All B/R update speculation.

[iamajellydonut]

Pox doesn't really become less consistent, it's normally mono Black to start with. Also Discard gains a massive boost so a deck like Pox gets an upgrade. As does Jund and other decks that depend of proactive disruption.

He meant that Pox would not see a meteoric rise to fame like other non-blue decks would because it takes "unstable piece of shit" to a whole new level. No offense to Pox players.

[Admiral_Arzar]

He meant that Pox would not see a meteoric rise to fame like other non-blue decks would because it takes "unstable piece of shit" to a whole new level. No offense to Pox players.

While this is an aside from the main discussion, stability was rarely Pox's issue (At least, as opposed to something like Stompy variants. You would flood out sometimes but that's pretty common in non-cantrip decks). The issue is that modern Ux decks can simply climb out of the hole your disruption puts them into far too easily. This is why Shardless was such a difficult matchup even pre-broken-delve-stuff - their draw allowed them to make land drops and eventually play more threats than you could deal with. I would play against Delver and Miracles all day long with Pox a year ago - now that they have DTT to recover and Pyromancer is everywhere it's just a losing proposition.

[Lemnear]

But if they go from banning Survival and Misstep to banning TC and DTT, then they should also ban Vengevine and unban Survival. And maybe there are other cards that can be moved around too. VV does nothing at all without SotF, just like TC and DTT might not do anything, or at least be limited, without 12 insane cantrips and 8 fetches in every deck.

Except that its totally inconsequent to chop a cantrip, if you feel DTT/TC are problems, rather than the fetchlands which make Brainstorm/DTT/TC/4-color goodstuff decks powerful the way they are.

Banning brainstorm does shit breaking the hamsterwheel if you feel offended by the number of cantrips in Legacy. You win absolutely nothing if 70%+ lf decks run Preordain/Probe/Ponder/DTT/FoW instead for example.

[menace13]

Format diversity FTW. The MM meta was horribly non-diverse.

Yeah, no. Try glossing over why they said diversity was lacking, maybe?

Here:

there are more blue decks than ever.

KThxBai

[Zombie]

While this is an aside from the main discussion, stability was rarely Pox's issue (At least, as opposed to something like Stompy variants. You would flood out sometimes but that's pretty common in non-cantrip decks). The issue is that modern Ux decks can simply climb out of the hole your disruption puts them into far too easily. This is why Shardless was such a difficult matchup even pre-broken-delve-stuff - their draw allowed them to make land drops and eventually play more threats than you could deal with. I would play against Delver and Miracles all day long with Pox a year ago - now that they have DTT to recover and Pyromancer is everywhere it's just a losing proposition.

Yeah, from the Elves side the Pox MU was just draw cards until they drew the wrong stuff and then just drown them. They can hold you down when they can kneecap you early, but have far more difficulty actually nuking you back to stone age once you've developed.

[btm10]

What you fail to realize is that I can also pick a card that doesn't promote a single strat and had lesser penetration than BS, but still got the axe for making the format "too blue". That card also went into even more decks than BS. Fuk your strategic diversity bullshit.

The 'too blue' critetion works for Misstep because they printed it expressly to push more people into nonblue decks by reducing the percieved need for Force of Will. When that didn't happen, they banned it because they were nervous about having the effect in the format to begin with and the preliminary results with the card confirmed their worst fears. It's a criterion made for only one card and holding other cards to it is silly.

My thoughts on DTT:

• I would probably enjoy Legacy more without DTT - as would probably most players.
• I think there is a good chance WotC will ban DTT anyway (and I'm not sure how they'll spin the ban).
• If DTT is banned on the basis of evaluating it as top tier card draw and/or tutoring (which are banned on principle), I could accept that happily.
• I believe unbanning Twist, Vise, Earthcraft, and possibly Recruiter or Frantic Search is what WotC/DCI should be doing with the banned list (maybe not all at once). Those cards could potentially cause a shake-up, and only after the meta settles should bans even be considered.

I think our main point of disagreement is on how B/R announcements are handled rather than on a substantively different read on the format, but I do want to pick a bit here.

