All B/R update speculation.

[Barook]

Is UR Delver going to be on top for long after the meta has adjusted to the fact that it *is* here to stay?

Is it going to be more dominant than RUG Canadian was for awhile?

Both of those things have to be true for WotC to ban something in the next B&R announcement.

The odds are really good that UR Delver isn't even the best list once you take TC and DTT into account. It's just the most obvious one and so people are flooding towards it. If it's getting people to actually buy Volcanics at inflated prices and enter the Legacy meta in the process the store owners will be happy. That's lots of additional sales of various overpriced staples down the road. That's all WotC cares about.

Maybe TC was designed to do exactly that? Put a little cheap thrill out in front of the next generation and see if you can get them to buy $1,000's worth of staples in the process.

Wizards doesn't give a shit about what price one buys his Volcanics. They want to sell current product.

One of the current trends to counter UR Delver is playing UWR Delver, because you can still run TC, more removal and SFM which gives UR Delver alot of trouble.

But in the end, all you do is switching a few cards to end up with the same core.

[FoolofaTook]

Wizards doesn't give a shit about what price one buys his Volcanics. They want to sell current product.

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.

[davelin]

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.

Didn't Ben say that SCG was in favor of removing the reserve list when asked by Wizards a few years ago?

[Barook]

Didn't Ben say that SCG was in favor of removing the reserve list when asked by Wizards a few years ago?

Maybe, maybe not.

He could also be lying since we have no way to tell that he's actually telling us the truth.

Fact is that they make tons of money with Legacy.

[Dark Ritual]

I would gladly trade brainstorm for mystical tutor in storm, reanimator, and show and tell. Sure brainstorm is great but mystical tutor is vampiric tutor/completely broken. You weren't getting turn 2 kills in legacy mystical ANT via brainstorm it was all mystical tutor end of turn 1 for ad nauseam or infernal tutor, dump your hand into said card, win. Mystical tutor is obscene as it is actually dark ritual, demonic tutor, yawgmoth's bargain, or a protection spell all at the low cost of minus 1 card in hand and a blue mana. That kind of flexibility is unrivaled in legacy currently. Mystical tutor is never getting unbanned. Compare it to land tax? The power level difference between land tax and mystical tutor is enormous. They are different cards sure but land tax is unplayable in eternal hell I would argue that it would be fine in modern. Mystical is just flatout busted though.

[Jander78]

Maybe, maybe not.

He could also be lying since we have no way to tell that he's actually telling us the truth.

Fact is that they make tons of money with Legacy.

Yes, he was in favor of it. His arguments are (were) very solid. In an already fluctuating market, with the non-reserve list reprints or power creep replacements of older cards, it wouldn't really affect the secondary businesses.

[Lord Seth]

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.

Except stores, especially the big ones, are really the ones least affected by a Reserved List retraction. Cards lose value, but their assets are fairly liquid so they're hurt less. As someone explained to me, all they really have to do drop down the buying price while also lowering the selling price and they're surprisingly unaffected by price drops. Buy a card at $40, sell a card at $80, buy a card at $39, sell a card at $79, buy a card at $38, sell a card at $78, and so on.

Not to mention that all those stores still get affected by reprints of non-Reserved List cards in the same way as they'd do with actual Reserved List cards. If they'd lose money if the dual lands all got reprinted, they're still losing that money thanks to the fetchlands and shocklands getting reprinted. Unless they're a store that's actually only selling Reserved List cards, in which case they're probably not much of a store.

The people who would be actually threatened by the removal of the Reserved List aren't stores, and certainly aren't the "online superstores". They're the speculators who buy a bunch of copies of a card and sit on them hoping for a price spike. The Reserved List makes such speculations significantly safer; you know you can stock up on Tundras without fear of a reprint, but something like a Liliana of the Veil is much more dangerous due to the possibility of a reprint.

[Dark Ritual]

The amount of product that would move if ABUR dual lands were reprinted in, say, a fall block would be enormous. For you to lose money as a store when you're selling every pack you get in insanely fast would take tons of dual lands/actual thousands as the amount of product you would move would be absolutely insane numbers wise. Not to mention there's no evidence that revised and unlimited duals would drop much. Revised yes I can see a drop. Unlimited taiga is just as hard to find as unlimited black lotus/fairly scarce. FBB's would maintain value in all likelihood. Alpha and beta would go up in value no doubt about it. All of this is a moot point as the list is staying as much as it sucks.

[apple713]

The amount of product that would move if ABUR dual lands were reprinted in, say, a fall block would be enormous. For you to lose money as a store when you're selling every pack you get in insanely fast would take tons of dual lands/actual thousands as the amount of product you would move would be absolutely insane numbers wise. Not to mention there's no evidence that revised and unlimited duals would drop much. Revised yes I can see a drop. Unlimited taiga is just as hard to find as unlimited black lotus/fairly scarce. FBB's would maintain value in all likelihood. Alpha and beta would go up in value no doubt about it. All of this is a moot point as the list is staying as much as it sucks.

*not calling you out, just quoting for context

when the company is hurting for money their "values" will get compromised and the reserve list will go away. Business is 1 sided...the best interest of the shareholders. so when the time comes where abolishing the list outweighs keeping it there will be no question about whether or not it stays. The only question that remains is when that time will come?

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.

That is just stupid.

