Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Anybody else noticed that Deathrite/Young Pyro multicolor piles are putting up more, and more consistent, results than utterly unbeatably crushingly format-stranglingly ban-worthy Miracles ever did?
Anybody else still laughing at the suggestion that something from that shell needs to go, and it's probably Deathrite?
I actually couldn't find anything explicitly saying what is allowed and what is not. The only thing I found is that both players need to agree on the method for selecting who gets to choose if they are on the play/draw first.
I will boycott any store that does not allow me to use voodoo as a way of determining who is on the play and who is on the draw.
I made the argument, back before the Top ban, that it would be a dangerous precedent because Miracles averaged a little over one pilot making top 8 per event in the TC Decks database. People will of course say now that the Top ban was mostly about pace of play and had very little to do with nerfing Miracles, but we all know that they wanted Miracles nerfed with a ban, and at the time talked explicitly about wanting a ban (and which card to ban) to nerf Miracles rather than for pace of play.
So, we've got a precedent: consistently put up 1+ copy in top 8 per recorded event, that's ban-worthy. And the correct card to ban would be Deathrite Shaman (it would considerably weaken the top deck of the format, and open up new avenues of attack against its greedy mana base).
Shall I get the traffic sign to put outside Wizards HQ, or shall you?
You are suggesting to chop the Hydras head like people did in the past with Brainstorm to "nerf the Fetch/Cantrip shell". DRS is a symptom just like Brainstorm is and Treasure Cruise was. All we witness is that DRS has become pretty much a no-brainer for deck construction.
www.theepicstorm.com - Your Source for The Epic Storm - Articles, Reports, Decktech and more!
Join us at Facebook!
I personally have a really hard time constructing Lands without a four of DRS. My decks is so much stronger when I cut out the Exploration for that OP card. Pity that Lands is so weak that it never does well without it.
Edit.
I hate DRS. I would have a lot more fun without it eating my Loams. But I feel like at some point if we are going to ban something out of Legacy it should be the root cause of the formats homogeneity. This is not Vintage where Shop gets a pass as a pillar while everything else gets restricted. This is Legacy. Top didn't need a ban, something else did but we all know that's not going to happen.
DRS might be next, but it and Top never had to be.
There is a non-rotating format where part of the philosophy is to keep banning blue cantrips until Opt looks like a good card. Of course, Deathrite got banned there already on power level, which doesn't bode well for where you seem to be going.
At this point Brainstorm is the Workshop of Legacy. People can agitate as much as they want, but it's never ever going to get banned and complaining about it is a waste of time. And the "Fetch/Cantrip shell" as another reply called it is never going to get a Modern-style nuking, which is good since the cost of doing that to the format would be a Modern-style banlist that the typical complainer's pet deck would not survive.
Meanwhile, Deathrite is and has been for some time clearly in need of ban by the Miracles precedent.
The probability of Brainstorm being banned in Legacy is zero. And it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the card's power level; like Workshop in Vintage, Wizards seems to've decided never to touch it no matter what. But as a result, any argument which begins with "X can't be banned until Brainstorm is" is identical to "no card can ever be banned in Legacy ever again". If that's the argument you want to make, feel free to make it. But we all know Wizards is not going to ban Brainstorm, and so the endless "WHAR BRAINSTORM BAN WHAR" non sequiturs aren't particularly useful.
Meanwhile, by the precedent set with Top, Deathrite still needs to go.
If the most impactful, most broken, most represented, and most SKILL INTENSIVE cards to ban (Brainstorm/Ponder/GitGudProbe) are off the ban table for arbitrary reasons...why is banning Deathrite, a relative nonentity (doesn't even have Awesome! 3/10 would not bang...I mean play), necessitated? So some SCG Pros have more grist for the article mill? So we can pretend the format is super open for all of a week before the same decks inevitably rise to the top?
If we're just gonna ban shit for funsies, with no regards to data or metagame share, and adhere to some sort of "pillars of the format" ban jurisprudence, can we axe True Ape, Leotard, Griselchimp, and Derper of Secrets first?
Basically: we know WotC's never going to ban Brainstorm. You don't have to like it, but you probably do have to live with it. If that leads you to the conclusion that no other ban can ever be justified, then it leads you to that conclusion. But if you want to talk about how to make the format as good as possible within the constraint of "we know WotC will never ban Brainstorm", then all the "Brainstorm is way worse than card X, so card X shouldn't be banned" stuff is just pointless.
What do you think is going to happen with a DRS ban? The format is still going to be dominated by blue decks with the occasional lands/dnt, etc. Pretty much the same format now, maybe RUG delver becomes the go to over grixis, blue midrange decks don't play 100 colours, etc, but I don't think a DRS ban changes the format as much as you think it does (Unless you really hate Jund and want to see it gutted even more, then cool I guess).
