Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Musings from a lunch break...
When you observe that the list provided can play 33 cards using an island, a swamp and some number of mountains the argument becomes weak. Just bringing in the two Blood Moons will probably bring that number up to 35 playable cards and probably other cards that are uncastable off of the two basics will be boarded out too, further increasing the amount of spells castable. So the argument that a four-color deck should not be able to sideboard Blood Moon themselves seems wrong. The relevant question is not how many colors the deck is playing, but how many of their spells are using these extra colors. (You could also argue that the problem lies in the fetch lands, i.e. how running about 10 fetch-lands gives you consistent access to 1-2 basic lands in your deck. But no one really minds the fetch lands.)
When it comes to opposing decks using Blood Moon to combat such a deck, that is a different, separate, story (which is what the original discussion from Lemnear was about, I notice).
I have some objections to this, although I like this way of reasoning (practically). First thing, Brainstorm is very hard to replace because it is the only card that lets you mulligan effectively midgame. I'm referring to the ability to undraw dead cards from your hand and replace them with other relevant cards, which is what makes Brainstorm fundamentally broken, far more broken than Deathrite Shaman. Midgame semi-mulligan with no drawback? Oh yeah I just want to mulligan the bad cards and keep the good ones. You're welcome! Scroll Rack is the only other option I can think of, and it comes with guaranteed card disadvantage and at triple the mana cost (very inefficient). I understand that many players love this effect, and that it may be good for the format to keep it, but let's not misrepresent what it is. Edit: you have a point in a DS ban forcing bigger adjustments though. But I'm not sure that is actually an argument pro banning it; a card being functionally unique can be very good for the game, which I think DS is. It's simply not DS's fault that blue decks have been DTB for eternity, and still are.
The other issue I have is with the description of a general weakening of the blue shell as a bad way to punish fair decks. The weakening of the blue shell, in general, is what could potentially allow more decks to be viable, viable as in relevant to play as a competitive choice from other people than stubborn innovators and the people emotionally attached to some strategy (I count myself in both these later two groups). Edit: I need to clarify this. You say that a ban hits half or more of the best archetypes with a change that they can easily make (Brainstorm replaced by Preordain). Well, hitting the best archetypes with a change that makes them slightly worse, not irrelevant or bad, is exactly what you would wish to do in order to accomplish a more diverse meta. I just don't understand what part is bad about hurting the best decks a little bit.
My argument was, that DRS+BlueShell is pretty resiliant to nonbasic hate like Wasteland/Bloodmoon/etc, to the point of running these itself, which you called a lie and doubled down by claiming the decks lose hard to nonbasic hate, despite there being no metagame data to support your point, as DRS+BlueShell is drastically outperforming all these so-called "predators".
Presented a pioneer, trial winning list as proof of my claim that 4c pile IN FACT CAN easily adapt and succeed with Bloodmoon, you suddenly no longer want to talk about the original topic. How convenient.
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Yeah, my question really was sincere. The ensuing specifics have filled me in, but I had not been aware of the acute annoyance with DRS. DnT players tend to face all of the cantrip decks in a very similar fashion, so we have always felt the format was inbred. This degree of corralling is new though. Something to think about, so thanks.
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I really really REALLY hate to be the guy who takes the argument full circle, but if no one else is gonna do it I will.
Saying "it enables multiple strategies" is an argument for the legality of any non-specific engine. Necropotence can enable multiple strategies. Does it deserve to be unbanned?
Necro would enable degenerate combo that's not Reanimator (since you exile your discards) or Storm in its current form (since you don't get the cards until your eot, are prevented from going to 8 on your turn and without Quicken you can't go off at instant speed) only. Turn 3 Necro out of anything remotely fair would just get Dazed or discarded beforehand, and if your opponent needles it after taking your business and/or way to get rid of your own Necro away you just lose instantly. The best shell for it would probably be something like Oops with 4 Pact of Negations.
But that's the thing. There's always going to be a best shell for every card. A page or two back someone pointed out that the last GP every Brainstorm deck in the top 8 was also a Deathrite deck. If this isn't a fluke than we can assume that the best deck for Brainstorm is a supporting cast of cantrips, Deathrite Shaman and the best low-cmc value cards you can find.
Hell those value decks might even give it a spin, has to be easier to achieve than , right? It even trumps your opponent's Leovold. Of course there's the issue of protecting your hand until turn 3 (less blue cards for FoW), but fair decks losing their haymaker to discard or countermagic has been a fact of life for years. EDIT: Adding to this, some people have been in all sincerity calling for the ban of a beater for over a year. Others blame a 3 mana white token generator for warping the format. 3 CMC sorcery-speed spells are definitely playable in fair decks.
