All B/R update speculation.

[Lemnear]

I really like this post, but I highlighted the part I think is the golden nugget.

Really? I am more irritated that people now label every blue deck as "unfair", not to talk about the fact that the label itself is dumb as EVERY deck opts to minimize the opponents ability to interact

[Whitefaces]

I am more irritated that people now label every blue deck as "unfair", not to talk about the fact that the label itself is close to retarded as EVERY deck opts to minimize the opponents ability to interact

que

[Mr. Safety]

Really? I am more irritated that people now label every blue deck as "unfair", not to talk about the fact that the label itself is close to retarded as EVERY deck opts to minimize the opponents ability to interact

I don't disagree with your point; I'm not arguing for a Brainstorm ban. But I do think the bandwidth of "fair" decks is narrowing, with the blue-based fair decks being an obvious majority. I define fair as a deck that plays interactively with the intent of stopping opposing decks and having an attack-phase based win condition. Decks that literally don't play blue but instead work on a critical mass of other effects are few: DnT, Elves, Chalice/Stompy variants, Lands. Of those only DnT could really be considered 'fair'. The others have either a combo lock (Chalice/Moon) or a combo kill (Depths/Hoof.) I wouldn't label all blue decks under the gross generalization of 'unfair'.

[maharis]

Aren't all of those cards currently competitive? I agree that they're all sweet. I've had all of them played against me at the last two locals I played, at least, and certainly lost to them more than once.

Yes. I mean clearly when I'm talking about wasteland I know the card is played. I'm just saying that there are plenty of other synergies that could be explored with these cards given legacy's card pool that are currently on hold. GSZ is always talked about as this powerful consistency engine but it is not even in the top 50 most-played spells in the format. A card that strong should see more play.

What do you mean by "narrowing of the archetype?" That the number of viable fair decks is getting smaller, or those decks are becoming more similar?

Not sure if the answer to this is "both" so I'll just go with the latter. I don't see much of a difference between, for example, Grixis Delver and Czech Pile. I mean sure, I get the delver/daze/wasteland vs. strix/snap/k-command strategies are aiming for games of different length. But then I see the former basically become the latter after sideboard. The choice between these decks comes down to how they play against each other -- that is, you select one based on whether you'd rather be the beatdown Grixis deck or the control Grixis deck.

And as I said before you still want to attack these decks with largely the same type of strategy -- chalice/taxing/wasteland. It sets up a dichotomy that creates the kinds of games people dislike.

How would you open up the format? Do you feel that banning a cantrip would even it up significantly? There's still pressure to have things like Force, because of unfair decks that don't use cantrips, and people will still need consistency engines.

I'm just going to make this its own obnoxious sentence so it's clear:

BANNING A SINGLE CANTRIP WOULD NOT WORK, AND BANNING MORE THAN THAT IS A BAD IDEA.

I used to be in favor of going after the cantrips but I changed my mind for a couple reasons:

1. I believe engine combo and pure tempo are integral parts of Legacy's identity and they absolutely need strong cantrips to function
2. You would have to ban so many cards to balance the cantrip engine that the psychological effect could be devastating to the format
3. The number of cards with cantrip synergies is so high right now that even if you were down to Opt and Serum Visions there's no guarantee that another choice of fair deck would be correct

I think the best move is to just get rid of some of the stupid top end cards, starting with True-Name Nemesis. Not every cantrip deck plays TNN but the threat of it forces narrow answers and by itself it invalidates almost anything else you can do at that mana cost -- thus pronouncing any other 3-drop that dies to removal or can't evade it DOA. Since non-blue decks tend to derive most of their value up the curve, such a hammer at 3 cmc makes it very difficult to justify playing another card at that cost.

