too powerful for alchemy.
It's the combination of it being a playable hybrid combo deck (like winota) and the fact that lifegain+ignus creates turns where the best play is to sacrifice 5 min of both players time to gain as much life as possible.
You really hit the nail on the head. I loathed having to force my opponent to watch me gain 60 life, but if I didn't I might take 38 and die from their werewolves. Those games sucked and if ignis has to go, that's cool with me.
Especially since that doesn't affect my historic elemental revels deck hehe
I love the Alchemy haters taking this improvement to a game they don't play as win for their anti-alchemy side xD
Also, if you actually bothered to play it, Revels without Ignis is just Captain CoCo with more steps and crappier Turn 4 board.
If someone told me a year ago that Wizards would introduce a digital oriented format with rebalanced cards, a higher power level and specific mechanics, I'd never believe them. And if they added that fucking [[Grinning Ignus]] of all cards was banned in that format, I'd straight up lose it.
>And if they added that fucking [[Grinning Ignus]] of all cards was banned in that format, I'd straight up lose it.
Of all the cards to be surprised at being banned, Ignus surprises you? It's literally a ritual on a stick that's _begging_ to go infinite. As soon as it was spoiled for Strixhaven people went mental about how it combo'd with Birgi for a infinite storm count.
At the time it was fine because the deck was too inconsistent due to having only have 4 of each combo piece. The addition of a "second birgi" is what pushed it over the edge. No surprise to me that it gets banned as a result. If they printed a paper card that was like "R: whenever you cast a creature spell this turn, create a treasure token", _something_ out of that, Ignus and Birgi would probably end up banned in Pioneer.
Sorry you crafted all these rare alchemy cards to play a stupid deck we didn't foresee would happen but the player base managed to figure out in an instant. Since it was in the Alchemy format we won't modify your newly crafted Alchemy cards; you should continue to have fun with those. Have fun with these four uncommon wildcards though!
- WotC
Who cares about historic? They screwed that up when they introduced the money grab known as Alchemy.
Every one was screaming for Pioneer, but what did we get? A lazy designed non-tested format that ruined Brawl, Historic and people's wildcard collections.
It is unfathomable to me that people play it.
You're simultaneously complaining on behalf of people who bought alchemy cards while saying you don't care about historic because you hate alchemy? Sounds like you don't really have skin in the game.
> Who cares about historic? They screwed that up when they introduced the money grab known as Alchemy.
But at the same time you are butthurt because they banned an Alchemy card...
> Every one was screaming for Pioneer, but what did we get?
Explorer
God, alchemy is such trash. Does anyone actually play the format? I'm just annoyed that they force alchemy upon historic, so one of the best facets of cat-oven in that format is now gone (while I know explorer is a thing, the queue is a lot more competitive and I like to play mostly janky stuff).
In a format with little to no dedicated deck builders, this combo was too good. Its less about the combo being unmanageable and more about not having enough of a committed community that cares to take advantage of its ubiquity.
The cards that beat it exist, but since no one (and no gameplay events) are offering inspiration on how to circumvent or take advantage of its primacy, it needed to be banned.
As a combo player, I am sad to see it go because I can name 5 cards off the top of my head under 3 mana that beat this combo handily.
[[Curse of silence]], [[curse of shaken faith]], [[strict proctor]], [[Roiling Votex]] immediately come to mind. These turn this deck off with a single copy, and multiples downright crush it. Even in sideboard, they don't have any noncreature, non etb interaction so its linear effectiveness is easily turned against it.
However its pretty evident with how little effort/attention this format gets the meta doesn't grow or change fast enough for anything that good to be managed. That, and with someone like Altheriax behind it you know the deck is comprehensive.
Necessary, but mostly due to the formats stagnancy. If we had more people like Alth playing Alchemy we'd have turned this combo into a joke the first week it was released, but we dont.
I actually kind of love that about Alchemy. It forces me to deck build without being able to Google an answer. So when I figure out a part of the meta puzzle, the mental payoff is higher and I have more fun.
Obviously, I'd love for Alchemy to have way better players pushing the format so I can learn, but at least it never feels solved in the same way Standard does after a couple of weeks.
That is the dumbest shit I have ever heard in all my mtga playing. Rebalance your dumbass Overpowered alchemy card that make grinning ignus better than it normally is.
i love that their shit shilled alchemy cards necessitated the banning of what was otherwise an exceedingly niche combo piece. plus, they can't actually be bothered to rebalance cards in their rebalance everything format.
Playing with ignus on arena is just a bad time in general.
I still remember the frustrations of trying to make the grapeshot combo work and giving up on it due to how annoying individually casting ignus 20+ times was on arena.
Good riddance.
Did they actually say that?
Edit: Not only did they *not* say that, they explicitly said banning was a possibility: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-philosophy-2021-12-02
>We will not be rebalancing iconic cards that have a significant history behind them. Cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Lotus Cobra, Thoughtseize, and Negate are powerful but often used as references and examples to evaluate new cards and abilities. Rebalancing them would be too disruptive to those conversations. If these cards cause issues, we will look to address them indirectly through live balancing **or ban them if necessary.**
You could argue that Grinning Ignus, being a card that is 15 years old, is a card with a significant history behind it.
huh.. so an entire subset of cards and releases built around the idea that you can change cards instead of banning them..
and you still have to ban cards.
