Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
This.Originally Posted by Lemnear
As far as combo decks are concerned, only Aluren and Show and Tell variants featuring both Omniscience and Cunning Wish have the ability the win the game in their opponent's turn, and most of the time they aren't interested to. Since both Tendrils of Agony and the attack phase are to be happening in your turn, brainstorm might as well be a sorcery.
Blue control, midrange and tempo decks would lose the instant ability of finding a solution to a must-answer threat. Other than that, you almost never want to brainstorm at instant speed.
Ah, I thought that was one of my less contentious assertions. Consider an example decklist:
[19 LANDS]
1 Badlands
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volcanic Island
[13 CREATURES]
4 Baleful Strix Just a value guy, trades up and replaces itself
4 Deathrite Shaman The quintessential midrange dude
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest again, keeps you ahead on cards, makes it hard for opponents to point removal at your guys
3 Snapcaster Mage another guy that draws a card, compare to BBE in some ways
[26 INSTANTS and SORCERIES]
2 Abrupt Decay general purpose removal
4 Brainstorm
2 Fatal Push general purpose removal
4 Force of Will small loss of card advantage as a concession to powerful legacy combos, perhaps the one counterpoint to my assertion, often boarded out
2 Hymn to Tourach discard
3 Inquisition of Kozilek discard
2 Kolaghan's Command flexible, powerful likely 2-for-1
1 Lightning Bolt general purpose removal
1 Night's Whisper again, generic card advantage
4 Ponder
1 Thoughtseize discard
[2 PLANESWALKERS]
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor planeswalkers, also a hallmark of midrange
[SIDEBOARD]
nothing tricky going on here, just things to adjust the numbers based on the nature of the matchup
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Flusterstorm
2 Forked Bolt
2 Marsh Casualties
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Sylvan Library
1 Tarmogoyf
The comments in bold are mine, and they are next to the types of cards you would typically find in Jund decks in other formats. Compare to modern Jund:
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Twilight Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
24 Lands
4 Dark Confidant
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
14 Creatures
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Thoughtseize
1 Seal of Fire
4 Liliana of the Veil
Sideboard
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Jund Charm
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Duress
1 Shatterstorm
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
15 Sideboard Cards
This is obviously a dated Modern list, but they even share some of the same cards, and it's still a pile of 1 for 1s and 2 for 1s backed up by efficient dudes. It's not trying to take advantage of unique interactions like Lion's Eye Diamond + Infernal Tutor or trying to tempo people out like UR Delver, it's trying to get by on good old card advantage and top shelf individual cards.
In many ways, Czech is the spiritual successor to something like Shardless, which was the previous iteration of "Legacy Jund;" that is, midrange BUG.
The decks you cited all share the notion that they have cantrips, but that doesn't inform their macro strategy in the same way. This is what the proponents of cantrips are saying when they talk about archetype diversity: you mentioned an A+B combo deck, an engine combo deck, a control/prison deck, and a tempo deck, on top of the midrange deck that is BUG. Sure, they share some of the same core cards, because those cards are very powerful, but how the decks use them differs in meaningful ways.
For example, in talking about Legacy with some of the other locals, one guy who loves midrange strategies like Czech was talking about how he likes Preordains, which I said that I hated as an ANT player. His explanation for why you might play Preordain over Ponder highlighted the difference between the two: Ponder is better when you want to find a particular card much sooner (useful for Storm), whereas Preordain is better for just smoothing out your draws/land drops (better for BUG). Even though both decks benefit from the cantrips, they do it in different ways, and playing against the decks feel meaningfully different.
I really enjoyed this. You guys I think are wrong about DRS, but I enjoyed it otherwise.
The thing is what people are asking for is not about Modern or wanting Legacy to be Modern. I think TNN sucks because it's not interactive, it's near unkillable and it's not fun to both to win or lose with it on the table. Regardless of side. I don't think someone asking for it to go wants to play Modern, they just don't want no interaction in their games.
