Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
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Still of the opinion that I'd rather ban the dumbfuck payoff cards (since wotc doesn't print as many abject dumbfuck cards like Emralolol/Griseltard/Omnidrool/EtI, possibly Jin-Gitaxias) and see if S&T can still exist with saner payoff cards even though I don't like the deck at all (engine combo all day for me). There's no dearth of powerful but less abjectly stupid fat available.
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I don't think all cantrips are holy, just brainstorm.
-rob
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
WOAH WOAH WOAH, you leave my boy alone
I mean, I think this is true, but a little overstated. For instance:
Lands: Gamble, Life From the Loam, Crop Rotation
DNT: Recuiter, Stoneforge, Vial (mana consistency rather than finding cards)
Elves: Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, Glimpse of Nature, Symbiote/Visionary
Depths: Confidant, Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, Into the North, Life From the Loam, Sylvan Scrying, Sylvan Library
BR Reanimator: Entomb, Faithless Looting
Burn: literally just playing 40 copies of the same card
Sure, cantrips are obviously a powerful engine for finding cards/fixing mana, but other decks have plenty of options as well.
P.S. Also I loved your secret santa package! thanks again!
Which decks do you think would be playable? Why do you think they would be able to beat DnT, or Reanimator, or Lands, or Elves? These decks are powerful now and still would be after the banning, there's no guarantee that new brews would get any better.
Last edited by taconaut; 01-02-2019 at 08:37 AM.
All these cards are fine if they're paid for with mana. They're not inherently broken - they're only broken if you find a way to cheat them into play, which is true of any card the effect of which is worth a bunch of mana (it's actually a tautology : any effect worth a bunch of mana is broken at very few mana).
On the other hand, the enablers that can cheat any card into play are breaking the whole principle of mana cost. If there is any culprit (and I said if), they are.
Whether banning a bunch of decks would make other decks better is debatable, but that isn't why it would kill the format. There is an implied premise here which I think is false; the idea that when someones deck gets banned, they will find another one. While some people may adopt and play Belcher or Oops, there are people who will instead choose to not play any more. Each ban cycle takes some number of players with it. There are cases such as Top getting banned, where there were people leaving because of the targeted deck already, but this is not the case currently. Banning so many cards at once out of so many decks, decks that people want to and enjoy playing, would cause a huge number of players to leave rather than building Jund or something. I honestly believe that the number of people that would leave that the format would be so great that there would not be enough people to keep the format afloat.
It would be great to pick up All Spells again without having to worry about Force of Will. That'd show all the Chalice-Evil Eyes, Darklands, and Cleric Tribal people how to play Real Maygick.
/sarcasm. Except not really.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
I think this was a great post. I agree with the premise of what mistercakes is saying, but I think you're dead-on by calling it a just a little overstated. What this does, in a very specific and brief way, is show how to attain consistency in a non-blue deck. Don't get the wrong impression that I'm criticizing mistercakes, far from it.I mean, I think this is true, but a little overstated. For instance:
Lands: Gamble, Life From the Loam, Crop Rotation
DNT: Recuiter, Stoneforge, Vial (mana consistency rather than finding cards)
Elves: Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, Glimpse of Nature, Symbiote/Visionary
Depths: Confidant, Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, Into the North, Life From the Loam, Sylvan Scrying, Sylvan Library
BR Reanimator: Entomb, Faithless Looting
Burn: literally just playing 40 copies of the same card
Sure, cantrips are obviously a powerful engine for finding cards/fixing mana, but other decks have plenty of options as well.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
the difference here is that you need very niche cards to be useful outside of blue for consistency. throw most of those cards outside of those mentioned decks and most of them just crap all over themselves. cards like brainstorm/ponder could actually be:
Lands: Gamble, Life From the Loam, Crop Rotation (brainstorm doesn't really work here, but it wouldn't be a stretch if somebody tried)
DNT: Recuiter, Stoneforge, Vial (mana consistency rather than finding cards) (they don't work here b/c of mostly thalia and wasteland/port)
Elves: Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, Glimpse of Nature, Symbiote/Visionary (elves cantrips work best inside elves, and terrible outside of elves)
Depths: Confidant, Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, Into the North, Life From the Loam, Sylvan Scrying, Sylvan Library (bug variants exist with brainstorm, and those cards are generally terrible outside of this strategy)
BR Reanimator: Entomb, Faithless Looting (UB variant exists).
