All B/R update speculation.

[MGB]

Brainstorm and Ponder are fun to play with ? this is just personal opinion, i hate playing them.
They test skill highly ? Well, maybe i can agree with ponder, but the fact that brainstorm is an instant makes it so that you cast it in response to anything you don't like, you don't need to make plans in advance with brainstorm

This is really incorrect. Brainstorm tests skill like no other card.

I am not even a Brainstorm pilot - I play Chalice of the Void / Ancient Tomb decks exclusively in Legacy, but having played with it in testing often, I've come to realize that it is basically one of those cards whose power level scales with the skill level of the pilot. There are many subtle nuances to correctly brainstorming - the use of fetchlands to shuffle away chaff, the ability to hide spells from discard, and the ability to set up triggers such as Delver's.

Ask any Magic Pro and they will likely tell you the same about Brainstorm.

[MGB]

Brainstorm is not a police card. It doesn't answer anything. While it can dig for answers, it can also dig for broken crap.

Anywhere in my quote did I say that Brainstorm is the police card? I never said that. Force of Will and Wastelands are the police cards that prevent alot of shenanigans from happening in Legacy - shenanigans that are very present in Modern right now due to the absence of Wasteland+Force.

Brainstorm is an entirely different discussion and I think you didn't read my post carefully enough to see what I was addressing re: the differences between Modern and Legacy.

[Megadeus]

Anywhere in my quote did I say that Brainstorm is the police card? I never said that. Force of Will and Wastelands are the police cards that prevent alot of shenanigans from happening in Legacy - shenanigans that are very present in Modern right now due to the absence of Wasteland+Force.

Brainstorm is an entirely different discussion and I think you didn't read my post carefully enough to see what I was addressing re: the differences between Modern and Legacy.

Literally from your earlier post:
"That's why Brainstorm and Force of Will should never be banned - they provide enough "policing" that Legacy does not degenerate into chaotic randomness like Modern has"

[MGB]

Literally from your earlier post:
"That's why Brainstorm and Force of Will should never be banned - they provide enough "policing" that Legacy does not degenerate into chaotic randomness like Modern has"

Woops, mistyped there - "Brainstorm" in that sentence should be "Wasteland" as it is throughout the rest of that paragraph.

My point in that quote basically was to say that Modern differs from Legacy primarily because of Wasteland and Force of Will. Brainstorm is a separate discussion, and my paragraph there was to respond to the people who were wondering why Legacy can't be a wide-open format just like Modern....

[Crimhead]

Not to mention there's only one (maybe 2) good Legacy decks that don't generally win the game using the combat step, so I have no idea what you're trying to say in that first claim.

There is a difference between using the combat step vs the combat step being a central focus. S&T uses the combat step, but they don't focus there strategies around that step! Their focus is setting up the hand. Lands wins via the combat step, but most of our strategy isn't devoted to figuring out how to make Marit Lage connect! Miracles wins in the combat step, but the strategic focus is on the stack and top deck manipulation.

I admit my knowledge of Modern is quite limited, but my impression is that creature light strategies are the exception, where in Legacy the are common fare.

@Sandian, maybe this isn't the right "hood" for me. I'm fairly indifferent to the colour blue, other than being glad we have Force to police the format without a heavy handed banned list. I play Lands, I don't run cantrips and don't care much if my opponents do.

Certainly I'm pretty close to no longer caring what other people think of format health or how they chose to interpret data.

[owerbart]

I think the brainstorm banning is coming a little bit exagerated. I would like to see a change in the banlist, the only card I have a problem is Monastery Mentor, but maybe I'm exagerating too. I could see Dig getting banned, although it would hurt the tier decks that are hurting miracles than miracles itself. Banning Top I wouldn't like, because that would kill the whole archetype (this is why i think miracles was a normal deck until Mentor appeared).

What I would like is to see more cards getting unbanned, or Wizards printing more non-blue engines so people have more incentives to not play blue. Like Life from the Loam, which is a staple engine now and it doesn't use blue. The problem is that they would have to print an engine card that is good enough for legacy without ignoring modern, and that might not be easy.

I haven't played during the Survival - Goblin Recruiter era, but I would like to experiment it.

[owerbart]

also when is the new banning announcement coming?

[Barook]

This is really incorrect. Brainstorm tests skill like no other card.

