Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
On another topic, Survival of the Fittest has gained quite a bit of monetary value in the last two weeks. I don't know what that really means, but I would guess some people are speculating (or have inside knowledge) of an unban.
I don't really know how that would affect the meta, but it would definitely spawn a new deck.
Actually, what decks DO play GSZ? There's Maverick, Elves and Nic Fit, but that's about it, unless you want to go pull out rather exotic decks like Sylvan Plug.Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
About 8% of all the decks in meta run GSZ, and that can be mainly attributed to Elves.
No nonblue card that can be cast comes even close to the penetration Brainstorm has.
Edit:
Now that's rather interesting. Survival never had a price spike like that after its ban. That does look kinda similiar to the rise of Bitterblossom about two weeks before its unban.
It could be all speculation in the end, but there was also the Vengevine MOCS promo in December. To be fair, Mike Turian is an incompetent dick and sucks at his job. However, if it was really unbanned, people with insider knowledge would buy out the combo pieces as well, which isn't the case.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I didn't mean to question GSZ's representation in the metagame. It should be blatantly obvious that my statement is geared the % of GSZ in any primarily green deck. To call RUG and BUG green is silly, since they run the famed "blue shell".
OK. I got it. Tell me if I got this right now. We are agreed that Brainstorm is better than the other cantrips. But where I see reducing the cantrip engine as a positive step, you see it as a fool's errand because the other cantrips are also very good.
Am I understanding you so far?
Good.
My problem was that I did not know you had a spidey sense about predicting the metagame that the rest of us can only dream about.
I suppose that every time Miracles sets up the mid-combat Terminus by swapping it out with Brainstorm, that would be just as well served its replacement, Preordain. In fact, without Brainstorm I do not think I can even keep a hand with Terminus in it any more. (A player better versed in Miracles can feel free to correct that.) Then you have to ask yourself how many Terminus is really best for a deck that has to get to Jace to use it once the card is in hand. And oh man, is the decision on when to Top more painful in the early turns. Can't draw that Terminus or you are sunk. Not much of a deck any more, mate.
How about Sneak Attack swapping duplicate Grisels for a useful card? I suppose that is no big deal for that deck. Or Storm confidently snapkeeping a hand with Brainstorm, extra lands, and insufficient something else because the player is intimately familiar with the concept of shuffling. I suppose Preordain is a great way to swap out those cards too.
Or you might be referring to the idea of putting Batterskull back in the deck because you are holding a Mystic. And how that is just as well served by Preordain.
and on and on...
I'm sure you are right. It is such a small impact that it is not worth bothering with. No matter. Kill away, Mr. McManus.
"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."
Can you explain your reasoning here? It sounds like you are just making stuff up... Like if I said "SFM is a huge anti-Emrakul card."
You've never actually played Vial Goblins, have you?
God I wish that were true. I stumbled across a copy of his high school yearbook in a local thriftstore and I would love to get it signed.
No spidey sense need just logical thinking and math. If a card increases consitency and it get banned than the deck who wants toFINN
My problem was that I did not know you had a spidey sense about predicting the metagame that the rest of us can only dream about.
increase the consistency will look for replacements. Since Legacy has these in form of ponder and co. the only thing will happen is that you see ponder and preordain instead of ponder.
Remember each addtional card you draw actually doubles you chance to get what you need to defend yourself against the current foe. So the blue decks wil not decrease but just change the cantrips they play. The Blue shell will remain intact and you still will have to play against Tempo decks and Miracles and co.
If you believe the numbers from mtgtop8.com only 19% of the Legacy meta has included green creatures over the last 2 months and 4% of that was Elves. So GSZ is going in about 40% of the lists that have green creatures which seems about right. Lists with green creatures over that span: Infect 4%, Elves 4%, Maverick 2%, Canadian Thresh 2%, BUG Aggro/Midrange 2%, everything else below 2%.
What's interesting is that if Bant makes a comeback in a metagame without Brainstorm it may very well choose to run GSZ to deploy it's toolbox. It doesn't have room for both at this point. Obviously GSZ, while reducing variability and getting around things like Chalice@1 or 2, isn't the same kind of asset that Brainstorm is. This is kind of a perfect example of where Brainstorm is depressing another very playable card's value in a list that otherwise would love to run it to find the things it needs to find.