From there, and this is going to be very unpopular I know, I would get rid of Snapcaster Mage. The simple reason for that is there are too many powerful one-mana spells in the format that a single resolution of this card can flip a board state completely. It is one of the best cards in Modern, a format that has Path to Exile instead of Swords to Plowshares and where cards like Spell Pierce aren't even all that good. In Vintage, Snap's power is constrained by the restricted list -- yes flashing back Recall is insane but you don't get to do that in every game. In Legacy, where the best spells are 4-ofs and incredibly swingy, Snap also constrains the ability to gain value up the curve by rebuying the most efficient answers to late-game threats.

But I also want to be clear that this is only my opinion based on the complaints people have about the format. I'm not expecting a ban on the 28th nor do I think its an absolute necessity. However, the next time I play a serious event both these cards will be in my deck because they are stupidly powerful.

As to your last point about Force, I think that losing to glass cannon decks is also part of Legacy, and such decks have internal inconsistencies and narrow play patterns that naturally suppress them. Also, one thing I miss about certain non-blue strategies being viable is the fun of eking out wins against more established combo decks like Storm and S&T. The tools are there that these decks don't have to autolose to any combo deck, but those answers are lacking against some of their fair peers.

Plus, I feel like Wizards is 100% on the fair side of this - it's only a matter of time before legacy becomes "who will be the king of valuetown" as they print more and more under-costed beaters with ETB effects and weenies with binary hate abilities.

Considering the top two decks in the format, I'm pretty sure we're already there.

And I would argue that Wizards' biggest mistakes with regard to Legacy still comes when they print spell synergies, not powerful creatures. Khans was such a huge turning point because of the Delve and Prowess mechanics that paid you off for durdling around with cantrips. Even Innistrad block, which certainly put out its share of powerful blue cards (and Miracles/Griselbrand/PiF), also interesting options for other kinds of decks like Lingering Souls, Thalia, Liliana, Faithless Looting, Cavern, Craterhoof. It was far more balanced across strategies than Delve/Prowess vs. Raid/Outlast.

Sort of unrelated, but I wish Wizards had a well-defined ethos for the Legacy ban list like they do for the other formats. Modern is explicitly kept at a certain fundamental turn, Vintage is a place for you to play Moxes, and Standard is all about format diversity. Whether or not those goals are good or we agree with them isn't the point, but I think one of the reasons Legacy gets so contentious is just that lack of a thing to point to and say, "This is too much based on this criteria." What is the major difference between the format today and the format when Treasure Cruise was legal? Decks max out on cantrips, Pyroblasts, efficient creatures that synergize with same, etc etc. Why is SDT a more dangerous enabling card than Brainstorm? Why is Earthcraft still banned?

[JackaBo]

Eventhough grixis delver and czech pile share a lot of cards they are very different deck. Playing against them is a totally different experience. For instance, when sideboarding against delver i bring in spells that fight creatures. When boarding against pile i bring in spells that fight spells.

In regards of banning the cantrip cartel. Would you enjoy the game more if it was more based on chance. As legacy stands it's a very skill-based and intense game. With less filtering it would be more random who wins and who loses. Remember that cantrip decks lose speed for consistency. Which is why i e BR Reanimator is good. When it comes to T0 and T1 cantrip decks and non cantrip decks have the same"consistency". Well actually cantrips decks have worse hands turn 0 since they have less actual business cards.

I would rather that they printed better consistency engines in other colors. If you had mirris guile-esque cards with a decent grandeur ability they would be playable in playset-amounts.

[Dice_Box]

The idea that the game would all fall to chance if all cantrips vanished is a little foolish. I feel that both Elves and Lands have the strongest draw engines in the format and they both do not require Blue for that privilege.

I think the format would look very different, but other ways to reduce variance would be found. Even if some of those decks would just run the Fish idea of brute force.

Personally opinion is that the format has become what it is today thanks to that Blue stew. While my views on the card Brainstorm are well known, I feel the format would be a much colder place if it also lost Ponder, Preordain and other similar effects. I don't have to like it when someone plays all these cards, feeding one into the next, but it does offer people who think I should be shot for playing Lantern something else they enjoy.

Oh and for the record, not making up that "You should be shot" thing. Some people really hate Ensnaring Bridge.

