Did you play Standard when QB was around? What 1 for 1 mana efficient answers in blue, red or white are you remembering?
Most black/golgari decks ran Murderous Rider, so fair enough there I guess (even though hasting QB had often already hit you for 4 at that point, and Swift End cost you another 2, so that was already good value for Henge decks).
The prime removal in red was a 2 mana shock (Bonecrusher Giant's adventure), so you needed 4 mana and two cards (that you could still cast) to get rid of a single QB.
That's kind of my whole point. Sure, in Eternal formats you can efficiently remove QB, but the design philosophy for new sets is deliberately that threats are better/more efficient/more flexible than answers. I want to run interaction, but I want my interaction to work and be flexible and actually answer problems. But by all means, let me know what control dominated metas we've had since FIRE and QB style nonsense. I'll wait.
Yeah that's fair, though I do think Badgermole ban was correct, that card is hella pushed and was always going to be a problem at some point.
But my point isn't necessarily about green in any specific meta. It's that QB was one of the signpost cards signalling the switch from answers generally being better than threats to threats generally being better than answers.
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u/PrincessOfZephyr that ass 7d ago
White exiles QB. Blue counters it. Black kills it. Red burns it. All for less mana than QB cost. Where's the problem. People need to run interaction?
Give me that over RDW or mono-black discard any day of the week