All B/R update speculation.

[Julian23]

*Trembles violently*

Please WotC give us strong, red/black/white, unsplashable cards.

A good way to do this would be printing cards that have easy mana costs like R oder B but have a clause that says "Play xxx only if you control a basic mountain" or something like that. I wouldn't like fetching a basic Mountain if I wanted to play Vendilion Clique or Jace...

[Gui]

A good way to do this would be printing cards that have easy mana costs like R oder B but have a clause that says "Play xxx only if you control a basic mountain" or something like that. I wouldn't like fetching a basic Mountain if I wanted to play Vendilion Clique or Jace...

Or sacrifice if doesn't control basic land type X, or a number of basic lands type X, or only basic lands X during upkeep or etc etc etc...

There are endless ways, but they keep printing multicolored cards with stronger stats as if multi color was worse than or instead... go figure...

[Oibade]

The thing is that the concept itself of "counter" is superior to most discard or destroy effects. WotC will have to heavily break the color pie to achieve something for other colors. And moreover they would have to be cards that blue decks should find difficult to play.

Printing an exceptional white removal, or black hate piece, or an exceptional red burn spell would work only if they were tailored for mono-coloured or for awkward (meaning non-blue) combination of colours.

[Gheizen64]

I'm fine with the banning of MM as long as they give us a replacement. I think where they went wrong with MM was making it hit perms which made it an auto-include in blue decks.

I understand they were trying to give non-blue a card to fight combo as they said in the reasons for banning, which is admirable, as non-blue decks need a SB card to deal with turn 0 & 1 shenanigans. With this in mind though the ability to hit artifacts and creatures is pretty irrelevant to this goal.

I was thinking about it on the way to school, and I think the way they should go would be to print...

Mental Fixed-step U
Instant
You may pay 2 life rather than pay ~this cards~ casting cost.
Counter target instant or sorcery with cmc 1 or less.

So it would certainly no longer be an auto-include in every blue deck and would still be the SB card non-blue needs to fight through combo. Sure in theory, yeah it could still protect SFM turn 2 from Bolt, but without the ability to hit Vial or creatures I doubt anyone would MD 4.

Right now the only viable answers to combo outside blue either are Mindbreak Trap (which is dead vs. Reanimator and sucks vs. blue storm anyways), discard, or come down your turn 2 at earliest. Please WotC give us a "fair" answer for turns 0+1.

Why still blue? White has a lot of space for this kind of cards, something like an improved chancellor of the annex:

Angel of Inertia - 2WW
Creature - Angel
You may reveal this card from your opening hand. If you do, when each opponent casts his or her first spell of the game, counter that spell unless that player pays 1.
Flying.
Whenever an opponent casts a spell, counter it unless that player pays 1.
3/4

Or simply:

The Dude W
Legendary Creature - Human
Each spell beyond the first each turn cost 1 more to play.
That's, uh, like, mh, totally your opinion man
1/1

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band.
Won't you take a ride on the flying spoon?
Doo, doo doo.
Wond'rous apparition provided by magician.

[sauce]

flavor text, it's important.

[swoop]

We need a new Imperial Recruiter.

[KevinTrudeau]

Mental Fixed-step U
Instant
You may pay 2 life rather than pay ~this cards~ casting cost.
Counter target instant or sorcery with cmc 1 or less.

This (replacing the CMC 1 or less with just CMC=1) would have been perfect.

[DragoFireheart]

Chaos Redux
RRR
Instant

You may discard a red card rather than pay * mana cost.

Change the target of a spell that has a single target.

Storm 1

[Koby]

Chaos Redux
RRR
Instant

You may discard a red card rather than pay * mana cost.

Change the target of a spell that has a single target.

Storm 1

Hello Painter!

[DragoFireheart]

Hello Painter!

I tried.

[Richard Cheese]

1. There are 44 Restricted cards in Vintage.
2. Add 4 Force of Will. 48 cards now.
3. Add 4 Mana Drains. 52 cards now.
4. Add win condition. Let's say Blightsteel, since Tinker is counted as a Restricted card. And let's include Voltaic Key, since Time Vault is also restricted. 54 cards now.

Where is your mana base? Or are you supposed to play this deck with 2 lands, a Lotus, five Moxes, a Mana Crypt, a Mana Vault, and a Sol Ring?