I am not even a Brainstorm pilot - I play Chalice of the Void / Ancient Tomb decks exclusively in Legacy, but having played with it in testing often, I've come to realize that it is basically one of those cards whose power level scales with the skill level of the pilot. There are many subtle nuances to correctly brainstorming - the use of fetchlands to shuffle away chaff, the ability to hide spells from discard, and the ability to set up triggers such as Delver's.

Ask any Magic Pro and they will likely tell you the same about Brainstorm.

Just because there are a few times where Brainstorm is actually skill-intensive (especially in the hand of good players) doesn't mean that it isn't a no-brainer most of the time. And no, e.g. having mana open to respond to a discard spell with Brainstorm is not skill-intensive, plus no reasonable counterplay aside from counters exist to it.

Think of Brainstorm like a tricycle:
An experienced stuntman could probably pull crazy shit with it. For everybody else, for all intents and purposes, it's just a fucking tricycle that even small children could use.

Playing your average Brainstorm isn't a sign of skill, just like riding a tricycle doesn't make you the next Evel Knievel.

[JDK]

What the fuck are you talking about? You refuse to actually say anything meaningful and instead resort to throwing out pissy insults as if they mean anything to anyone.

I'm not putting words in your mouth, I'm summarising what you've said over the last 4-5 posts. You said regarding the decklists posted here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/c...sts-2015-07-05 "You do realize, that those places are often only tiebreakers or 1-3 points away from top8, right? "

I don't know what you expect by misreading and misinterpreting this blatantly, but I didn't say this regarding the posting of the decklists but as a reply to a snarky comment. You see which post I quoted so I don't know why you fail to see the connection.

When someone said "Yes, I agree. Goblins in 152th place was fucked on breakers. Elves at 55 had the same issue. Oh and Fish on 112th. Those fucking breakers." you said;
"I still fail to see how you would base your argumentation solely on Top8, when other decks just missed it by some points. Don't you think they still did fine or even very well?
Remind you, this is not a reasoning against the critical view of blue and its meta share (or of a given deck). To me, it's just outright wrong to just argue with "wasn't in the top 8, so it didn't do well" or "no top 8 no influence on the meta", when the competition consists of 15 rounds and significantly over 1000 people.
Maybe I just misinterpreted the post. If that's the case, sorry and nevermind."


None of which makes much sense but moving on.

He tried sarcasm to belittle my point and I made sure my point was clear. Not so hard to understand once you put some brain cells into it. But moving on, right? ;)

Then I commented showing the points won by the sole Goblins player because I thought you genuinely thought that Goblins lost out on breakers which obviously struck a nerve in you because you then said:
"Yup, you can pick those in the lower places to prove your point but you still don't want to see the ones in higher finishes. Oh well. Reading whole sentences/posts is so difficult.

Because it's pretty simple-minded to just pick the worst results in the article and do some nit-picking. My point (which you obviously didn't catch because it "makes no sense" to you - but hey, nitpicking is so much more fun than trying to understand stuff, right?) still stands.

Who doesn't dream of the old glorious days of Team Italia and Boros, right?" <--- (what does that have to do with anything)

This was regarding the mentioning of those decks and not related to the topic you randomly chimed in about. You aren't exactly a fast learner, are you?

So i apologise for trying to make sense of what you've posted because in reality, nothing you've written has made much sense at all. I think you're saying that Legacy is a wide-open format based off the "day 2 exemplar decklists" even though it's pretty obvious to me and others that these decklists are outliers and not indicative of a healthy meta.

Again, I made my message clear in the "makes no sense"-part. If you still don't want to understand my point, then feel free to ignore it.

[Crimhead]

also when is the new banning announcement coming?

July 15th.

Edit - I mean the 13th.

[ktkenshinx]

July 15th.

It's Monday, July 13th at 11 EST/10 CST/9 PST.

[owerbart]

thanks @ktkenshinx and @Crimhead

[Crimhead]

thanks @ktkenshinx and @Crimhead

Mostly ktkrnshinx - I'm on vacation and spaced on the date.

[jrsthethird]

It's Monday, July 13th at 11 EST/10 CST/9 PST.

AM or PM?

[Dice_Box]

1100 est.

[nedleeds]

End the pain WotC. Format is stale as a month old fart.