You seem to be of the 'there should be sufficiently clear criteria for B/R changes that the community in any format can look at tournament results and determine what cards (if any) will be banned in an upcoming announcement with a high degree of certianty' school of thought. I think this approach is problematic for a variety of reasons. First, while WotC likes the secondary market and does their best to support Modern, Legacy, and (to a lesser extent) Vintage through Modern Masters, Commander, and other not-for-Standard-play products, they clearly aren't fans of speculation, and the clearer they are with criteria, the more they help speculators. Having to hold to rigid criteria also presents problems when dealing with cards that hurt people's play experience much more quickly than they cause large noticeable metagame shifts as is the case with Dig. It's possible to say that Dig violates a key rule of the format and should be banned as a result, but Dig's efficiency is very difficult to know a priori and then we'rre right back to the issue of having to generate data from tournaments (since its efficiency is, to a first approximation, proportional to how powerful a strategy chaining cantrips is and that's dependent on bunch of factors). Finally, being tied to objective criteria and unambiguous rules for B/R changes poses serious problems for format stewardship in Legacy and Vintage. Tournaments tend to be both rarer and smaller than for Modern and Standard and the monetary costs of large metagame shifts are much larger if people don't have access to the entire cardpool, so a significant fraction of the player base for Legacy and Vintage can find themselves locked out of the top tier for however long it takes for them to buy and trade for the pieces they need, and there's a chance that many people who aren't already substantially invested in the formats will just cash out or deepen their Modern/EDH collections rather than buying the additional Legacy/Vintage staple needed for their new top tier decks. This isn't as big a problem for serious Spikes who travel and grind GPs or the SCG circuit since those people usually have Magic networks that can provide the missing cards, but for people who are conpetitive but only play locally, the ability to network up 3-5 new blue duals is substantially diminished. In order to stop from driving the latter group toward formats like Modern and EDH - which is essential for keeping many local Legacy scenes strong - WotC is sometimes going to have to act with imperfect or incomplete data. It's also why they're extremely conservative toward unbannings.

[menace13]

It's a criterion made for only one card and holding other cards to it is silly.
.

Try lying to yourself a little more, please.

[jrsthethird]

To me this is worse than catrips/dig. Those cards support creature based play-styles like midrange and tempo, but they also promote decks which run few or even zero creatures, like Omnitell and Miracles (the cantrips also support Storm). It's nice to have decks which don't run creatures.

Miracles wouldn't be a thing anymore. CounterTop decks would go back to a more traditional Standstill base. If Standstill becomes the new best draw 3 spell, might see a return of DreadStill variants too. As far as other decks that don't mechanically interact with the top of the library outside of BS, apply Occam's Razor. Just replace Brainstorm with the next best cantrip and see how that goes (augmenting the number of Probes in the process), before throwing the whole deck away. EVERY Brainstorm deck gets worse, but the decks that run BS/Ponder will try Ponder/Preordain, the BS/Ponder/Preordain decks will try Ponder/Preordain/Serum Visions.

Creatureless decks will still be around; they will pop up as the meta adapts.

Cantrip-less midrange and aggro should become more competitive - decks like Jund, Junk, Maverick, Goblins, Deadguy, affinity, or brand new brews. Probably at least some of these will become tier one. Maybe even Burn.

Not to mention Zoo.

I would be shocked if Ponder went at the same time Brainstorm did. Ponder is not really the same beast. It's not an Instant, it can't replace dead draws, it doesn't give you instant access to the cards your looking at and it's not able to answer discard to anywhere near the same effect. The benefit really is that it has a built in shuffle effect. That's it. If we saw Brainstorm banned, likely it would be the only Cantrip banned. Ponder, Preordain and Probe are unlikely to see the axe.

If BS and Ponder go, they will unban something. If it's just BS, then we'll see how it plays without. If BS is banned, I'm grabbing up those fucking Serum Visions quick.

[btm10]

Try lying to yourself a little more, please.

So do you have an argument, or are you just going to be a shit about being wrong? A plain reading of the text supports my position. Yours seems to come from either a poor reading or a preconceived notion of what you want it to say.

Miracles wouldn't be a thing anymore. CounterTop decks would go back to a more traditional Standstill base. If Standstill becomes the new best draw 3 spell, might see a return of DreadStill variants too. As far as other decks that don't mechanically interact with the top of the library outside of BS, apply Occam's Razor. Just replace Brainstorm with the next best cantrip and see how that goes (augmenting the number of Probes in the process), before throwing the whole deck away. EVERY Brainstorm deck gets worse, but the decks that run BS/Ponder will try Ponder/Preordain, the BS/Ponder/Preordain decks will try Ponder/Preordain/Serum Visions.

Just a few things. I don't think you'd see many Probes replacing Brainstorm. You want Probe in combo decks and decks that are looking to run Pyromancer or Mentor, but I think most other decks would want Opt, Preordain, or Serum Visions before Probe. And I'm also not sure if we'd see a major Standstill resurgence. I love the deck to death, but I'm not sure what form "hard" CounterTop control would take. You'd probably see more "controlling aggro-control" like Stoneblade and Shardless because they have the least to lose by dropping Brainstorm - they aren't relying on it for anything other than card quality and don't have cards that are as clunky as Miracles or unwanted redundant combo pieces since they're just stacks of somewhat synergistic good cards.