Also asking for a ban on a card that sees 36%~ play vs a card that sees 56%~ play seems silly even if brainstorm is 'untouchable'. (Though I'm using online data so I don't know how accurate that is, I'd still argue brainstorm sees a -lot- more play than shaman).
I'm well aware, and I'm also aware I'm beating something close to the texture of red mist at this point. Doesn't stop the idea of banning DRS from being amusingly depressing.
Top was the card that had to go, only because the card that really had to go was untouchable. So we lost Painter, Nic Fit lost some consistency, 12 post died and what not because of the second best option being hit. "Let's not hit Necro, let's hit everything else and hope that solves the issue."
DRS is a shit of a card. Just from my personal perspective. It's a main deck answer to most of what I'm trying to achieve. Loam eaten, Lands eaten, Punishing Fire having to sit and wait for a second Grove. I hate the card. But it's more a hate piece in my view strapped onto a piece of acceleration and I feel the format is better off having the hate DRS brings in the main than we are without it.
To be fair I find that having DRS in the main accompanied by things like surgical postboard against lands/dredge/etc. is a lot more interactive and fun of a match than getting dumpstered game 1 with no graveyard interaction then having a bunch of Leyline of the Void type cards post board and hope to draw them.
I think the issue we're seeing right now with Deathrite is the mana-producing ability, honestly. It's not just that it smooths out a normal game for a three- or four-color deck, it's that it's a repeatable nonland fixer good enough to play maindeck in a lot of decks. Legacy is heavily dependent on the ability to punish greedy mana bases, whether with Wasteland or Blood Moon or more exotic stuff, but Deathrite blunts that and makes it much harder to attack the mana. Which in turn makes 3+ color goodstuff decks like Grixis Delver/Czech Pile/etc. much better and much more consistent/resilient than they'd otherwise be, since now you need not just your nonbasic hate but also a way to pick off the Deathrites in order to make the nonbasic hate actually stick.
Also I really think Miracles -- if it needed a nerf, and again I'll point out its results were not as good as what Grixis has put up since the ban -- should've been nerfed by banning Terminus. It's the card no other deck really plays, and the extra boost in ability to quickly stabilize a game and proceed to lock/Mentor/Jace/whatever was a big part of what made Miracles as good as it was.
I dunno, I think it's just silly to insist on metagame representation as criteria for a ban except in the case of the cantrip cartel. Some subjective notion of fun or format "pillarness" saves Brainstorm and pals but spares not the Deathrite. Using empirical observations to argue for anything besides Brainstorm is almost farcical at this point, and I don't think that there is a significantly stronger subjective argument for giving Deathrite the axe over a dozen or more other cards in the name of making the format more fun.
Personally, if we're not banning the cantrips, whatever, but at least get rid of a couple of stupid Blue creatures and see what happens. Imagine a format without Derper or True Ape...it's easy if you try. Not fully serious, mind you, but there's as strong a rationale for this move as much as booting DRS.
This is basically why I have a begrudging respect for DRS. Yes, it shits on a couple of my pet strategies, but I those decks aren't fair, and DRS is a creature with summoning sickness that dies to practically every removal spell in Legacy. If that's too powerful for Legacy, but Skill&Tell into Griseldumb is okay or any sort of LED shenanigans are okay, welp, I don't get the format anymore.
Your option is, as I've suggested previously, to play Modern. Brainstorm has never been legal there and never will be, and the rest of the "cantrip cartel" is on the banned list. I wish you luck in that format.
If you want to talk about Legacy, though, sooner or later you have to acknowledge that there simply is no point to bringing up Brainstorm. We know it's legal, we know there are people who believe with fiery passion that it should be banned, and we know Wizards will never ban it. So what's the point of endless non sequiturs about Brainstorm? Why keep derailing discussion of whether there's something that can be done to improve the format within the constraints we know Wizards is imposing on it? Folks who do this are basically just Cato the Elder at this point, throwing random "BRAINSTORM DELENDA EST" interjections into every conversation.
I think it's wholly silly unless we are talking about a single archetype (or perhaps 2 archetypes with an almost identical style, eg, UR & URW Delver decks in the TC era).
Right now we don't have that. "Deathrite/Young Pyro multicolour piles" are not a single archetype or play-style. Grixis Delver is a tempo deck, while Czech is a very Grundy midrange/control deck. Not the same at all.
The "Cantril Cartel" (are we still saying that in 2018?) is a collective of distinct tempo, midrange, control, aggregate combo, and 2-card combo decks; none of which approach the meta share once hogged by Miracles (which was 15-20% BTW, more than 1/8).
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
There are currently 386 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 386 guests)