[Mr Miagi]

I too am looking for a shake-up, it is getting rather stale-ish

[Crimhead]

are you really going to tell me that a deck like Goblins is being held down by a small number of people playing it? I can tell you it has its hard core base, but is it people not playing it or is it people testing it and finding out its crap now? Is it the people like me who played it for 7 FUCKING YEARS and love it to death not trying hard enough to make it work or is it just not good? What about those that love Enchantress? Good god some of those players when they foil out their decks, most wonderful things to see. Are they not trying hard enough? Are people not testing it and seeing how powerful Enchantress is or is it just, perhaps, that it is not very strong?

I love enchantress myself - my second favourite after Lands.

But no, I am not saying anything so naive! Those are (sadly) weak decks I think.

I'm looking more at deck's like:

• MUD
• Burn
• NicFit
• Deadguy
• Painter
• etc.

Which do occasionally place high. I'm not saying that all these deck's are tier one! But when we see deck's occasionally getting results, instead of dismissing them as flukes or anomalies, it is wiser to look at how those deck's are represented in the field. I haven't looked at much data in the last few weeks, but often those decks will have a ratio of high finished relative to entrants which indicates their results are as impressive (or moreso) than the supposed top deck's.

Even more successful deck's like D&T and Lands are less played than Miracles or Team America. They are seen as barely hanging in there and inferior or a mistake to play. But this is based only on their top finishes without consideration to how much they are played. This is relevant data, plain and simple.

But nobody in the community wants to consider this concept. People would sooner look at the top eights and decide which deck's are good (or oppressive) solely on the evidence of their best performances. I can prove roulette is better for the player than baccarat if we only count the sheer number of players who win and ignore all the losers and the fact that roulette is played more.

But I guess people really want to believe that certain decks are oppressive and will ignore or find excuses to dismiss any data that contradicts that desired conclusion. So I'm going to back off and let people believe whatever they choose. I know my wisdom won't be missed!

Is it that people are just playing follow the leader or is it that these decks are dumped in favor of other, stronger and thus more dominant strategies?

People play the deck's which they think are good. But this is completely, 100% irrelevant! We can analyse the statistical performances of a deck without ever needing to know why a players choose that deck. It has no significance at all.

The only exception might be a deck like Burn, where people play it because they are on a budget (which means on average they are newer and less experienced). Unless the motives for playing a specific deck will affect the ratio of good to bad players drawn to that deck, those motives have no actual bearing on the deck's performance.

Blue has been king of filter, Jund was a great deck for a little while until people figured out it was a better deck if you traded Red for Blue.

I though Jund was good until TNN hit the scene; TA having done nothing for a long time before the printing of that card. I think this was an actual power shift, not a matter of people realising TA had been better all along! That card pretty much killed blue-less midrange (or at least relegated it to tier 2).

Good luck to everyone who has specific hopes for Monday!

[CorwinB]

Those last few days, I've seen several calls for banning SDT based on "quality of coverage" of all things (basically, watching players activating SDT seems less exciting than players taking turns turning their guys sideways). People are comparing SDT to Second Sunrise in Modern (disclaimer here, I was also against banning Second Sunrise in Modern for "logistic reasons") or to Shahrazad.
Examples : Brian Braun-Duin @SCG (behind SCG paywall)
Ryan Overturf@Quiet Speculation

What are your thoughts here, not really on the subject of banning SDT specifically, but on invoking "logistic" or "coverage quality" reasons for a ban, as far as Legacy is concerned ?

[Lemnear]

Those last few days, I've seen several calls for banning SDT based on "quality of coverage" of all things (basically, watching players activating SDT seems less exciting than players taking turns turning their guys sideways). People are comparing SDT to Second Sunrise in Modern (disclaimer here, I was also against banning Second Sunrise in Modern for "logistic reasons") or to Shahrazad.
Examples : Brian Braun-Duin @SCG (behind SCG paywall)
Ryan Overturf@Quiet Speculation

What are your thoughts here, not really on the subject of banning SDT specifically, but on invoking "logistic" or "coverage quality" reasons for a ban, as far as Legacy is concerned ?

Tricky one. Miracles and SDT in particular are responsible for a large chunk of matches going to time and ending in draws in compeditive Environment and this became even worse now that Miracles is a top contender in the metagame and presenting ~17% of the metagame. In Lille I barely finished a match against a Miracles pilot in time, despite me playing fucking storm, because he was using SDT every eot and after every Fetchland he cracked on top of using it to setup Counterbalance which means that he was looking at the top 3 cards and tanking AT LEAST TWICE per cycle and taking a minute off the clock for each turn cycle. No one should be surprised if the card gets flak if you see this bullshit several times over a weekend on camera