Would you quit Legacy if Brainstorm was banned?

[DragoFireheart]

As long as spells cost mana, land will have a "stranglehold" on the game. It's pretty much that.

Lands are so oppressive towards my Burn deck, always enslaving me to tap them for Lightning Bolts.

[Megadeus]

Lands are so oppressive towards my Burn deck, always enslaving me to tap them for Lightning Bolts.

But they make your Price of Progress so good!

[Dzra]

I wish people would stop pretending Brainstorm is a skill intensive card; it's the exact opposite.

Brainstorm can be thought to operate on efficiency. If I play my Brainstorm perfectly, it's operating at 100% efficiency. On average, I'm forced to cast it early or simply don't have the correct setup to maximize Brainstorm. In these cases, Brainstorm is operating at a much lower efficiency. When Brainstorm is being used close to its potential then it is extremely powerful. The less efficient my Brainstorm, the less powerful it is. This likely seems very intuitive.

The key is that for a card like Brainstorm to be playable, its maximum efficiency has to be very, very good. In other words, if Brainstorm was only "decent" or "good" when operating under maximum efficiency then it would likely be unplayable. Brainstorm is a "swingy" card, except its swing can be mitigated by format knowledge and skill. Skilled players can try to leech out every bit of efficiency from their Brainstorms, making it a good card with more consistency.

It's no wonder that players who'd fancy themselves as skilled (as well as actually skilled players) are attracted to Brainstorm. Skilled players playing Brainstorm means more people winning with Brainstorm. More people in general playing with Brainstorm means more people winning with Brainstorm.

Spirit of the Labyrinth:Brainstorm::Skylasher:Delver of Secrets

Skylasher is actually a pretty solid card and might even be playable if there was actually a decent home for it. Spirit of the Labyrinth has a good home already. The unfortunate thing for Spirit is that it is greatly hurt by the presence of TNN, both because TNN-hate has fallout for Spirit (and DnT in general) and because TNN itself is excellent against non-evasive groundpounders like Spirit.

If blue is required to perform well (as the GP data clearly shows - the higher the standing, the higher the Brainstorm percentage gets), then it certainly is a good reason to be banned.

Why does this follow? Blue can be the most powerful color in Legacy (if played correctly) and Blue is unquestioningly the dominant color in Legacy. Why does it follow that 1. This is even a bad thing or 2. That this is so bad that it requires a Brainstorm banning? Deciding if a card is ban worthy because of its color is rather arbitrary.

More GSZ's, red looting where the discard is part of the effect, not the cost so you can use it to grab a card to an empty hand. In that vein seeing Survival gone was sad because it was another great nonblue card selection spell, and required a heavy green commitment.

Many Legacy players would love to see better cards printed in other colors, particularly ones that gave them color-flavored ways of gaining card selection. GSZ, Bob, etc. I'd love to see Survival come back and I'd love to see better looting effects (Faithless Looting was close but it should have cantripped rather than been CD).

There is no reason to believe that blue's ongoing and ever-increasing dominance over the format would be significantly checked by the banning of any single other card rather than Brainstorm, so if you think a format where the metagame is entirely blue-based into perpetuity is bad, you should be advocating either a banning of Brainstorm or a comprehensive banning of a number of problematic blue cards, probably something like Delver, TNN, SnT at a minimum.

Two things to take from this:

1. I wouldn't necessarily say that a Blue-dominant format is a bad thing simply because we arbitrarily decide that the color pie should be equalized.

2. Likely it is correct that no single banning would end Blue's dominance. New printings rather than bans of any type will likely be the best solution.

[FieryBalrog]

Yes, I like to play formats where all powerful decks don't revolve around a single color.

No, your mediocre pet deck is not a powerful deck.

. I wouldn't necessarily say that a Blue-dominant format is a bad thing simply because we arbitrarily decide that the color pie should be equalized.

A basic tenet of good game design is to not have the supposedly symmetrical design of your game turn out to be completely and laughably lopsided in reality.

I'd rather play Brood War than Warcraft 2 Orcs & Humans any day, because no matter how skill intensive bloodlust mirror matches are, it's fucking boring.

[Megadeus]

If looting said, draw 3 discard 2 with no flashback, would it have been bonkers?

[ahg113]

You are never going to usurp blue as the main color. The fundamental building block of the game is the card. Use it to make a spell. What does blue do? Draws cards, controls spells. As long as a deck is made up of a pile of cards, and as long as those cards pass through the stack, blue is the best color. There is no getting around that. The Boon cycle is the clearest example of what each color does, and fairly well sets the tone of all Magic to follow, for better or worse.

If you want to complain about Brainstorm as a single card, fine, sure. But if the argument is that it is the lynchpin to blue's stranglehold on the color pie, nope. The list of cards to rise and take it's place is too long. And then you start talking about banning blue as a color. If that's your argument, fine, let's talk about that. But be clear about it.

As long as spells cost mana, land will have a "stranglehold" on the game. It's pretty much that.

There are niche arguements to be made to counter that thought process. Spells with alternative casting costs, phyrexian mana, uncounterable spells, split second, dredge type effects, etc.

The problem is Brainstorm for a list of articulated reasons IBA and Ghezen have supplied.

Along with Brainstorm, a culprit cause for blue dominance is the move into aggro territory. What historically has been a slow fatty flier color (Air Elemental, Mahamoti Djinn, has been replaced with sleek newness (Delver of Secrets > Flying Men, True-Name Nemesis > Daring Apprentice, and to a smaller extent Snapcaster Mage > Voidmage Prodigy) that warps the game.

