Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
That completely depends on whether you like to play blue.Originally Posted by bakofried
Right, because there's 28 trops in every top 8.
So 4 Jund and 4 Elves are in a hypothetical top 8, are they considered all DRS decks too?
No, but DRS gets banned quicker than you can say "DRS gets banned."
It's the card that is "enabling" all the others.
I think it's funny that people say the metagame is fine when you can literally maindeck Red Elemental Blast/pyroblast in something that doesn't have Painter's Servant. Not even Vintage has that kind of degeneracy going on (yet).
Happened in Modern.
There were 12 combined TC and DTT in the top 8. 4 Delver of Secrets. It's not those cards that's the problem.
You aren't going to get a significant chunk of the meta to drop blue until you can guarantee that they won't benefit substantially from Force of Will. Banning Brainstorm isn't going to change anything other than the cantrip that's run in that slot. So in 6 months nothing will have changed and people will be crying for Ponder's head. There is no way to weaken blue through bannings that doesn't end up in Legacy as Modern with a handful of non-overlapping strategies. I'd rather have a format where running 12-16 cards dramatically improves your chances of doing well and have the number of distinct, viable strategies that we do have now than have 0 predetermined slots and fewer distinct strategies.
The so-called "8 blast plan" goes back to the Gro-A-Tog era in Vintage. Gush was restricted as a result of GAT's (rather than blue's) dominance, but the meta remained as blue as ever until Trinisphere became a problem.
Ask the chess players about how much skill matters if all play the same figures.
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Magic is not Chess and never will be. It's a somewhat flawed game design, a game type that nobody had ever tried before, and it mixed enablers and spells in the same pile of cards with no reliable way of sorting them out after the pile was first shuffled. The best you can do in 95% of the lists is adjust the mix of lands and spells to the optimal mix and hope you don't get screwed by the draw.
WotC's fourth game, BattleTech, fixed the problem with separate piles of enablers and "spells" and two draws a turn of which you could make up to two from either pile depending on what you needed. Then they managed to dump the license when they realized the implications of a strictly better game system on Magic, which was already in it's third year by the time they printed BattleTech.
You can only make the Magic to Chess analogy if you can figure out a way to make Chess pawns randomly disappear from some games on one side or the other depending on a luck element beyond the control of the players.
It's funny to say that Legacy is in a bad place with 7 Archetypes in the top 8 and 4000 person attendance.
Since they both run DRS, yes. But you have to look at it this way: Do those decks permanently dominate the Top 8s and if so, why?
Thing is: If you don't run the blue cantrip shell, you are going to gimp yourself. If that wasn't the case, then Brainstorm decks wouldn't outperform the non-Brainstorm decks so hard. That's the issue here.
If you want to do well, you either run Brainstorm, an Anti-Brainstorm shell (and hope you get lucky because consistency is a bitch) or Elves, since it's the only deck that also has high consistency thanks to 2 draw engines + 2 tutor packages. That's exactly what we've observed in the past and what we're observing again at the GP. In very few cases, "fringe" strategies that don't care about the opponent also place and fit neither classification, like Dredge. The entire ordeal becomes extremely predictable.
While it isn't on Brainstorm's power level, Ponder is also a problematic card (that's why it's banned/restricted in Modern and Vintage). But as I said, people would riot if both were banned.
The bolded part sounds terrible, though. Everybody being forced into the same shell does sound pretty warped and there's no way to predict that the number of distinct strategies would be lower since Brainstorm prevents other strategies from doing well.
GP Columbus aka GP Flash also had 6 different archetypes: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206744&f=LE
By that logic, that metagame was more healthy than the 6 Delver clusterfuck we saw recently at Eternal weekend.
So I can play whatever deck I want -- as long as I'm packing blue and 4x Brainstorm.
That's the fundamental problem people here disagree on. I do see it as a problem that you absolutely should be playing something or you're going to be playing catchup in every major tournament. All of the new cards that they've printed to try to punish people using things like Brainstorm clearly haven't worked.
