Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Welcome to the: **\ All B/R update speculation 2.0 /**
I think we're talking past each other. I don't disagree with what you're saying about the fact that the cantrips are played very broadly; my point is that they aren't the shell of a deck because the decks often wouldn't use those cards if they had added viable options for business and permission. The cantrips often aren't the things you want to run; they're the things you have to run in order to make other things tick. So I don't see why that bothers anyone any more than, for instance, the Legacy land staples. I'll concede that the cantrips are among the most commonly played cards in the format's winning decks, but I still feel like there's a substantive difference between those cards and the cards they enable.
What I was saying to Megadeus was that I think he was focusing more on the enabling cards than on the overarching game plan of decks that run them, and I don't see anything wrong with a large number of decks' playing specific (homogenous) enablers to power very differing sets of business and permission. Probably splitting hairs, but I still think it's a reductive argument to say that the cantrips form a shell that embodies the strategy of the winning blue decks.
Another way to think of it is that I see a big difference between a lot of top-tier decks' running Brainstorm and Ponder (which they do/did) and a lot of top-tier decks' running some hypothetical K.O.-card. I'd be a bit peeved if the entire top tier ran Belcher, for instance, or Tendrils, or Tarmogoyf, or Shardless Agent. I guess it's a matter of taste, because I don't view battles against Brainstorm decks to be formulaic, though I find battles against, e.g., Tarmogoyf, Delver, or Chalice of the Void to be.
I actually like a lot of the newly (or once-again) dominant decks, and I'd love to give them a spin if I had the cards. I just don't think it's logical to group everything with Brainstorm and Ponder into a specific category the way it seems like several posters are doing.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
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You're arguing semantics at this point. Regardless of what word salad is used, you are describing a shell.
It figuratively holds the contents of several strategies together like how a shell literally holds the contents of various eggs together. Sure one egg may make a chicken while another makes an alligator, but they all have a shell in common.
This is a very well-trodden subject here with a lot of emotion stapled onto it. Best to just accept that some people feel that way and move on. You have zero, and I mean zero chance of changing any opinions on the matter. Furthermore, I am appreciating the perspectives on the topic I asked for. If we go any more in the direction that takes us, Dice will have to close the thread because it will go downhill fast. People just can't help themselves.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
To be fair, you're talking about delver-type decks whose mana curve basically stops at 2 and generally adopt a 8x 1cmc and 4x 2cmc threat suite. The non-Brainstorm deck is probably more mana hungry and uses fetchlands to actively hurt its odds to topdeck the next land. If a fair deck wants to play low to the ground, there are plenty of non-blue, legacy-costed effects out there that let them sluff lands from hand to get another draw. As it is, they overwhelmingly choose discard over effects that correct their hand.
"I couldn't topdeck lands is the only reason you won" is something I hear all the time in limited when people get smashed by a deck that is low to the ground; there's nothing stopping people from making decks in any format that let them attain more satisfaction from the amount of magic they 'get to play' than annoyed by variance.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
What is the purpose of arguing over the "Blue shell"?
If 4 brainstorms and force of will is a shell then so are these?
punishing fire / grove of the burnwillows / life from the loam
ancient tomb / city of traitors / chalice of the void
gitaxian probe / cabal therapy
deathrite shaman / abrupt decay
the format is made up of compact combos / synergies of cards.
I like how people can complain that a deck can smooth out land draws, yet have no issue with a different deck going sol land -> chalice and winning the game at that moment.
Having by far the best card in legacy will do that. I mean DRS/Decay certainly is a shell. Every BG deck runs them at this point. My complaint is more that due to the power creep of cards that lists are becoming far more homogenized and there's no room for innovation. If you're playing a Delver deck, tell me what colors you want to play and I'll name off 56/60 of your main deck without thought. It's gotten to the point that every game plays the same and it's just become stale in my eyes at least.
What's the next card to be released from ban-list? I'm rooting for mana drain :) Or mindtwist!
Chalice brings deck building constraints. If you want to land it on one you have to limit the amount of cards you play that have that CMC. If you want to play Brainstorm, realisticly all you need is a Blue mana base. It's not the same thing. If adding Brainstorm to your deck was a conflicted choice, an act that meant removing other format vital cards from your deck, I am sure less people would complain.
While I think that the card is probably safe, I do not look forward to having an opponent playing this and taking about 4-5 minutes stacking his deck, and then a couple of turns later doing it again, and then maybe again. That kind of time consuming mechanical chore I think is a much stronger reason to leave it banned than pure power level aspects imho. People already think that topping takes too long :p
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