Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I think you missed part of the question: hypothetical...Originally Posted by Crimhead
Loam was just an example, insert whatever non-Xerox engine in there. My point is that the Xerox engine is the best engine in Legacy and is untouchable for some reason. You may have a tempo, combo and control deck in the format but they all use Xerox which makes Legacy dull and boring. If you want to fix Legacy, you need to start here and it's very easy to solve. Blue circle-jerking just prevents us from actually doing it...
There was a time when people really wanted either Goblin Lackey, Goblin Ringleader or Aether Vial banned out of Goblins because it was too oppressive (apparently), so there's your example.
Yeah, but your hypothetical still doesn't compare apples to apples and over simplifies the issue...
Life from the Loam is a single card.
If I am understanding the use of 'Xerox' and 'Turbo Xerox' correctly (I'm only kind of sure I am, so let me know if I'm off target), we are talking about a group of similar cards:
- Brainstorm
- Ponder
- Gitaxian Probe
- maybe Preordain?
So your hypothetical question actually reads
You are comparing a single card to at least 3 cards and asking how long it would take for changes to be made when that single card dominates the meta. I would argue that Survival of the Fittest is a better comparison to Loam as a single card engine. And that was banned pretty quickly after Vengevine was printed.
True, but the thing is, Survival didn't become effective because of Vengevine, it became effective when it adopted the "blue shell" with Ponder/Brainstorm, and then Vengevine made it the absolutely best thing to DO with the "blue shell" and THAT'S when it got banned.
There's also the fact that Xerox isn't an engine in the same way Loam or Survival was. An engine, in the traditional sense, is a card that generates incremental card advantage. Loam and Survival both do this. Standstill does this, CounterTop did this. Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were also engines. The cantrips, on the other hand, only put you up cards virtually, by minimizing the number of dead draws. You can still call it an engine if you want, but it's different.
The other part is that it's hard to look at the cantrips individually as the problem. If you ban Brainstorm, you definitely hurt the blue stew, but most decks just run Preordain instead and move on. In order to really do the sort of damage necessary, you'd have to go the way of Modern and ban all of the good cantrips.
But I cannot understand the point. If you want a format where all of the good cantrips are banned, you already have Modern. Brainstorm and DRS may be in a lot of decks, and definitely perform better in larger events by reducing variance, but the metagame itself is extremely diverse, and has been in a constant state of flux since Top got banned. The Top 8 of EW may have looked bad, but look at the Top 64. Is there really anything wrong with Legacy?
I love where Legacy is right now. There is still plenty of room for innovation, brews, and new decks to break out and perform well. I mean, two different variants of Nic Fit placed in Top 16. What more do you guys want?
But Brainstorm =/= Brainstorm/Ponder/Probe/Preordain...
Here's what I found of old Survival decklists:
Rock Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...gacy%20Archive
G/W Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
Madness Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
Ooze Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
Welder Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...val-2010-10-28
The ONLY list I saw that included Brainstorm is the last example in the WotC article (and looks like 3 copies made it into one UG Madness list).
Edit: Looks like some piles running Counterbalance as well as 3 copies of Survival ran Brainstorm: Balance Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
2nd Edit: This one also has some lists with Brainstorm, but it appears more common that it was not included: Vengevine Survival - http://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php...Legacy Archive
Brainstorm is very, very different from Ponder/Preordain, and significantly more powerful.
1)Brainstorm doesn't just fix your draw, Brainstorm fixes TWO PREVIOUS draws. Like, if you draw a dead card after using Ponder or Preordain, that's it, that draw was wasted. With Brainstorm, you get that draw back later.
2)It's an instant. Making blue use their cantrips on their turn instead of waiting until EoT and then having a choice of doing that or something else is pretty huge.
3)It brutally synergizes with and increases use of fetchlands, which completely eliminate it's one drawback for zero cost.
Banning Brainstorm doesn't stop Blue Cantrip decks, it just lowers their power level, which is really all any of us want. I like the cantrip shell and options, it just needs a power level drop because right now it's so far ahead of the rest of the format that nothing else is even close to as worth doing.
