Now I'm really confused. So aura removal is fine in
, even helping out a tempo sort of deck, but that sort of thing in
is bad? Importantly,
Curse of Chains is a white aura removal. So in that deck its perfectly acceptable as a white card, but not in it's blue form as a soft-gy-hate spell for UG tempo? Especially since it could be used in a variety of other decks, say UB control, as a soft-gy-hate removal spell or in case black removal (high demand) gets cut out by someone else. Double especially since this is completely in addition to the normal bounce options UG uses, triple especially since the deck is apparently so removal starved, so something > nothing? So confused.
Its neither good nor bad, it just depends on what you are trying to promote.
We kind of have a mix of issues here, but as far as white removal goes: if you are supporting disruptable aura removal in white (which it sounds like you are since you want it to hit the yard) than its no longer really hard removal and is more akin to soft removal.
This is going to effect the composition of the decks that people can build in that color pair. I had this with the Innistrad theme cube, where the white removal was all aura based as a form of passive graveyard hate, and the end result was UW couldn't count on its answers to permanently answer threats. The solution to that was to play a more assertive, creature based, tempo plan, effectively narrowing the color pair.
This may or may not be, what you want to encourage from your white section, and specifically your UW color pair, which is significant because white has a very broad range of removal options. I'm also not sure that I personally, think that white aura based removal is good or bad for a list. I think it
can be good, but I've played with it enough to know that it very much falls into the category of conditional removal, which means that hard statements like "aura removal is fine in white" without looking at broader context are going to be problematic in nature.
The second issue is how you want your removal in blue to look. Now, I kind of jumped ahead here, and went straight to UG, and thats probably where the confusion is setting in, so let me backup, as this is another discussion where context matters.
So first off, let us all acknowledge that
narcolepsy,
claustrophobia, and
curse of chains are all low power removal. They are far below the power level of cm or many of its more modest variants, and lower power than
psionic blast. Even compared with white pacifism equivalents, they are lower power.
Claustrophobia is expensive and clunky.
Narcolepsy is basically a pure control card because it doesn't ETB shut down a blocker, but is super awkward as control removal since you can't count on any of these auras to actually stick around.
Curse of Chains has the exact same problem as narcolepsy, and none of these cards shut down activate abilitie
s. I'm surprised you didn't post them in the low power thread, and my response would have been different had you done so.
In that sense, its a false equivalence to really compare any of these blue pacifism style removal cards with
pacifism, as pacifism manages to be a higher power card, something which should be giving us pause.
So lets consider a possibility, as level 0 analysis, that none of these cards might actually be good enough for a non-pure peasant/pauper list, that they may end up being bottom tier removal in any sort of higher power list. Your list is high enough power where this is something you should consider.
But assuming that we still give these cards the green light, let us also acknowledge that blue doesn't actually have any ostensible need for hard removal. Blue's soft removal, in the form of bounce, is already incredibly powerful, and with our flexible mana bases, she can tap into any supporting color to potentially pick a wide variety of powerful hard removal, which can both compete with and occlude those aura based pacifism style blue spells.
Except in specifically UG.
This is the color combination with the worst hard removal options, the most contradictory gameplan, and which can oftentimes ending up struggling for an identity as a result. UW, as a combination, doesn't have a critical hard removal problem, neither does UR or UB. While you can design UW to be purely pacifism style based removal, White's pacifism removal selection is quite a bit better than blues, and white also doesn't have to go in that direction. White has access to some of the strongest hard mass and spot removal ever printed. UG has psionic blast, control magic equivalents, ambush viper, and fight effects.
So, we're looking to plug a design hole in a color section. Our choices are: 1) blue based pacifism effects that are weaker than actual pacifism and maybe not runnable, 2) CM effects, that while vulnerable to aura disruption, are powerful enough to justify that vulnerability, 3)
psionic blast, which is the closest blue ever gets to actual hard removal.
Where the rabbit hole eventually took me, was to cater towards UG's removal needs as a matter of practicality. This is a deck that either wants some sort of high impact tempo play or to hold mana open, and given that criteria, control magic effects or psionic blast work really well, and work much better than any of blue's pacifism style removal. I went with psi blast, because its actual hard removal and wanted to promote that angle. Another alternative would be to go with something like
dungeon geists, but you may or may not want to stick a tapping ETB on a large evasive body (I didn't).
Now, if you don't view this as being a problem, than you won't make those adjustments, which is fine.
But this is what I did, and this is why I took this course.
?