I won't say a format is balanced until there are drawbacks to playing the "best" cards, because tactical risks is the most fun part of the game for me. There is no risk to playing 4x brainstorm, and it's showing so obviously in every tournament top 16 we have seen lately that I don't know how people can look right past the results and say everything is balanced.
There's a balance between landscrew and landflood when choosing the number of lands you play. There's a balance when choosing how many colors you play in the chance you get screwed or forced out of one. If you want to play a gigantic creature, you need to have a setup of Show and Tell or reanimate to do it. Brainstorm is just flat out more powerful, has no forms of hate that are better than simply playing it yourself, and is an auto include that forces the format into such a heavy blue territory that the winning deck at a 4,000 person tournament plays both brainstorm and maindeck pyroblasts.
This thread is getting too serious. Time for a joke.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/c...nj14/top5cards
Did someone actually compare Magic to Chess in terms of competitive/strategic game play?
First, that's the most **** thing I've ever heard and I'm going to explain clearly why.
- Chess does not have random variables.
- Magic has random variables.
I'm not going to bother listing out all the random variable involved in MTG (far too many), other than it starts with shuffling/randomizing a starting hand... I can't think of any professional sport that condones randomization outside of a coin-flip to see goes first.
I've seen scrubby net-deckers that copy an exact 75 card list and can literally win tournaments with it. Against a field of players that are far more experienced in the format no less. Why? Because every dog has it's day. That's the causal appeal to the game and how it was marketed early in it's life cycle on the market.
Where as in chess, I've never seen an actual professional chess player lose to some random person on the street. Sure, you'll have those once in a life time stories that become a feature film sort of thing, but that's not a thing these days.
I've seen recent trends on Twitch where MTG streamers would cry and complain why a Mario 64 play through is getting 10,000+ views over their Legacy stream, much less a Team Spooky stream. The fact is, MTG just isn't spectator friendly, much less can be taken seriously as a competitive game compared to other games/video games.
Let's take Street Fighter IV for example. You have one the best fighting game engines that rewards players with match-up knowledge and the time they put into character specialization. Sound familiar? Legacy/Modern operates basically the same way. Match up knowledge and knowing what tools to use to punish linear play, as well as putting time to know your deck's strengths and weaknesses. But that's where the similarities end as a competitive game.
Unlike MTG, any professional Street Fighter IV player will never lose to a scrub or a casual wannabe pro player. You think Daigo or Justin Wong is going to lose to your home town hero? Basically a nobody that no one has ever heard? Rarely. There are exceptions, especially when you consider Justin did lose to Gamer Bee a few years back at EVO, but they've had their run-backs, rematches, etc. Gamer Bee was a professional pro gamer back then, but coming from a small country, his Adon was off the radar. That's not even mentioning the consistency of Justin's wins have been since then.
The difference between losing to a nobody to how Justin lost is that Justin had full control of his actions. How many anticlimactic times have you watched two rounds of amazing games of Magic and then the final round, one of them mulls to 4 cards and gets stuck on 1 land for 4 turns before losing? That sort of thing doesn't happen in Street Fighter, that doesn't happen in Star Craft, that doesn't happen DoTA2, much less in the NBA.
You think some random street baller is going to beat LeBron James in a game of 1-on-1? Hell no.
Yet you still have professional Magic players like Brian Kibler that can still get scrubbed out by a random.
Guess what, that's because MTG is at it's very core, randomized. Don't get confused with pride and self worth in a game where no matter how much time you put into it, it's not taken seriously by the rest of the world, much less on a competitive level. You can min/max all you want, but that's not going to save you from a mull to 4 against a burn deck, much less any other deck in Legacy.
You can aim for concistency and top 8s, but saying Chess = Magic on a strategic level is just blind pride and emotions speaking, not logic.
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That was not the context. I said that if two players play (basically) the same deck, there is no strategic advantage because of deckchoice (see chess as everyone has the same figures) and the playskill is more relevant. Without a doubt these players still suffer from variance as the game was designed the way it is, but that was not my topic
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It's getting pretty ridiculous the lengths people go to try and demonize Brainstorm. I think it's way too complex an issue to reduce to the simplistic terms people are applying to it, so let's try an exercise in context.