Assuming we ban DRS, not really? You can cast Leovold off your two basics+a dual of your choice, three basics if you're playing some funky BUG pile, whereas triple black either requires that you play 4 Dark Rituals and 4 Lotus Petals/Cabal Rituals, after which the rest of the a+b kill my opponent asap yee haww.dec builds itself, or enough basic Swamps so you can resolve the damn thing through Wasteland at which point you're basically not playing Grixis(+green) anymore.
With respect, the same argument made about Necro here can be made about Recall as well. But people see red when you mention recall and state 'Your obviously trolling'.
But here's the rub, just about every single argument you use to defend Brainstorm being legal I could make to argue that Recall should be. It would support "A wide range of strategies", it would "Not really be homogeneous in 70% of the format because it goes in combo and Midrange" and it "Would offer fun and interesting play" for those who like it. In fact, since you can't hide your hand like you can with Brainstorm it would be worse in some situations.
For the record, I don't think either should be legal, nor am I seeking to argue a point only reinforce another's point. But yea, the arguments can be made just the same way, but I am sure we can agree the format is better off without Recall. Even if everyone got a play set for free upon unbanning.
Can we admit that Brainstorm is the loveable drunk uncle in the family at this point? I mean, nobody invites him, he's always just *there*. We all walk on eggshells while he rants about millennials, drinks the PBR we brought, then slips us $10 when mom isn't looking.
Brainstorm Realist
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The switch Recall out for Gush. Another broken Blue effect. The point stands. I can argue till I'm blue about why it should be legal with much the same defence, does not mean it should be done.
No, the point changed. Gush is an interesting card to play for sure on top of being overpowered, Recall is just overpowered simpliciter.
Agreed, now we can get back to the topic of "how to make the best eternal format possible given Brainstorm will always be legal", not "how to get Knight of Reliquary to win a Legacy GP".does not mean it should be done
Not everyone feels that way, it’s just that the ‘ban brainstorm brigade’ are much more vocal about it.
I believe Brainstorm is part of what’s keeping the format together. It’s an enabler for FoW shells than keep the hideously broken combo decks in check. Sure you can argue that if BS were gone these blue shells would just play Ponder/Preordain etc, but that’s pretty basic thinking honestly. It’s not just a xerox shell + fows, Brainstorm is that much better than the other cantrips that it’s keeping the fair decks viable (and better than combo decks currently, granted), but Brainstorm is still enabling combo too. Do you think Ponder and Preordain are enough to fight things like Depths and BR Reanimator from blue decks? I’d love to see what the format would look like 6-12 months after a Brainstorm ban, and I’d put money on it not being pretty.
The Legacy metagame has a fragile ecosystem, just look at what happened with the SDT banning, I think a majority of people believe the format is in worse shape now because of it? The notion of banning DRS pre Top ban was laughable, so much so that this article was torn to shreds, but in the wake of the ban we can see some truth to it. The implications of banning Brainstorm are massive, I don’t think anyone really has any idea what would happen (myself included), and I don’t want to know.
My point was not about the cards themselves but the arguments used. The point stands no matter what broken card you insert into the debate. Apologists for broken cards make excuses that look foolish when you put them next to other broken cards, but only seam reasonable when you set them next to fuck ups we have long accepted and overlook.
It's the only way shit like Workshop stays unrestricted when it obviously should be or Gush becomes restricted when it should not have been. (For the record I play Shops, I like that I can play it, but I'm not going to say it's not stupid that I get 4 permanent Lotus in my deck.)
This is an opinion without any facts supporting it. Is like: "this is the best possible world". It is not.
Vintage t1 is still together with 1 brainstorm, and lot of fanboys were crying about the end of t1 with banning brainstorm.
brainstorm is broken: Check it, in GP Birmingham 12 deck in top 16 was playing brainstorm and 11 of those 12 plays DRS too. Other decks were Combo or COTV Deck.
less diversity -> less fun
today decks are: DRS + Brainstorm and blue shell + Finishers / COTV DECK / HIgh speed Combo.
is it fun? i don't think so.
I agree with you but you can't just claim less diversity is objectively less fun. There's a lot of people who play legacy who would have no issue with every deck running 4 brainstorm 4 ponder 4 fow. Chess has 0 "deck" diversity but it's still a fun game due to the in play choices.
I remember how the format was in a chockehold of chalice/workshop/lodestone for years after the Vintage Apocalypse. Don't tell me the format was fine and diverse.
Of course it is overpowered. Of course it's was a candidate for being removed years and years again.
Two things still get swept under the rug too often: BS, compared to DRS, isn't locking you into BUG colors and removing BS isn't breaking the cantrip shells dominance over the format, it just removes a few decks and conditional cards from being playable, potentially narrowing the format further in the long run.
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