Like I said before above, thinking RUG and BUG are green decks is silly. I'm strictly talking about decks that don't use the "blue shell", as they are required to fill it with some other shell. When it comes to green creature decks that is the "GSZ shell" I beleive, and it will continue to be so as GSZ will only get better, and better as time goes on. Brainstorm is to tempo decks, control, and combo what GSZ is to green mid-range creature decks, that can also fall into different archetypes like mid-range control (Maverick), and combo (Elves).
If you are main-decking Savannahs, or Bayous, and running 16+ creatures, you are probably running GSZ. Not saying something doesn't have to be done about this cantrip shell, by the way. I think Ponder and TC can go. 70% is a little out of hand. Banning Brainstorm will weaken many t1 strats, but also kill off many t2 decks.
As for price spikes, Reset went up in value from like 13.50 (was this much on abugames in mid-december) to 32 freaking dollars. What in the hell happened there? Someone expalin that to me! Maybe Frantic Search unban coming? Time to order 4 more foils just in case.
Right. So Brainstorm is just a card. No particular advantage over other cantrips. In that case, why don't you join all the other geniuses who have burned their Brainstorms and embrace the power of Sleight of Hand. As you say. It still lets you see more cards than just topdecking. I'm sure you will do splendidly.
"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."
Finn, what would be your opinion if Ponder, Preordain, and TC got banned?
Bolded part is specifically what his problem is. Sans brainstorm, you lose a bunch of decks that have issues with clunky cards in opening hands and a bunch of fringe decks. Is that a big deal? I think so, as do others here. What is also big is sans just that ability, (I.E. BS away a terminus or an extra Griselbrand, or w/e) those decks seem to just get replaced by decks that look way more identical than currently being complained about. Something like the last example where if you already have Skull in hand + a mystic, that's no so bad. In that case, ponder + preordain still fixes your draws, you still cast all your spells on time and find exactly what you are looking for, you just lose some minor functionality.
Minus Brainstorm it's very possible that cards like Terminus and Emrakul and Griselband aren't playable, and to that I say: bring it on!
Nothing like having the most abusive cards in the meta die to their own double-edged nature - which Brainstorm prevents right now. I mean when the opponent casts Terminus you're pretty much screwed. When they get Griselband or Emrakul or Omniscience in play same thing. It'd be nice if there were counterbalancing negatives that were associated with those cards as well. To make up for the fact that they just royally screw the opponent when they are seen in context and usually too early to do much about it.
90% of my keeps with Miracles in them are because Brainstorm exists, the rest are incorrect.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
Dropping Brainstorm might force Sneak and Show onto more of a Sneak/Reanimator hybrid, sort of like how BUG/UB reanimator often runs Show and Tell as a backup plan (though I've been seeing more and more people using Pack Rat as the backup plan recently). Another tack could be to become more of a combo-control deck that just finishes by cheating in Emrakul or Griselbrand, like the deck briefly did when it would board Jace in. Without Brainstorm the second path seems more robust, and because you're no longer a dedicated combo deck, you can just run fewer dead cards, filling the newly empty enabler and monster slots with some combination of library manipulation, counterspells, and removal. In the case of Miracles, some other UWx control deck likely takes its place, but that deck probably looks a lot like UWx Stoneblade (and let's be serious, x = r in all likelihood) because it's harder to play the dedicated control plan in the face of the format's current threat package without instant speed Wrath for W. Some might try Scroll Rack, but I doubt it would work well enough. So in the best case one combo deck either becomes more like another combo deck or spawns a sort-of new combo-control deck, and the format's one real control deck turns into an existing aggro-control deck.
While I agree with the position that the other cantrips aren't nearly as bad relative to Brainstorm as they're made out to be, I also think that those who think banning Brainstorm would represent some kind of godsend for nonblue decks are ignoring Force of Will as a big reason to play a blue-based deck. Lots of people really hate losing to combo, or just having highly polarized matchups in general, and Force fixes a lot of those problems. When I switched to playing Shardless and TA from playing Enchantress, it wasn't for Brainstorm, and it certainly wasn't because my matchups against the so-called "fair" decks were bad. It was because I hated being cold to combo, and even splashing black for discard wasn't enough.
See above. Bant is actually probably the best example of a deck that isn't widely played because it gains so little from its blue splash. It's mostly a GW creature deck, which means it has barely enough cards to support Force and so is more reliant on slow interaction like Meddling Mage for its supplemental disruption than something like BUG and Esper, which have discard, or RUG, which doesn't bother with clunky midrange like Stoneforge (or even Deathrite) and is just on the "soft counters and kill you" plan.
Best post in the thread.