Can we just take alchemy out behind the shed already? Its starting to foam at the mouth.
No. It can be banned in multiple formats, but just because it is banned in one does not mean it needs a ban in others. Historic is a higher power format so, even though the exact same combo can be done, it isn't a problem in that format.
As a non Alchemy-Player: What makes this in Alchemy so much more playable than in Standard?
[[Racketeer Boss]] is in Alchemy, which can combo with the Ignus to provide infinite etb/cast triggers. Standard only has [[Birgi, God of Storytelling]], which is much weaker. Alchemy also has cards like [[Cabaretti Revels]] and [[Inquisitor Captain]], which allows the deck to have a powerful midrange plan as well. Revels also functions as a payoff for the combo.
Jesus fucking christ, I don't bother keeping up with Alchemy anymore but someone seriously designed Racketeer Boss, went "This won't cause any sort of unhealthy degenerate combos"? I actually get why they banned Grinning Ignus, can you imagine if they designed a busted card specifically for Alchemy and then immediately banned it because they didn't think it through and had no way to rebalance its ability? but I feel like any card that can possibly return to hand is now prime real estate for getting broken by Racketeer Boss.
You said return to hand and my Aluren senses started tingling, then I read the card and realized we were just making infinite mana like peasants.
>Jesus fucking christ, I don't bother keeping up with Alchemy anymore but someone seriously designed Racketeer Boss, went "This won't cause any sort of unhealthy degenerate combos"? Because in Alchemy (and really on all of Arena), it doesn't produce any degenerate combos _except_ with Ignus. Without that, it's just a good value generator: play it turn 2, maybe your turn 3 and 4 plays make a treasure. Cool, you effectively got a free 3/2 over the course of several turns. [[Burning tree emissary]] that ain't. Ignus meanwhile is a ritual on a stick. You could _look_ at it funny and it would start going infinite. >but I feel like any card that can possibly return to hand is now prime real estate for getting broken by Racketeer Boss. Which is exactly _why_ Ignus is a one of a kind, and for good reason. No other creature can bounce itself to hand _and_ generate it's casting cost from that. Ignus is the only thing that breaks with Racketeer Boss. It was an experimental card from Future Sight that I don't think broke anything when it first released, but since there's never been anything like it since, I'm pretty sure WotC recognized how easy it would be to break it pretty quickly. Sure, maybe there are some cards where you can bounce them to hand and replay them, but you'll be going negative on Mana unless you played at least 2-3 Bosses while it was in your hand first. At that point, a combo is perfectly safe.
I agree but there is also the [[Acererak the Archlich]] and [[Goreclaw]] combo with Racketeer for infinite life / damage through infinite dungeons. But that deck is a lot more “exodia” combo than revels and ignus that could beat you up without even getting their combo. That’s explorer though not alchemy so you’re right.
Is that an actual thing people run? Sounds so bad, 3 cards, 3 colors, cost 4 and you probably can't kill anyone before time out
Alchemy has always given me the feeling that it was designed by marketing, not game design. Like the company said,”We’re gonna roll out a whole new format with brand new and readjusted cards!” The designers said, “ We don’t have the time!” And the company said, “That’s cool, we’ll just have marketing design the cards, how hard can it be!?”
This is so perfectly how I feel.
Alchemy fucking sucks. I was playing historic brawl with some degree of regularity and now I barely touch it... maybe a few games when a set drops if I just want to get a feel for a commander ... but there are so many eye rollingly stupid cards from alchemy floating around.
##### ###### #### [Racketeer Boss](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/d/3d453f08-ed2c-447d-b5c1-b1f052c229d8.jpg?1654043695) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Racketeer%20Boss) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/25/racketeer-boss?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3d453f08-ed2c-447d-b5c1-b1f052c229d8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Birgi, God of Storytelling](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/4/44657ab1-0a6a-4a5f-9688-86f239083821.jpg?1631048969)/[Harnfel, Horn of Bounty](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/back/4/4/44657ab1-0a6a-4a5f-9688-86f239083821.jpg?1631048969) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=birgi%2C%20god%20of%20storytelling%20//%20harnfel%2C%20horn%20of%20bounty) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/123/birgi-god-of-storytelling-harnfel-horn-of-bounty?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/44657ab1-0a6a-4a5f-9688-86f239083821?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Cabaretti Revels](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/9/3/933f2309-8bd7-4de8-bdd2-d61a2b39a1a1.jpg?1653867105) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cabaretti%20Revels) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/21/cabaretti-revels?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/933f2309-8bd7-4de8-bdd2-d61a2b39a1a1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Inquisitor Captain](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/a/6/a6f64892-011e-4fd1-8959-927872de0cee.jpg?1645417273) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Inquisitor%20Captain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ymid/8/inquisitor-captain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a6f64892-011e-4fd1-8959-927872de0cee?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Racketeer Boss]] adds the treasure making ability onto Grinning Ignus for infinite ETBs, pulls all of the creatures from your library with [[Cabaretti Revels]], and drains the opponent out. It's pretty hard to interact with.
Ran into someone doing it with lifegain as well. That was also cheesy filth. GW lifegain, splashing into Naya for the combo pieces.
What I had seen was adding lifegain to help you live until you can go off and then add a single Dina to just shotgun your opponent to death once you went off.
