[Article] The Meadery - Leaving Legacy for a Modern Mistress

[Lemnear]

Also, I love how everyone has an opinion on everything, even Hoogland's underwear, but there's zero discussion on LftL.dec in Modern.
This is what I came up with. Note that it's GW. As such, it's hurt by unavailability of Windswept Heath, so lets try something different. (In fact I'm trying this in Legacy but to no avail.)

4 Temple Garden
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Brushland
2 Forest
2 Plains

8 Manadork @ cmc1
4 Goyf
4 Kotr
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Aven Mindcensor

4 LftL
4 PtE

4 slots

Obviously, this is VERY BAD build. Any ideas how to improve it?

Also, what's the best splash color? I guess GWr and GWb are solid choices with Bolt and Bob being powerful cards. Is there any effect similar to Devastating Dreams available in Modern?

I would think in the direction of Oracle of Mul Daya and other extra-landdrops + Valakut + Scapeshift + Titan + Wolf Run ... heared Lightning Bolts are the shit in Modern ;)

[MrGlantz]

I'm going to try to avoid talking about Brainstorm at all because you get flamed pretty easily on these forums and I mostly lurk, rather than post so I can easily see myself being flamed just because of something arbitrary like that.

To address many posts in this thread about modern being less diverse or similarity diverse to legacy is in many ways unfair. We have relatively large legacy tournaments every week thanks to SCG. Until very recently there was no such thing for modern. So while modern may really not be more diverse or even less diverse it's pretty hard to say that with much actual data to back it up.

Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.

Also his article reads more about how he likes modern for it's potential, rather than what it currently is. Modern can potentially be very open to players because it's not shackled by the reserve list. Modern can potentially be very healthy because wizards is active in banning and unbanning cards. It's a bit more optimistic than I would be, but in theory those are things I think most people would really enjoy. There just isn't much faith in wizards to do that competently.

[T-101]

I'm going to try to avoid talking about Brainstorm at all because you get flamed pretty easily on these forums and I mostly lurk, rather than post so I can easily see myself being flamed just because of something arbitrary like that.

To address many posts in this thread about modern being less diverse or similarity diverse to legacy is in many ways unfair. We have relatively large legacy tournaments every week thanks to SCG. Until very recently there was no such thing for modern. So while modern may really not be more diverse or even less diverse it's pretty hard to say that with much actual data to back it up.

Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.

Also his article reads more about how he likes modern for it's potential, rather than what it currently is. Modern can potentially be very open to players because it's not shackled by the reserve list. Modern can potentially be very healthy because wizards is active in banning and unbanning cards. It's a bit more optimistic than I would be, but in theory those are things I think most people would really enjoy. There just isn't much faith in wizards to do that competently.

There actually has been a whole lot of innovating attempted in Modern. Ever since it was announced, people have been brewing. In the early days, brews were just smashed to pieces by Hypergenesis, Infect Shoal, and other turn 3ish combos. But its a bit better now, brews crop up (think Ad Naus/Lightning Storm). There is certainly untapped potential, but for some reason there isn't as strong an effort to make sweet decks in Modern. Maybe all the brewers are happily tinkering away in Legacy-Land.

[Richard Cheese]

I am pretty sure that Mr. Hoogland is correctly identifying Brainstorm as being overly powerful. And in this case I also completely agree with IBA that chalking it up to "Well, that's Legacy. Blue gets a free pass on consistency" is foolish. Brainstorm is flat busted, folks. I hope to God that this is not something we need to dissect and bicker about. Anyone who would argue the contrary, I am just going to say has not played enough to see it. I did not always feel this way. But over time I have recognized how this is undeniably so. And it has gotten more broken with each excellent card blue has been able to add to its arsenal.

Yep, he has given up too easily, probably because he feels butthurt about his pet deck losing. But that is just his reaction to the truth he has discovered. The guy hit the nail squarely on the head. Brainstorm does exactly what he says it does. And I think the guys here are by and large acting predictably defensive about it. Oh, I feel the same as you folks. I just recognize the unhelpful place where that feeling comes from.

I also hope Brainstorm never gets banned. There is no easy fix here. But you can't just ban this iconic card. Then there really would be nothing preventing Modern from ruining Legacy. We just need more cards that are unusable by blue and that weaken Brainstorm. I hope that effects randomly pepper the format over the next few years to bring the card down a notch. Just a notch...or even better yet, give the other colors equally as fun and skill-intensive staples of the same power. Kudos if they can get these cards to hose each other and Brainstorm, thus accomplishing both and limiting their ubiquity at the same time.