[evanmartyr]

Just to drunkenly hop in, I desperately want Standstill hard-contorl to be a thing again. I miss it. It's my favorite.

[menace13]

So do you have an argument, or are you just going to be a shit about being wrong? A plain reading of the text supports my position. Yours seems to come from either a poor reading or a preconceived notion of what you want it to say.

Why would I waste time explaining anything to someone who jerks off to Brainstorms and twists anything just to keep playing the card? Like, no. I'm good. Get off that. As if you had an argument. "oh, is special case!" derp.

[Cartesian]

Why would I waste time explaining anything to someone who jerks off to Brainstorms and twists anything just to keep playing the card? Like, no. I'm good. Get off that. As if you had an argument. "oh, is special case!" derp.

I also wonder, why do you waste your time. I truly enjoy playing with - and against - the card Brainstorm, and I accept it as a pillar of Legacy. I also accept Wizards decisions on B/R matters, even when I don't agree with them. I can see why it must be difficult for you to accept, if you hate one card that much, but I simply don't care about your opinion on this matter, and I will not be swayed. So there.

The original thread title says 'speculation', as in 'wonder what Wizards might change next'.
Now it's all about what *I* want, because *I* am right, and *YOU* are clearly blind/stupid, look 32/32, derp, etc.

This whole thread is a disgrace to The Source and the Legacy community, and should be closed down, because it is a waste of time and off topic.

[Lemnear]

I also wonder, why do you waste your time. I truly enjoy playing with - and against - the card Brainstorm, and I accept it as a pillar of Legacy. I also accept Wizards decisions on B/R matters, even when I don't agree with them. I can see why it must be difficult for you to accept, if you hate one card that much, but I simply don't care about your opinion on this matter, and I will not be swayed. So there.

The original thread title says 'speculation', as in 'wonder what Wizards might change next'.
Now it's all about what *I* want, because *I* am right, and *YOU* are clearly blind/stupid, look 32/32, derp, etc.

This whole thread is a disgrace to The Source and the Legacy community, and should be closed down, because it is a waste of time and off topic.

The thread stays simply because no one wants the bullshit and whinning to spread into other threads ;)

[maharis]

Except that its totally inconsequent to chop a cantrip, if you feel DTT/TC are problems, rather than the fetchlands which make Brainstorm/DTT/TC/4-color goodstuff decks powerful the way they are.

Banning brainstorm does shit breaking the hamsterwheel if you feel offended by the number of cantrips in Legacy. You win absolutely nothing if 70%+ lf decks run Preordain/Probe/Ponder/DTT/FoW instead for example.

Right, I totally agree. I'm just saying that if it were a build-around mechanic, Delve would be an interesting way to print powerful effects. But there's no build-around required when you play the fetchland/cantrip engine.

Compare it to, say, Affinity, which is very powerful and even has its own mini-Recall in Thoughtcast. A well-constructed Affinity deck will mow down unprepared opponents. But it is vulnerable to powerful hate and even dying to its own redundancy.

Delve as a mechanic may be weak to cards like Rest in Peace, but bringing in a card to shut down the Delve cards isn't a winning strategy since right now it's really a secondary strategy to the main angle of cantrip-fest. In theory, dedicated Delve decks that would be weak to RIP, but have the ability to power through unprepared opponents, would be an interesting addition to the metagame.

I have been testing a BUG turbo-delve control deck, with Grisly Salvage and Thought Scour in addition to Brainstorm, DTT, Angler, and Eternal Witness. While it's OK, and pretty fun, it's not really worth pursuing other than my own desire to play Grisly Salvage, dig up Snapcaster and dump Hymn, because it does nothing much better than a standard BUG control deck with Brainstorm, DTT, Angler, and better cantrips/less reliance on GY (cards like Ponder, TNN, or JTMS).

Of course, there's a tension in Legacy between people who say that the format is super-diverse, and others who say "TS if you want to play fun cards, the best cards are the best for a reason."

[Finn]

I truly enjoy playing with - and against - the card Brainstorm, and I accept it as a pillar of Legacy.

Why does a format need a pillar? What is the benefit of such a thing? Cards that the format can't do without? Why would anyone want that?

