[Article] North American Defeatism and the Dominance of Brainstorm

[Lt. Quattro]

All this talk about brainstorm, and probably any talk about banning/unbanning seems quite useless to me, simply because wizard doesn't care at all about legacy and i wouldn't be surprised if the banlist will never ever change until the end of the world, even if they print a one cost colorless mana instant that says "you win the match" in the next commander set.

We just have to accept that they care about modern, so legacy will eventually die or become quite an absurd format because they will never do anything to make it better/healtier. I'm sad about this, but i think it is the bitter reality.

Abrupt decay was made to answer counterbalance.

[menace13]

Abrupt decay was made to answer counterbalance.

And Delvers. But then a Delver deck took it :/

[sjmcc13]

And Delvers. But then a Delver deck took it :/

There was already enough answers to Delver.
also the Delver deck uses it because BUG Delver is basically a goodcards.deck, and it is a good card in the decks colors.

I honestly am starting to think that all this our cry about brainstorm is simple because the format is shifting towards goodcard.decks, and people (or the blue haters at least) need something to blame as lists start to shift towards the best cards in each category and little else.

Yes, I would always consider a blue splash for brainstorm, just like in vintage I always consider Black for Demonic and Vamp, but that does not make it a blue deck. Brainstorm does not cause heavy blue decks, FoW does. The dominance of blue decks has more to do with people wanting to have a chance to fight the bombs that they can not allow to be resolved. The best way to fight allot of these cards is with counter magic, which puts people who want as good a game against combo into blue.

The problem is Wizards has been making to many bomb cards, and not enough cards to support non good stuff decks.
Remember when Phage was printed, they obviously considered "cheat" into play methods for her, but Grisslebrand is as bad once in play and has nothing to stop or limit these effects. Emrakul, is hard to re-animate (there are what 4 cards that can reanimate at instant speed in the game), but has no other enter play limitations.

Blue was always a good support color with weak or non-aggressive creaturers. Delver is a mistake because it is a cheap aggressive creature in blue, a 1 mana 3 power evasion is too good, and they have no excuse for not realizing this would be a heavily played card in formats where instants are still good, as opposed to the creature and PW fest that is standard. Sure in draft if will not flip as reliable, but once you go beyound draft its effects become obvious.

What is needed is the unbanning and creation of new cards that will either re-envigorate old decks or spark new origional decks. We need more caards for Tribal, themed and synergy based decks, and less cards for goodcard.decks because those just converge into a handful of lists over time. But wizards is not making these cards, they are afraid of "breaking standard" and their few new cards from the for legacy sets are almost all useless with a couple broken cards for the goodcard.decks to use, and little else.

[Koby]

words

The presumption is that WotC cares about Legacy to make an attempt to fix it. They don't. They would rather atrophy the format and ignore it. Any attempt to address it shines a spotlight against it, and reveals the cancer they have created (WotC's view). Ponder, Delver, Snapcaster have formed a trinity of cards that has shifted the balance heavily towards blue-centric decks. Brainstorm is now the creme-de-la-creme of this blue-centric dominance. Either we get incidental new cards that can attack the dominance, or the format begins to unravel from its staleness; or else ban Brainstorm and let the shock stir up new decks.

[lordofthepit]

Since when did frequent bannings become a good thing? Is this a rhetorical strategy employed by Modern apologists? That format has some things going for it, but the aggressive ban policy is not one of them. If your girlfriend hits you whenever she sees something she doesn't like, it doesn't mean she cares about you, it means things are fucked up and you should get out.

I agree that Brainstorm is the most powerful and ubiquitous card in the format, and I wouldn't mind seeing these strategies taken down slightly, but that doesn't mean the format is degenerate by any stretch of the imagination. Mutavault in Standard saw long stretches where pretty much ever deck ran it, and that card contributed far less to deck diversity in its format than Brainstorm does to deck diversity in Legacy. But no one ever seriously called for it to get banned because it did not do anything inherently degenerate, and I doubt this is because Wizards doesn't care about Standard.

[LOLWut]

You keep making it sound like that these less often played decks are the best decks. And that players aren't playing the best decks because card availability, preference, and misinformation. All of which blatantly undermine the community collective of information sharing that forums and groups represent. Maybe if this was before the internet you would be right. To you it is as if these decks are secretly the best decks or at least on par with the most widely played ones. They're not. They're pet decks. Otherwise they would be far and away the most popular choices to take down events. The argument that not enough people are playing these decks actually serves to illustrate the flaws of not playing Brainstorm. The card that most of the player base is gravitating towards. I believe it that is because they aren't as good. You believe they are and it's due to ignorance, and card availability. Hope that was simple enough for you?