You, sir, know NOTHING about Vintage. My deck runs 19 of the 44 Restricted cards (invalidates your first point), does run Force of Will, doesn't run Mana Drains (invalidates your third point), does have a win condition. And it's the same as the list that took 4th at Vintage Worlds in GenCon - so it's not some bad jank deck. It's a finely tuned Bob Gush Control list.

What you listed isn't the shell for anything but a very, very bad EDH deck (and illegal, with 4x Force and 4x Drain).

Sorry to drag up this off-topic stuff, but that was seriously so funny I almost spit coffee all over my keyboard.

[dontbiteitholmes]

*Trembles violently*

Please WotC give us strong, red/black/white, unsplashable cards.

I agree. I think WotC is continuing to make mistakes in that regard. I mean in the end you can splash for BB as Hymn to Tourach has shown us, but to do it right you have to make an extremely fragile mana base which seems like a fair trade off.

Why still blue? White has a lot of space for this kind of cards, something like an improved chancellor of the annex:

Angel of Inertia - 2WW
Creature - Angel
You may reveal this card from your opening hand. If you do, when each opponent casts his or her first spell of the game, counter that spell unless that player pays 1.
Flying.
Whenever an opponent casts a spell, counter it unless that player pays 1.
3/4

Or simply:

The Dude W
Legendary Creature - Human
Each spell beyond the first each turn cost 1 more to play.
That's, uh, like, mh, totally your opinion man
1/1

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band.
Won't you take a ride on the flying spoon?
Doo, doo doo.
Wond'rous apparition provided by magician.

Why not still blue? It's irrelevant to the actually playability of the card and blue is the color of counters. As your examples have shown it's pretty hard to make an answer to turn 0-1 combo plays that isn't completely terrible, or broken and isn't a counterspell or discard of some sort.

The Dude is cool, but the angel would be garbage vs. combo. I mean they just play the worst card in their hand and beat you down anyways. It might buy you a turn if they don't have an extra spell they don't need, and it might turn a turn 0 kill into a turn one kill but it's probably not enough in the end. In reality something like Misstep is the perfect solution.

The brilliance of Misstep was that it rewarded you for playing smart vs. combo when you weren't playing Blue and the mere threat of having it in hand forced to combo player to actually interact and play smart instead of just going all-in blind and knowing they were gonna blow you out. That's something permanent solutions don't have. If I'm playing combo and you drop a Thorn of Amethyst turn 2, it's out there and I know I have to play around it and destroy it. If there is the threat of a free counter and the other guy is putting on pressure I have to make the decision to wait until I can Duress/Chant/sculpt my hand or go for it and hope they don't have it. Right now they just go blind and hope you aren't dumb enough to play 4x Mindbreak Trap in the side. Mindbreak Trap is and always will be ass.

This (replacing the CMC 1 or less with just CMC=1) would have been perfect.

Yeah well the whole idea would be to have a good SB card vs. combo. I feel like as time goes on Pact of Negation will just see more and more play in combo until it finds it's true calling. When a combo deck has 4x Force and 4x Pact or something similar it makes it harder for blue decks that should be good against combo to interact. So might as well throw in the "or less" prematurely since it's pretty much irrelevant unless Pact is a problem.

[DragoFireheart]

Why would you want a non-blue solution when you could just play Merfolk and have at least a 50% win percentage against the whole field while still being able to fight combo?

[dontbiteitholmes]

Why would you want a non-blue solution when you could just play Merfolk and have at least a 50% win percentage against the whole field while still being able to fight combo?

I realize playing Merfolk seems like the best bet right now if I'm playing to win. While I like to go into events with the best chance of top 8ing I will probably not play Merfolk at SCG Indy because I play Magic as a hobby first and foremost. I'm not saying I'm going to walk into events with a "fun" deck if I think it's a bad choice, or that I'm opposed to playing the best possible deck at any given event, but I have school and life during the week and Magic is my hobby/diversion so I'm not going to go play 9 rounds with a deck I personally find boring and linear. I like to make decisions beyond drop Lords and counter spells. I'm not saying Merfolk is not challenging to play and there are not plenty of decisions, but for me swinging blue guys every turn is tedious.