You take a look at legacy before Future Sight, High Tide, Maverick, Thopter Countertop, Goblins, Thresh... People want to go back to that kind of meta, not Modern. What has happened since then is the format has sped up to such a degree that even the king of the hill that did adapt, Thresh, is dead.
People aren't wishing for something unreasonable, they are wishing for something that was. A time before TNN, Grizzlebees, Delver and DRS. These cards and others have had major impacts on Legacy and not all for the better. Each one becoming the flat best thing to be doing. If your casting Shallow Grave it's likely your looking at a 8 drop Demon because he is objectively the best thing to be doing and not everyone likes that the field has narrowed to such a fine honed point.
This is part dream, part reminiscing, part get off my lawn. But it's not exactly unreasonable. Those of us who started years ago do not like what Legacy has become, not because we hate Legacy, we are still here. Hell I was playing this format long enough I got to complain about it being called "Legacy" and swear I would only ever call it "1.5". We love it, we just don't love everything we feel has emptied the spirit and hollowed out the joy. Legacy of today feels like a soulless shadow of Legacy of yore. What once had been.
We watched our little girl grow up, we watched her play with dolls and teddy bears and now we are pissed she's dating boys we don't like. It's not that we want a new little girl, we just wish she hadn't changed so fucking much and would stop dating boys just because he has a car.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Deathrite doesn't really hurt graveyard combo decks, but it pretty much killed "fair" graveyard decks and cards. You almost never see cards like Lingering Souls, Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, or Academy Rector because of Deathrite Shaman. I will say that having a one mana maindeckable grave hate card is really good to have in Legacy. However, it's pretty clear that the only fair Deathrite decks that consistently do well are blue.
There's almost zero opportunity cost to playing Deathrite in a blue deck when you get to cast Birds of Paradise off a U. Sea, smooth out your draws with Ponder and Brainstorm, play creatures that generate immediate value, provide card advantage, or are unkillable (Baleful Strix, Snapcaster, Leovold, TNN), or have dumb tempo plays like T1 DRS -> Daze their spell -> T2 lose zero tempo and do whatever. The fact that so many of the best threats are blue in addition to the best spells being blue makes it so playing Force of Will is trivial.
I actually agree that TNN is super boring. I don't think it's quite as hard to interact with as people say, but I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more Knights than TNNs, just because Knight is actually a cool magic card. I don't think everyone who hates the cantrips is in the same spot as you, though - they might hate TNN too, but they hate Brainstorm and Ponder and Probe in a way that I don't think you do, Dice.
I actually hate Griselbrand even more than I hate TNN, haha, so I get you there 100%. I didn't play during the Tide/Thresh/Goblins/Thopter meta, so I can't really speak to that, but I do empathize with you on that. I got riled up looking at Kap'n Cook and Mega's posts earlier, because it feels like they are constantly hyperbolic about brainstorm/cantrips/DRS/etc, but instead of getting chippy, I looked at their profiles to see what they play, and especially the Strawberry shortcake thread made me feel bad about it because he clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, and I could see how that would feel shitty. I'm not sure what the best approach to it is, but I don't think getting rid of the cantrips would make Legacy better; I also want them to have the kind of fun they want, though. It's a hard problem.
As for the spirit and joy of legacy, I actually feel that way about modern - it used to be such a cool format where you could do a ton of different things, and decks were powerful and could interact, but then WOTC banned the soul out of it, taking away Seething Song, BBE, Twin, Pod, etc, etc. I don't want Legacy to end up in the same place, and it feels like a lot of people who want more aggressive bannings would take it that direction.
What did we say? Haha. I would say we actually represent a range of DRS opinions:
Ban --- Zac --- Phil --- Nate --- Don't ban
But I let Zac and Phil sort of have their time in the sun on it, mostly because I think it's definitely gone based on Wizards' history. Oh well, at least I can play Bant.
