All B/R update speculation.

[menace13]

So blue lives in all the spaces in the meta except linear combo at this point and dominates all of them.

Even in combo. Show and Tell decks and High Tide.

[AggroControl]

Even in combo. Show and Tell decks and High Tide.

I was thinking blue-based linear combo and while you are correct that High Tide is exactly that it hasn't been a good list for a long time. It's the kind of list that if you are bad against combo you will absolutely suck against it. Aluren is the list I would say is strong against the meta right now but it is almost never played. 4 Imperial recruiters is too much investment for most people to play one list.

[Teveshszat]

Hello,

For the other things yes blue has to many options right now but I think the only problem are the Aggro options is
has. Blue is one of the traditional control and combo colors.
So in my opinion what is hurting us right now are Delver and TNN because they are blue aggressive creatures
which evasion which is something blue should not have but some other color like green or red.

Best Regards Teveshszat

[ahg113]

So blue lives in all the spaces in the meta except linear combo at this point and dominates all of them.

Hmm... I wouldn't call ANT or TES blue per say... but some of the blue tools are easily present in those decks. Those aren't at the top of the table at the moment; however, they seldom fall but so far. And in the pure sense of the matter, High Tide (Solidarity) is a linear combo deck. Same could be said about Merfolk pending on the direction of the wind and day of the week.

Cheers,
I'm out of my element, where's a large rock?

menace13- he is quick, and wise

[ahg113]

Hello,

For the other things yes blue has to many options right now but I think the only problem are the Aggro otions is
has. Blue is one of the tradtional control and combo colors.
So in my opinion what is hurting us right now are Delver and TNN because they are blue agrassive creatures
which evasion which is somthing blue should not have but some other color like green or red.

Best Regards Teveshszat

As a hater of blue, this is a fantastic place to broker some sort of peace with an identified blue fan.

It is true that there is an abomination of aggressive blue creatures that pervert the scales. However, the thought process behind banning brainstorm is to take one card, instead of many. Of the aggressive creatures that should be removed from Blue, to the appropriate magical-fantasy-land color they should've been: Snappy- Red, V. Clique- Black, TNN- White, Delver- Red. If the blue community can ditch those 4 cards, I'm totally fine with leaving brainstorm in the game. Allowing Blue to have aggressive better creatures, with no need of splashing is just whoomp whoomp :(.

Spotting DRS, Bob, SFM, Goyf, and Goblin Lackey for lulz, what other creatures make the best 4 early drops in the other colors? Second tier Grim, MoM...??? Yeah, [music]sad trombone[/music].

So, ban 1 card, or ban several cards?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So, ban 1 card, or ban several cards?

You may also choose to ban both BS and the most annoying blue suckers.

Frankly, I'm not even sure if Delver is that bad. If not for the AWFUL idea of transform cards - inb4 "why u no love new ideaz?"; well, I love new ideas, but not the ugly ones that interfere with the very basics of a card game -, and of course, if not for the fact that it's blue, maybe I'd somehow loved the guy. I realized that tempo has horrible times right now (at least clear RUG, maybe the B splash with DRS, Decay and/or Bob has an easier game), because it's only so so fast enough to fight the combo, it cannot fight forever against control, esp. ever since its threats cannot be reliably protected due to AD's uncounterability. Yes, yes, yes, I know all the jargon about "you simply continue pressure with another threat" or "AD makes no difference, removal always existed" or my favourite "if you spent resources protecting Goyf, then you know nothing about playing RUG". Simply put: no, this is wrong, from time to time it was necessary (and simultaneously pretty easy) to save Goyf from StP/Submerge/Demise/w-e and tap it once again to finish the game; Decay leaves no such a choice.

So yeah, if tempo's place in meta is only allowed thanks to Delver, then I'm willing to play with the card. Without tempo, one quite important aspect/portion of game/meta would be lost, and non-combo decks would gravitate (maybe only a bit, but yeah) towards the midrange/control part of the spectrum with emphasis on Big Spells (TM). I'm not interested in an arms race (and games of who's got a bigger Craw Wurm). But maybe it's just a trouble of RUG having no other option than Delver (Jace's Phantasm is unplayable and TNN/Clique is slow), while all other tempo decks would simply use 4 DRS and be done with the thing.

