Big Deck Poll 11: Price of Progress?

more nonbasic hosing. what do you think?

Awww shit ... I already fucked up and hit No when I meant Yes x_o My bad ...

Okay, why it should be banned.
-Mono colored, thusly easier to cast
-CMC of 2, so cheap as fuck to cast
-Deals double the damage that Anathemancer deals at a cheaper cost (Anathemancer would be 6BBRR to do what this does)
-It hits everyone and its easy to play around so you don't get hurt as much
-Oh yeah ... Two words : ISOCHRON SCEPTER

It's too good. If everyone but the caster has 3 nonbasic lands, thats 6 damage to all opponents for 2 mana! And I've seen WAY more then 3 nonbasics under everyones control.

~Zuty

Anathemancer also brings a creature to the battlefield, albeit a lowly 2/2.

Price of Progress is definitely nasty on an isochron scepter. In a deck of 10 cards total, you could quite reliably do that on the second turn and start pounding your single opponent who has already played 2 non-basics, with a grip of non-basics and no artifact removal.

But I say:

IF you happen to draw both in your 250 card deck

IF you can cast Isochron Scepter without it's being countered

IF you can imprint Price of Progress before the scepter is destroyed

IF you can activate it at a time that's relevant in the game and really hurt your opponents without hurting yourself

and

IF your opponents don't come down on you like a ton of bricks afterwards

Then your opponents deserve to lose anyway.

what about tutoring?

The Scepter arguement is a bit of a pointless thing. It's like saying we should ban Time Warp because of Panoptic Mirror. They're both painful two card combos, but they're easily disruptible and unlikely to occur anywhere near often enough to worry about.

The main issues with price are the fact it's 2 damage per land, and that it hits everyone. It's something that atleast needs to be looked at. If it either targeted a single player or did 1 damage like Anathemancer, I'd say it was perfectly fine.

Honestly, I think we need to see if it really is a problem. While it can and has ended games rather abruptly, late in the game a lot of cards'll do that.
I'm of the opinion right now that we let it go and see if it actually is an issue. I think Back to Basics would be the same way.

MidniteEffort wrote:what about tutoring?

I run about 20 tutors, and have played plenty of games in which I saw none of them.

I do think that if you're running enough basic lands so that Price of Progress doesn't hurt you, you'll be at a disadvantage during all the games in which you don't see it, just because your mana won't be fixed enough (and you'll get slapped around by Maze of Ith). I may change my mind once Wolsky beats me (us) with it a few times. But he has had it in his already, and I can remember it being played maybe once or twice.

we're tied up. i'll make another poll...