I think the issue with a phrasing like that is that "guarantees" are binary, they are or they aren't, and I feel tutors are the same way. Either you have perfect access to the card or you don't. I've had Brainstorms that gave me the win, and I've had Brainstorms that weren't worth casting. I've had opponents who topped a Terminus before I even get an attack in, and I've had people spin tops, crack fetches and Brainstorm for two turns only to concede when we move to declare blockers. Cantrips reduce variance, but can't eliminate it on their own and I get tired of the people in this or the other of too-damn-many "ban cantrips" threads who speak in absolutes like Brainstorm magically gives everyone a broken hand, sets every play in place and provides insurmountable advantages.
Compared to something like "soft counter"/"hard counter", I think that phrasing is more appropriate because, at some level, no counter can provide guaranteed safety. Even against actual "counterspell" or "force of will", I can make a play happen, it's just that the effect to play around is more or less harsh. You can interact with it in either eventuality, just more or less so. In the case of cantrips vs tutors, tutors actually do guarantee you a card, sometime you dig and dig and don't find a card with cantrips.
The ability to look through some number of cards or have conditional tutors IS potent, and jury-rigged tutor effects like Infernal Tutor are, tutor effects in the cases that they are tutor effects. However, I don't think I'm underestimating the effectiveness of Brainstorm/Ponder when I say they are NOT tutors.
For me Legacy is a format where you can play cards from the Eternal pool especially with the original dual lands.
I actually don't like all those broken cards. If it where for me the ban list would be a lot longer. Maybe there should be an extra format for people like me. ;)
To simply summarize Legacy as Brainstorm, I understand that argument, but it's not inclusive enough. Yes, it's on a playmat, it's on the sleeves, but to generalize as Brainstorm, you are ignoring Painter, Elves, DnT, Lands, MUD, and many more.
Hence, Legacy is a non-rotating format such that the barrier is low enough to take in cards in a new set and it is capable of self-adjust. You can see this when TNN came to the scene.
There're very little meta-game shift you see in Vintage; most card slots are locked, takes in very few cards if any, when a new set comes out.
Modern is a format that is incapable of self-adjust. Sure it takes in new cards, but the existing decks are simply powerless once people figured out how to abuse certain aspect of allowable cards. This happened in thopter foundry, in DRS, and many other examples.
To me it's Vintage light, where the game winning singletons are banned, the mana bases are based on just Fetch/Duals and color quality instead of mana acceleration and all of the cards that shouldn't be restricted aren't - Brainstorm, Ponder etc. - while maintaing the wide depth of archetypes like Storm, Sneak Attack, Dredge, Reanimator, Elves, D&T etc.
The "is it a tutor?" question is uninteresting, but I'm pretty sure that the Brainstorm/Ponder/SDT shell can be a more efficient and versatile card finder than many of the topdeck tutors. (Otherwise, Miracles would play Personal Tutor, right?) With the exception of Green Sun's Zenith we really only see full tutors in decks which run them with 1-of game plans like storm strategies and reanimator.
It's a topic for another thread, but I wonder if there's a sensible way to compare the 'card finding power' of one shell with another.
I would have to say that Legacy, as a format, is most defined by its ability to be very consistent (by far the most consistent of all formats, IMO), and the methods of gaining that consistency - specifically, card quality, powerful/reusable engines, and stable multi-color mana bases.
Compare this to the other formats...
Vintage has tons of powerful cards, but is very swingy because of the restricted list. It also has fewer of the best CQ cards, as a result of them making it far too easy to make decks that consistently find cards on the restricted list. It does have very consistent mana bases and utilizes many (often broken) engines, but is differentiated from Legacy because of its lack of consistency.
Modern has fewer powerful cards than Legacy, and generally relies more on having functional duplicates to achieve consistency. Where functional consistency isn't possible, the deck usually has to have more than one method of winning the game (see Birthing Pod combo lists, for instance). It lacks ridiculous CQ and many of the engines available in Legacy and, as such, is generally less consistent.
Standard has the same issues as Modern, but they are (usually) more exaggerated. It being (generally) a slower format means the issues can be masked by the speed, so it can often be very consistent as a result of the metagame, but I find that it usually is not.
IMO, this is what makes Legacy the most competitive format.
A great example of how consistency is viewed differently between formats is the Thopter Foundry 'combo' - as both pieces aren't good on their own, the combo is not consistent enough to put up top-tier results in Legacy. However, it is banned in Modern because its power level is much too high and the threshold for a competitive level of consistency is significantly lower than it is in Legacy. Similary, Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage because it pushes the consistency threshold too high - that is, the decks that want it can do broken things more consistently than is desirable when they have access to four of them.
Well, I think we have found at least one, somewhat, common denominator, in that the banned list is a major part of what defines Legacy. Not only what is on it, but also what isn't on it.
That being said, and in light of the recent banning of Treasure Cruise and unbanning of Worldgorger Dragon, what do people feel is the character of the banned list?
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Hilariously under groomed.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I'll second both of these. I think I'd like to see a slightly more active ban policy as a way to force changes on Legacy but they shouldn't be nearly as aggressive as they are with Modern, and the easiest way to be aggressive now is to remove some potentially dangerous cards.
I'd rather have a hilariously broken metagame for 3-6 months than just keep playing Miracles vs. Blade vs. Delver vs. Elves vs. Show and Tell forever. Cruise fixed that a bit and Dig and Swiftspear might keep some of the URx decks strong enough to still compete, but UR Delver has the only even sort of new playstyle of those decks, with Grixis playing a lot like the BUG decks and UWR Blade playing like all of the other Blade decks. I'd like them to bypass probably-unplayable cards like Mind Twist and Black Vise and instead bring back things like Survival, Earthcraft, Frantic Search, and Mana Vault despite the risks they pose. At worst they reban the problematic cards, and Vault and Search aren't likely to suffer from availability problems, meaning unbanning followed by rebanning isn't likely to alienate players with price fluctuations.
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