All B/R update speculation.

[Gheizen64]

Yes, yes, after Top, let's ban DRS.

Then fetchlands. Then anything but Brainstorm. Then i will be finally able to play my 4 brainstorm , 34 grey ogres and 20 lands deck.

[Ronald Deuce]

I think the issue with DRS and BS decks (as in in the same deck is that the play patterns are all the same. Sure sometimes you play red instead of say white to get bolt instead of path, or you play BUG for Leovold rather than Grixis for Pyromancer, but the games don't really play out that much differently. You can say yeah the third color is different and therefore the deck is different, but the reality is that most games go the same way.

Then ban Delver. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Deathrite or Delver, but at least a Delver ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the 1-cmc attacker slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Elves or Mav.

Or just don't ban anything and wait to see how the format shakes out. People are really trigger-happy in this thread.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Then ban Delver. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Deathrite or Delver, but at least a Delver ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the 1-cmc attacker slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Elves or Mav.

This reminds me of the arguments for keeping top, in fact...

Then ban Terminus. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Top or Terminus, but at least a Terminus ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the board wipe slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Painter or 12-Post.

..after replacing some key words, I’m pretty sure you can find a post almost exactly like this if you go back a few pages.

[MrFrowny_]

I think one of the major problems with unbans in Legacy, or hell any format, is that Wizards doesn't like making mistakes. For example; Golgari Grave Troll was banned in modern for a long time, and people complained because there wasn't a good dredge deck in modern and that it didn't deserve to be banned. So after awhile, Wizards unbanned the Troll and nothing happened for awhile, but they printed several cards over the course of 2-3 sets that made a dredge deck in modern tier 0 and eventually had to reban the Troll.

So in my opinion, there are things that can be unbanned in Legacy, like Survival of the Fittest because DRS is rampant, but Wizards is hesitant to unban anything because they don't want to make a mistake and release a tier 0 deck that's all their fault.

[Crimhead]

Or just don't ban anything and wait to see how the format shakes out. People are really trigger-happy in this thread.

I think people who aren't craving a ban have less incentive to post here.

[Rekk]

Unban Mind's Desire it will be fine.

[jandax]

RIP Painter. It hurt me to list my Reciters.

Turned mine into a piece of power figured the money would be safer. Am sad to see the deck die, we had a good run

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[Ronald Deuce]

This reminds me of the arguments for keeping top, in fact...after replacing some key words, I’m pretty sure you can find a post almost exactly like this if you go back a few pages.

Does that make the argument invalid, though?

Regarding DRS and Brainstorm, I understand why people don't like them. I just don't think banning them will solve the lack of variance between decklists: people will keep gravitating toward the best cards. (I also think that banning cards that enable broad strategies is worse than allowing them to appear in 60% of top-8 decks.)

I think DRS is actually a lot worse for this than Brainstorm is. Sure, Brainstorm and the rest of the "cantrip cartel" skeleton are everywhere, but they're part of a much wider variety of deck types and lists than Deathrite is. Deathrite lets people just go "4-Color Value Town" and run the same permission spells (and cantrips!) all the way down the list.

[rlesko]

Then ban Delver. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Deathrite or Delver, but at least a Delver ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the 1-cmc attacker slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Elves or Mav.

Or just don't ban anything and wait to see how the format shakes out. People are really trigger-happy in this thread.

Maverick can still play Noble Hierarch / BOP and has access to GSZ for silver bullets like scooze and teeg. Just because Deathrite is black / green doesn't mean that banning it hurts black / green decks the most. It hurts Grixis / 4c decks the most because green can easily replace deathrite whereas grixis can't play any mana dorks besides the shaman.

Regarding DRS and Brainstorm, I understand why people don't like them. I just don't think banning them will solve the lack of variance between decklists: people will keep gravitating toward the best cards. (I also think that banning cards that enable broad strategies is worse than allowing them to appear in 60% of top-8 decks.)

I think DRS is actually a lot worse for this than Brainstorm is. Sure, Brainstorm and the rest of the "cantrip cartel" skeleton are everywhere, but they're part of a much wider variety of deck types and lists than Deathrite is. Deathrite lets people just go "4-Color Value Town" and run the same permission spells (and cantrips!) all the way down the list.

This post honestly seems like a response to your previous post. The best deathrite decks don't even play delver. Delver can only attack, it doesn't ramp you and then drain you for 2 life a turn later in the game, all the while stonewalling 1/1s.

[Sidneyious]

Try this, remove delver from any percentage list of bs/fow and see what the top cards are.

How many people that get pissed off about brainstorm are people that lose to a delver deck?

[Sidneyious]

I think one of the major problems with unbans in Legacy, or hell any format, is that Wizards doesn't like making mistakes. For example; Golgari Grave Troll was banned in modern for a long time, and people complained because there wasn't a good dredge deck in modern and that it didn't deserve to be banned. So after awhile, Wizards unbanned the Troll and nothing happened for awhile, but they printed several cards over the course of 2-3 sets that made a dredge deck in modern tier 0 and eventually had to reban the Troll.

So in my opinion, there are things that can be unbanned in Legacy, like Survival of the Fittest because DRS is rampant, but Wizards is hesitant to unban anything because they don't want to make a mistake and release a tier 0 deck that's all their fault.

But it wasn't until thoes other cards that made it better. Modern dredge was still bad even after troll unban.