burn: see UR delver
the point is that unless if you find something with a very precise synergy for the deck, you might as well just play brainstorm/ponder. your only real deckbuilding constraints are if you are playing chalice, thalia, and maybe the few decks where it just doesn't work. (eg. elves, dredge, specifically BR reanimator, rg lands.)
i really am not against brainstorm. it's a horribly one-sided effect, but it is unique and that's fine. ponder on the other hand is just a lazy design and would have been fine in a non-fetchland world.
preordain is slightly worse than ponder (although sometimes it's played incorrectly over ponder). i suspect getting rid of ponder and preordain would give nonblue decks a very fair shot at having similar consistency. brainstorm alone (especially with snapcaster) allows for this > 20 lands in a control deck. this is one of the issues with why blue is much better.
-rob
Thanks for the ups, Mr. Safety. I try to be even-handed in my posts.
Yes, that's the nature of the beast. The precise synergies allow other colors to trade broad, flexible application for power level - cantrips sometimes find you what you need, whereas Green Sun's Zenith will always find you a particular guy and put it into play. Same with Gamble - if your deck's particular synergies make you ambivalent about where the card you tutor ends up, it's much better than hoping to hit it with Ponder.
I played some games of ANT yesterday, and in several of the games, I would have won immediately if any of my cantrips had hit an Infernal Tutor. Unfortunately, all of them saw something like "Ponder, Preordain, Land," which is something cantrip detractors don't always acknowledge. Gamble will always find you Life From the Loam one way or another, and Green Sun's Zenith will always get your Arbor on 0, Symbiote on 1, and Rec Sage on 3.
It turns out that over may games, you can get enough value out of the selection of the cantrips to get there (and, if we're being honest, it's not that hard to get that value, cantrip decks are obviously good); it's just a matter of deciding whether you want to play the odds or make up for it with individual power-level.
As much as I hate playing Preordain, I think that getting rid of Preordain and Ponder in Legacy would make cantrip decks awful, and dogs to the other DTBs. Hell, just getting rid of Probe made Storm feel much clunkier to me personally... (the deck is fine, I just hate Preordain so much...)
I'm not sure what you mean by this - is that supposed to be a "less-than" sign instead? Could you elaborate?
oops! sorry about that. < :)
the more generalized point i'm making about the cantrips is not the precision to find a single card, but to have a general consistency. i don't claim that ponder is to have the same effect as gamble, or gsz, or even burning wish/infernal tutor. what it does allow you to do is keep 1 land hands, and that is also what brainstorm allows you to do. this is why the blue decks tend to be a lot safer when going to many round tournaments over non-blue. the fact that a deck like ANT/show and tell is able to use brainstorm/ponder/sometimes preordain as a semi-tutor just shows the abuse of these cards.
miracles, delver, and grixis are more appropriate examples of how they abuse the general purpose of those cantrips.
-rob
Brainstorm is also close to crap all by itself without fetchlands or shuffle effects to make it great. There is also a case to be made that there are specific cantrip decks that are the best at leveraging their power level. Other decks play them, but they aren't the best cantrip-engine decks. At one time in history we all needed to be aware of consistency regardless of blue's ability to smooth it out. I'm not trying to rehash old arguments, but I just want to point out that imagining cramming brainstorm into any old deck makes it better is a false premise. There are decks that use cantrips to their fullest potential, all others are sub-par in power level.
I would argue that these are the best cantrip decks:
Grixis Delver
Miracles
Grixis Control
Storm
Show and Tell
All the other decks that play cantrips do so to give a crutch to a weaker strategy. A weaker strategy at-large can win games because of consistency, but we are all lying to ourselves if we think playing decks other than those is optimal. We have a crossover effect to these decks, all of them doing the same filtering to win in a different manner, but all are doing something powerful enough that no amount of consistency can compensate for a lesser strategy. Is the real issue, perceived mind you, that blue has the best engine that also coincidentally allows for 5 very powerful decks and other lower-powered decks to quasi-compete?