The takeaway is that Mr. Hoogland has it right in what Brainstorm does. He is just reacting poorly by complaining into a microphone.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Dice_Box

Agree almost completely with this. Brainstorm is an inherently powerful card, but like Show and Tell, the things it enables have gotten much more powerful over the last few years. Quality blue creatures have gone up with Delver, TNN, Geist, and Snapcaster. Powerful answer cards like Abrupt Decay, Liliana, Toxic Deluge and Terminus. Griselbrand single-handedly revitalized two combo decks and created at least one more (you're welcome).

It's not just Brainstorm either. Between that, Ponder, Preordain, and Jace, it's hard to argue that Blue isn't going to continue to be the color of consistency for the foreseeable future. It wasn't necessarily always going to be that way, but based on the current card pool and Wizards' design philosophy over the last oh....seven years, it's really hard to see it changing any time soon. I don't think you have to want or like the current meta to recognize that it won't change overnight, if at all.

Oh, and Loam isn't terrible in Modern, but it's a lot slower without Mox Diamond, you lose the card advantage of cycle lands, and the late-game inevitability of Stronghold.

[btm10]

I agree that the article is mostly Hoogland whining about Legacy without a whole lot of justification other than "Brainstorm and Force are good". I don't think that Legacy is as interesting as it could be with some unbannings, but that's a completely different issue. I'll echo the sentiment that several others have made: Brainstorm (and to a lesser extent Ponder) make the format better by minimizing variance and opening up a large deckbuilding space. I think that the drift toward the dominance of midrange strategies is a consequence of how good creatures have gotten recently. If we want something approaching real control strategies other than Miracles (and a lot of builds in the US can get pretty midrange-y) we need better answers, and if we want more combo we need better draw/search and better mana accelerants, and these are all things Wizards are loathe to print. Modern isn't appealing at all because of how controlled it is in general and how bad they've made Storm combo in particular.

Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.

People do brew in Legacy, it's just that the viable design space is constrained because of the power issue, as you said. Humility in particular had a good home in Enchantress, but that deck is just too soft to combo to have its favorable-to-even matchups (RUG Delver) supplanted by even-to-slightly unfavorable matchups (BUG Delver) and simultaneously get hit by random anti-TNN cards to be anything close to viable anymore.

[Dzra]

I notice that Hoogland has gotten quite antagonistic towards and vocal about Legacy. Even aside from this article, I see entirely unprovoked comments on SCG articles about Legacy decks, Reddit threads about Legacy development, tweets regarding #SCGKC, etc. about the dominance of blue/Brainstorm in the format.

He's just sandy about being unable to beat top players with his pet brews.

I think Zoo, Goblins, Maverick, Junk decks being able to place consistently are a sign of diversity and health of a format. 2010 was really the year it started getting away.

Probably a little after that also. I remember Zoo, Maverick/Survival, and Junk all being top decks around that time.

It's not just Brainstorm either. Between that, Ponder, Preordain, and Jace, it's hard to argue that Blue isn't going to continue to be the color of consistency for the foreseeable future. It wasn't necessarily always going to be that way, but based on the current card pool and Wizards' design philosophy over the last oh....seven years, it's really hard to see it changing any time soon.

Honestly, if there is anything negative to be said about the diversity of Legacy, I believe it would be how "midranged good-stuffy" the format is becoming. It isn't Brainstorm and Force of Will that are the problem; if anything they are helping to preserve the diversity. What can be said though is that as Wizards continues to push extremely powerful two and three mana creatures, the format will continue to move more and more towards three-and-a-half color good-stuff decks.

[btm10]

Honestly, if there is anything negative to be said about the diversity of Legacy, I believe it would be how "midranged good-stuffy" the format is becoming. It isn't Brainstorm and Force of Will that are the problem; if anything they are helping to preserve the diversity. What can be said though is that as Wizards continues to push extremely powerful two and three mana creatures, the format will continue to move more and more towards three-and-a-half color good-stuff decks.

Another two or three years of this and they can just unban Balance. I'd lol.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What design space are people arguing that Brainstorm opens up again?

I also notice that people continue to just avoid the part of the discussion where reducing meaningful deck variance- i.e., not just being interchangeable three color goodstuff decks- reduces the number of skill metrics in the format because it makes deck design and metagame prediction much smaller obstacles.

[Tormod]

Yeah brainstorm is powerful.

But to me Deathrite Shaman was printed to be the GB "brainstorm". It fixes mana, its a clock with evasion, its life gain, its a disruption card against by strategies, it ramps, it adds consistency to strategies.

