All B/R update speculation.

[Sloshthedark]

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:

Misty. Just keeps comming

Also how comes reading this thread often invokes in me an unparalleled urge to punch people?

[Michael Keller]

Treasure Cruise just has incidental strength that makes it a powerful card turns three and four when you're most likely to cast it. The fact that you really invest nothing into turning each card in your graveyard into a colorless mana aside from playing cheap spells is what fuels its broken nature.

Sure, Brainstorm is powerful and always has been. It's also multifaceted and in the end is a strictly more powerful card than Cruise. People are just hungry to play Cruise because it's new, and while I get it that it's incredibly powerful, its popularity will fade slightly when folks adjust to beating strategies that splash it only for good measure. It doesn't fit in all decks the same way, which is why I kind of feel the madness will fade slightly after the GP.

I just don't think it's ban-worthy. Drawing three cards at sorcery-speed realistically on turns three or four - even for a single blue mana - just doesn't sell me on a ban. People thought the same thing about Griselbrand, and that's still here.

For me, personally, I think Show and Tell is easily the most broken card in Legacy no matter how symmetrical it may be. And it's still in the format.

[menace13]

The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.

#rekt

[AngryTroll]

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:

Misty x2, Delver x3, Brainstorm, and anything is better than all of those hands. Shoot, even Misty x2, Delver x3, Ponder, Treasure Cruise is still better than hand one, two, and three.

[wonderPreaux]

The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.

isn't a lot of the rationale for banning brainstorm that W and/or G and/or B midrange can't compete? if you wanna ban cards to support other cards you like, i see no reason not to argue for keeping cards in the format to support other cards you like. i would miss being able to play combos that aren't all-ins like Dredge/Charbelcher, for instance. That reason why Brainstorm has such saturation is that it does contribute to many decks being playable, since most of the complaints are about Delver/Cruise decks, why take away the card that enables combo and control, as opposed to the literal flagship card (imo, Delver)

if you want to ban something to stop the all-terrain blue concept, take their clock away. we've had the 1-mana draw-3 by turn 3/4 concept for a while in ancestral visions, cruise is just somewhat higher variance in that you can top-deck it, but otherwise it feels somewhat tame. As for Brainstorm, I would argue that it enables as many decktypes as it suppresses-by-opportunity-cost, and arguments for banning/keeping it would pretty much always boil down to what your personal vision of the metagame would look like, in other words, cards you like

[FoolofaTook]

Banning brainstorm does very little to improve the internal inconsistencies of non-blue decks.

I don't think this is true though. I do think Preordain would be the replacement for Brainstorm but it isn't half as powerful as Brainstorm is. You can't draw and keep multiple cards with it. You can't hide stuff on top of the library with it. You can't use it plus fetches to shuffle away trash for good stuff.

I think the prospects of non-blue lists would go up dramatically with the banning of Brainstorm. I think they'd still be the best lists in Legacy for the most part but right now they're the Godzilla-stomping best lists and that would likely go away.

WotC has been completely disingenuous on what it is that they try to accomplish with the cards they print and the cards they ban. It's embarrassing at this point. They need better internal consistency than they've shown in the past.

[Gheizen64]

WotC just don't care or is terrible at this format. Land Tax needed what, 3 years to come of the list and saw how much play? Grim monolith also needed a couple years iirc, and the worst thing is that whenever wotc unbanned one of those turds they'd rant on how good they are and how scared they are of their format-warping effect, all of this while they see play as 4 copies in the span of an year. And both Mind Twist and Vise are on the list, cards that would play an amount of play comparable to Mystic Snake in this format.

[DragoFireheart]

Well regardless I'm glad no one thinks Show and Tell is ban worthy anymore. Now lets hurry up and ban Brainstorm so the format can collapse.

[Admiral_Arzar]

WotC just don't care or is terrible at this format. Land Tax needed what, 3 years to come of the list and saw how much play? Grim monolith also needed a couple years iirc, and the worst thing is that whenever wotc unbanned one of those turds they'd rant on how good they are and how scared they are of their format-warping effect, all of this while they see play as 4 copies in the span of an year. And both Mind Twist and Vise are on the list, cards that would play an amount of play comparable to Mystic Snake in this format.

I would LOVE to play 4x Black Vise against all this Treasure Cruise-fueled blue nonsense. But agree, it's pretty obvious they don't even pay attention to the format considering how many obvious unbans there are. Most of the cards on the list that aren't obvious Vintage brokenness are less busted than things we have available now anyways.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I don't think this is true though. I do think Preordain would be the replacement for Brainstorm but it isn't half as powerful as Brainstorm is. You can't draw and keep multiple cards with it. You can't hide stuff on top of the library with it. You can't use it plus fetches to shuffle away trash for good stuff.

I think the prospects of non-blue lists would go up dramatically with the banning of Brainstorm. I think they'd still be the best lists in Legacy for the most part but right now they're the Godzilla-stomping best lists and that would likely go away.

WotC has been completely disingenuous on what it is that they try to accomplish with the cards they print and the cards they ban. It's embarrassing at this point. They need better internal consistency than they've shown in the past.

Sure yeah, that's right. My point was that while BS is op, it still shines also because non-blue sucks hard in CQ dept. And that's the trouble, because you may ban BS and cut down the consistency of ex-BS decks, thus making the non-blue better postioned, but it still does very little about the fact that they'd still suck, although it won't be that glaring compared to the old, pre-ban Brainstorm decks.
While making blue worse improves the metagame position of non-blue (I hope that no one chimes in with "color balance doesn't matter"), it still doesn't miraculously improve the "4x land, 2x KotR, 1x random" opening hands which are a pest to enjoy. In short: I'm all for consistency, as it's more funny to play the game than mull to oblivion or topdeck like crazy. And still, this isn't "give us non-blue Brainstorms", it's just me wondering why the concept of CQ/CA that seems to be extremely important in a game of variance and skill, is kinda limited to one color only, while the company designing the game clearly wants to sell all other remaining colors; insert something about marketing here.

