Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
How many Chalices does Elves play? How many in DnT? What about Depths?
I'm not saying the Cantrip decks aren't good, I'm saying there are plenty of non-cantrip decks, and that even the cantrip decks have diverse strategies.
The argument people were making was that there's only one thing you can do in Legacy, which is just not true.
Why are you just arbitrarily dismissing the hatebears as though they don't count as powerful non-blue spells?
Brightling
Sanctum Prelate
Recruiter of the Guard
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Tireless Tracker
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Nissa, Vital Force
All of the relevant Eldrazi are recent (and from standard sets!)
Edit: just realized Glass House had also made this list, my bad.
There's no way there are more Kesses, Yurikos, or Artisans in the format than there are Prelates.
When was the last time they printed something good for Storm? Dark Petition? Meanwhile, they're banning things like Gitaxian Probe, which are totally innocuous but non-blue players hate.
Could they do cooler things with Boros and Mardu? Sure! Do they only print good blue and black things? No.
All of the cards you listed either only see sideboard play or only see play in one deck, sometimes both. Granted the commmander toys were not so much about how they are ubiquitous but more about how they were the only non-garbage cards coming out of these sets. Weak point I'll admit, but ranting feels cathartic.
You're probably right that the meta is the least blue it's ever been for quite a few years, and that's pretty cool. Nevertheless, if you were to ask any pro (as in, mtg pro and not legacy specialist) to take a deck to a Legacy GP with the intent to take it down, they would still go with a blue deck. The oppprtunity cost of leveraging variance by playing the same 8 homogeneizing cards + a bunch of good blue stuff and FoW to take care of the random nonsense from early rounds is simply too low. In my opinion you should get punished for "playing safe", and that's where Chalice comes in. Fortune should favor players who do a bunch of cool and unusual things, not people who stay within safe paths.
I remember that early versions of Dredge (when it was still called friggorid or something) would tilt a lot of people. Part of it was the lack of 'interactivity' (understand: people refused to interact with it, as they now do with Chalice. Granted, gy hate was much worse back then) and part of it was the 'how dare you beat my finely tuned spike deck with a pile of garbage cards' aspect. Today, you can beat people with a pile of garbage and 4-5 drops propped up by Chalice, and it does tilt people the same both ways. The point is, Legacy used to (and still does, to some extent) have this characteristic whereby you could bring together a bunch of garbage that would become unstoppable due to weird rules interactions and meta positioning. Aluren + Cavern Harpy + Strix, Food Chain + Griffin, Dredge, Storm, Elves, Depths + Stage, etc. More and more, this flavor of Legacy is being phased out in favor of straigtforward, unambiguously good and 'real' cards. People don't want to mess with Aluren anymore, they just cram all the 2 for 1s in a deck and call it 'Grixis Control'. They don't even want to mess with Shardless + Vision when Leovold exists. All the 'I won because something cool happened' stuff loses to 'I won because I'm a serious player slinging serious cards and playing serious games'.
Hence my proposition, print cards that punish good cards until bad cards are good again. Or ban all non-basic Islands or something.
I guess this is where we differ.
You see
"All the 'I won because something cool happened' stuff loses to 'I won because I'm a serious player slinging serious cards and playing serious games'."
As a problem, but for me, it seems that this should largely be how the game is played. The player who is trying to build and play the more competitive deck should win more than the player who is trying to get cute. This is essentially how all games are though, not just Magic.
I'm not saying this as a strict Spike either, I've always been one to blaze my own trail in deck design and selection and I've largely been rewarded for it, it just happens to be that decks I enjoy tend to play brainstorm.
Then we have a fundamental disagreement about the nature of the game. There are serious games with minimal variance where people ascend to top level through pure skill and strength of will. These games are called Chess, Go, Shogi, etc. Magic: the Gathering has always been and will always be a corporate children's card game with fantasy art and cheesy flavor text written on the cards. It has inbuilt variance (through topdecks, mulligans and the mana system) meant to hamper pros and give newbies a chance to shine. It is rigidly controlled by printings, bannings and design decisions meant to bring a profit to Hasbro's shareholders. The whole game atmosphere is meant to convey a 'chill' and 'friendly' vibe to its players so as to maximize the playerbase and its retention. This is why you see them insist so much on diversity, family-friendliness and clamp down on anything that may convey the impression that MtG places are in anyway 'unsafe'. This is why, to my despair, they don't dare stray off the beaten path and design wild new mechanics that may turn out to be too combo-tastic or prison-tastic and scare off new players. Even Richard Garfield didn't have balance in mind when the first cards of the game were designed since you were just meant to buy a couple boosters, jam whatever you found in them and get playing in-between two Dungeons and Dragons sessions.