[Julian23]

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

Both D&Ts (GP Straßburg) as well as Elves (BoM Paris) have won major Legacy tournaments as well as had several GP/BoM Top8s. Two of the last 3 BoMs had Elves in the finals. All of them had Elves at least in the Semis. All of them had Death and Taxes at least in the semis. GP Straßburg had two Death & Taxes in the semis including the win by Thomas. GP Washington D.C. had both Elves and Death & Taxes in the Top8. And I'm not even metioning medium-sized stuff like my win in the GP Paris sideevent (2xx players) as well as several SCG Top8s/wins.

Both decks are without question among the top tier of Legacy decks.

['Nilla Pac]

Both D&Ts (GP Straßburg) as well as Elves (BoM Paris) have won major Legacy tournaments as well as had several GP/BoM Top8s. Two of the last 3 BoMs had Elves in the finals. All of them had Elves at least in the Semis. All of them had Death and Taxes at least in the semis. GP Straßburg had two Death & Taxes in the semis including the win by Thomas. GP Washington D.C. had both Elves and Death & Taxes in the Top8. And I'm not even metioning medium-sized stuff like my win in the GP Paris sideevent (2xx players) as well as several SCG Top8s/wins.

Both decks are without question among the top tier of Legacy decks.

This goes back to how some decks are more consistent than others. Elves still has consistency without blue cards due to green sun's zenith and its draw engines. Death and Taxes is consistent because, well... fuck I don't know why. How that deck wins anything is still a mystery to me and I wonder about it every time I lose to it.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.

[Dice_Box]

Elves is rather consistent. I mean I can not speak for DnT but Elves does not need filtering. You use a brute force method of finding what you want by simply drawing more cards than anyone else does. It works so well that often Visionary and Symbiote get removed more than cards like Heritage Druid.

Add in GSZ and I don't see Elves going away for a long while.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Okay well yeah Elves is more in the category of combo decks like Reanimator or TES or Time Spiral. Despite not having Brainstorm it does seem pretty consistent, I've been a big fan in the past, but it is more susceptible to metagame variations than the generic good stuff decks.

[Barook]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.

D&T sure can adapt to the meta (well, except for Elves). Calling them inconsistent is wrong, they're just less consistent than blue decks. Drawing only land and Vials for 11 turns just happens more often than with blue decks and their filtering.

If they were inconsistent, they wouldn't put up results. I agree that they put up less results due to higher random, though.

[Jander78]

Stop with the insults and personal attacks. Keep this thread on topic about the article. Any discussion about bannings should go in the Banned and Restricted thread. Further offenses will results in warnings and site bans.

[LOLWut]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.

Obviously there's too much blue (because of player preferences, card availability, and most importantly, recent design philosophy), but don't act like elite nonblue decks are somehow less competitive than elite blue decks. Earlier in the thread, someone tried to gloss over nonblue presence in top 8's of large tourneys by claiming that they only get there and beat other decks in the top 8 by being good against solely the top decks, blue decks in their argument, and getting lucky. The incorrect assumptions in this argument are hilarious. The idea that D&T, Elves, Painter, Lands, etc beat up on all blue decks equally. The idea that "better" nonblue decks can't beat up on all of the "lesser" nonblue decks the way that blue decks can. If people are just playing these decks because they beat "blue decks", and obviously succeeding, it follows that other people can play decks that beat these decks but might not beat the "blue decks". There's so much to pick apart about that argument, but basically, it's simplistic and incorrect. I don't think it was your post, but I meandered.

Also don't act like there hasn't been a similarly "rotating cast" of blue decks. The fact that UW Blade, RUG Order, Landstill, RUG turned into Miracles, Team America, Shardless BUG, Patriot or whatever doesn't mean that blue strategies can't adapt and that each blue deck is doomed to downfall more than nonblue decks.

And of course D&T is "still" a top deck. Other decks that have left the DTB section in the past 3 1/2 months: Sneak & Show, Patriot, Canadian Thresh, Jund, Deathblade.

[zeus-online]

Have not read all the responses....but...

I chose to play legacy for two reasons:
More players, where i live, play legacy than vintage.
and in legacy i get to play with most of my awesome blue cards :)

I also get to play versus a wide variety of decks, possibly greater than the variety in any other format?

On a third note: legacy and vintage are the only places left to go for those of us who do not enjoy playing with creatures.
It is not that i dislike playing with creatures that much, i mean...creature based decks can certainly be fun for me. But i really do like having the choice.

A fourth feature of both vintage and legacy is that they are generally not dominated by a single deck.

[Aggro_zombies]

Thread closed. For issues pertaining to Brainstorm's legality, please see the Banned and Restricted Speculation thread.