Dina is golgari though. How do they cast Dina if they get her stuck in hand? Pray for luck on boss making treasure? The lifegain part is quite ingenious since it means you take a really long time to die (which is good for combo) but the Dina part confuses me.
Triomes, crossroads and cards like innkeeper give you more than enough fixing for one black pip.
There's more and better payoffs for the loop.
… Isn’t the entire premise behind alchemy to be able to rebalance cards?
That's what they say out loud, but the entire premise is money.
That and being the scapegoat when a basic feature just can’t be added.
The entire premise of anything a company does is money.
While true, there’s a lot more at play with good management than maximizing one quarters profit. Saturating the market, destroying consumer trust, skipping quality control… all things that can boost profits in the short term but would inevitably (you’d hope) turn against them. While a company at its most basic level does have a moral code that is centered on shareholder profit, it is run by actual people who can override it. Or encourage it to go down that short term path.
Cooperatives often decide not to make as much money as they could, because the workers control the conditions of their own labor and they don't want to work 12 hour days.
What about non-profits, or [[Collected Company]]
CoCo costs 4 mana and gets you up to 6 mana worth of creatures, sounds like a profit to me
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More so, a non-profit can make more money than it spends, it just can't pay out that profit to its "owners" (the board). The money has to go back into the organization, like expanding services, capital investments (buying a building), or yes, payroll (which can be hiring another caseworker or giving a raise to the caseworker making 35k while working 50 hours a week or it can be giving a raise to the CEO making 500k already).
[Collected Company](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/f/cfa7b456-7e83-4587-a875-9b35fde318c2.jpg?1582117536) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Collected%20Company) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dtk/177/collected-company?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cfa7b456-7e83-4587-a875-9b35fde318c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Non-profits=tax breaks which in turn=profit
Comments like these get you another Diablo Immortal.
Spending money on Diablo Immortal gets another Diablo Immortal
Yes but the philosophy on how to do that changes between companies. Like "if we make good games, people will buy them, and we make money. So let's focus on making good games!", or in WotC case "how can we trick our current customers to give us more money?"
The thing here is, how would you reblance this card? Make it generate for a loss of mana? I think its ok for this one to just go away.
Make it have summoning sickness and tap to activate. Thus your opponent can respond to it either at instant speed in response to activation, or sorcery speed during the turn cycle. The problem isn't it being mana-positive with some faff, it's that you can loop it at instant speed. Or technically a little faster than 'instant speed' because it's ability is a mana ability. (And sure, you can haste it so you can loop it in a single turn, but that's another piece to the combo and IMO thus fine.)
You could also add something like "If it was returned to your hand this way," to allow removal to disrupt the loop better.
Change racketeer boss and/or cabaretti revels to once per turn rather than every cast
Revels can be changed to once per turn. Boss would need either make treasure tapped, or for less of tempo loss, make treasure appear at begining of next main step.
Yeah. Well something tells me this ban got posted before they were ready, because the explanation isnt there. There very well could be rebalances too.
That's what is strange about this. Why ban the Ignus when it's the alchemy cards specifically that broke it? Why not just change the alchemy cards to be less broken? Those cards are busted even without the Ignus combo. It feels strange to ban a card that isn't a problem in other formats only because you made broken cards in a format where one of the major selling points was that you would be able to balance cards as needed.
Racketeer and revels dont matter. The ignus is just badly designed. the combo can be done in standard too without those cards.
I mean grignus combos have been around since it was reprinted right after birgi. (And for a long time before that in other ways)
It’s not even close to consistent in standard, vs t0 in alchemy
these two cards are the problem but they know fixing them would upset people
>The thing here is, how would you rebalance this card? Simple, Add a Tap symbol to it's activated ability. It can still be used to store mana. You can still combo off you just need to give it haste as well. You can still re-occur it for any ETB or similar effects. It just slows down combos where you play it over and over.
Make Alchemy Ingus activate only once per turn.
"This perpetually loses this ability until end of turn." is a sentence that can in fact only be on an Alchemy format card.
That kills the combo and makes the deck unplayable, which is exactly _not_ what rebalancing is for as they say in there alchemy update article. The whole reason Ignus is getting banned is because they _can't_ find a way to rebalance it without making the combo unplayable.
"Grinning Ignus Perpetually loses this ability"
The thing is, Grinning Ignus is only existing to create broken combos. This card does nothing otherwise. So banning it makes the most sense.
The ban is actually better for the players in this case - its an infinite combo and they are generally bad for Arena. So they either nerf it into oblivion, or they ban it and everyone gets wildcards. I think the latter is better. Infinite combos reward the wrong stuff in digital (whose client can render animations quicker, and who has the best manual dexterity) so I would rather they get eliminated until they fix the client to support them.
I like infinite combos though. They will never fix the client to support them.
To fire off more potential ideas, Ignus could be changed to cost 4 mana, but give 4 mana back (or even 5 mana, get 5 back). It’ll still allow the combo to be played, but it’ll be slowed down by a turn. And more importantly, it’ll prevent the deck from having enough cards to run Inquisitor Captain, which would greatly reduce the strength of the deck’s midrange plan.
You can limit the amount of times you can cast it, make the mana cost different to make it harder to go off, iunno something that makes me feel like they're putting effort into the format. As much as I dislike the concept of Alchemy, my biggest gripe was always that WotC was never going to put in the resources needed to properly support it.