What did you make of the dozens of TMI charts, from the recent Internet age, showing decks that have win percentages and average finishes on par with highly-played and top tier decks being played by low amounts of people week after week? Some of these decks were recent creations; some had been around for a very long time.

Deck choice is a decision made. The players choose to play their non brainstorm decks same as some players choose to play with Brainstorm decks. The premise that most players didnt sleeve up the best decks because they dont have access to the cards is a lie. Does everyone have every card? No. Are all pros playing decks they dont want to play in GPs? No. If these other decks were so much better and outperforming as data from 2010-2011 suggests. Which, mind you was at a time when Brainstorm hovered around 50%. Then clearly those decks would have been popularized by now as strong finishes were racked up in events consistently. Reading GP top 8 profiles, how many of the players were wishing they played another deck? Does availability play some part? yes. A large part? I would wager no.

Did you read my examples? The point was not that underrated decks from 2010-11 should be top tier decks now (although some are, like Thresh), but as evidence that even in the Internet age, whether it's because not everyone is a Spike, or because the deck has expensive cards, or because many people don't like the decks, or because there is lack of awareness about the deck's strength, it is very possible for strong decks to be underplayed. This is not an argument that Brainstorm isn't amazing, or that Brainstorm decks don't make up a large percentage of the best decks. I really want to know how you can look at charts and charts of data, in a time with the community collective of information in full swing, showing low amounts of people playing decks with excellent win percentages repeatedly, and say that there's no way that there are currently very strong decks played by few.

[menace13]

I really want to know how you can look at charts and charts of data, in a time with the community collective of information in full swing, showing low amounts of people playing decks with excellent win percentages repeatedly, and say that there's no way that there are currently very strong decks played by few.

Because if they were really strong they would be crushing. They are a blip on the radar. Theyre not as strong as the data would lead you to believe. How do we know that the few players who play those decks arent overperforming because of skill with their preferred deck? How do we know those decks are as a solid choice in any meta through generalized rounds of games as decks with Brainstorm? Only thing we can know now is Brainstorm decks are out numbering the other supposed "strong" decks. Everyone recognizes the broken interactions of most winning decks and they flock to those decks. If the other decks were as good then then we would see surges of large numbers of players piloting those lists. But they dont, do they?

Did you read my examples?

What am i to take form those examples? Guess work made by you as to why those decks arent played. And it's every excuse you could possibly muster except that theyre not as good? Your example shows a meta where Merfolk was the most played, as a result Goblins became the 2nd most played further resulting in Rock decks having good percentages if paired against Merfolk and Goblins.

[Aggro_zombies]

The presumption is that WotC cares about Legacy to make an attempt to fix it. They don't. They would rather atrophy the format and ignore it. Any attempt to address it shines a spotlight against it, and reveals the cancer they have created (WotC's view). Ponder, Delver, Snapcaster have formed a trinity of cards that has shifted the balance heavily towards blue-centric decks. Brainstorm is now the creme-de-la-creme of this blue-centric dominance. Either we get incidental new cards that can attack the dominance, or the format begins to unravel from its staleness; or else ban Brainstorm and let the shock stir up new decks.

The shock won't really stir up new decks, though. Banning Brainstorm and Brainstorm alone means that most decks will just replace it with Preordain or some other cheap draw spell and continue on their merry ways. Discard gets slightly better since you can't hide your best cards at instant speed anymore, but decks that can run Ponder, Thoughtseize, Force, and Hymn come out much farther ahead that mono_black_discard.deck simply because they have actual control over their draws plus something to do against topdecks. BUG would probably come out well ahead in these scenarios, and the format would likely not be any less blue.

This is why they banned Ponder and Preordain in Modern. It turns out that having a bunch of one-mana spells that let you look at multiple cards and then draw one of them reduces variance too much and tilts the balance in favor of those decks, which then steamroll the decks that can't or don't run similar variance-reducers by virtue of just running better on average. The meta thus coalesces around a core of blue decks and becomes stale. Sound familiar?