Brainstorm is far closer to an actual ancestral recall than Treasure Cruise is.

Brainstorm is the by far stronger card. Treasure Cruise is not banworthy.

[Sloshthedark]

I would gladly trade brainstorm for mystical tutor in storm, reanimator, and show and tell. Sure brainstorm is great but mystical tutor is vampiric tutor/completely broken. You weren't getting turn 2 kills in legacy mystical ANT via brainstorm it was all mystical tutor end of turn 1 for ad nauseam or infernal tutor, dump your hand into said card, win. Mystical tutor is obscene as it is actually dark ritual, demonic tutor, yawgmoth's bargain, or a protection spell all at the low cost of minus 1 card in hand and a blue mana. That kind of flexibility is unrivaled in legacy currently. Mystical tutor is never getting unbanned. Compare it to land tax? The power level difference between land tax and mystical tutor is enormous. They are different cards sure but land tax is unplayable in eternal hell I would argue that it would be fine in modern. Mystical is just flatout busted though.

The read it again... how is it possible you do not know what are you talking about?.. Storm is the best BS deck but would be far from being the best Mystical Deck... do your homeworks and build it, or build a current AnT with Mystical tutor, legacy is much different than in 2010 and current for of Ant superior to that of 2010, you would not even play 4 Mysticals if it was unbanned

damn I really should not open this thread

[Bobmans]

So with the release of Commander 2014, will there be an update on the B&R list for Legacy/Vintage the monday after? I wasn't able to find the next date while searching the new WotC site.

[DLifshitz]

Brainstorm is far closer to an actual ancestral recall than Treasure Cruise is.

I was about to explain how the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed and became dominated by Miracles and Delver - mainly U/R - after that, which does suggest that Treasure Cruise may the problem card, and that banning it might lead to a diverse metagame again. And that drawing 3 really is much better than drawing 3 then putting back 2. But the quoted statement struck me as so funny that I will just say:

Only if you aren't playing on camera.

[H]

when the company is hurting for money their "values" will get compromised and the reserve list will go away. Business is 1 sided...the best interest of the shareholders. so when the time comes where abolishing the list outweighs keeping it there will be no question about whether or not it stays. The only question that remains is when that time will come?

I've said for a few years now that the failure of Standard will be the redemption of Legacy and Vintage. Fight the good fight and convert kids over from Standard and eventually we will have our reprints. The question is, to me, not if this happens, but, do they essentially kill the game trying not to do it. This is, however, the wrong thread to discuss these kinds of things though.

[testing32]

the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed

Hilarious

Edit: I think the problem here is that you and I have different definitions of diverse. When I see a top 8 like this:

BUG Delver
RUG Delver
Miracles
Miracles
Reanimator
Deathblade
Shardless
Elves

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards".

Edit 2:

One more thought on the mystical tutor topic. I could be wrong and enough people seem to disagree to think that.

I think you guys are glossing over how large of a loss BS would be. Delver would flood out. Show and tell would have multiple business spells with no fatty and no way to put them back. The magic Christmas land miracle decks would have no way to put 5/6/7 mana spells back into their deck.

And mystical was legal with BS in storm for a long time and by most accounts the ban was unwarranted. The only thing that has changed since then is probe and past in flames.

[DLifshitz]

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards".

Yes, but of these 7, 2 are tempo, 2 are control, 1 is combo and 2 are dissimilar midrange decks. Playing in such a metagame would reward experience, knowledge of the format, and good play, rather than just picking the "best" deck. It shouldn't be monotonous. And on average the metagame was actually less homogeneous and blue-heavy than that, see the top-8/16 metagame breakdown at tcdecks:
http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?form...y&fecha=2014-9

I mean, of course it would be nice if the metagame would be less blue-centric, but I don't see it as the biggest problem right now.

[Lemnear]

I think you guys are glossing over how large of a loss BS would be. Delver would flood out. Show and tell would have multiple business spells with no fatty and no way to put them back. The magic Christmas land miracle decks would have no way to put 5/6/7 mana spells back into their deck.

And mystical was legal with BS in storm for a long time and by most accounts the ban was unwarranted. The only thing that has changed since then is probe and past in flames.

The printing of Gitaxian Probe was huge in terms of how the card would interact with Mystical Tutor. For a blue mana and 2 lifepoints you have a Demonic Tutor and the interaction also works with Past in Flames in the exact same way.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I was about to explain how the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed and became dominated by Miracles and Delver - mainly U/R - after that, which does suggest that Treasure Cruise may the problem card, and that banning it might lead to a diverse metagame again. And that drawing 3 really is much better than drawing 3 then putting back 2. But the quoted statement struck me as so funny that I will just say:

Only if you aren't playing on camera.

ahahahhaha

The diversity of the format is unchanged since Treasure Cruise. It has not changed the slightest.

[Julian23]

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards"

Look, ALL of them are playing lands. That's not very diverse, is it?

How is that even relevant when you have several completly different strategies present? It's like looking at a game of football and saying that the game is boring because all of them are playing with with a striker.

Diversity is not about the cards you see, why would it be? Diversity is about how much your mind is challenged.

[FieryBalrog]

Yeah, "blue tempo decks are really fucking good" is not exactly a new thing in this format.

Beyond that, "decks that play brainstorm are overwhelmingly favored to win stuff" is also not exactly new.