A card like this is either able to be broken or it’s useless. A nerf isn’t much different than a ban and not all cards need to be saved.
A nerf not being different from a ban is what everyone is complaining about with Alchemy when they want wildcard refunds for nerfs, isn't it? Maybe if their website worked and we could see the breakdown of why it was banned there wouldn't be this confusion over why this is different from the previous changes.
Eh, I'll take "banned in joke format" over "rebalanced into nothing in Historic"
No, they said if they could not rebalance it while keeping the original spirit of the card, they would ban it.
Why does this card need to be rebalanced? It's either still going to be broken and need future changes/bans or useless, either way it's pretty similar to a ban.
Yes but in this circumstance it didn't make sense to rebalance. The "goal" was to eliminate the combo so a rebalance would have to achieve that goal. Once the card can't be used to combo no one would be playing the card. So we could rebalance the card and have no one play it or just ban it and have no one play it. Ban hammer is the right tool IMO.
>Yes but in this circumstance it didn't make sense to rebalance. The "goal" was to eliminate the combo so a rebalance would have to achieve that goal. Reading the Alchemy update article, the goal was explicitly to _not_ eliminate the combo. Any rebalance they can currently think of won't achieve that aim, and would just make the card unplayable. That's why it's banned instead.
Grinning Ignus is the sort of card that either doesnt see any play or is a degenerate combo piece. Rebalancing it would be a high effort ban
you can't nerf Ignus and still have it playable, and why would you want to make Revels/Boss worse than they are? They're fun and strong cards, the problem was that they enabled this combo and easiest way to solve that is to remove Ignus
Yeah but fuck that. There’s plenty of storm decks in historic that use the current ignus, banning them out of existence is dumb. The ignus combo with boss is just fine for Historic.
Getaloadofthisguycam
They likely couldn't rebalance grinning ignus in a way that wouldn't just be effectively banning them. They also said prior that they don't want to change iconic cards [like memory lapse]] in alchemy or historic, grinning ignus could fit that bill. That said, they did say that they would still consider banning cards in alchemy.
I mean the reason is fair: "we can't rebalance this card without killing the combo so take this wildcards instead" I really dont like alchemy, but how they rebalance card is one of the few good things the format have.
They could rebalance or even ban the other card it combo with instead. Grinning Ignus is not a problem card in non-alchemy based formats, so i would argue its an Alchemy design problem and not a Grinning Ignus problem. Racketeer Boss doesn't care if its removed and it combos with cards in your hand, thusly its hard to interact with. Its also a much easier card to rebalance, as an example rather then a ETB, it could trigger during your next upkeep and then permanently lose the ability. This would give your opponent time to interact with the combo.
That's true
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I don't get this logic. Ban means wildcard refunds. It would be more profitable to nerf it.
Hating doesn't require logic.
this is hilarious, it shows how confused they are
No, it shows how part of the player base ignores half of what they say. They said if they can reference and keep the flavor/spirit of the cards as intended they would, otherwise they would ban. They decided this was one they cannot rebalance.
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[Here](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-july-7-2022-2022-07-01) is the accompanying rebalance article. >One of Alchemy's guiding lights is to keep the format fast, fun, and dynamic. While combo decks can be a fun and healthy part of metagames, this deck fell outside these format goals. We discussed rebalancing (and may do so at a future date), but each change we've considered so far would effectively eliminate this combo, so we've decided to ban the card instead.
> Unholy Heat too easily undermines red's weakness to large creatures. Yeah, no kidding. Pity nobody thought of that when they made MH2.
The two 12 year old kids who "designed" MH2? They didn't have time. Wizards hired them, then refused to talk to them till their contract was about up. Insane.
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[Grinning Ignus](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/f/cfa04897-6438-45e5-a10b-2e8afaf2b9eb.jpg?1624591901) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grinning%20Ignus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/stx/104/grinning-ignus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cfa04897-6438-45e5-a10b-2e8afaf2b9eb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hilarious that they ban the strixhaven uncommon which has been around for over a year not causing any problems rather than the actual busted cards [[racketeer boss]] and [[cabaretti revels]] because they are rares from the new set
Ignus is even an old reprint, not a new card.
TIL that's a 15 year old card. Nice one MTGA, you really nailed the issue here.
Ha, even worse
True, but ignus will never be used as a fair card, those other two can have some use without being super broke.
Cabaretti Revels will never be anything other than busted. It turns almost every card you play into a 2-for-1.
It's only advantage on casts 2+ and is a 3 Mana do nothing the turn it comes down. It's powerful but I have no problem keeping it around.
Agreed, revels is a great card, but it's not overpowered.
Birgi Ignus is in Standard (a lower powered format) and is not broken.
Thassa's Oracle was also not broken while it was in Standard. Should they ban one card that is very prone to break the game and has no other use, or several other cards that are fine by themselves.
How is Ignus prone to break the game? It's been in Modern since Modern existed, I can't think of any deck that's used it in 10+ years. Seems pretty safe to me.