By the way -- I was playing vs. Lands with UR Delver the other day. I got 3 basics out, cast TNN, drew bolts and won through PFire, Maze and next-turn Marit Lage. What a card!
I will add a few cents, although I usually lurk. Admittedly, veteran Legacy players know all this stuff. For some reason I was inspired to sort out my thoughts. I also wanted to share the view that, as much as possible, only “classically broken” cards should be banned.
Classically Broken Cards
The bulk of the Legacy banned list (and Vintage restricted list) consists of cards that I’d call classically broken, that is, they provide a very large upside in terms of (a) card drawing, (b) tutoring, or (c) mana production/mana cheating with little deckbuilding cost. Ancestral Recall, Demonic Consultation, and Black Lotus are examples of each type of upside. (Some cards have multiple types of upside: Tinker is both tutoring and mana cheating, albeit with a perceptible deckbuilding cost.) Both the size of the upside and lightness of the deckbuilding cost go into making a card classically broken. I think that when most people think of a healthy banned list, they prefer to see cards that are classically broken, with leeway being given to cards that have high upside but a correspondingly high deckbuilding cost. For Legacy, the line to be drawn is arguably somewhere between Tinker and Natural Order. Legacy is the format where even the most powerful cards can flourish, provided that they come with real deckbuilding costs (Lion’s Eye Diamond, Entomb, Gaea’s Cradle, etc.).
Brainstorm Is Not Classically Broken
A cantrip such as Brainstorm doesn’t provide the same level of upside as do the banned cards in the previous paragraph. It’s powerful (and one can argue that, with the right support, it’s broken), but looking three cards deep is not the same as drawing three cards (Ancestral Recall) or looking through your whole deck (Demonic Consultation). In a slightly different configuration, looking three cards deep for one mana is just right (Preordain). From a design perspective, the balancing cost of Brainstorm is that it costs one mana. You must sacrifice a bit of tempo to get the benefit of smooth draws. In theory, a Zoo deck could take advantage of turns spent playing cantrips by playing fast threats and dealing damage. In a practical sense, however, Brainstorm doesn’t cost mana in Legacy.
Brainstorm Doesn’t Cost Mana in Legacy
The Legacy card pool is so deep that certain interactions cause cards to act like classically broken cards even if they wouldn’t do so in, say, a booster draft. Recently dominant Brainstorm decks have used the card in such a way as to recoup its one-mana cost (and then some) while gaining the benefit of its card selection. Miracles decks have used Brainstorm to set up one-mana wrath effects (Terminus, cheating by 3 mana), free countermagic (Counterbalance, cheating by one card and 2 mana for each card countered beyond the first), and delve (cheating by one mana). Tempo decks have used Brainstorm to set up a one-mana 3/2 flier (Delver of Secrets, undercosted by at least one mana) and a one-mana 5/5 (Gurmag Angler, undercosted by at least two mana). In addition to the favorable interaction with the ubiquitous fetchlands, Brainstorm acts broken in some of the best Legacy decks by providing a benefit without a mana cost, or rather, with a mana cost that gets recovered in short order. (This is similar to how a Mox provides a small amount of mana acceleration that is nonetheless broken because there is no cost.)
Ban Cards That Aren’t Classically Broken?
As one can read in this thread, many players feel that Brainstorm-based decks have too dominant a hold on Legacy. The cantrip/fetchland/Counterbalance package, the cantrip/fetchland/delve package, the cantrip/fetchland/DRS package, the cantrip/fetchland/miracles package, and the cantrip/fetchland/Delver of Secrets package are all powerful and flexible clusters of cards that don’t rely on anything that is classically broken. A few cards in these clusters have already been banned (Treasure Cruise, DTT, Top), and others are in the community’s crosshairs. The common thread is that banning cards from these clusters means banning cards that aren’t classically broken. Much of the Legacy-playing community doesn’t like this idea (again, Legacy is where the most powerful cards flourish, as long as there are deckbuilding costs; part of the Brainstorm controversy has to do with whether running a critical mass of cheap spells, cantrips, and fetchlands can be considered a deckbuilding cost anymore).