I never said Brainstorm wasn't the best of the cantrips. It clearly is. But many people here want it banned so that Xerox isn't the best thing to be doing, and what I'm saying is that just banning Brainstorm doesn't change that... Xerox is still going to perform better than everything else at large events because it reduces variance.
And what I'm saying is that there's a difference between that being a very strong pillar in the meta, which is what BS ban would do, and it being simple the very best thing possible to do, which is what it is now.
This. Ponder and preordain are both very good card, but they aren't brainstorm. I know it's anecdotal but I was just gold fishing a bit with my deck, and my hand was 4 land brainstorm. I cast brainstorm and I draw goyf, Stoneforge, JVP. I get to put two lands back and then fetch them away and now have 3 powerhouse 2 drops in hand instead. Obviously just a goldfish in my anecdotal story, but if you've ever played with brainstorm you know this isn't an uncommon thing at all. That's something that ponder could never do. You'd still be stranded with lands in hand there. It's a crutch that gets the blue decks to have the ability to get very very greedy in ways that non brainstorm decks don't get to be. And with the efficiency of the format, it gives brainstorm decks better top decks simply on the basis that they get to run 2-3 less lands (or even less than that in the case of stuff like RUG Delver which gets to run like 5-6 less lands than the average non blue deck)
When people talk about how skillful Brainstorm is I always think about situations like this. Deck construction, sequencing and opening hand evaluation are skills too. Brainstorm makes these almost irrelevant. The presence of Delve and similar mechanics like "costs 1 less for instant/sorcery in your GY" just makes it even more irritating because not only do you find the best cards but now this card also makes mana. JVP in your example is another such card.
The payoff for pumping cards into your GY has gone up even since Goyf was dominant. I was testing a GWR deck with Tarmogoyf yesterday and they were basically 1/2s unless my opponent was able to cast instants/sorceries -- and they could be using more of those cards to kill my Goyf or delve away for an Angler and I'm still stuck on small goyfs.
There's a whole ecosystem around the stew right now (also identified in the article you posted in vintage forum) with very few natural predators other than taxing artifacts that are much harder to cast in this format than in vintage. Even if you look at modern you see the dynamic of big mana vs. turbo xerox. The top 5 decks in that format play 16, 17, 18, 24, and 27 lands. There is little space in any format for a deck that wants to play 20-21 lands and efficient spells because it will either get blown out by the huge mana decks or undercut by the decks with better card velocity.
Haha, it takes more skill to play against or without Brainstorm then to play with Brainstorm...
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
A lot of good points about these 1 mana cantrips! Man, if only there was a card that countered all of them as they were cast...
Yes, I am operating on a much higher level than you.
I didn't make a value judgement. I am just stating facts. All non-rotating formats are about Xerox vs. big mana right now. Here is a man with a Ph.D. saying the same thing:
http://themanadrain.com/topic/1360/t...nastery-mentor
The point about Brainstorm emphasizing some play skills over others is also not a value judgement. Just a fact. It is unarguably true that you can keep 5 lands, a Brainstorm and one other card on the play and practically not have to fear anything. (On the draw, Thoughtseize or Chalice become more frightening). Or that you can keep Brainstorm in a one-land hand because you are that much more likely to draw it in your next 4 looks which can happen before your opponent's second land drop. In a different kind of deck, or even in the Brainstorm deck but without the Brainstorm in hand, these hands are essentially mandatory throwbacks.
Power creep + consistency = stagnation because on a long enough timeline getting consistent access to the most powerful cards pushes out opportunities for synergies to shine. The question is whether or not Legacy needs repairing on the axis right now and what should be done, not whether or not that is true.
This is the least-silly part of your post which is why it was the smallest brain (thats how those things work right? shrug)
I don't disagree that playing a Brainstorm deck means you can mulligan less, but generally I think that games being decided by mulligans are lame and therefore I am okay with a card that minimizes the occurrence of mulligans.