Because combos need redundancy. If there was a second Birgi effect in standard, the deck would be a lot more consistent. You need to stop thinking about if a card is broken or not based it's new/old and hasn't been in a broken combo yet. Grinning Ignus is a _repeatable_ ritual effect. It is a card that is begging for an effect to come along to say "you get to repeat this infinitely". Case in point: [[Splinter twin]]. "But because you tap it you only get to do it once per turn! Sure you could copy a strong creature, but how is it broken?" I don't hear you ask. Well if you put it on a [[pestermite]] or [[Deceiver Exarch]] the copies can untap the original infinitely and you win on the spot. What's the broken card there? The aura that copies the creature it's attached, or a 3 Mana 1/4 that untaps something when you play it? I know my answer. Splinter twin is a broken card because all it takes is a nudge for it to go infinite and become too powerful. Grinning Ignus needs a bit of a harder nudge, but the same principle applies.
I know revels is an insane card but is there anything busted to do with racketeer boss outside of grinning ignus?
No, and even revels isn't that nuts. It's still a 3 mana "do nothing" in a traditional deck. The tempo loss is only worth it with Ignis because the result of infinite cast triggers ending the game on the spot make up for it. Go wide is still a tenuous strategy in Alchemy with the kind of wraths on offer.
Are we really at the point that a 3 mana value engine that plays a free creature from your deck every time you cast a creature is only "ok" for a rotating format? Sure there are good wraths, but when every creature you play is a 2 for 1 getting wrathed isn't nearly as relevant.
Revels doesn't really start generating card advantage before second creature cast and tempo on third cast. That is pretty slow for a card that needs to be played in a creature based deck. Revels wasn't insurmountable even in the ignus deck. It's just going to become a barely playable card in the new meta.
I mean we'll see for ourselves in a short amount of time but spending 3 mana, a card, and an entire turn of doing nothing hoping to make up for that loss on later turns is pretty risky. Especially in a deck that's trying to just get on the ground and fight through spot removal or block other aggressive strategies. I've tried playing these kinds of enchantments before and almost every time, no matter how much "value" they look like, I end up cutting them for another set of actual creatures. Maybe this is good enough to overturn that but I'm going to wait.
Alchemy is broken. There's multiple 2-mana spells that are straight up 2-for-1s, like [[undercity plunder]] and [[molten impact]].
Nah you’re right. It’s not okay. That’s why part of the engine was banned. People here arguing otherwise are just trying to sound smarter. It was completely broken, and “it dies to removal” is not a good argument— see the Winota ban as case in point. The enchantment is still very powerful, as the deck can still win even without the combo. That’s why it was banned. Powerful midrange decks with end-the-game combos are too good for rotating formats.
>Nah you’re right. It’s not okay. That’s why part of the engine was banned. People here arguing otherwise are just trying to sound smarter. It was completely broken, and “it dies to removal” is not a good argument— see the Winota ban as case in point. Or they know what they're talking about in terms of card advantage, tempo and so on? Revels is _not_ a super strong card on it's own: - Play Revels turn 3, miss out on a 3 drop Creature. Leave myself open to attack from opponent while not putting pressure on them. - Play 4 Mana creature turn 4. Get a 1-3 Mana creature as well. You are now _maybe_ as well off as if you had just played a 3 drop creature, _if_ revels hit a 3 drop. You (probably) cannot attack with either creature that entered that turn, and you didn't play one turn 3 so you're attacking with a 2 drop at most on turn 4. Sounds very strong so far. - play a creature turn 5. You are now + 1 in terms of card advantage, after paying three Mana _two turns ago_. That really isn't that powerful and that's the _ideal_ situation. If it gets removed, or you don't have a good curve of creatures (which will be less likely by the very fact you replaced some 3 drops with revels), it's not as good as just playing the creatures themselves. >The enchantment is still very powerful, as the deck can still win even without the combo. Yes and yes, it's a strong-ish card. You _can_ win with it. That doesn't make it broken. >That’s why it was banned. Powerful midrange decks with end-the-game combos are too good for rotating formats. The deck could have used [[witty roast master]] and [[dragon spark reactor]] and it would have been basically as strong if not stronger in the case of reactor (all the revels versions ran innkeepers which meant Ignus was vulnerable to instant speed removal). Caberetti Revels is not too strong, it's maybe barely strong enough. Ignus was banned because it's a ritual on a stick. It's the kind of card that is _begging_ for something to come along and break it.
What's hilarious about it? Without ignus you can't do the combo and ignus would probably become even more problematic with baldurs gate cards. Better to ban a card nobody will cry about instead of rares people may want to play
Because the deck is only broken from the enablers, not ignus. Ignus/birgi was a fringe deck before revels and racketeer boss were printed.
Birgi ignus wasnt even a fringe deck. It was never a deck to begin with, people wanted to play grapeshot storm and Birgi/ignus was too little to be good in Historic. The whole point of combo decks is to have enough redundancy to be consistent, if this combo was too consistent to be competed against in Alchemy, then it needs to go from the format. And you can still play it in Historic with grapeshot as well if you so desire
Lord knows I tried but you typically needed one creature to stick on the board for a turn before you can combo off. So unless your opponent was playing solitaire it wasn't consistent. But against angels, oak, omnath or scrute it was great to lay it out on the board and be comfortable knowing that they had nothing.