[dunstilbrejik]

Then ban Delver. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Deathrite or Delver, but at least a Delver ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the 1-cmc attacker slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Elves or Mav.

Or just don't ban anything and wait to see how the format shakes out. People are really trigger-happy in this thread.

The format doesn't seem really bad, but honestly if anything is really nonsensical it's delver. At least DRS and BS make sense for their colors, blue having the most efficient creature is wrong. I wonder if a lot of the things hated about BS can really be pointed at Delver

[Dice_Box]

I think each card has its own reason for being hated. For me, the card I hate the most in Legacy is TNN.

Delver, effective but honestly not a problem.

Brainstorm, broken in half but untouchable.

DRS, a mistake played in the two formats where mistakes are often a prerequisite for play.

TNN. A pain to play with or against and my personal bug bear.

SnT. A mistake in a format full of mistakes that enables the use of other mistakes. Will likely be banned someday.

In all honesty, I feel the drive to truly ban a card lost a lot of steam with Top taken out of the format. Yes, people want DRS gone, but I don't feel the push is the same. Also, on record, I won't cry if it goes but would not be my first choice.

[MGB]

Will all Pirates be emergency banned next?

Or just Hostage Taker?

[Megadeus]

Will all Pirates be emergency banned next?

Or just Hostage Taker?

eh?

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Not even the slack jawed hooligans in Georgia respect the pirate menace?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!???!!!

[Megadeus]

Not even the slack jawed hooligans in Georgia respect the pirate menace?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!???!!!

You havent lived until your opponent played a rishadan cutpurse on turn 2 after you ponder. I respect only that

[Fox]

Will all Pirates be emergency banned next?

Or just Hostage Taker?

That card was already errata'd; cannot infinitely target self:
When Hostage Taker enters the battlefield, exile another target creature or artifact until Hostage Taker leaves the battlefield. You may cast that card for as long as it remains exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast that spell.

They have already overridden the infinite loop concerns and we're no longer banning cards like Worldgorger for these types of reasons.

[btm10]

But actually though, I think this is a good distinction to make - Gitaxian Probe and Deathrite Shaman strike me as powerful, but ultimately reasonable cards, which is what we (or at least I) want in legacy - they are very strong, sure, and in a way that is generic enough to warrant their inclusion in many different decks, but one is a cantrip and the other is soft graveyard hate/ramp/decent threat in a pinch.

By contrast, Show and Tell is very unfair, and breaks the rules in a more fundamental way. Plus, it can only get dumber as the game goes on and wizards continues to print nonsense duders to put in with it (though I'll admit Griselbrand and Omniscience are already pretty high bars for dumbness level).

I feel like bans should only happen in a format like legacy when there is something that breaks the actual nature of the game, not merely for cards that are "best in class," so to speak.

(Aside: I do have some level of cognitive dissonance with this, as I enjoy Storming people, but somehow the texture of that feels different than, "show and tell, griselbrand, plus I have the force" to me. I guess I would like the opportunity to do broken things, but at least sufficiently complex broken things?)

Sorry to not respond for days. You basically got the reasons right - Storm decks (like most Deathrite decks) are fundamentally interactive in a way that Reanimator/Dredge/Show and Tell aren't (Lands is right on the line). Both players take actions that have meaningful counterplay from their opponent, and non-games are comparatively rare. Jamming with Storm decks comes at a real cost, while jamming with Show and Tell is basically free since the deck is so redundant. DRS likely does more good than harm simply by making graveyards much easier to interact with than they ordinarily would be, which both frees up sideboard slots and reduces the incentives to run linear graveyard decks in the first place. My issue with Probe is primarily that it creates too much free velocity in fair decks, and the information makes that even better.

[Lemnear]

I see the thread hasn't much changed in the last months other than the tone thankfully being less hostile. In addition to the usual suspects, it appears that Probe and DRS are the hot sauce discussed atm.

Tbh, I can see the issues people have with either, but I am not convinced that banning either would really make a difference other than chopping the Hydras head just to make space for a new Best-in-Slot emerging.

Probe is an annoying card to play against (coming from one who slings it in every deck) so I understand that the free check for counters and the interaction with Cabal Therapy is a gamewrecker for decks which rely on "the scare game". I however doubt that removing Probe from the pool just for more cantrips/disruption to inherit the open slots would make decks like Grixis, Storm, S&T, etc significantly easier to battle, given Probe can be used against these decks as well. We are not even (yet) down the road of non-blue decks abusing it to estimate their plays like dropping a hatebear vs dropping a threat based on info provided by Probe.

I think we agree that DRS is a 1cc Planeswalker and lovechild of Grim Lavamancer, Withered Wretch and Birds of Paradise. Hands down: I love that manadorks and creatures in general finally got more versatile than just attacking/blocking like they did during the rise of Tarmogoyf and maindeckable hate is what makes creature.dec playable in a format with combodecks around. DRS has opened up so many options in Legacy for creature.dec being more than just D&T + Delver/Stifle and I think, we should give the card some credit for making 3cc cards playable again and fight back the Wasteland/Stifle/Daze chokehold as well as Graveyard combos. The only arguments I am on board with is, that the creature has too much Toughness to act as a blocker and that the essentially non-existant color restriction for cost & generation is not only pushing blue as a color, but has caused a further streamlining of decks. I am actually baffled that combo decks like Storm or S&T haven't picked up DRS to fight back against Daze and opposing DRS at this point.