Where Do We Go Now?
There aren’t many Legacy shells that have the same levels of synergy, consistency, and flexibility as does the cantrip/fetchland/XYZ shell. (One powerful shell is Lands, with Loam, Gamble, Mox Diamond, Exploration, and a huge toolbox of utility lands. We’ve also got Ancient Tomb decks, although the consistency and flexibility are often lacking.) For those who yearn for the cantrip/fetchland/XYZ shell to be less dominant, here are the paths forward that I see for Legacy:
Option 1: Wizards bans one or more cards that aren’t classically broken. Personally, I don’t like seeing a card with the format saturation that Brainstorm has, but I also don’t like seeing cards banned if they’re not classically broken. (Earlier in this thread people were deriding the banning of Ramunap Ruins in Standard as a very extreme case.) I would be sad to see Brainstorm, DRS, Terminus, or fetchlands get banned, but of all of them I’d be the least sad to see Brainstorm go. For a card that’s not classically broken, it sure is enabled by practically everything else that’s already good in Legacy. Banning Brainstorm might give us back Top in a “prisoner exchange” that would favor non-blue decks without returning Miracles to its former ascendancy. (Some will say: “Not Top! Then everyone will always be looking at the top of their deck and slowing down tournaments!” But isn’t that true now, and if Brainstorm were banned, wouldn’t it roughly balance out?)
Option 2: Players wait for printings that open up new synergistic, consistent, and flexible shells. In other words, anyone who is unhappy with the format can suffer in silence until new sets change things (or don’t).
Option 3: Wizards unbans cards that aren’t classically broken. If Wizards is willing to let a powerful, controversial card like Brainstorm slide, and if they’re OK with Show and Tell and Reanimate, they could open the banned list at least to the extent of unbanning expensive cards, creatures, and the more anemic combo cards. This is my preferred option. I think they should have a very hard look at the banned list and compare it with the current T1–T3 kills already possible. Many people have already mentioned Earthcraft, Frantic Search, Hermit Druid, Memory Jar, Mind Twist, and Yawgmoth’s Bargain. In particular, Survival of the Fittest is powerful but (in my personal view) not classically broken. It tutors, yes, but only at the high cost of 1GG or more, and it incurs −1 card disadvantage and has concrete deckbuilding requirements. Out of all cards on the banned list, it seems the most likely to support synergistic, consistent, and flexible shells if it were unbanned. Even if the cantrip/fetchland/XYZ shell were to adopt it, this would at least lead to a new, additional value of XYZ that could add diversity. A toolbox deck seems to be missing from the current top decks.
TL;DR
Legacy is a really powerful format. Please unban lots of things, including Survival of the Fittest. This probably won’t change Legacy in a huge way, but it would feel fair, let players have fun, and kick the Brainstorm can down the road for a while. In the long run, consider banning Brainstorm and unbanning Top.
Edit: ubernostrum:
I see what you mean about Deathrite Shaman. Among the cards in the crosshairs, it is maybe the most classically broken because its deckbuilding cost is low (in part because of the hybrid mana cost) and it produces all colors of mana while also doing other stuff. I want to cling to the idea that getting lands into the graveyard is a deckbuilding cost, but you've got a good point in light of how Legacy actually plays.
Edit2: Dice_Box:
Thanks for the reminder about the past of Legacy and how the format has changed. I have lurked here a lot longer than my join date, and I think your perspective is right. "Play a different format" doesn't really fit with the fact that the overall feeling of the format used to be different. Tarmogoyf felt like the first creature that left all others in the dust, although I can understand why Wizards would let that one slip through, since its power was not totally obvious and old formats don't require much policing. True-Name Nemesis is a different story, though. How was that ever a good idea? As you said, that kind of card changes things.