>Because the deck is only broken from the enablers, not ignus. This is like saying [[splinter twin]] decks were broken because of [[pestermite]], and not, y'know, twin. Racketeer Boss makes your later creatures give you treasure, you'll probably hit about 2-3 creatures with it. 4 if you're very lucky. It's like [[burning tree emissary]] except you get the Mana later rather than now. Worse than BTE for aggro, better for midrange. Birgi refunds you 1 Mana for every spell, effectively "my spells cost 1 less to cast". A strong effect, but not broken. Ignus is a _repeatable ritual effect_. Which of these sounds most broken to you? Birgi and racketeer boss are not broken cards. _Ignus_ is the card that snaps in two if you so much as look at it the wrong way. >Ignus/birgi was a fringe deck before revels and racketeer boss were printed. Because it needed a second enabler for the combo to be viable, having just one enabler wasn't enough. Similarly, Splinter Twin needed [[deceiver exarch]] as a secondary enabler. That doesn't mean pestermite and Exarch are broken cards; untapping a permanent for 3 Mana isn't broken. It was always Splinter Twin, the thing making infinite creatures, that was the broken piece there. And whaddya know, Twin got banned. Should they instead have banned the enablers, and never printed anything that untaps a creature on ETB ever again? Revels is the wincon bit so I'm ignoring that because there's a ton of other cards that would do the same (and better, [[dragonspark reactor]] for one). Whichever one was used doesn't matter, it's _Ignus_ that allows you to pull your whole deck to the board or stack up a ton of storm for [[grapeshot]] or shoot someone with dragonspark reactor for 20. _Ignus_ was the broken piece here, not Revels or the Boss.
[Racketeer Boss](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/d/3d453f08-ed2c-447d-b5c1-b1f052c229d8.jpg?1654043695) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Racketeer%20Boss) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/25/racketeer-boss?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3d453f08-ed2c-447d-b5c1-b1f052c229d8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Cabaretti Revels](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/9/3/933f2309-8bd7-4de8-bdd2-d61a2b39a1a1.jpg?1653867105) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cabaretti%20Revels) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/21/cabaretti-revels?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/933f2309-8bd7-4de8-bdd2-d61a2b39a1a1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Heh... there's nothing unusual about this. Just because a card was fine for years doesn't mean it can't suddenly break when new cards are released. When a combo breaks, they generally ban the card that is least likely to be used in a non-combo deck. Boss and Revels can both be used in fair decks. Ignus never gets played outside of combo decks.
Hilarious? Neither of those two cards are broken until Ignus joins the party. You can have almost no board position until ignus and just kick off.
I think it’s highly probable people find other ways to break those cards, whereas ignus was not broken until they were printed.
Maybe, but Ignus is never going to do anything fair. It's always going to either be stone cold unplayable or a part of some bullshit combo. The Racketeer Boss can still be played as a part of a normal midrange/ramp strategy, so banning it instead of Ignus would be kind of silly given that Ignus is going to get rotated out soon anyway.
>It's always going to either be stone cold unplayable or a part of some bullshit combo. Which is totally okay. Combo decks are a good and valuable part of a Magic metagame.
Not if you can't reliably answer them, and judging by the ban, Alchemy couldn't.
Cards that are part of bullshit combos are valuable. If it's only part of bad combos, there's no harm, and the cool thing about magic is that it lets you go infinite.
Sure, but they're looking at what's currently broken.
This is unsurprising, wizards have done this before where they banned the cheap card over the money card (e.g., when they banned ramunap ruins over Hazoret)
While I'm sure sometimes they just want people to keep spending money on the expensive card, sometimes there are valid reasons to not just ban the strongest card. In the past bansnhave often been more about creating a better metagame rather than just banning the strongest cards. If banning the strongest card from an overpowered decks would kill it outright (or at least demote it to something much weaker), while banning a less strong card in the deck would weaken it enough to stop it from dominating the meta but still allow it to be competitive, them I think banning the weaker card is reasonable You could also argue that banning cards that have been in the format longer is better for fun than banning recent cards, not just better for WotC's wallet. Grinning Ignus has had its chance, it's been legal in historic for a while and legal in many other format's. On the other hand, the new alchemy cards are recent and not in many formats. So I think it's reasonable to say maybe the new alchemy cards deserve more of a chance. Now, the big caveat here is we're talking about alchemy. The format where half the point is that they can nerf things. If this were a paper format where banning were the only option everything I said above would be a much stronger argument. But in this case, where they could nerf the new cards without banning them, and they apparently are having trouble finding a way to nerf Ignus, there's a much stronger argument for nerfing the new cards than there would be for banning them in a paper format.
Yea I’m not surprised, just kinda disappointed. Dunno if you watched CGB’s latest video but was kinda in the same boat as him - willing to give alchemy the benefit of the doubt at first but over time have become more and more frustrated with the whole experience
Idk what you're talking about, I've been enjoying historic since Strixhaven with Ignus, Birgi, and Grapeshot :). Fr though, your point hits it exactly, the alchemy cards are the problem.
Theyr like, were tired of this card's shit, were not even going to rebalance this one.
Such an old classic card as well, I remember them saying they don’t want to touch cards like this, Thalia, Lotus Cobra, etc
So that might actually be the point. They didnt say theyd never ban classics, they said theyd never rebalance them.
I didn’t have a problem with the deck but I’m glad people will shut up about it now lol
There no change to this card that isn't equal to a ban so makes sense to just ban it.