In terms of deck construction, if you look in the no-brainstorm threads (e.g. Nic Fit, Pox) you see wildly different lists constantly being suggested that are often different from each other by 20+ cards. If you look in the Canadian '6 flex slots' Threshold thread there is currently a heated discussion over whether Goyf or Hooting Mandrills is better or whether the correct solution is to play some combination of both. Maybe you like the first type of deck for being more 'open' or 'free' or whatever but in either case decisions are being made by players which can certainly decide the results of their matches.
In fact this entire dichotomy is a red herring because how much flexibility you have in deck construction is decided not by Brainstorm's inclusion but by how established the competitive version of the deck is. No-brainstorm decks like Lands or Charbelcher are also largely set in stone.
The idea that Brainstorm (or any cantrip with manipulation) makes sequencing irrelevant makes no sense whatsoever. Knowing the top cards of your library by definition puts more of an emphasis on sequencing because you have more information with which to plan out your actions. Entire articles have been written about the timing for casting Brainstorm. The BS/Cantrip decks often have 1 mana interaction/threats so there is often a decision that needs to be made between cantripping, casting a threat, leaving open mana for interaction (or bluffing it), etc. I'm not trying to say that nonblue decks make 0 decisions, but where is the relative sequencing nuance for a deck like stompy (or Zoo) where in most games you just play out the threats in your hand on curve and call it a day?
You can't complain "there is is little space in any format for a deck that wants to play 20-21 lands and efficient spells" when you obviously have no desire for efficient spells (because all the 1-mana 'Xerox' cards are the most efficient spells out there) and there are DS/Delver decks in Modern and Legacy filled with these efficient spells and only 2 fewer lands than your arbitrary magic number.
You are ignoring this part of my post:
I really don't care all that much about whether or not Brainstorm or Deathrite Shaman is banned, because those cards are now only a component of a massive soup of cards that streamline deck construction to a high degree. The point about sequencing is that the relative power level of an individual card is so high now that there is a much bigger margin for error in the cantrip deck. You are right that more decision = more nuance, but the decisions are much more forgiving now because there is consistent access to high-powered cards. Put another way, it's only getting more obvious which two cards to put back after a Brainstorm, or which of the top 3 you need to draw off a Ponder and which you can shuffle away with the fetch you have up, because individual cards do so much.
Your reference to the Nic Fit/Pox threads is actually very astute. The reason there is so much discussion is because the low inherent consistency AND lower power level of those decks makes every card choice crucial. Getting a T1 chalice on 1 and riding it all the way isn't the most consistent play, but it is much more likely to succeed because of its high power level -- it creates way more virtual card advantage than something like a Thoughtseize or even a Hymn/Smallpox, especially as more efficient spells are printed.
Perhaps my reference to skill wasn't ideally worded, but my point was more that, even the argument that Brainstorm/cantrips reward skill is being diluted by the power level of everything else. That's due to raw power in some cases and cantrip synergy (like mentor/YP/delve so that you can't really go all that wrong in casting one) in others.
1. Ban Brainstorm/DRS
2. Non-blue/GY combo dominate = more bitchin
3. Ban all enablers
4. Aggro becomes rampant = bitchin never stops
5. Wild Nacatl is banned
6. Welcome to Modern
Your oversimplification is just hilarious, I can easily constuct likely scenarios where you loose with all these hands. I would argue all those mulligan decisions are actually much more difficult than your "Do I have Lands and Spells?"-Deck, because ou have to evaluate porbabiltys of what cards you cantrips might give you and so on.
Arguing that non-brainstorm decks are harder to play is just a joke. They might be worse, okay, and therefor it's harder to win, but harder to play? Come on, I can't even believe somebody actually believes this. More options always make decisions harder, cantrips give you a lot of decisions. But yeah, non-brainstorm decks are obviously harder#burn
Without having incredibly powerful cantrips to bail you out each decision you make is magnified because you don't have an easy ability to simply go find more removal or another wasteland. You may have less options (sometimes), but each decision you make has a greater impact on the game. Also just because you don't have brainstorm doesn't mean you have less options. Look at maverick. Two different tool boxes built into the deck makes for many intricate lines of play that result in a lot of different decisions to be made, and with many activated abilities you must also learn the art of perfect timing.
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