Of course there are competitive aspects. But to me, the great strength of this format is that competitiveness does not go against the 'you can bring any cool shit' aspect of the format. Of course you can't bring your limited deck full of combat tricks but you learn about D&T or Infect and you still keep that feeling. Of course you can't bring a newbie deck full of 8 drops, but when you learn about Show and Tell -> Emrakul or tap 4 Cloudpost -> Ulamog, your Timmy instincts are satisfied. Of course you can't bring your shitty Timmy 4-card combo deck but then you learn about Aluren, Bomberman, Food Chain or Storm and your inner Timmy revels. Of course you can't bring your shitty Vampire tribal deck but then you learn about Elves, Goblins, Eldrazi or Merfolk (hell, even Soldiers these days) and you still feel like you're flavoring your way to victory. Legacy has this unique aspect where any player can think of any strategy or silly concept (from decks without creatures to decks without lands), and there's probably a deck in that range that can do reasonably well. But let me tell you one thing: no one ever thought, upon discovering this format, "what if I put a bunch of midrange cards and a namesake one and call my deck <Color Combination> <Cardname>?" Such is the realm of serious people who want to pretend they're Kasparov or something, while forgetting Kasparov never won off his opponent's bad mulligans.
It's nice that you partly list decks without any major Top 8s in the last months as a Counterargument to a) Loam, Eldrazi and Stompy all playing Chalice and b) decks like DnT & Co being no smart, viable tournament choice.
Just look at the last 4-6 majors and count the URB, URW and Chalice decks compared to stuff like DnT or Elves. The trend is the same like the years before: Cantrip Shell vs Decks preying on Cantrip decks with the Cantrip decks still performing significantly better.
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I don't get what sideboarding has to do with this, at all. When people complain about the decks being samey, it never ever means they are so much the same that you can attack them the same way. It's like the Standard example I gave: People feel every deck playing a bunch of creatures is samey, but if you board the same against control-oriented pile of kinda midrangeish Standard cards and a historically oddly high-curved aggro deck, you're going to get rekt. That doesn't mean the two decks don't feel more similar to each other than say, Stompy and Tron in Pauper.
This whole thing feels like:
Zombie: Makes complaint about every dish in the restaurant coming with fries as a side, when I'd like some salad instead.
taco: But look at all the different kinds of burgers you can order! There's the trusty beef+cheese+bacon one, one with avocados and vinaigrette, one where they put a huge veggie in instead, and even salmon!
Zombie: The burgers were never the point, it's that every meal having a pile of greasy salty starch sticks as an integral part of the dish makes them feel kinda samey, and it's hard serving the meat as something like wok because the side is always fries.
taco: But you can't say the burgers are all the same, salmon's so fresh compared to beef and bacon! And sometimes the fries are made of sweet potato :O
Basically, it misses the point because it points at everything but the point that was being made and goes look, diversity, while there's a whale plopped in the middle of the room.
Originally Posted by Lemnear
People keep acting like Brainstorm shows up in every game in decks that play it and that that fact is pushing all the mono-green aggro-enchantment lists out of the format.
There's another card that goads people into thinking their decks are still viable without it, in spite of the fact that those decks fold to everything else in the format that doesn't play the card if they can't land said card on T1–2.
EDIT: There's another card that wins games on the spot about 70% of the times it resolves, but nobody's complaining about it.
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Ponder?
I don’t think this works given that any reasonably sensible adult will tell you walking into a burger joint and getting a salad is likely not the wisest decision in the world and if you want something beside burger and fries, you’d be best advised visiting another establishment
I mean, I get your point but as a burger enthusiast, I can tell you that a salad from a burger joint is barely a salad (basically lettuce, tomatoes and a dollop of whatever hidden valley dressing they have on hand)
The Taco Salad is like the best thing you can eat at Wendy's. You literally pour a bowl of chili on top of a bigger bowl of lettuce and crunchy stuff.
Edit: Holy shit, remember when there was an actual salad bar at Wendy's? All you can eat super bar for $2.99.
"I'll decide when I've had enough bacon bits, thank you"
https://youtu.be/79XNWFu13CE
Dice, I guess i can save my breath after you already outlined that current DtB status means nothing in the face of a decade dominanted of the ever same deck core and predators.
Instead, i wanna spend the time wishing you, your loved ones and everyone on The Source who cares a wonderful holiday season, merry Christmas and a great start into 2019!
Last edited by Lemnear; 12-25-2018 at 08:07 AM.
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All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
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Yeah, for sure, fuck 2018. Happy holidays!
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
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