Here's a brief summary of all the reasons I've recently seen as to why Brainstorm should be banned:
> High penetration in top8s/top16s as evidence of warping a format.
> Increases the consistency of a deck thereby making it easier to be successful overall.
> Arguably close substitutes to replace it, thus reducing the odds of taking a vital component from the format by banning it.
> Contributes to the Delver-Cruise cancer.
> Maindeck hate for it as evidence of being a problem card.
If you breeze through this thread's last dozen or so pages, you'll see all sorts of talk of main-decked Pyroblasts, how seven different decks in this latest GP's top8 are pretty much the same because of a 4-of they play, and how Treasure Cruise and Delver are too strong, yet not actually worthy of being banned themselves. Cool, great. Glorious internet discourse, etc. Now... watch this: replace Brainstorm with fetchlands and all the same arguments apply historically.
> Look at all the "fetchland decks" in the top8s/top16s of recent tournaments.
> Fetchland-using decks are more consistent, even mono-color decks use fetches for consistency/enabling reasons.
> Banning fetches would be ok, since we have the mirage CIPT variants, right? No big deal, this won't be a big cut.
> Fetches contribute to Cruise Cancer as they fill the yard, let you scry with Delver and provide you with Blue sources to play both cards. Wow, such enabling.
> Stifle has been mained in some decks for years to target these problem cards, how long will we let it slide?
See? It's just that simple, the exact same arguments for Brainstorm bans, and you can apply them to fetches if you really feel so inclined. I could fill this thread with post after post on the oppressive fetch meta and complain endlessly about token non-fetch decks occasionally slipping into the top 8 of some scg open. Here, lets go the extra mile and complain about Duals too:
> Look at all the "Dual Land decks" in every top8 or top 16, such penetration etc.
> Dual Lands are more consistent for obvious reasons and allow you to use multiple colors, thereby allowing you to not be stopped by silver-bullets (i dont lose to COP: Red because I also have Blue for Delver, yay!)
> If we ban duals we still have shock-duals, no big deal. I'm so sick of the "go play modern" argument for letting these oppressive alpha duals stay in the format!
> Without Duals, these Cruise decks can't easily integrate multiple colors of cheap and effective spells! Try casting Delver off your mountain, etc.
> Wasteland has been packed in many mains to target these oppressive Dual Land decks, how long must we suffer?
Do you see how ridiculous this gets? Popularity, increasing consistency, close substitutes, or people having the foresight to metagame a card aren't reasonable rationales to remove a card, otherwise we'd have to start cutting huge swaths out of the format. Fundamentally, yes, it is strange that one color of the five in this game was given a monopoly on card selection, a facet of the game that is vitally important. However, this is just how concepts were designed in the beginning of the game, remember, there was a time when Healing Salve was thought to be a parallel in power to cards like Dark Ritual and Ancestral Recall. We are playing Legacy, an eternal format, you have to be willing to accept the game's history as it is. Magic made its initial design decisions, then spent 20 years learning about them, if you want a format that spans that history, you have to be willing to accept the anomalies involved. Legacy is a format defined by unprecedented cards, Tarmogoyf, SnT, Jace, SDT, etc. and yet the format for all it's faults is engaging and interesting. 4200 people came out this weekend to play Legacy, warts and all, and amongst the Oops All Spells, Show and Tell, Tendrils of Agonys, and Treasure Cruises, yes, there was a card that appeared in force that makes hands more playable and interacts with a good number of cards. Just like there were a lot of fetches and duals, Brainstorm shows up because people like to not lose to variance. Brainstorm helps you not lose games, Brainstorm even helps you win some games, but it can't win games on it's own. Theres not some hidden rule where if I have enough card advantage or quality over my opponent that I will auto-win, overall I may have a better EV on how I perform, though. The solution is to either create/innovate components for other colors that are consistent in their own right (Elves/GSZ for Green or Burn for Red are good examples of this), or accept the historical precedent that a particular color happens to encapsulate a particularly important design concept and that Eternal formats by their nature will carry the qualities of their development over times (hence the "go play modern" arguments or the comparisons to how much blue there is in vintage).