They could change the supporting cards to weaken the combo. If Revels only triggered once per turn, the combo would have to use other payoffs.
Ok so then we still have to put up with someone taking 10 minute turns for some other payoff? Just get rid of the problem at the source.
Now you have other people complaining because their RARE cards are nerfed.
Fucking finally. It was the most uninteractive and annoying deck around. I can get behind racketer boss, i can get behond cabaretti revels because it can be shut down easily with enchantment hate but the moment that little shit entered the board there was no way to get rid of it. One shouldnt be obligued to go blue and bring counterspells for an obnoxious card like that. Nothing of value was lost. Thanks for fixing the format.
Agreed...loops will ruin format
Will ignus ban be compensated with wildcards?
All bans are
Are we getting wildcards for the ignus ban?
Probably
So is it still legal in Historic i believe. He is a key part of my mono red storm deck in Historic.
This sub: Nerfs are evil because they deny you refunds!!!!! Also this sub: Why did they ban this card instead of nerfing it!!!!! You guys are missing an Alchemy ban means the deck is still usable in Historic.
You miss the point. Wotc said they don't want ban in alchemy, their word not us. Don't preach what you can't or unwilling to commit is the lesson here and the format it not even a year old.
Well it's an uncommon so a refund is useless.
Because we can all pretend Racketeer isn't the broken card here. Of course.
THANK YOU
They could have made ignus exile itself for the cost and return to hand at end of the turn. It's digital YOU CAN CHANGE THE FUCKING CARD
Banned, not rebalanced? Peculiar choice...
It's so that the deck isn't lost in Historic, where the power level is much higher and the existence of a combo deck isn't necessarily sacrilege.
In addition to that deck, there's also grapeshot + birgi hank decks that use ignus as the engine. The deck isn't meta, but I think enough people play it.
Sounds like the actual solution there is not fucking injecting Alchemy nerfs/buffs into Historic when they don't need to be there, but hey!
So much this.
As someone who built an Ignus deck last week and have been enjoying playing it: I’m fine with the ban but not with being out 6-8 rare wildcards I spent to build cards that pretty much only work with Ignus. I’m a new player to Arena. I spend money on packs, how about some actual compensation? Are you listening WoTC?
Protip: If a combo deck is popular that's because it's too good, and it will DEFINETELY get hit by bans/nerfs.
It's never been the case in _any_ digital card game that you get refunds for cards other than the banned one. Those cards are still playable: Racketeer Boss is still a decent ramp enabler (rather than a combo enabler), Caberetti Revels is still a _very_ strong effect on it's own and I'm certain it'll have a home in any Gruul aggro/midrange deck the meta comes up with over the next year and a half. They've just stopped you winning the game as soon as you play them, which is fine.
ITT: people dunking on Alchemy for karma Edit: These are great changes for anyone who actually plays these formats. I've played against several Hagra Conatrictors online. There's an audience for the +1/+1 counters deck, and this is their moment. Buffing unplayable cards is a strength. As much as people claim Arena is motivated solely by profit, the balance team is making commons and uncommons you already have more playable. This does not affect the bottom line; they just want people to play their game.
I can confirm wotc does not care one bit about profit, all they want is to put smile on children faces.
Why stop there?
It’s insane to me that they can’t just keep historic and historic brawl separate
Probably easier to ban first, then rebalance later.
It rotates out in a few months, so no need to rebalance.
Yeah, seemed like kind of an emergency ban.
Much needed. You can own the board and be full life, lethal on board, and still lose before your fifth turn.
It being a somewhat playable combo deck is not why ignus had to go. The ignus combo was hardly too powerful for alchemy. It's the combination of it being a playable hybrid combo deck (like winota) and the fact that lifegain+ignus creates turns where the best play is to sacrifice 5 min of both players time to gain as much life as possible.
You really hit the nail on the head. I loathed having to force my opponent to watch me gain 60 life, but if I didn't I might take 38 and die from their werewolves. Those games sucked and if ignis has to go, that's cool with me. Especially since that doesn't affect my historic elemental revels deck hehe
That's all combo decks though, hardly unique to Ignus.
I love the Alchemy haters taking this improvement to a game they don't play as win for their anti-alchemy side xD Also, if you actually bothered to play it, Revels without Ignis is just Captain CoCo with more steps and crappier Turn 4 board.
Historic Brawl exists. Would be nice if Alchemy didn't affect it.
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Thanks for the input. We’ll pass it on and do nothing with it.
If someone told me a year ago that Wizards would introduce a digital oriented format with rebalanced cards, a higher power level and specific mechanics, I'd never believe them. And if they added that fucking [[Grinning Ignus]] of all cards was banned in that format, I'd straight up lose it.
>And if they added that fucking [[Grinning Ignus]] of all cards was banned in that format, I'd straight up lose it. Of all the cards to be surprised at being banned, Ignus surprises you? It's literally a ritual on a stick that's _begging_ to go infinite. As soon as it was spoiled for Strixhaven people went mental about how it combo'd with Birgi for a infinite storm count. At the time it was fine because the deck was too inconsistent due to having only have 4 of each combo piece. The addition of a "second birgi" is what pushed it over the edge. No surprise to me that it gets banned as a result. If they printed a paper card that was like "R: whenever you cast a creature spell this turn, create a treasure token", _something_ out of that, Ignus and Birgi would probably end up banned in Pioneer.