[Finn]

Zombie, could you please show me on this doll where Miracles touched you?

That's pretty damned funny.

****************

In other news, are we actually in agreement here that the format looks balanced? That would be amazing.

EDIT: Dice_box, the draw engines in Elves and Lands both require the rest of the particular deck to work. In a sense, you could say that both decks start with "Wouldn't it be cool if we could use x, y, z amazing engine cards in the same deck? Yeah, what would the rest of that deck look like?"

Whereas, cantrip cartel starts with "Hey, here's a new card or two. I need an engine so that I can use these."

As an example, we have all see the Cavius Casual Corner. I don't know how many people know it now, but Cavius was a guy. He had himself convinced that his deck was good largely on the back of his standard (and very good) cantrip engine. He was able to win enough games against real decks even though his combo sucked to convince himself that he was one tweak away from amazing. In fact, he was basically playing a suboptimal Bryant Cook deck or something in disguise. But the excellent sifting power of cantrips kept that secret from him. You can fill in the blanks between cantrips with almost anything reasonable and get a mostly functioning deck.

You play blue or you play specialty cards.

[Mr. Safety]

That's pretty damned funny.

****************

In other news, are we actually in agreement here that the format looks balanced? That would be amazing.

EDIT: Dice_box, the draw engines in Elves and Lands both require the rest of the particular deck to work. In a sense, you could say that both decks start with "Wouldn't it be cool if we could use x, y, z amazing engine cards in the same deck? Yeah, what would the rest of that deck look like?"

Whereas, cantrip cartel starts with "Hey, here's a new card or two. I need an engine so that I can use these."

As an example, we have all see the Cavius Casual Corner. I don't know how many people know it now, but Cavius was a guy. He had himself convinced that his deck was good largely on the back of his standard (and very good) cantrip engine. He was able to win enough games against real decks even though his combo sucked to convince himself that he was one tweak away from amazing. In fact, he was basically playing a suboptimal Bryant Cook deck or something in disguise. But the excellent sifting power of cantrips kept that secret from him. You can fill in the blanks between cantrips with almost anything reasonable and get a mostly functioning deck.

You play blue or you play specialty cards.

+1 Two golden nuggets in one day!

And I read threads in Cavius' forums all the time, lol. Sometimes it's about the fun factor.

[Moosedog]

Rare sighting in B&R thread - last few pages have some solid, constructive, thought out posts. +1 for all!

Now back to your regular programming, brainstorm is ruining everything. amiright?

[Crimhead]

GSZ is always talked about as this powerful consistency engine but it is not even in the top 50 most-played spells in the format. A card that strong should see more play.

That's exactly how I feel about Smokestack, Maze of Ith, Smallpox, Tangle Wire, Propaganda, Tabernacle, Humility etc. These are powerful cards that see very little play because WotC loves to push fair decks.

I would love to see more fair decks that don't run cantrips (and also more fair decks based on synergy rather than "good cards"). But just try to imagine being a prison player having to listen to fair-deck players complaining about a lack of options and under-used powerful cards. You guys have it pretty good.

[maharis]

That's exactly how I feel about Smokestack, Maze of Ith, Smallpox, Tangle Wire, Propaganda, Tabernacle, Humility etc. These are powerful cards that see very little play because WotC loves to push fair decks.

I would love to see more fair decks that don't run cantrips (and also more fair decks based on synergy rather than "good cards"). But just try to imagine being a prison player having to listen to fair-deck players complaining about a lack of options and under-used powerful cards. You guys have it pretty good.

That implies I don't feel the same way about that list of cards. I do. I guess I don't see what my complaint has to do with these cards. All these cards seem like nightmares for the decks I think I would like to should see more of, but as long as those decks are suppressed, these cards have no good prey.

[Crimhead]

You play blue or you play specialty cards.

This is absolutely true. But the only decks that don't run specialty cards are "good stuff" piles. Literally every (playable) card is either a specialty card or an individually "good" card.