[Dzra]

If looting said, draw 3 discard 2 with no flashback, would it have been bonkers?

No.
Hell, make it say Draw 3, Discard 2 and still have a Flashback. Perhaps up the Flashback to or make it . Now we're talking.

[ahg113]

Skylasher is actually a pretty solid card and might even be playable if there was actually a decent home for it. Spirit of the Labyrinth has a good home already. The unfortunate thing for Spirit is that it is greatly hurt by the presence of TNN, both because TNN-hate has fallout for Spirit (and DnT in general) and because TNN itself is excellent against non-evasive groundpounders like Spirit.

1. You talk around Skylasher being solid if there were a home for it. But there isn't a home, and if good players gravitate toward good cards to increase their chances of winning, the card would be getting played, correct?

2. We need to ban TNN to make SoL better? Then SoL will fight cantrip/draw effects more efficiently? Assuming MtG R&D knew about TNN while they were developing SoL, they could've printed SoL with 2 toughness, so it wouldn't die to the same -1/-1 effects that kill TNN, but they didn't, and Bob's your uncle.

[Barook]

If looting said, draw 3 discard 2 with no flashback, would it have been bonkers?

In the wake of this discussion, I actually had the same thought.

Can't pitch to FoW, but gets rid of chaff without fetchlands and fuels GY strategies.

And yes, I do believe it would be bonkers. And the sad part is that blue decks would pick it up. Just imagine RUG Delver or combo decks running red powered by this - the horror!

[Dzra]

What historically has been a slow fatty flier color has been replaced with sleek newness (Delver of Secrets True Name-Nemisis).

I can get behind this. I think TNN was a colossal mistake in terms of the meta, as well from a design perspective. Delver was almost close to as bad for the meta. None of this makes me think the format would be better without Brainstorm, however.

1. You talk around Skylasher being solid if there were a home for it. But there isn't a home, and if good players gravitate toward good cards to increase their chances of winning, the card would be getting played, correct?

Some cards are good enough or unique enough that entire strategies can be built around them. Skylasher is good, but it is not that good. If a deck already existed then it is probably good enough to slide right in, but it is not impactful enough to create a whole new deck around it.

2. We need to ban TNN to make SoL better? Then SoL will fight cantrip/draw effects more efficiently? Assuming MtG R&D knew about TNN while they were developing SoL, they could've printed SoL with 2 toughness, so it wouldn't die to the same -1/-1 effects that kill TNN, but they didn't, and Bob's your uncle.

TNN was a mistake, but don't blame me. I'm just telling it as I see it.

And the sad part is that blue decks would pick it up. Just imagine RUG Delver or combo decks running red powered by this - the horror!

That's why I had the thought of making the Flashback cost double or even triple . This would minimize the use of the card outside of Red heavy decks, or at least give more upside to making Red your dominant color.

[Hof]

Many Legacy players would love to see better cards printed in other colors, particularly ones that gave them color-flavored ways of gaining card selection. GSZ, Bob, etc. I'd love to see Survival come back and I'd love to see better looting effects (Faithless Looting was close but it should have cantripped rather than been CD).

Two things to take from this:

1. I wouldn't necessarily say that a Blue-dominant format is a bad thing simply because we arbitrarily decide that the color pie should be equalized.

2. Likely it is correct that no single banning would end Blue's dominance. New printings rather than bans of any type will likely be the best solution.

Well said. I agree.

I also doubt that we have seen the last of Spirit of the Labyrinth. So far I have only seen it as 'hatebear of the week' in already existing hatebear decks.
It might require a little more building around it, or a not so obvious type of deck to maximize its potential.

[Guie]

IPA,

Brainstorm is ubiquitous, agreed. Is there any deck that is unplayable because of it? Would any archetypes or strategies open up if it was banned?

Oh, and no, I wouldn't quit.

Many Legacy players would love to see better cards printed in other colors, particularly ones that gave them color-flavored ways of gaining card selection. GSZ, Bob, etc. I'd love to see Survival come back and I'd love to see better looting effects (Faithless Looting was close but it should have cantripped rather than been CD).

Two things to take from this:

1. I wouldn't necessarily say that a Blue-dominant format is a bad thing simply because we arbitrarily decide that the color pie should be equalized.

2. Likely it is correct that no single banning would end Blue's dominance. New printings rather than bans of any type will likely be the best solution.

It's a no win situation. Many of those off-color cards would just start appearing in decks with Brainstorm

[PirateKing]

...a culprit cause for blue dominance is the move into aggro territory. What historically has been a slow fatty flier color (Air Elemental, Mahamoti Djinn, has been replaced with sleek newness (Delver of Secrets > Flying Men, True-Name Nemesis > Daring Apprentice, and to a smaller extent Snapcaster Mage > Voidmage Prodigy) that warps the game.

I agree with this sentiment. While blue is best at supporting your game while limiting your opponent's, it's fundamental weakness was that it couldn't by itself win the game. Blue got shit creatures, best was overpriced versions of okay cards. Classic decks like UG thresh were not using the blue for damage. That was the point, there was the balance.

Problem is Delver and TNN.

[Zilla]

This thread has turned away from whether people would quit and is consequently indistinguishable from the ceaseless Brainstorm debate that already exists in another thread. Feel free to continue the discussion there.