TNN, being a similarly ugly card like Delver (although in a different way) I wouldn't miss at all. But maybe there's some reason why it should remain legal, maybe some X-Blade enthusiasts sees this differently and maybe I'd be convinced (if only there weren't like three or four reasons why I'll never touch the card).

[AggroControl]

As a hater of blue, this is a fantastic place to broker some sort of peace with an identified blue fan.

It is true that there is an abomination of aggressive blue creatures that pervert the scales. However, the thought process behind banning brainstorm is to take one card, instead of many. Of the aggressive creatures that should be removed from Blue, to the appropriate magical-fantasy-land color they should've been: Snappy- Red, V. Clique- Black, TNN- White, Delver- Red. If the blue community can ditch those 4 cards, I'm totally fine with leaving brainstorm in the game. Allowing Blue to have aggressive better creatures, with no need of splashing is just whoomp whoomp :(.

Spotting DRS, Bob, SFM, Goyf, and Goblin Lackey for lulz, what other creatures make the best 4 early drops in the other colors? Second tier Grim, MoM...??? Yeah, [music]sad trombone[/music].

So, ban 1 card, or ban several cards?

You can make a pretty good argument that four permanents broke blue over a period of time. Those would be Tarmogoyf, which gave blue an early wall against aggro who was also a big beater that could be cast without tapping out in the mid-game. Then they printed Jace, the Mind Sculptor who was both a draw engine and a win-con and who protected himself from a single beater who might take him down. That you could draw cards with him or clear a big beater in the turn you dropped him made him an overpowered control piece. Then they printed Delver of Secrets in Innistrad, which made the already aggressive blue tempo lists overpowered. Finally they printed True-Name Nemesis in Commander 2013. A card so powerful they wouldn't let it touch Standard.

In truth I don't see three of those cards as overpowered in a vacuum. Tarmogoyf, Delver and TNN are all manageable with the right preparation and practice. They're manageable in multiple colors and by solutions that people already use for other dangerous creatures. Once you give them the consistency of a blue shell and protection from spells, which are the key blue elements in play, they become overpowered. Jace is just overpowered though. That's a card that never should have been printed. When he is resolved successfully the person resolving him probably wins 80% of the games. This is because they are a control deck and they've gotten into the mid-game and Jace puts that kind of list over the top when he lands.

My take on the overall situation is that 3 of the cards above have the significant flaw that they are a creature and the 4th would be weakened somewhat by a loss of consistency in drawing him out. That's the argument for get rid of Brainstorm. Doing so would weaken blue as a whole and make all the power cards in the archetype less powerful.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Delver didn't create any new archetypes really, it just got slotted right into the existing Thresh lists. I guess it let the tempo decks cut green to get ridiculously undercosted creatures?

[AggroControl]

Delver didn't create any new archetypes really, it just got slotted right into the existing Thresh lists. I guess it let the tempo decks cut green to get ridiculously undercosted creatures?

Delver made RUG Tempo more proactive on turn 1, particularly on the play. Dropping a Delver turn 1 is something most players will do when playing in the blind on their opponent. There was no play in RUG Tempo that was almost an auto-drop on turn 1 on the play before Delver. People might keep a 50/50 hand with Ponder and tap out to fix it but they might not also depending on if Stifle was available.

Assuming he lives Delver is like 4-6 more damage than you would ever see out of Nimble Mongoose, even if you dropped mongoose turn 1 which most players were loath to do. So I would argue that Delver turned RUG Tempo into RUG Turbo-Tempo and in the process created a new archetype - hyper aggro-control.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Delver didn't create any new archetypes really, it just got slotted right into the existing Thresh lists. I guess it let the tempo decks cut green to get ridiculously undercosted creatures?

Not exactly, it helped them to gain back the extraordinary tempo, something they were a bit lacking once metagame shifted or people learned how to play against tempo or maybe simply becasue of DRS and Decay's introduction that made it possible to slow down or stop the biggest threat that tempo could offer, Tarmogoyf.