Thats not what I said and yoiu know this. I never doubted brainstorm is more powerfull than the other cantrips. What I said is that banning Brainstorm will no one prevent anyone from playing Blue Shell and will not decrease the percentage of players who are playing blue. The reason for this is that from a mathematical standpoint of view the rest of the cantrips increase the consitency enough to continue to play them despite of the Brainstorm ban.Finn
Right. So Brainstorm is just a card. No particular advantage over other cantrips. In that case, why don't you join all the other geniuses who have burned their Brainstorms and embrace the power of Sleight of Hand. As you say. It still lets you see more cards than just topdecking. I'm sure you will do splendidly.
If you want I can give you the formula for this and you can make some examples on your own. Maybe than you will see why banning Brainstorm wil change nothing.
You are missing Finn's point...
It looks like the two of you have begrudgingly agreed Brainstorm is:
A.) a cantrip
B.) the best cantrip
So let's pause for a second and rejoice that these are agreed upon facts!
...
...
Okay great!
Finn spent a good deal of his post describing specific common situations in Legacy where Brainstorm's unique form of cantripping allows for more powerful gameplay over other cantrips.
So to say 'banning Brainstorm will change nothing' is not true! All the situations Finn described will have drastically different outcomes because the other cantrips keep your hand and library separate.
Tevesh, you are stating the % of players playing blue decks will not change because blue shell decks will just go -4 Brainstorm, +4 Preordain (or whatever). And this is also likely true. But banning Brainstorm would have an affect on the format.
We never, in the history of the whole format, had more than 4 strategically different Decks to Beat (I worded it that way because I tive a fuck about the various flavors of Tempo Delver shells). The "open meta-game" in regards to tournament Magic is a hoax like I showed in the 2006 example. You can look at the Hatfields metagame analysis articles and see the same.
I got it before, dood. You are angry that Goblins isn't a DtB anymore despite it's remarkable run from 2003-2007 without ever adapting or changing until Tarmogoyf came im May 2007 and Shard of Alara in Oct. 2008 curbstomped the remains of Goblins with a new generation of creatures. Blaming a deck which got it's center cards in May 2012 is laughable.
Even if I feel that precious posters did a good job responding to this, I'd like to add a point here and there. My argument is not that banning Brainstorm wouldn't "hurt" blue in general because there are other cantrips to take it's place, it that I consider the actual impact of that banning on the current position of the metagame color composition pretty marginal because the blue cantrip shell woild remain the surpreme tool for reducing variance, BUT ... and that's the mayor point, which has to be considered as a result of banning Brainstorm ... it would cripple decks like the mentioned Miracles in a mayor way.
Would you seriously want to keep playing those clunky, conditional cards like Entreat or Terminus which are dead in your grip unless you get to resolve your 4 mana planeswalker? Would you want to keep playing conditional cards like Daze or Stifle if you can't shuffle them away after turn 3? What does the tournament player in you say? Can you sustain to lose games because you drew conditional, low poweres cards in the wrong moment or do you share my sentiment, that it's smarter to play less conditional cards and deck which have generally less dead draws in it? If you draw the Batterskull and already have the SFM in hand, you can still fetch a Jitte and don't suffer at all. This is something which is completely different to drawing an Entreat in the first turns or the third Griselbrand/Emrakul while you are looking for a S&T.
So back to the earlier point made: Why is it undesirable to cripple Moracles and Co.? Unless you think it's reasonable to ground your whole Miracles deck on a resolved Jace (Which I'm sure you consider madness as I do), it's pretty desirable to switch to a subtype of deck which is less vulnerable to variance by running less conditional cards than Miracles does. I feel that Blade variants qualify for this (I could write also about S&T, but that's basically just the other side of the medal) and here the desire to create "diversity" may backlashs, if all the Uxx control, tempo and aggro-control pilots try to find a new shell with a minimum of variance. How likely is it that, if Daze, Terminus and other conditional cards are "unplayable" because of their conditionality, all those players eventually head in the same direction of the "lowest common denominator". This basically results into merging all these Delver, Blade, Miracles, Team America, etc. decks into one supertype, especially if Ponder+Preordain+Cruise still remains as a strong core known for its excellent support of aggro-control types, if you ask me.
Edit:
We ALL agree on that. That was never the question. The question is: Does it affect Legacy in a positive way if Miracles and other decks which are build on partly highly conditional cards predictably vanish especially under the aspect of "format diversity" and serious doubts about ANY effect on the playability of non-blue Archetypes
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Well phrased. I didn't fully grasp your point until this.
Matt Bevenour in real life
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