So basically you are only forced into blue if you want to play a good-stuff pile. I'm okay with that, because there is so much more to Legacy than decks that just jam good cards.

All these cards seem like nightmares for the decks I think I would like to should see more of, but as long as those decks are suppressed, these cards have no good prey.

You would think, the fact is that when Maverick and then Jund were tier-1 decks, such cards saw almost zero competitive play.

I do. I guess I don't see what my complaint has to do with these cards.

The point is that it's hard for me to shed a tear for GZS (which sees play in Elves and Loam) when swaths powerful and classic creature hosers are obsolete.

For over half a decade pure prison decks have been unplayable. If you want to play prison, you have to play a ton of creatures (D&T, Eldrazi), or play a combo hybrid (Lands). There is less than zero variety for decks that grind the opponent into dust with, eg, Mishra's Factory being the scariest threat.

If you want a diverse format rich with aggro, tempo, midrange, combo and hard control/prison, realistically we can only expect 2 or 3 competitive decks from each style. Midrange and tempo are eating more than their share of the meta as it is - with more variety than any other play-style. I would love to have 20 or 25 tier-1 and tier-1.5 decks, but I don't think it's realistic.

If you think fair decks are the "meat and potatoes" of Legacy (with the other styles being "sides" and "extras"), variety of fair decks might be an issue. But if you think all styles are equally important, fair decks are healthy and fine.

[Zombie]

Zombie, could you please show me on this doll where Miracles touched you?

Judgment would've ended on the list anyway, Miracles or not. It and TNN just break good card design in ways that make me vomit whenever I see the. Mentor and Miracle cards in general just seem dumb, would not like to see them in the format. Mentor especially just feels dumb. Easily castable threat that goes both tall and wide in one card is just ???. Tokens with prowess sounds like the whole R&D just had a how dumb we can go contest.

[Crimhead]

. Mentor especially just feels dumb. Easily castable threat that goes both tall and wide in one card is just ???. Tokens with prowess sounds like the whole R&D just had a how dumb we can go contest.

Mentor is one of my least favourite cards. It resists most of the best answers to creatures while simultaneously encouraging harder control decks to run more threats. It was a giant middle finger to anybody who likes to see the occasional control deck that doesn't lean on the combat step to get ahead.

Ironically I suspect Prowess was designed to answer complaints that the game was too creature centric with not enough focus on spells. Thanks for nothing, WotC!

[Raizen884]

Yeah I wouldn't say I worry about the meta today, but I worry a bit about how legacy will look like in 3-4 years, creatures are just becoming very good individually, kind of the reason goblins became a tier 3 deck, its synergy is not sufficient to beat down just plain individual creatures that have been printed "recently" like TNN, Leovold, Monastary Mentor... It makes you question if you need a combination of synergical cards to make your plan or just slam the best creatures on a deck.

That for me is the plain reason I'm not a fan of other formats besides Legacy and Commander, most decks on other formats look like a pile of goodstuff cards, legacy still lives not like that because we have a lot of tier 1 - tier 1.5 synergy decks like DnT, Elves, Storm, Lands... But I don't know how long it will be like that, DnT may be the only one who got true updates on the deck, the others are basically the same for some years already, but still fight the new cards, of course Legacy is much slower to change because only 4-5 cards per year actually makes good appearance on the format, but they do and this could someday push Legacy to something modern-ish like.

Anyway, about the discussion I usually don't play blue-based decks, more Elf/DnT player, but I don't see any problem with cantrips in general. What I really feel very strong is Brainstorm which I don't really considerer a cantrip, I mean if you got 2 horrible cards for the match on your hand and you shuffle them away, you virtually bought 3 cards with 1 mana at instant speed. This is a concept of card advantage that really makes Brainstorm so powerful, I think it is banworthy, but its been so many years with it in the format I don't think that will ever happen, it is the card that you see and remember legacy right away, its hard for a ban on BS, but it could be interesting yes to see how it shakes the meta, because it would change the power of a lot of decks and probably even their manabase.