Edit3: taconaut:
Good points on how decks can be meaningfully diverse within a blue cantrip framework. Your reasoning is why I hesitate to want Brainstorm banned. It's not that different from fetchlands in the sense that it's not inherently a bad thing that most decks use it. You don't want all decks to use a card, though. (I wouldn't ask for fetchlands to be banned, and I would certainly not ask for dual lands to be banned, but from a design standpoint it would be more interesting if different kinds of deck used different mana-fixing lands.) That being said, if you don't count lands, Brainstorm's format saturation is a unique case, and I have a hard time seeing how it promotes diversity even if diversity exists within its influence.
Gumble grumble grumble... UR is Lands 2nd worst match up anyway. Fuck TNN though.
The worst part about TNN is its not strong enough to see a ban. Not on power levels. It's terrible for Legacy, but it passes the "Is this broken enough to see a ban" test.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I don't people want a specific meta back so much as the idea of playing a format where their opponent actually has to have a deck that "does something." The essence of the frustration with legacy probably has more to do with the success of the no-strategy 'play the best cards' decks. I would put Delver variants, Czech Pile/Shardless/UWx Blade/good stuff pile [same deck, different colors], and miracles all in that no-strategy category together. There really isn't much to disrupt in decks like these; you deal with one best card and another follows....and it really doesn't matter what order they draw their cast-able* cards in because the power level is raw rather than predicated upon an idea of "A then B," "A plus B," or synergistic restrictions.
I think the thing people [who are discontent] are unconsciously wishing for is actually unreasonable: a format without ETB value scum and 1-mana game enders. They may think that they're wishing for a specific bygone meta, but that meta is defined by decks not hiding behind a wall of Delver/DRS/SCM/SFM/Strix (you could probably also add Goyf/Leo/TNN/Gurmag...and even Mentor/YP onto that list). So while it would be nice to reacquire a format where strategic deck construction necessitates internal consistency liabilities which turn into combos, when correctly sequenced; it just isn't a reasonable expectation. To expand on that for a moment look at maverick (and ignore the SFM/equip and Thalia angles for a moment): GSZ + targets, a non-tutorable Mother of Runes meant to increase the longevity of GSZ targets, and random lands your GSZ targets find because you presumably bought them enough time with Mother of Runes....none of this is "good" because the sequence is easy identify and disrupt; that is to say that one can attack a strategy rather than individual cards, while only presenting individual cards for maverick to react to.
* When discussing legacy I often refer to R/G Lands as the control deck legacy deserves, because it really challenges the idea that one actually has any mana left to cast (or sustain) their value nonsense/best cards. Getting Strip Mine'd/Tabernoggled/P-Fired or 20/20'd out of games isn't exactly healthy, nor are the responses it elicits (such as a strategy like SnT -> draw 7/annihilate)...but it is kind of what the format deserves until such a time that playing limited-style magic (i.e. run good cards into each other until someone runs out) with legacy cards stops being the surest path to tier one.
I just yearn for the days when legacy top 8's felt diverse rather than the diversity simply coming by saying, oh well this deck is different from delver because instead of delver and dazes it runs leovold and KCommand. Just look at the most recent Modern Open Top 8. 7/8 decks (maybe 6/8 if you consider Jeskai Control and Blue Moon to be too similar) have pretty unique strategies. You can trash modern for having boring (subjective) gameplay, but you certainly can't say it isn't a diverse format.
Lands preys on almost every creature based deck. Not only good stuff value decks, but also synergy based creature decks like Elves, Fish, Eldrazi, Nic Fit, etc.
Blue-stew could go away, and Lands should be just fine.
BTW if you think a unique prison/combo hybrid deck that attacks the game from an unconventional angle is inherently unhealthy, we want pretty much the opposite thing from MTG I think!
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Skimming through the last few pages this jumped out at me for being probably the most objectively wrong thing said.