Goyf wasn't cut and it's still played, unless we're discussing U(W)R Delver or anything similar, a decks that emerged only thanks to Delver. Several UGxx decks don't play Goyf or rather use less than a set of them, yet this is often a meta call, question of playstyle, maybe even availability issue, but definitely not a norm. At least speaking of decks with less then three Goyfs. 3-4 are norm in any given UG Internet Tempo, while 2 (often accompanied by some number of TNNs) are also used sometimes. Anything else is really unlikely, except for some experiments with 3x set of DRS, Delver, TNN which offers great deal of flexibility, speed and pro:you.

It's not like Thresh played only eight dudes prior to Delver, in fact it was common to see at least Clique (and sometimes there was Trygon Predator thrown in when necessary: CB/Top or MUD infested lgs), but Delver helped to increase the pressure which seems to be necessary today, as lots of decks are able to stabilize (CB/Top, CotV) or even take over the game on turn2 (SFM->Skull, Moon), not even speaking about outright combo wins due to the infamous "tap for Goyf, lose now" situations that were not exactly avoidable, namely when playing against unknown opponent.

Also, it flies, so it was quite often the only way how to get over the immense wall of (immense) blockers that e.g. Maverick or Folks could accumulate.

edit:

Assuming he lives Delver is like 4-6 more damage than you would ever see out of Nimble Mongoose, even if you dropped mongoose turn 1 which most players were loath to do. So I would argue that Delver turned RUG Tempo into RUG Turbo-Tempo and in the process created a new archetype - hyper aggro-control.

This.

[HrishiQQ]

My god, a single post about the relative power levels of cards and people go fucking berserk. It's also clear to me that many don't actually play Vintage or the cards mentioned in the post at all because many cards are being oversold in terms of their power. Yes, Mana Drain is a good card. Yes, it gives you mana but you need to keep UU open and you need to actually have something to spend that mana on for it to be better than Counterspell. If you're just passing the turn back then you basically just cast Counterspell. It CAN be broken but it's situational.

Yes, Oath is a good deck in Vintage. It places horrible constraints in deck construction and the reason it's really good in Vintage is because it can switch to a Vault/Key plan if Oathing is not possible (control oath anyway). That would be impossible in legacy. Oath also tends to have horribly awkward draws and are plagued by not being able to run many of the traditional draw engines.

Yes, Bazaar is a broken card in dredge. Any deck that currently exists can beat it with enough SB hate. Bazaar-based dredge decks typically win g1 and struggle to win g2/g3 if their opponents pack enough hate.

IBA is correct in saying that many cards on the banned list are much weaker than cards currently legal. No, I am not saying I would want these cards to get banned but let's not kid ourselves. Personally I'd rather see aggressive unbans, not just unbans once WOTC figures out that the card will do nothing once unbanned, but maybe that's just me.

EDIT : As for Delver, funny thing is I still see people complaining that Black Vise is too powerful as a 1-drop in legacy. What is Delver then?

[Lemnear]

My god, a single post about the relative power levels of cards and people go fucking berserk. It's also clear to me that many don't actually play Vintage or the cards mentioned in the post at all because many cards are being oversold in terms of their power. Yes, Mana Drain is a good card. Yes, it gives you mana but you need to keep UU open and you need to actually have something to spend that mana on for it to be better than Counterspell. If you're just passing the turn back then you basically just cast Counterspell. It CAN be broken but it's situational.

Yes, Oath is a good deck in Vintage. It places horrible constraints in deck construction and the reason it's really good in Vintage is because it can switch to a Vault/Key plan if Oathing is not possible (control oath anyway). That would be impossible in legacy. Oath also tends to have horribly awkward draws and are plagued by not being able to run many of the traditional draw engines.

Yes, Bazaar is a broken card in dredge. Any deck that currently exists can beat it with enough SB hate. Bazaar-based dredge decks typically win g1 and struggle to win g2/g3 if their opponents pack enough hate.

IBA is correct in saying that many cards on the banned list are much weaker than cards currently legal. No, I am not saying I would want these cards to get banned but let's not kid ourselves. Personally I'd rather see aggressive unbans, not just unbans once WOTC figures out that the card will do nothing once unbanned, but maybe that's just me.

EDIT : As for Delver, funny thing is I still see people complaining that Black Vise is too powerful as a 1-drop in legacy. What is Delver then?

