Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I feel banning DRS would splitGrixis Delver back to some amount of RUG (Goyf), BUG (Goyf/Abrupt Decay), and Grixis Delver (Therapy/Young Pyro) decks spawning. I imagine a mix of Mongoose, Goyf, maybe Mandrils would come out to play. But certainly the rest of the non-Blue stew decks with DRS would take a hit - Slow Depths, Dark Maverick, Elves a little bit, Jund, etc.
Pile decks likely drop a splash or die out completely, but I imagine would reform to center around True Name, Angler, and Jace.
I doubt the overall meta share of Delver drops considerably.
I own set of mW since 2002 and still playing it, now stax is an aggro deck, it is the so called evolution.
It's funny how you don't see that in vintage to stop a shell they restrict: COTV \ GOLEM \ Thorn \ Trinisphere
apply the same to legacy blue shell. Brasinstorm banned \ probe banned \ ponder banned
Now it sounds different to You?
Is what Wizzard do. Ban dominating shell. Next step is banning BS + DRS. Or mantain a stagnant meta with 12 deck on 16 playing the same pillar cards.
The obvious flaw with this position (suggesting that current turn 1 options in legacy are comparable to Ancestral Recall, REALLY?) is that if I Force of Will your turn 1 Charbelcher / Chalice / Exhume the chance of me winning the game goes up by a lot (either because you committed multiple resources into Charbelcher/Reanimate, or because the rest of your deck is full of shit cards because you were banking on resolving chalice)
If you just go Fetch, Dual, Recall, and I Force that, then your 1-mana Concentrate only got downgraded into 1-mana Mind Rot
As a Lands player (mostly RGu - the "toolbox" version), these are different.
For one, their Wasteland encourages making a token on my turn, but the other deck's Jace encourages EOT Marit Lage.
Beyond that, there are other differences. For instance, mana denial is better vs Delver, where the Chasm lock is better vs Czech. I like to bait Daze vs Delver on the draw (Mox gets Dazed, I play Tabernacle (or Land-CR-Tabernacle).
There are other differences, but the decks are similar and so are the matches. It's nothing like the differences I experience playing, eg, ANT and Miracles.
For me this is true regardless of what my first two matches are. If I play Burn and then Elves I want a different deck next.
I didn't mind Miracles' high numbers because it played nothing like any other deck (particularly the builds w/o Mentor). If we had had other classic UW control decks at the time, I would not have liked seeing Miracles do so well. So I get where you are coming from.
I agree 100% that decks with the same "engine" are similar tactically even when they are polar opposites strategically. This doesn't hold universally, though. eg, Miracles likes to use Cantrip to fix there top deck, while Storm uses it to chain spells together (these are tactical plays).
Personally I am far more interested in strategy (and strategic diversity) than in tactics.
I would argue that Grixis Delver losing DRS (or switching to Thresh/Prowess) is just as much of a "hit" as Slow Depths switching to fast Depths. Probably more of a hit.
Last edited by Crimhead; 05-15-2018 at 08:36 PM.
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I agree with a lot of this. They are of course different as people have argued so you play differently against them. However they are not nearly as different as say either is compared to a thalia deck (similarly dnt and maverick are much closer to each other than either to grixis delver). If you play drs blue stew at least every other round on average (which is where we are atm) it becomes boring to many.
For me the two are the same and headed into round 3 I'd want to face something different.
If I probe on turn one and see:
Brainstorm, ponder, bolt, DRS, force, fetch and a sea
I still don't really know what I'm playing against. Sure they are different because of waste and daze so I don't know if I should fetch a basic or whatever, but the 80%+ overlap doesn't make it feel very different to me, because the cards are all the same for the most part.
Is straight up just ignoring cantrips ( if you're not playing them yourself) a viable strategy at all outside of fast combo? I guess that's the strategy of elves/ depths, but every other "fair" deck either actively hates on cantrips or plays them. And that's even if you consider elves or depths to be "fair". I think it's just an indictment of the format that you either play cantrips, hate on them, or ignore them by winning quickly. It reduces a lot of fair deck building options when you basically have to play chalice or a thorn style effect to be competitive.
I think this is your problem. You refuse to see that Brainstorm is keeping a lot of beautiful decks (not only dark maverick) down because Brainstorm is just so much more powerful than what those decks try to achieve with almost 0 opportunity cost (you only need to play a certain amount of fetches which you will do anyway to be able to splash into other good stuff). Lots of brewers have actually given up because no matter what they try it's just better to play Brainstorm.
Ban DRS and the meta just shifts into another Brainstorm deck. My guess is the redesigned Miracles lists. People will start to complain about the next non-blue victim at that point, I guess Terminus? Will that moves us to some StoneBlade list? Let's ban Stoneforge at that time...
Well, I think you are really mis-evaluating the power of Brainstorm, it's not just a good card, combined with fetches it basically is an Ancestral.
But anyway this whole point of the discussion is completely moot, Wizards has come out and admitted that Brainstorm should be banned but never will be because of pillar of the format shit. You can keep arguing it's perfectly healthy but even Wizards disagrees, they just can't be bothered to do something about it.
Stop a shell? Shops is cleary the best deck in Vintage since like forever isn't it? Maybe with the brief exeption when 4 Mentor were legal. Doent look like stopping to me.
I am comparing the status of Workshop to Brainstorm, and you tell me because payoff cards get restricted they should ban brainstorms? Thats just not good logic. Legacy banned blue payoffcard in the form of TC and DTT so I think the situation is really comparable to the restriction of the lock pieces you named.