On a side note, I don't think Wizards will ever ban Brainstorm in Legacy. They probably want the format available to cater to people who were unhappy with the bans on cantrips in Modern. Thus, you have Standard for the majority of players; Modern, to retain players who burn out on constantly purchasing cards for Standard; Legacy, to cater to players who want low-variance, skill-testing formats at a higher power level; and Vintage, for people who want to play with all the best cards ever. Every format is different and aimed at different players but the Eternal formats are niche enough that Wizards doesn't have to go out of their way to support them.

[ESG]

Since when did frequent bannings become a good thing? Is this a rhetorical strategy employed by Modern apologists? That format has some things going for it, but the aggressive ban policy is not one of them.

Frequent bannings and an aggressive ban policy are not what people are asking for. It's been a really long time since the last ban (Mental Misstep in 2011). That's longer than any other point in the format's history. By my count, there are at least two cards that should have been banned but weren't (Griselbrand and True-Name Nemesis), and that's why we're in the predicament we are in now. I think part of the problem is that WOTC has shifted the Banned and Restricted announcement dates to coincide with set releases; thus, it's easier to take a hands-off approach and say, "Let's see if these new cards fix things," rather than actually addressing the issue head-on. I personally would not vote to ban Brainstorm, but I would vote to ban a few other cards.

[Lt. Quattro]

The presumption is that WotC cares about Legacy to make an attempt to fix it. They don't. They would rather atrophy the format and ignore it. Any attempt to address it shines a spotlight against it, and reveals the cancer they have created (WotC's view). Ponder, Delver, Snapcaster have formed a trinity of cards that has shifted the balance heavily towards blue-centric decks. Brainstorm is now the creme-de-la-creme of this blue-centric dominance. Either we get incidental new cards that can attack the dominance, or the format begins to unravel from its staleness; or else ban Brainstorm and let the shock stir up new decks.

They still do make cards to change up legacy, abrupt decay was made to be an answer for Counterbalance and Mental Misstep was made to be played in non blue decks to help them fight combo and brainstorm decks.

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...y/feature/161b

Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm.

Then they went ahead and made Mental Misstep blue, giving blue players the option of paying life or mana for it, and adding yet another 4 of card to pitch to force of will.

Here is another article wizards tell us about how they use commander/planechase products to print cards for legacy.

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...g/daily/ld/269

Naturally the blue cards they print for legacy are home runs:

Flusterstorm
True-name Nemesis
Baleful Strix
Shardless Agent

IMO most of the non blue cards they make that are intended for legacy are hot garbage.

Restore

Restore is an acceleration spell or Wasteland recursion in Legacy, but it can also let you use one of your opponents' lands against him or her in Commander, or return something like Gaea's Cradle to the battlefield.

Unexpectedly Absent

you can't Swords to Plowshares a Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Batterskull's token can easily be killed, but the 'skull itself has been immune from most of the same removal... until now. This kind of diversity makes the card an interesting choice, especially since it is hard to make an argument for cards like Disenchant in the main deck. Unexpectedly Absent may not be better than a large number of cards in every situation, but often in Legacy being the second best in a dozen different situations can be better than the best in just one.

While keeping a person off of a card for a few turns requires a hefty commitment of mana, it's easier to get much more by using one of the key factors of Legacy against your opponent—all of the shuffling. Because of the fetch land/dual land mana base, as well as cards like Stoneforge Mystic, people are often shuffling their library. Putting a Jace, the Mind Sculptor on top of an opponent's library in response to a fetch land will force the opponent to shuffle him back into the library. Putting a Tarmogoyf on top of an opponent's library in the upkeep can not only force the opponent to redraw it, but keeps his or her Delver from flipping for one more turn. Or, you can respond to a Shardless Agent and either put a card on the bottom of its owner's library or control exactly what card he or she will be getting. It's this kind of diversity that sets the card up to be a real player in the format.

Wizards seriously thought people were going to use this card to keep delver from flipping, use it in response to the the card advantage machine known as Shardless Agent and to pay to shuffle away a Jace in response to a fetch land.

[lyracian]

Ponder, Delver, Snapcaster have formed a trinity of cards that has shifted the balance heavily towards blue-centric decks. Brainstorm is now the creme-de-la-creme of this blue-centric dominance. Either we get incidental new cards that can attack the dominance, or the format begins to unravel from its staleness; or else ban Brainstorm and let the shock stir up new decks.

The Trinity makes Blue too powerful but why ban Brainstorm? Surely the problem is Blue having what it never had - efficient creatures. Swatting the Insect (or Taigo) would have just as much impact on changing the format.