[Dice_Box]

When it comes to new printings it's not actually as necessary as it first appears. In Lands, older cards tend to be the ones that change the deck not new ones. New printings would be lovely, but that's not always the case in a format so deep.

I know people don't like to talk about Modern here, but there is a case too look at there. Eggs, as I understand it was completely unknown. Then it randomly wins a pro tour. A whole deck from mind to PT and then it took over. Lantern too. A bunch of cards in isolation that appear to hold almost zero redeeming value, put them together...

Legacy has to be the same. Sure, most of the deck you come up with are likely to play second place to the existing shells, but that doesn't mean they are not out there. It's possible that Dirty Kitty could take over the format if someone just noticed an interaction everyone else missed. I myself personally owned all the cards for Goblin Stompy for over a year before someone else worked it out. I had every single card. No new cards needed.

The problem is not new cards, the problem is that the existing shells are so powerful it's hard to look elsewhere for ideas. But it's possible that those decks exist and will take over.

Even then, when new cards appear we do not always see the value. The example that comes to mind is Colourless Eldrazi. Pro Tour winner to Legacy staple. Again, something we all missed and may only just be piecing together now if not for a pro team.

[Stuart]

When it comes to new printings it's not actually as necessary as it first appears. In Lands, older cards tend to be the ones that change the deck not new ones. New printings would be lovely, but that's not always the case in a format so deep.

Wouldn't RB Reanimator be a good example of a "new" Legacy deck that existed for a long time? Other than Collected Brutality, that card pool has been around for a few years but wasn't really played.

The problem is not new cards, the problem is that the existing shells are so powerful it's hard to look elsewhere for ideas. But it's possible that those decks exist and will take over.

"Blue Stew" is a new term that's popped up in the Vintage community to describe the critical mass of powerful restricted spells that's developed over 24 years of printings. The same thing could be happening in Legacy: sure, we'll keep getting powerful new creatures, combo pieces, etc, but as is, the existing shells (Cantrips, Tomb, Vial, or whatever) feel kind of perfected. We might have reached a point where decks can't really get much better and new decks are gonna struggle to be viable.

[Lemnear]

I define fair as a deck that plays interactively with the intent of stopping opposing decks and having an attack-phase based win condition. Decks that literally don't play blue but instead work on a critical mass of other effects are few: DnT, Elves, Chalice/Stompy variants, Lands. Of those only DnT could really be considered 'fair'. The others have either a combo lock (Chalice/Moon) or a combo kill (Depths/Hoof.) I wouldn't label all blue decks under the gross generalization of 'unfair'.

I just have a tough time to see how locking opponents out from playing the game with chalice, resistors and landdestruction is "fair" in regards of "having an Interactive game".

If the opponent can't resolve a spell because its either countered by Chalice, unplayable because your opponent attacks your mana or you die before you get to play your spells, the way barely makes a difference.

[morgan_coke]

I just have a tough time to see how locking opponents out from playing the game with chalice, resistors and landdestruction is "fair" in regards of "having an Interactive game".

If the opponent can't resolve a spell because its either countered by Chalice, unplayable because your opponent attacks your mana or your opponent comboes out on turn 1 because you don't have Force of Will and you die before you get to play your spells, the way barely makes a difference.

fixed.

[Fjaulnir]

fixed.

Hehe I know that feeling all too well!! As an Enchantress player being a total sitting duck against storm 95% of games, even with Leyline of Sanctity.


Then again I don't consider Enchantress to be a fair deck, so I accept this unbalanced matchup for what it is. But apart from "do I have Leyline/does he have Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth" there is not much interaction going on when I'm playing against Storm - that's what makes it uninteresting to me, not the imbalanced matchwin percentages.

I guess that's how Storm players feel against Chalice decksm probably, so I sympathize. But I do think, like you, they shouldn't complain too much about it as they're doing the same to other players in some matchups.