Btw, while Twist and Vise are weak, and they might be unbanned right now, I'd much rather see SotF come off the list. Just please, don't do it before I purchase the set...

[Richard Cheese]

I'd also love to have Vise back, although I don't think it would do much against Cruise, at least in the UR deck. Every time I playtest with that deck Cruise ends up being part of a mini-combo turn to power Swagspear up to 4/5 and make a bunch of tokens and enable another cruise next turn.

[Humphrey]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

Yeah, this. I just don't know what to cut from RUG, seems like either Mongoose (as it's slow) or Goyf (as it's expensive) or maybe some mix of them; Goyf's big (although cmc2 sucks) and Mongoose is hard to remove. I may always BS-shuffle away the one that's situationally inappropriate... d(-_-)b

[SevenInTheQueue]

There's a chance that if any bans are put into motion, WotC would rather take out Brainstorm than a newer card like Cruise. While Cruise is certainly the topic du jour, let's not forget how slowly they move when it comes to Legacy. Removing Brainstorm from the format weakens the boogie-men archetypes of the format, while "dealing" with the problem at hand.

As for unbanning, the following are all safe candidates for removal:

Black Vise
Mind Twist
Earthcraft


All this said, we could just be in store for another year of ~nothing changing~

[Zombie]

i would miss being able to play combos that aren't all-ins like Dredge/Charbelcher, for instance.

What's with this assumption that non-belcher/dredge combo decks would instantly implode and wither away from the face of the Earth the moment Brainstorm is gone? Other formats have had perfectly functional Brainstorm-less Storm decks over the years, shouldn't be impossible to construct a good Storm deck sans BS. Harder? Probably. Impossible. I highly doubt it. Also...

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

I keep telling this to people that want Vise back. The chance that it would do anything good to the format is miniscule, chances are it'd either do nothing or be incorporated into Delver and make life hell for people. It's a risk for basically no probable benefit.

They don't listen :/

[Gheizen64]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autolose against 80% of the decks of the format which ignore it.

Fixed.

[[SLAYER]chaos]

If blue tempo decks get everything good forever I only think it's fair that Necro gets unbanned.

[FoolofaTook]

I'd also love to have Vise back, although I don't think it would do much against Cruise, at least in the UR deck. Every time I playtest with that deck Cruise ends up being part of a mini-combo turn to power Swagspear up to 4/5 and make a bunch of tokens and enable another cruise next turn.

There are no lists that consistently hold 5+ cards from turn to turn however that's only half the story with vise. The other half is play a vise and then wasteland and stifle you to death, which certainly would happen.

You're right about UR Delver not caring about vise against it. Since they don't play wastes and stifles they probably wouldn't play it either.

[wonderPreaux]

What's with this assumption that non-belcher/dredge combo decks would instantly implode and wither away from the face of the Earth the moment Brainstorm is gone? Other formats have had perfectly functional Brainstorm-less Storm decks over the years, shouldn't be impossible to construct a good Storm deck sans BS. Harder? Probably. Impossible. I highly doubt it. Also...

If youre relying on a 4-of like SnT or Infernal Tutor or entomb, or other disproportionately powerful cards you want Brainstorm so as not to get sniped out by random Thoughtseizes. If you need a balance of certain pieces, say not-too-many lands for hellbent, or just enough untaps for High Tide, you need a way to adjust the balance. brainstorm-less combo is possible but not as viable unless all your cards are equally proportionately effective (elves), consistently interactive inherently (dredge) or built to go off t1 so as not to be vulnerable to drawing too many lands/fatties/rituals (belcher/oops).

combo decks like storm, reanimator, omni tell etc are held up by brainstorm to filter and protect the various pieces. you COULD try to play without them, but you suddenly start losing a lot of games to preventable circumstances like random topped discard, land flood/screw, etc.

*also, considering elves has a poor matchup against storm and a few other combo decks, and has as many silver-bullet hate cards as storm might face, its likely not the best example for you to start coughing up regarding the topic

[FoolofaTook]

If youre relying on a 4-of like SnT or Infernal Tutor or entomb, or other disproportionately powerful cards you want Brainstorm so as not to get sniped out by random Thoughtseizes. If you need a balance of certain pieces, say not-too-many lands for hellbent, or just enough untaps for High Tide, you need a way to adjust the balance. brainstorm-less combo is possible but not as viable unless all your cards are equally proportionately effective (elves), consistently interactive inherently (dredge) or built to go off t1 so as not to be vulnerable to drawing too many lands/fatties/rituals (belcher/oops).

combo decks like storm, reanimator, omni tell etc are held up by brainstorm to filter and protect the various pieces. you COULD try to play without them, but you suddenly start losing a lot of games to preventable circumstances like random topped discard, land flood/screw, etc.

*also, considering elves has a poor matchup against storm and a few other combo decks, and has as many silver-bullet hate cards as storm might face, its likely not the best example for you to start coughing up regarding the topic

Getting sniped out by random Thoughtseizes should be an element that everybody has to consider. It's not like Thoughtseize is unreasonably costed at 2 life plus black mana for a 1-for-1 trade. It's just one of the things that blue doesn't have to worry about most of the time due to Brainstorm.