Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Except that no-one in any of those departments spends any time thinking about legacy. Do you honestly think the marketing team is considering legacy on a regular basis? Hell, the R&D team just released an article where they confirm that they don't actually do any modern testing at all.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...ern-2015-05-22
Nobody is actively thinking about legacy within wotc.
I'm not sure I'm on board with this characterization of the jump. I think Delver made a real impact but I also think we've seen a big impact in the last year. 50%+ in 2008-2009, 60%+ in 2011-2012, 70%+ in 2014-2015.
Ponder - Lorwyn (Oct 2007)
Vendilion Clique - Morningtide (Feb 2008)
Jace, the Mindsculptor - Worldwake (Mar 2010)
Preordain - M11 (Jul 2010)
Delver of Secrets - Innistrad (Sep 2011)
Omniscience - M13 (Jul 2012)
True-Name Nemesis - C13 (Nov 2013)
Treasure Cruise - Khans of Tarkir (Sep 2014)
Dig Through Time - Khans of Tarkir (Sep 2014)
Then you have the cards that are effectively blue given they work best in the blue shell:
Tarmogoyf - Future Sight (May 2007)
Ad Nauseum - Shards of Alara (Oct 2008)
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn - (Apr 2010)
So I'd group the rise of the blue shell into three rough waves:
2008-2009 Tarmogoyf, Ponder, Vendilion Clique, Ad Nauseum
2010-2012 Jace, Preordain, Emrakul, Delver of Secrets
2013-2015 Omniscience, TNN, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time
Blue threats have outpaced the format sequentially and they've been joined by better cantrips and card selection as well. That's why we're where we are.
The cantrip part was pretty interesting, since Legacy is exactly plagued by that:
Part of the reason that Ponder and Preordain are banned and Sleight of Hand and Serum Visions aren't, is that the latter two are just weaker and don't do as good of a job of letting people set up their draws quickly. The problem with putting too much card filtering in a format is that it drives too many of the games to play out exactly the same. There is some novelty in this, but I think it is less fun for a format that we want to be highly re-playable.
That's not to say we don't like consistency, it's one of the reasons we put so many dual lands in our sets, but there should be a reasonable tradeoff for consistency.
Pretty easy - stop printing amazing blue cards and fucking everyone else.
-Matt
Unsurprisingly, I have to agree with all instances of this post. Printing non-drawback bullshit or easily splashable powercreep isn't going to do anything to break the cantrip safe haven. A deck like Deathblade shouldn't even be able to exist, but TNN and SFM doesn't even bother the manabase at all. What if SFM was WW and TNN 1WW? The format would have been a lot more balanced during 2014 for example.
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You left out this interesting part from the article about 'reasonable' consistency:Part of the reason that Ponder and Preordain are banned and Sleight of Hand and Serum Visions aren't, is that the latter two are just weaker and don't do as good of a job of letting people set up their draws quickly. The problem with putting too much card filtering in a format is that it drives too many of the games to play out exactly the same. There is some novelty in this, but I think it is less fun for a format that we want to be highly re-playable.
That's not to say we don't like consistency, it's one of the reasons we put so many dual lands in our sets, but there should be a reasonable tradeoff for consistency.
By extension, if this applied to Legacy as well, which is obviously doesn't, but if it did, then we were looking at a dual-land ban just around the corner.If you want a deck that never has color problems, then you can play mono-red. If you want to play a three-color aggressive deck, then you get to play way more powerful spells, at the cost of your life and your lands entering the battlefield tapped and messing up your curve.
It's close to lying if you exclude all the non-blue printings since 2008 which shaped what Legacy was since 2008 and is today. No talk about Decay, DRS, , Nettle Sentinel, Heritage Druid, Thoughtseize, Quasali Pridemage, Knight of the Reliquary, Wild Nacatl, Life from the Loam, Thalia, SFM, Craterhoof, GSZ, Dryad Arbor, Vengevine, etc. or even the fact that Emrakul was first adapted by Elves.