The format absolutely needs turn 3/4 Pierce-proof Jaces or turn 3/4 hardcast Batterskulls. /sarcasm

How can you deny that Brainstorm + Ponder + Oath would just totally own every fucking creature strategy in the format.

[menace13]

Yes, Oath is a good deck in Vintage. It places horrible constraints in deck construction and the reason it's really good in Vintage is because it can switch to a Vault/Key plan if Oathing is not possible (control oath anyway). That would be impossible in legacy. Oath also tends to have horribly awkward draws and are plagued by not being able to run many of the traditional draw engines.

Deck Constraints compared to regular creature decks? In legacy Vault isn't possible but that can be anything else that is legal in the format. Excluding small creatures obviously. Legacy has Show and Tell to make it a hybrid. Or Reanimator with Oath. Or Tin-Fins with Oath. No it wouldn't look like Vintage Oath. Neither does Storm look like Vintage Storm. Statements not really pertinent to this format.

Yes, Bazaar is a broken card in dredge. Any deck that currently exists can beat it with enough SB hate. Bazaar-based dredge decks typically win g1 and struggle to win g2/g3 if their opponents pack enough hate.

It's not like it auto loses. The decision comes down to players giving up half their sideboard space every time they sleeve up.

To expound further on some dynamics of why Bazaar can win despite living in a format with tons of hate and the most powerful cards in the game. Not including faster to win decks like Storm. Having a perfect mix of a clock/win condition, the graveyard hate, and a way to stop them from either removing the hate card or having another one. Is less likely than Bazaar + removal for the artifact or enchantment or just Bazaar into the removal. Even more so when hyper mulligans to Leyline is about the only way to not lose on turn 2 for a majority of decks. Other decks being more prone to mull into nothing relevant. Or a weak combination of hate card and stone nothing, than the deck playing 4 Serum Powders and lots of redundant pieces. This is why decks must often slot 6 or more cards to combat the ridiculous engine that Bazaar is. With on average 40% or more of your sideboard space dedicated to not lose to just one deck that you may or may not even be paired up against. Is there anything now that forces you to do so in Legacy? It can occupy up to 5% of placing lists despite being the most targeted deck in most sideboards. It's the boogeyman of a format filled with boogeymen.

[Zombie]

One thing I find interesting is that people (at least Tevesh and Dice_box?) argue that this
A: "Some cards that are legal are stronger than stuff that's banned ATM. See, here is a list"
automatically also means this:
C:"We should unban some of the stuff on the banned list".

I don't see how that follows even remotely. You're including an additional premise in IBA's statements:
Premise 1: "Some cards that are legal are stronger than stuff that's banned ATM. See, here is a list"
Sneaky Premise 2: "Those strong cards that are currently legal are just fine".
Necessary conclusion: "Some cards on the banned list should be unbanned because they would be fine."

What IBA has been trying to get at in my view:
Premise 1: "Some cards that are legal are stronger than stuff that's banned ATM. See, here is a list"
Premise 2: "A card being banned means it's too strong."
Necessary conclusion: "Maybe the DCI should consider giving some cards the hammer."

[Dice_Box]

No, what I am saying is I do not believe that there are legal cards more powerful than the ones I stated in my rebuttal. As for the others, the ones I made no comment on, those in my view are somewhere between safe and so safe they would do nothing to the format.

[Zombie]

No, what I am saying is I do not believe that there are legal cards more powerful than the ones I stated in my rebuttal. As for the others, the ones I made no comment on, those in my view are somewhere between safe and so safe they would do nothing to the format.

You did say that, true. But you also said that if we accept IBA's claim that there are stronger cards unbanned than cards that are banned it means he's arguing for unbans as well which does not hold.

[Dice_Box]

A comment I stand by. If your going to say that one card is legal and this other card that is not is less powerful, then you must understand that you are claiming that by that metric you see the less powerful one as safer. If you want to say "Brand is stronger than Bargain" Then you have to understand that by extension you are also saying you think Bargain can be delt with in the format. If one is both legal and is not making the format cave in and the other is not legal is is worse than the legal card.... You can't have it both ways.

