Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I don't think you're wrong that brainstorm + fetch is better than other cantrips, but brainstorm is not boring. Attacking with creatures, chalice decks, Show and Tell - that's the boring stuff. Brainstorm is sweet.
Brainstorm is sweet. Definitely my favorite card.
#leavebrainstormalone
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Would you be against brainstorm in other colors? If brainstorm were also available in white or green, do you believe it would make it better, or do you believe it would be worse?
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Would it really improve non-blue decks, if blue decks can run 8 brainstorms and non-blue ones still have no Ponders, Preordains, Delvers, TNNs and "free" counterspells?
One of the fundamental problems of the format and the cantrip/fetch shell was already displayed by Survival and later DRS: The shell has no trouble absorbing powerful non-blue cards/strategies because of the shells capability to fix hand/draws/mana/colors without carddisadvabtage
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-rob
I thought about that and I'm not sure this would actually be a concern since I think most blue decks would still run ponders before more brainstorm, and the the nonblue decks get a significant boost in selection. I understand the risk, though, and mostly this is just an exercise. From the deleted posts I can tell some of you certainly have opinions. Good. Try to articulate them in a way that won't get them deleted, I would like to be able to read them...
I understand, I'm unconvinced that this would be an issue since the non-blue card I proposed is already a blue card and 60 cards is a small amount of space for more cantrips. Maybe blue decks shave one or two of their worse cantrips to play 1 or 2 non blue brainstorm. I could see that I guess, but then you are dropping blue cards for non-blue cards for FoW.One of the fundamental problems of the format and the cantrip/fetch shell was already displayed by Survival and later DRS: The shell has no trouble absorbing powerful non-blue cards/strategies because of the shells capability to fix hand/draws/mana/colors without carddisadvabtage
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.
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Non blue decks already have brainstorm. It's called Brainstorm. If it's your only blue card you can splash it using fetches and that also makes it better in your deck.
I'm not sure this is actually true. A lot of non Blue decks build themselves around an engine of some kind and seek to abuse it. They end up finely tuned for one task and you would likely deminish the impact by playing cards outside the plan.
That's the issue, Blue gets to be the colour of random piles of cards, non Blue normally need to have a streamlined plan and be constructed to maximise it.
Way more decks could splash blue for Brainstorm than what actually do. Why not? Who knows.
I think his point was that Brainstorm's great in decks that need to find specific cards to win, but it's really bad when your deck relies on having a high threat density. Burn's a great example of a deck in which Brainstorm is palpably worse than whatever else the deck is running. Dice is right.
I see your point and agree with it on principle, but Modern's also a format where you don't have the same supporting apparatus. Just because something's "too good for Modern" (LOL!) doesn't mean it's too powerful for Legacy.
But yeah, people saying that Cruise and Dig would be fine if Brainstorm were banned don't really have a leg to stand on. Ancestral Recall's banned for a reason, and double-Recall ("Total Recall?") is banned for even more obvious reasons.
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The issue is probably that it outclasses every other shell that tries to do the same thing (CA/consistency), the other options are things like loam/ library, then other things like bob/ looting/ visionary and tracker that are only slightly similar. Probably the only way around this is just to overload everyone with card manipulation options so that it isnt a distinct advantage anymore. This isnt to say that all colors should get brainstorm, but WOTC has been dabbling in it with cards like Ancient Stirrings, Faithless Looting and the like, but they probably need to be more aggressive in this regard if they want other colors to be able to compete outside of loam and ape decks. They were willing to give blue a bunch of really good creatures, maybe its time for some quid pro quo.
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@taconaut I think I've made pretty clear points about when and how Probe became a problem. Bringing up Baubles and Street Wraith are not comparable; while they have the same function as a free draw spell, you still have to win a game with a streamlined plan. To get away with Baubles, you'd probably have to be running Auriok Salvagers, cards with keyword improvise, and/or Thoughtcast. Street Wraith has to do something more than cycle for 2 life to win games (i.e. double ramp towards Gurmag and Shadow, or interact with dredge to create pseudo-mana). Probe had to go when it stopped requiring build-around [Khans], delve made it a turbolinear card that required zero deviation from Delver's fair, Fetchland maximizing gameplan [thus Grixis became the only way to make Delver if you wanted to win].
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on how aspects like widely-playable, ease of exploitation, velocity [mana engine aspects], etc are/aren't a requirement for deserving a ban.
Other aspects of your post without rehashing old stuff:
An example of how one core of legacy (the cores are Fetchlands/consistency, Loam/Mox, Sol land/Chalice, and Cavern/Vial) creates change/diversity in another would be best described by looking at DnT; its structure mutates in response to what other decks are doing. Plenty of decks do this, but what should be noted is that, barring the release of exceptionally game-changing new cards, no amount of different builds of the latter three cores can derail Counterbalance [miracles] or Hymn [Grixis Jammy Jams]. Change has to come from within the Fetchland/consistency core, but those two cards largely prevent it. The issue is that cards which should widen diversity from within are generally incorporated into those shells (a prime example being DRS). Grixis Delver [pre-ban] was able to use DRS differently to success, but it also pretty much killed off every other low to the ground Delver strategy, which makes it rather trivial for Hymn and CB to invalidate all low to the ground strategies as they will only have one dominant presentation.Can you give me an example of a deck that introduces diversity in other archetypes? This is an interesting premise, but I don't think it actually occurs.
Again, what variety of decks would you expect to appear were WotC to ban Counterbalance and Hymn? In my estimation, the DTBs basically didn't change after the Probe banning (with the possible exception of Czech Pile taking a hit because of DRS).
So there were the other three cores off to the side [pre-ban] and then Grixis Delver, Czech Pile, and miracles - it's not hard to see how combo of any variety wasn't going to be able to force them to change. The Delver side of that equation is weaker now [post-ban] which allows for more combo representation, but combo still isn't going to dislodge the use of Hymn nor CB. These two cards provide time for SCM/removal spam durdling so we can also rule out any change being forced by non-blue Fetchland users (which makes all of this family's non-combo members a worse version of Grixis Jammy Jams regardless of what colors and tools they were using).
Banning off CB immediately allows people to play Tundra as differing users of Terminus [SDT could safely be unbanned] and differing color combinations of Blade. Banning off Hymn [DRS safely unbanned] means you can start off with that card and play it with Delver or Strix or not-blue cards (since everything you'd use DRS to ramp to isn't auto-losing to Shatter/Shock, lose your hand, and repeat with SCM). There is a synergistic effect of Delver/DRS and not-blue/DRS in terms of eliciting changes from control when control can't sit back and play UU: Delver can't force me to adapt. Once control has to react away from not-blue/DRS towards Delver/DRS, you make a lot of space for not-blue/DRS (which does not have a terribly hard time choosing to beat up on Delver-based strats) and combo, which is traditionally strong versus not-blue/DRS. This kind of environment is where the latter three cores (Cavern/Vial, Loam/Mox, and Sol Land/Chalice), which exist mainly as reactions to Fetchlands/consistency, begin to pick and choose the definitions of what is required to sit at tier 1 at any given time.
With Hymn and CB sitting on top of the format, where control is immune to change forced by the other three cores, it is understandable how such strategies are seen as an annoyance.
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