Btw I was always an advocate of banning probe, majority of the people here thought is was fine though. Ponder ban would not do much, since Preordain just straight up takes its place. Ponder+Preodain ban is what I would do before touching BS.
There will always be tier-2 decks kept down by the tier-1 decks. That was as true during "Maverick Summer" as it is today. We can't ban cards because the top decks are holding back the fringe decks! That's an endless cycle.
There will likely always be a "best deck" (even if they ban BS). Doesn't mean we will need a ban - that's only the case if the best deck (+ similar decks) are overrunning the meta! Right now it looks like we might be going that way
I guess you've never played a Storm deck?
I used to play High Tide. Don't tell me BS even comes close to recall.
Edit - what kind of world do you live in where you always have 2 useless cards after drawing off BS? Quite often you end up putting good cards on top and waiting to draw them.
This should be the MTG version of Godwin's Law.
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I am not sure why is there any discussion about the ban of brainstorm, as it has been state by Aaron that its ban will never happen.
You can like or dislike the card, but move along, you have to deal with it forever.
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People calling BS "like Ancestral" should really just play with and against Ancestral instead of Brainstorm. Then delete your lies and apologize*.
*reference to some old drama involving Swindlemelonzz (HoN & Dota2 player)
This is more blowing hot air than anything.
Well, they never said that. They said They "are currently taking a break from one-mana accelerators in Standard". We knew they will come back.
I mean, this won't happen. Theorical or not, nobody is foolish enough to think that BS is right in term of power level. But still, the card will be here.
We should juste take that in note and focus on another(s) problematic card(s).
Duress your FOW, good luck with Ancestral What, you Brainstorm
Not suggesting Brainstorm is better, but it is clearly a broken card when the drawback is mitigated. No other cards give you 3 fresh cards at 1 mana without card disadvantage. Wake me up when there is a Looting that draw 3 and discard 2. Did I mention the instant speed of Brainstorm?
So you found 1 situation where BS is marginally betten maybe. The comparision is still a joke and hyperbolic bullshit.
Some small number of BS feel like Recall in the right conditions. But only for 1-2 Turns. Recall is allways Recall.
You can suggest any UX on UX MU where I get to swap my Braintroms for Recalls and you have to keep your BS. You really think you would have a decent shot at winning?
I suppose you could just replace it with another land for a similar point, but the lightning bolt would make me lean towards grixis and fetch basics, because Czech really only plays one or so. If you replace the DRS, too it could be UB reanimator or ANT as well, but I think this further detracts from the point you're trying to make: if all of these shells demand wildly different responses, even if a curated probe hand looks similar, doesn't that lend credence to the notion that brainstorm improves diversity, rather than stifling it? Sure, some of the cards are the same, but the games are not.
What fair deck do you want to play, but can't, because of the cantrips?
Ok, long post, can't write short posts.
So, a card is played in a couple of different t1-t1.5 decks, using different strategies, and you think this indicates that it is good for format diversity? Could you not imagine a situation where more than a handful of decks using these different strategies would be considered competitive? I can imagine it, and it is easy [edit: it may not be so easy to achieve, but it is easy to imagine and something very positive to strive for], to the level that I find it hard to understand why so many people can't. More on this topic of imagination in a second.
When you observe which decks are successful in legacy, it often seems apparent that they consist of the decks that fight or use Brainstorm (with a very small amount of exceptions based on very strong synergies or super redundancy, but this can be discussed too) to the level that decks that fight the decks that fight Brainstorm are becoming relevant decks. Which is in itself a good thing... But it is still an indication of the polarization of the format into what seems to be a narrow set of relevant options. I think people who never try to build, and test, successful new decks (not using Brainstorm) won't notice. These are perhaps the same people that would argue that Brainstorm helps create format diversity. Although, like I've written before, we would need to try the format without Brainstorm to know for sure. Which I am considering, it could be fun and provide some relevant input on a difficult discussion.
Furthermore, the argument can be presented that if a deck cantrips into threat + removal to take care of your threat and to present more threats than you and wins by doing that, it is perhaps not so important if it's the Delver of Secrets or Baleful Strix that kills you and if it's Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolt that destroys your threat. It's the cantrip into cantrip into cantrip that killed you, effectively. This is surely another argument with flaws [edit: and it has been presented many times, but not very convincingly it would appear] but I'll not write excessively on it right now, hopefully the idea of what can be perceived as monotonous is clear. However [edit: sorry if I get repetitive here, I've been rewriting this post too many times, pre posting], I get the idea that everyone who compliments Brainstorm for the positive effect it has on format diversity has low expectations on format diversity. Maybe these are people who like to focus on a single successful deck and change 2-3 cards for their meta? Just guessing. Would be interesting to hear if someone who likes Brainstorm for the diversity it generates has tried to build 3-4 non-Brainstorm / non-Chalice decks over the last 24 months or so?
On a related topic, I really hope we get the following creature printed soon: cost WG, power 2, toughness 2, shroud, each player can only draw 1 card each turn. With such a creature it would be very easy to summon a card that in a relevant way (doesn't die to Lightning Bolt) punishes excessive cantripping. Players can still cantrip all they want, it will just be possible and effective to interact with it. And we would need more such options. Just speculating, of course..
Have you visited the Established Decks and New and Developmental Decks sections here? There are probably thousands of decks, and one can imagine how a more allowing meta would lead to more innovation rather than a status quo.
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