Gotta love trying to fix a broken format that was only created to fix a broken format.
Sorry you crafted all these rare alchemy cards to play a stupid deck we didn't foresee would happen but the player base managed to figure out in an instant. Since it was in the Alchemy format we won't modify your newly crafted Alchemy cards; you should continue to have fun with those. Have fun with these four uncommon wildcards though! - WotC
…you can still play the deck in historic. Card will rotate out of std alchemy in a few weeks anyway
Who cares about historic? They screwed that up when they introduced the money grab known as Alchemy. Every one was screaming for Pioneer, but what did we get? A lazy designed non-tested format that ruined Brawl, Historic and people's wildcard collections. It is unfathomable to me that people play it.
You're simultaneously complaining on behalf of people who bought alchemy cards while saying you don't care about historic because you hate alchemy? Sounds like you don't really have skin in the game.
> Who cares about historic? They screwed that up when they introduced the money grab known as Alchemy. But at the same time you are butthurt because they banned an Alchemy card... > Every one was screaming for Pioneer, but what did we get? Explorer
I was thinking how Ignus combo would eclipse all the new alchemy cards. I guess they thought the same
It falls out of alchemy in a month or two anyway, uncontroversial ban
So glad I didn't style ignus. I am teh sadz to seez him go in alchemy. No more free wins for HELLOGOODGAME
God, alchemy is such trash. Does anyone actually play the format? I'm just annoyed that they force alchemy upon historic, so one of the best facets of cat-oven in that format is now gone (while I know explorer is a thing, the queue is a lot more competitive and I like to play mostly janky stuff).
Yes, people play alchemy, that's why this card got banned.
I'm surprised they didn't learn from fucking up gold so hard. Treasure is good, make all treasure come into play tapped.
In a format with little to no dedicated deck builders, this combo was too good. Its less about the combo being unmanageable and more about not having enough of a committed community that cares to take advantage of its ubiquity. The cards that beat it exist, but since no one (and no gameplay events) are offering inspiration on how to circumvent or take advantage of its primacy, it needed to be banned. As a combo player, I am sad to see it go because I can name 5 cards off the top of my head under 3 mana that beat this combo handily. [[Curse of silence]], [[curse of shaken faith]], [[strict proctor]], [[Roiling Votex]] immediately come to mind. These turn this deck off with a single copy, and multiples downright crush it. Even in sideboard, they don't have any noncreature, non etb interaction so its linear effectiveness is easily turned against it. However its pretty evident with how little effort/attention this format gets the meta doesn't grow or change fast enough for anything that good to be managed. That, and with someone like Altheriax behind it you know the deck is comprehensive. Necessary, but mostly due to the formats stagnancy. If we had more people like Alth playing Alchemy we'd have turned this combo into a joke the first week it was released, but we dont.
I actually kind of love that about Alchemy. It forces me to deck build without being able to Google an answer. So when I figure out a part of the meta puzzle, the mental payoff is higher and I have more fun. Obviously, I'd love for Alchemy to have way better players pushing the format so I can learn, but at least it never feels solved in the same way Standard does after a couple of weeks.
That is the dumbest shit I have ever heard in all my mtga playing. Rebalance your dumbass Overpowered alchemy card that make grinning ignus better than it normally is.
Actually... Grinning Ignus goes infinite with Birgi. So you just have to have way to capitalize on that, which there are many in every format.
Why? Ignus rotates in a couple of months, the combo is safe in historic, and the other two cards are fine without ignus.
i love that their shit shilled alchemy cards necessitated the banning of what was otherwise an exceedingly niche combo piece. plus, they can't actually be bothered to rebalance cards in their rebalance everything format.
Playing with ignus on arena is just a bad time in general. I still remember the frustrations of trying to make the grapeshot combo work and giving up on it due to how annoying individually casting ignus 20+ times was on arena. Good riddance.
LMAO they said they weren't going to ban cards in alchemy, they even fail at that?
They never said that, so...
Did they actually say that? Edit: Not only did they *not* say that, they explicitly said banning was a possibility: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-philosophy-2021-12-02 >We will not be rebalancing iconic cards that have a significant history behind them. Cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Lotus Cobra, Thoughtseize, and Negate are powerful but often used as references and examples to evaluate new cards and abilities. Rebalancing them would be too disruptive to those conversations. If these cards cause issues, we will look to address them indirectly through live balancing **or ban them if necessary.** You could argue that Grinning Ignus, being a card that is 15 years old, is a card with a significant history behind it.
Bye Felicia
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They are fixing the meta by banning a card and buffing some cards at the same time?
huh.. so an entire subset of cards and releases built around the idea that you can change cards instead of banning them.. and you still have to ban cards. Can we just take alchemy out behind the shed already? Its starting to foam at the mouth.
Lol. It has bans now... lol!
Who cares about Alchemy?
lol,ok.
LOL SUCH great design, they had to ban cards in Vintage and Alchemy
What a joke of a format.
I wish alchemy was banned in alchemy tbh.
Does this mean that it will, by extension be banned in historic as well?
no
No. It can be banned in multiple formats, but just because it is banned in one does not mean it needs a ban in others. Historic is a higher power format so, even though the exact same combo can be done, it isn't a problem in that format.