You ban say Brand is busted in half too, and while I agree, we are talking about a format where everything is busted as fuck. "X is busted" is not really a strong statment in Legacy. Nothing in Legacy is playing Fair. Even the fair decks have some plan to do something unfair.

[raudo]

I couldnt agree more that the power level of Show and Tell + Griselbrand is way too high compared to banned cards.
I enjoyed most the good old type 1.5 and I think that could be the way to go for legacy. Unban couple of cards at time and then some more and then some more.. Start with hermit druid, mana drain and survival. :)

Unban

Black vise
Fastbond
Goblin recruiter
Bazaar of baghdad
Frantic search
Gush
Hermit druid
Mana drain
Mana vault
Mental misstep
Oath of druids
Skullclamp
Survival of the fittest

Ban

Show and tell
Lion's eye diamond
Griselbrand
True-name nemesis (not the powerlevel, but it is clearly multiplayer card)
Some stupid storm cards

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I couldnt agree more that the power level of Show and Tell + Griselbrand is way too high compared to banned cards.
I enjoyed most the good old type 1.5 and I think that could be the way to go for legacy. Unban couple of cards at time and then some more and then some more.. Start with hermit druid, mana drain and survival. :)

Unban

Black vise
Fastbond
Goblin recruiter
Bazaar of baghdad
Frantic search
Gush
Hermit druid
Mana drain
Mana vault
Mental misstep
Oath of druids
Skullclamp
Survival of the fittest

Ban

Show and tell
Lion's eye diamond
Griselbrand
True-name nemesis (not the powerlevel, but it is clearly multiplayer card)
Some stupid storm cards

Black Vise is quite an annoying and unreliable card that may or may not win you the game in a boring fashion. Delver no. 5-8, idk if we need more of them, especially if it cannot be interacted with by StP, Bolt and Terminus.
Sets of Fastbond and Gush in one format would definitely lead to a plethora of new decks I'm not sure about we wanna see.
Goblin Recruiter is interesting card with original effect, sadly quite a Shahrazad-like one. Maybe it can come of the list, it's not like Goblins/NLBelcher are Tier 0,75 anymore and they can be powered up.
Bazaar... simply no. I don't care of any sophisticated reasons why it's secretly bad, we know it isn't, especially in a format with 4 LEDs.
Frantic Search. Yes, please. Hight Tide ain't a killing machine, FS is quite interesting card and I got box of them.
Sets of Gush and Fastbond in one format would definitely lead to a plethora of new decks I'm not sure about we wanna see.
Hermit Druid is stupid card, I don't think we need it.
Mana Drain. I'm not sure if a better Counterspell is that strong. Two words, though: price tag.
Mana Vault is a "one-shot" colorless Dark Ritual; our fromat is fast enough right now and I don't think we need more fast Trinispheres, Lodestone Golems and JTMS on turn2 to make it super fast/annoying.
Mental Misstep, please no.
Oath of Druids. I can't evaluate the card in Legacy meta, but it would definitely shake the world of Legacy. I guess traditional aggro would be extinct.
Skullclamp is interesting option for aggro decks, sadly it makes nothing about the most usual one-mana Wrath played and I fear it would simply fuel Your Next Combo. Is it good? Idk.

Show and Tell should be banned ihmo, there are reasons why (it's a threat and cheat in one card, super-duper stupid thing, it'll get only worse in time). I'm pretty infromed about it's price and I loathe the idea of annoying hundreds of Legacy players; it already happened with SotF.
LED. No, it makes the whole Storm archetype possible, fuels Dredge and before the format turned to a Delver's tempo discotheque it's now, there were interesting lists like Flying Fuckers that nobody play anymore.
Grisly. Yep, ban this sucker.
TNN. It'll be a strange precedent and frankly I don't see it happening as TNN isn't dominating enogh, and it sells their packs.
Some stupid storm cards. Joking much?


I hope they'll unban SotF. It's once again an interesting card with original effect and as an engine+tutor, it may fuel powerful and entertaining decks. Also, it's the only card that may force Slosh to sleeve up creatures, and I want this see happening.

[btm10]

I played Oath in a Vintage tournament yesterday. You think Show and Tell -->Griselbrand is bad? Just wait until you can Oath him up.