Except a "fetchland deck" is not guaranteed to be any particular color. Pretty much all multicolor decks use them. If you're playing Brainstorm, you are playing Blue. Playing Brainstorm forces your deck in a certain direction more than fetchlands do.
Uh, no. Fetchland decks are less consistent than decks not using them, because even with fetchlands, you're less likely to be getting the right color. It's just that generally speaking, the benefits that come from going into multiple colors outweigh the drawback of sometimes having trouble not getting the right color lands.> Fetchland-using decks are more consistent, even mono-color decks use fetches for consistency/enabling reasons.
Also, most of the mono-color decks that use fetchlands are decks running Brainstorm. You don't see Death & Taxes using fetchlands.
There's a much bigger difference between the Onslaught fetchlands and the Mirage fetchlands than there is between Brainstorm and Ponder.> Banning fetches would be ok, since we have the mirage CIPT variants, right? No big deal, this won't be a big cut.
And they enable decks that aren't Blue decks as well, unlike Brainstorm.> Fetches contribute to Cruise Cancer as they fill the yard, let you scry with Delver and provide you with Blue sources to play both cards. Wow, such enabling.
Because even against decks not running fetchlands, Stifle usually has targets, even if they're not great ones. If you're running Pyroblast and are up against a non-Blue deck, the card is dead. Stifle can at least hit cards like Aether Vial, Stoneforge Mystic, or Goblin Charbelcher.> Stifle has been mained in some decks for years to target these problem cards, how long will we let it slide?
Problem is, you don't actually offer any argument against the demonization of Brainstorm, not quite. Even ignoring the differences in regards to Brainstorm and the fetchlands that I pointed out, at best, you argue that fetchlands are equally a problem. You're not actually offering an argument against people saying to ban Brainstorm; all you're doing is saying a different set of cards could be banned instead.See? It's just that simple, the exact same arguments for Brainstorm bans, and you can apply them to fetches if you really feel so inclined. I could fill this thread with post after post on the oppressive fetch meta and complain endlessly about token non-fetch decks occasionally slipping into the top 8 of some scg open.
Your post concludes with an overly giant wall of text that I actually stopped reading through because of the bad format, but there is one thing I wanted to take issue with from what I did read:When was this? When was this mythical period in which Healing Salve was ever thought to be on par with Ancestral Recall?However, this is just how concepts were designed in the beginning of the game, remember, there was a time when Healing Salve was thought to be a parallel in power to cards like Dark Ritual and Ancestral Recall.
You might be claiming that this period was back during development, because Ancestral Recall was part of the same cycle as Healing Salve. I don't see that as them considering them to be on equal power to begin with (cycles are almost never evenly powered). But even ignoring this, the problem is they actually did notice just how much more powerful Ancestral Recall was than the rest, which is why they put it as a Rare. Back then they incorrectly thought players wouldn't be buying that many booster packs, so keeping the super-powerful cards at Rare would keep people from getting more than one copy. They were wrong about that, of course, but they did correctly identify Ancestral Recall as way better than the rest.
Ancestral Recall - rare
Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Giant Growth, Healing Salve - common
Yep, they new Ancestral Recall was much, much better going out the door. They just didn't understand Magic very well. Richard Garfield was almost apologetic about how little he understood about the way the cards would interact as he was designing the game.
@Fetchland discussion: if these lands didn't exist, I am sure that Brainstorm and SDTop aren't as broken as they are right now. Maybe Super Jace wouldn't be so super. The power of Deathrite Shaman and Treasure Cruise would be minimize. Wasteland strategies outside of Brainstorm tempo would be viable. There would actually be a drawback in playing 3+ colors instead of relying on multiple Blood Moons to punish these strategies.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
The new cards are you meaning spirit of the labyrinth and Notion Thief?
If Chains of Mephistopheles was a more common card to get hold of we could see more jund get played. The rough cards against brainstorm needs to be more rough like chains not that easy to get rid of for 1 mana in bolt / swords.
They should print some version thats almost a functional reprint of the card!
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