Don't act as if blue cardselection was the only aspect of the game which got better in the last 6 years. We still see D&T, Elves, Jund, Lands, etc as viable option in the metagame which also profited by the powercreep
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I would say its more along the lines of Wizards giving blue the best low cost spells, and then printing cards that are extremely synergistic with said spells (delver, snapcaster, pyromancer, cruise, dig ect) that are blue or splashable. I think it is just the case that all other colors dont have access to cheap spells that are anywhere near as good as the blue package. Each color has a few, which is why there are so many variants of delver type decks that all run the same shell with those few decent spells in other colors.
Goyf works well in ANY shell that runs green and more then just creatures, not just blue shells. People really need to get over this misconception that Goyf is a blue creature because it is splash-able. Heck in modern most of the decks it sees play in have no blue cards at all.
Also calling Ad Nauseum a blue card is laughable since the decks that run is are normally more black then blue, ANT runs BS, Ponder, Probe and Pre-ordain, normally maxing at 14-15 blue cards IIRC but almost never more then 16. and normally what 20-21 black spells. Sorry but if a deck is more black then blue, then calling it a blue deck is wrong, and that is the only way to justify calling Ad Nauseum a blue card. Or are you someone who looks at a deck, sees Brainstorm and other cantrips, then stops right there saying that is is a blue deck running the blue shell regardless of the rest of the decks cards.
Goyf works best in the blue shell. That's when he's at his best as a threat. If he worked better in Jund or Junk or Naya then those lists would be in a better place than they are right now. If he didn't work in the blue shell then those lists would be better right now. He works better in RUG and BUG than anywhere else and that's where he has the highest impact.
Ad Nauseum is not played in any lists that I am aware of that do not run at least 10 blue cantrips alongside it. It's played as a 1-of with 10+ blue spells to find either it or the black tutors that will find it.
And yes, if I see a lot of blue cantrips it's a blue shell list. The cantrips are a much bigger effect on the metagame right now than the permission or the creatures in blue. They're the effect that tells almost all of the archetypes that depend on a heavy load of non-blue spells to GTFO.
You're making my point for me though. You're right, all of those guys work better in the blue shell than in shells based around their color also.
The point about Goyf is that before he showed up the blue shell didn't have an aggro wall easily available. Werebear, Nimble Mongoose and Mishra's factory were as close as you came for the shell. They all had flaws of one sort or another, none of them had the impact that Goyf did both in stabilizing and then in turning hard on the opponent when the opportunity presented itself.
2 mana for a 4/5 or 5/6 beater is a great thing. It's greater in the blue shell than anywhere else and that's unfortunate.
It is amazing how many good blue cards they have printed lately. It's like having Survival legal and not only printing Vengevine, but like 4-5 other functional reprints. Can't say I'm impressed.
It's not just blue cards. Where are Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Gurmag Angler and Murderous Cut going to be used to best effect? In a blue shell with lots of fetches and cantrips hitting the graveyard early enough to make them valuable.
The blue shell is still going to be much better than anything else running even if they did ban Brainstorm. It will be weaker but it's way above the power level of the format at this point and a single ban isn't going to change that.
Dude, if Lands would really be dominating (which, I'm pretty sure will never happen), just pack the appropiate SB-hate. People are just unprepared and inexperienced against this deck. You don't have to believe me, but this deck is easy to beat with the right cards. I mean, Blood Moon or Surgical Extraction are still cards. With your reasoning decks that can go off multiple times per game have elements that are ban-worthy. Note that Lands has the interact by attacking with Marit Lage, which can be blocked... untill the end of times.
If they unbanned Mishra's Workshop, it would put a big contender against the blue cantrip shell.
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I quote this post after 3 pages because i found it so true i needed to do it.Originally Posted by Folofaatook
I read people here say that we are playing in a healty and diverse meta. Sure, healthy and diverse as long as you play 4 brainstorm 4 ponders and 4 force of will. Obviously this is not a healthy meta, the fact is just that people in legacy are by now so accustomed to this that it just seems normal, and people who actually like playing with said blue cards keep considering this meta healthy.
Obviously, wizards won't do anything (because they never do anything, because they don't care about legacy) so the format will slowly fade away and start resembling vintage. The restricted "elite" of people who like blue cards /blue decks will continue playing legacy, while everyone else will inevitably get tired of this shit and quit magic or start playing modern, that is basically what wizards wants.
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