Look, I think we all enjoy playing against and with the card. It makes for a beautiful symphony of options and directions. But that is not and never was any sort of facet of the issue at hand here. The unequivocal resiliency and efficiency of the cantrip cartel dominates deck construction to a degree that absolutely stifles a wide variety of erstwhile contenders. And while there are several viable strategies powered by the tactic of chaining spells in this manner, it is nonetheless a bunch of decks hitting all the same notes on all the same instruments. Legacy is feeling increasingly like living in some podunk town with just one radio station. And damnit, sometimes I want rock and roll.

[nedleeds]

It's a blank statement that people throw out when the existence of a card is otherwise indefensible given both the cards currently on the banned list and the criteria for being a banned card. It means nothing, it's the Null Rod of arguments. You can just apply it to any indefensibly busted card you have a hard on for and your 'argument' is irrefutable because you haven't actually argued anything.

Some examples:

"Necropotence is a pillar of the format, it always has been. Go play modern."

"Necropotence is a pillar of the format, it always has been. Look what happened in Vintage when they restricted it, everyone quit."

See also:

Skill tester, skill intensive, something about how since the best combo, control, aggro and aggro control decks all play it - it promotes strategic diversity.

[jrsthethird]

Why does a format need a pillar? What is the benefit of such a thing? Cards that the format can't do without? Why would anyone want that?

Vintage has a pillar system that works. Bazaar, Workshop, Ritual, Mana Drain are all cards that are stupidly powerful that define a deck's strategy, but the decks all have a power level that keeps them in check with one another. Using Brainstorm as a "pillar of Legacy" is a stupid argument, mostly because there is no other card that can even compare to it in usage. What are the other "pillars"? Chalice, LED, Vial are the possible ones that come to mind. There is no real power comparison. 7/8 of the DTBs run Brainstorm. 1 of those Brainstorm decks runs LED too, and clearly depends more on that so it would fall under the LED pillar. The other deck? RG Lands doesn't even play any of the traditional pillars.

The beauty of Legacy that we knew for the majority of the format's history was the idea that, while there is a top tier of decks, there's also a huge possible field and you can have a Top 8 with 8 completely different archetypes, completely different color combinations, and nothing was really format dominating. Modern is pretty much in that sweet spot right now, but Legacy is so stagnant with format inbreeding that we're nowhere near the old days when you can brew at home and expect to have a decent shot. Now when you brew at home you start with half the deck already and add your archetype later.

It's like Betty Crocker. Legacy in a box. All the same ingredients already prepared for you, you just add your own egg, water, and icing and you've got your deck. I want a deck from scratch.

[rufus]

....

It's like Betty Crocker. Legacy in a box. All the same ingredients already prepared for you, you just add your own egg, water, and icing and you've got your deck. I want a deck from scratch.

If you want to see a lot of original decks, perhaps competitive legacy isn't the best choice. The card pool is well-known and changes slowly.

[nedleeds]

Vintage has a pillar system that works. Bazaar, Workshop, Ritual, Mana Drain are all cards that are stupidly powerful that define a deck's strategy, but the decks all have a power level that keeps them in check with one another. Using Brainstorm as a "pillar of Legacy" is a stupid argument, mostly because there is no other card that can even compare to it in usage. What are the other "pillars"? Chalice, LED, Vial are the possible ones that come to mind. There is no real power comparison. 7/8 of the DTBs run Brainstorm. 1 of those Brainstorm decks runs LED too, and clearly depends more on that so it would fall under the LED pillar. The other deck? RG Lands doesn't even play any of the traditional pillars.

The beauty of Legacy that we knew for the majority of the format's history was the idea that, while there is a top tier of decks, there's also a huge possible field and you can have a Top 8 with 8 completely different archetypes, completely different color combinations, and nothing was really format dominating. Modern is pretty much in that sweet spot right now, but Legacy is so stagnant with format inbreeding that we're nowhere near the old days when you can brew at home and expect to have a decent shot. Now when you brew at home you start with half the deck already and add your archetype later.

It's like Betty Crocker. Legacy in a box. All the same ingredients already prepared for you, you just add your own egg, water, and icing and you've got your deck. I want a deck from scratch.

Vintage has a restricted list. Legacy used to not have one. Now it does, it's just in 4's instead of 1's. The 'quadstricted' list. Derp derp something about lands or some crappy vial deck.

[wonderPreaux]

If you want to see a lot of original decks, perhaps competitive legacy isn't the best choice. The card pool is well-known and changes slowly.

This. Especially given that the ability to aggregate and disseminate decklists will only increase, most of the "home-brew" aspect of this format will slowly go away regardless of whether Brainstorm is in the format or not.