[Lysandros]

Brainstorm is obviously really good, but we're not Modern here, so I hate all the "ban it!" talk. Brainstorm fits Blue's color scheme, so I don't really have a problem with it, despite it's power level. Delver of Secrets and True-Name Nemesis and Snapcaster Mage don't fit Blue's color scheme however. Protection is generally White's realm, cheap agro is Green's, and graveyard recursion is Red or Black. Even from a flavor perspective, none seem to fit. Merfolk may be Blue, and a wizard's experiment-gone-wrong feels Blue, but there's no reason True-Name had to be a merfolk, and transformation into an animal / insect feels awfully Green to me. Would anybody really care if TNN was White, or Delver was Green, or Snapcaster was Red / Black? Sure, Blue could still adopt them, but there are greater costs to doing so, which would tone the power level down a bit.

I'm with the people advocating better cards in the other colors. Green and Black have card draw in their past...the original Ponder was Green (I forget the Alpha card), and Sylvan Library allows for card draw at the expense of life. Black's long been able to trade life for cards ("Greatness at any cost..."). Red having the looting ability is a start, as is the Chanda, Pyromaster 0 ability -- that fits Red's theme of using things fast and furiously -- or even Cascade feels very "Red" as a mechanic. White's realm has long been hosing the other colors and value creatures to create virtual advantages. More effects like that are great.

In short: no need to ban Brainstorm. Just keep Blue (and all colors) in it's proper lane, and print some more efficiency engines for the other colors that fit their themes.

[LeoCop 90]

I agree with ESG that Griselbrand and true name nemesis should be banned. I don't complain about brainstorm or show and tell .... brainstorm is the most powerful card in the format but it is just a cantrip, show and tell is broken only in conjunction with other cards (mainly griselbrand).

True name is just an error. A stupid card with a stupid wording, that now lets blue have the best creature in magic. And either it invalidates non blue aggro-strategies by being a 3 mana impossible to deal with attacker and blocker, or it forces to play suboptimal cards to deal with it (golgari charm, serra avenger in death and taxes, and so on). I know it is not extremely played, but it is just a wrong card to me.

Griselbrand is what let show and tell be really unbeatable. When they drop emrakul or another creature with show and tell, there are still possible answers. hen they drop griselbrand , no matter which answers you have, they just draw thousand cards and win.

[Koby]

What did you make of the dozens of TMI charts, from the recent Internet age, showing decks that have win percentages and average finishes on par with highly-played and top tier decks being played by low amounts of people week after week? Some of these decks were recent creations; some had been around for a very long time.

Those articles granted a look at the entire tournament's worth of data. If we had access to every tournament's all decks, then it may make an argument for one conclusion or the other. Without this data, we're left guessing what's at fault.

I hope to have some metagame analysis for LA's best attended regular tournament (on the regular ~ 6 weeks for 6 round event with Top 8) coming out in the next few days.

[Richard Cheese]

The Trinity makes Blue too powerful but why ban Brainstorm? Surely the problem is Blue having what it never had - efficient creatures. Swatting the Insect (or Taigo) would have just as much impact on changing the format.

Yup. If you really want to shake up the format you give Delver the axe. It's at the crux of three of the format's best decks, and I think it's the single worst card for encouraging same-y-ness IMO. Next on my list would probably be Deathrite, because a super flexible auto-4-of that shits all over the second best source of card advantage outside cantrips just stifles too many strategies.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Unexpectedly Absent



Wizards seriously thought people were going to use this card to keep delver from flipping, use it in response to the the card advantage machine known as Shardless Agent and to pay to shuffle away a Jace in response to a fetch land.

I don't think the card does what you think it does, Unexpectedly Absent. You can pay to flip a jace in response to a fetch. The only problem is that most problematic creatures in legacy can't be hit by conventional means anymore and stop the threat, and even hitting a jace isn't that awesome since planeswalkers have haste. Making the card also means it only fits in a small number of blue decks, so it doesn't see play.

[AggroControl]

In short: no need to ban Brainstorm. Just keep Blue (and all colors) in it's proper lane, and print some more efficiency engines for the other colors that fit their themes.

The real problem is that 20 years on and with extraordinary evidence in front of them WotC still does not understand the game that they publish and how it works. They don't understand (yet) that card selection and advantage are the most important factors in play, particularly as the competitions get shorter and people naturally see fewer cards before they are effectively defeated.