Lets look at other engines like Life from the Loam: Lands and Aggro Loam. Two powerful decks, one in and out of DTB. Lion's Eye Diamond: Storm variants, Dredge, Belcher, All Spells. Powers 5 recognizable decks (definitely more, but Doomsday doesn't count anymore) with Storm going in/out of DTB and Dredge always on the cusp of DTB in the right metagame. Green Sun's Zenith: Elves, Nic Fit, Bant. Elves is sometimes a DTB. Is the real outcry because the blue cantrip engine has more viable decks? If you're going on pure power level, some of the non-optimal cantrip decks are pretty weak compared to the non-cantrip decks. Just look at RUG Delver as an example and how much it struggles against the DTB. It's actually, in my premise here, a bad cantrip deck. It's not as powerful as the 5 decks listed above. The closest to it is Grixis Delver, but that deck has less conditional threats and better removal. Strict upgrade territory. RUG Delver is officially a meta-deck now, just like Dredge (bold words, I know.) It attacks the game in a specific way that is either good in the metagame or not, no amount of filtering can make up for it's lack of power. It's a strictly worse cantrip-based deck compared to the others. There are decks that don't play blue that are more consistent than a bad cantrip deck, achieving it through other engines.
TL, DR - It is my opinion that there will always be 5 (or so) cantrip driven decks that are the most powerful at enabling that engine in the format and 3-4 non-blue decks that can also compete. I don't see this as a problem, just seeing reality for what it is. Fuck it all, Depths is a DTB currently and you can build a budget version for less than $500. You don't have to play blue to win in legacy. If you want to play blue in legacy, fall in line with what the format demands you to do: play one of the 5 decks above or accept a lower power level in your deck choice (whatever that choice is, based on fun or whatever other metric.) Cantrips can only cover so much of the gap in power level.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
i don't need a rant here. blue decks are able to more safely keep hands that would require mulligans. unfortunately those decks are converging each year on becoming the same good-stuff deck.
you can roll the dice with a deck like turbodepths or dredge, but if you want to consistently win tournaments (large ones), stick to a brainstorm or ponder deck, preferably one of the 5 you mentioned.
i would simply prefer a little bit more of the randomness which is inherent to card games to be a little more present.
-rob
Sorry about that...didn't mean to offend. I also wasn't targeting you specifically, just the argument itself (which has been posited by many.)
You're not alone. I think most, even some diehard blue players, would agree.i would simply prefer a little bit more of the randomness which is inherent to card games to be a little more present.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Are Storm, Miracles, Grixis, and Sneak and Show really converging? Are they really goodstuff decks? I don't think this claim bears scrutiny. If you mean that the only essentially viable midrange deck with blue is Grixis, then sure. But blue decks are clearly diverse, even if they share cantrips.
Really? Why?
So many people seem to want this, and I just don't get it.
I wish Magic had less variance, there's already a ton of it. Part of the reason Legacy is more interesting than other formats is that you have fewer games where you just don't get to play - cards like cantrips make it possible to have meaningful games that aren't just decided by whether you drew the right lands or not.
These posts have been some of the most interesting and insightful I've read in this thread. That may be a low bar, but I'm really enjoying this discussion, and it's a lot more engaging and analytical than most forum fare. Thank you all for your thoughts! And by all means continue, but I have a prediction apropos of nothing.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think that the upcoming Chancellor of the Scry 3 will be banned.
The Source's thoughts?
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
You're looking at variance as something that can only be bad... like it only means getting mana screwed or flooded.
If EVERY game you played of storm was: turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 cantrip, discard, turn 3 go off; then you would lose interest eventually. Variance means you occasionally get god hands and sometimes have to find creative ways to get out of bad situations. Variance means you don't always lose to Turn 2 decks and don't always beat Turn 4 decks. Variance leads to situations you talk to friends about between rounds.
But yes, that means variance can lead to mana screw/flood non-games too.
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