It just sucks that if you don't play blue you have to roll the dice the first 3 rounds and hope you don't hit the 10% of the field that you can't even sideboard for no matter how hard you try.

[DragoFireheart]

There are a couple of fixes that would have made MMS fair.

Mental Mishap #1
U (P blue mana)
Instant

Counter target instant or sorcery.

Mental Mishap #2
U (P blue mana)
Instant

Counter target instant or sorcery with a CMC of 1.

Mental Mishap #3
U (P blue mana)
Instant

Counter target instant or sorcery with a CMC of 3 or less.

I think had Wizards had done that, they would have struck gold.

Regardless, Mental Misstep is banned. It's in the past and harping on it any longer is futile.

I suspect the meta change will be such:

Goblins, Zoo, and Merfolk will be played more since they are the three popular aggro decks. In response to the goblins, Storm decks (AnT, TES, High Tide) will rise up to fight the flood of mid-range aggro decks. In response to that, various flavors of CounterTop. We'll see CounterTop Thopter, Supreme Blue, and CounterTop decks running the Stoneforge Mystic Batterskull combo to help fight aggro decks. The meta will settle after 4-8 months and we can expect the top tier decks to look something like this:

Merfolk
Zoo
TES
High Tide
Dredge
Goblins
CounterTop (with Blade Top being the most popular version in whatever colors it finds to be the best fit I suspect either UW or UWr will be the most popular choice.)
Bant (Aggro / NO-Pro variations).
NO RUG (I highly suspect this deck will stick around even after the MMS banning. It might be slightly weaker but it's still going to make its presence known).

[Oibade]

The meta will settle after 4-8 months and we can expect the top tier decks to look something like this:

Merfolk
Zoo
TES
High Tide
Dredge
Goblins
CounterTop (with Blade Top being the most popular version in whatever colors it finds to be the best fit I suspect either UW or UWr will be the most popular choice.)
Bant (Aggro / NO-Pro variations).
NO RUG (I highly suspect this deck will stick around even after the MMS banning. It might be slightly weaker but it's still going to make its presence known).

If that is the case, there shall be a fair share of each relevant archetype represented in the metagame. I.E. the metagame is going to be healthy (with due time).

I also do not see S&T-based decks in your projection. Are they going to disappear? (Cheating things into play does suck.)

I am looking forward to the impact of Snapcaster Mage on the metagame. Hope it won't screw too much with BS and stuff.

[death]

Lion's Eye Diamond in 2 1/2 months.

[Gheizen64]

Lion's Eye Diamond in 2 1/2 months.

I think that actually the next big thing is Brainstorm. Just look at the justification for MM banning. Brainstorm was one of the reason MM got printed. And Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain got banned basically everywhere except legacy. With Brainstorm gone and MM back in, control would be as good as ever but they'd cripple combo. Exactly what WotC like.

[Zilla]

I think that actually the next big thing is Brainstorm. Just look at the justification for MM banning. Brainstorm was one of the reason MM got printed. And Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain got banned basically everywhere except legacy. With Brainstorm gone and MM back in, control would be as good as ever but they'd cripple combo. Exactly what WotC like.

Banning Brainstorm for any other reason than an emergency measure to correct a major problem with the format would be a huge mistake, and I think Wizards knows it.

It's definitely the strongest card in the format, and you can make a logical argument for its banning based on power level alone, but ultimately a large amount of Legacy players play this format specifically because they can play Brainstorm in it. I can't think of a card they could ban that would produce more negative player backlash than Brainstorm, particularly if there's not a very very compelling reason to do it.

[DragoFireheart]

Banning Brainstorm for any other reason than an emergency measure to correct a major problem with the format would be a huge mistake, and I think Wizards knows it.

It's definitely the strongest card in the format, and you can make a logical argument for its banning based on power level alone, but ultimately a large amount of Legacy players play this format specifically because they can play Brainstorm in it. I can't think of a card they could ban that would produce more negative player backlash than Brainstorm, particularly if there's not a very very compelling reason to do it.

- If Wizards of the Coast banned Brainstorm, I would sell off all of my legacy related cards and forever stick to playing casual / EDH magic until the backlash killed the secondary market and Magic as we know it collapsed.