The way to fix the problem is to give all colors similar chances to look at and select their cards. Then blue can have it's fast creatures, like everybody else, and the eternal formats (and occasionally Standard) do not get blown all to hell in the process.

The color wheel should differentiate by one major strength at this point:

Blue - Denial of played spells.
Black - Denial of cards in the hand.
Red - Fast damage via Instants and Sorceries.
Green - Efficient creatures with a bigger body than you'd expect for the cost.
White - Efficient removal that is hard to deny.

Everybody should have access to decent creatures along the curve. Everybody should have access to good abilities to filter and gain card advantage. The idea of splashing blue for predictability in seeing and drawing cards should be laughable on the face of it. If that's blue's strength then the meta will inevitably twist towards at least splashing blue to gain the one thing that is most important in high level Magic play. That's where we are now and have cyclically been at least two thirds of the time that Legacy has existed.

That's where Vintage has been forever.

That's where Modern will inevitably go in the future despite the throat lock on blue card selection and advantage that WotC has tried to put on the format.

Brainstorm is going to need to be banned in the short term while WotC figures out what to do with the Eternal formats. Banning Delver might also be a good move but without Brainstorm the blue lists that play him will come back some towards the pack. Banning TNN is a joke. I hate blue in organized play due to the dominance that it creates at high levels of play and even I realize that TNN is something that can be adapted to and managed in any number of ways that the format is already exploring with vigor. Banning Jace the Mind Sculptor would just be a nod in the general direction of "don't print ridiculously OP cards from now on R&D. I mean really!"

[TsumiBand]

The problem with saying that WotC "doesn't understand their own game" is actually the opposite of the Blue problem. WotC understand the game; what you may not understand is their decisions regarding Blue's role in the game, which, for *some reason*, they have articulated as being the color that "is better at Magic". In TLDR style, MaRo et al have gone on record as saying that Blue gets to "hack the game" while the other colors just "play the game". The problem is not them not getting it - they *definitely* get it, and they do not give a shit because they have decided that it's okay for Blue to be the 'meta-magic' color.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Very good points AggroControl and Tsumi! I'm araid both of you are right somehow.
It stil surprises me that in this game of cards selecton, random factors, and huge wizards battling with powerful beasts (or whatever), WotC was so one-sided when they decided who gets what. I think that no later than what, Urza Saga, they must have realised that some aspects are more important than the others. Say CA and CQ is definitely more important than Banding and stuff. Yet the were/are still so adamant about their application of "color wheel" and such stuff that clearly doesn't a place in game where each side-to-choose should be similarly good. It's like giving one rook more to the white (which is blue) and then act surprised when ppl don't choose black.

It's also about power of creatures, and frankly, for the first decade they mostly sucked. Guess how many of them gets played in non-rotating formats... when the creatures need to deal 20 dmg and they are mostly 1/1 @ cmc1, and 2/2 for 2, etc. it doesn't take a genius to realize that WoG is a pretty powerful spell. I know that there's a trouble of scaling if you'll start with a 3/3 vanilla for as a base (or 2/2 with an ability for the same price), and then of course something something power creep cmc2 4/5, but I think you got my point. Not that it matters, those 22 years cannot be undone and MtG cannot be remade from scratch. But back to topic: yeah, all colors need creatures, it's the very basic of game. All of them need some kind of CA and CQ engines/tools, unless the players gravitate towards the color that has those tools. It shouldn't be the same, lets make it colorful and flavourful, but give those tools to the colors. Then lets each color have its own strong themes (recursion, burn, counterspells, removal, etc.), but denying the tools to affects its draws turns them into secondary choices and suboptimal colors. It's similar as to not giving them creatures.

Which reminds me of an anecdotal story I heard in our lgs. Dudes played Revised minimaster on some GP. On of them opened a pack and got there a Deathlace in rare sot, some basic land and a Wall of Air as his only creature. Go figure.

[Lord Seth]

The real problem is that 20 years on and with extraordinary evidence in front of them WotC still does not understand the game that they publish and how it works. They don't understand (yet) that card selection and advantage are the most important factors in play, particularly as the competitions get shorter and people naturally see fewer cards before they are effectively defeated.

Except they obviously do understand the power of card selection and advantage, which is why the cards that do that have been weakened so much. I mean, card draw has been nerfed so hard in Standard that Divination is considered good enough to be in a Pro Tour-winning deck.

Of course, the nerfing of card draw is what Legacy players always seem to complain about in regards to Standard...