Modern is way more diverse now than it was when Twin and Pod were legal.
You have the freedom to do way more 'ton of different things' now than you did when you could just lose the game by tapping out on turn 3-4.
'ton of different things' and 'decks were powerful and could interact' usually don't go hand in hand
Delver/Twin are powerful and can interact but they put a serious limit on 'ton of different things'
On the other hand this post from taconaut is actually good:
I'm not trying to tell people to "go play modern" by way of excluding them; I'm trying to ask those people, "why not play modern?"
The things those players want, in general, roughly align with decisions they have made in modern: cantrips are banned, deathrite shaman is banned, TNN isn't legal, many different kinds of janky, creature-based decks are playable, you can get away with not playing blue, et cetera et cetera. I don't want to kick them out of Legacy; I want to understand why they want to make Legacy something it's not, instead of just seeking out the play patterns you want in other formats that actively encourage them. Every time I consider playing Modern, I realize Probe/Ponder/Preordain/various other things are banned, and instead of complaining about it, I just play a format where they are legal, instead. Why do we need Legacy to be another "duders and removal" format, when there are already at least three I can think of that fit that description?
I don't know much about Modern, but Legacy has both of those features in spades.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Honestly, i never liked modern cause i'm an old man that has been playing since '94. Most of the modern cards hold zero nostalgia to me, i need my duals and my wastes and my forces, my petals, my reanimates, my cradles, grim monoliths, dark rituals etc...
That and modern used to be an extremely linear playpattern format. It was all midrangy shit and combo. It's no longer that way. Mardu pyromancer and hollow one are real tempo decks, with cheap powerful threats and disruption. UW control with jace feels a lot like a real control deck, with permission and jaces and sweepers, then you still have all the midrange soups (but much less now) and the janky combo decks. In short, the play patterns in there are varied, even if modern players probably hate it cause not playing curvedecks is "unfair".
Now it's legacy that feel that way. Say what you want about miracle, at least it wasn't a stupidly ass-garbage boring play pattern of tempo threat into infinite cantrips and permission. It spent turns setting up a combo, and then you knew you had lost unless your deck was tailord to beat it. Its power level was too high, but it didn't need its identity removed, it needed its power level toned down, alongside all the "i play everything in my deck cause i can play ancestral recall anyway". Current Legacy now feel more like old modern than current modern does.
The implication inherent in 'ton of different things' is 'ton of different things that are competitively viable' and everybody calling for bans in this thread would disagree with you.
As the metagame saturation of Brainstorm and DRS seems to be going up rather than down I don't think the data agrees with you either
("decks are powerful and can interact" is of course true about legacy)
I do find it somewhat amusing that you complain about a 3/1 with protection from the opponent while your main game plan is an indestructible flyer that kills in one hit and is often found in decks that can bring it right back any time someone does manage to get rid of it.
Just for a data point: I've been playing a lot of U/R Delver lately (because Price of Progress is a good card right now), and while I agree that it's good against Lands, sometimes I still find myself facing down a turn-two or turn-three indestructible flying 20/20, and that's the game. It's no more or less fun to lose to that than it is to be pecked to death by a True-Name. And True-Name takes a while to kill you, can be outraced by a variety of things, is susceptible to counterspells, and usually actually stays dead if you manage to put it in the graveyard. Is that massively worse than Marit Lage? I don't think it's possible to say so objectively.
But I think the main thing is Legacy is a huge, high-powered format. There are going to be decks that coalesce around the best and hardest-to-answer threats, because blanking common answers is often a good strategy. True-Name is certainly up there on the hard-to-answer scale, and requires some specialized tools if it does manage to get on the battlefield, but the same is true of several common big threats in Legacy.
Sorry for the wall of text! Here is my attempt to summarize parts of the discussion objectively, provide some perspectives and then my own view. I usually try to avoid posting in this thread, since it's so hard to keep updated on everything, and since it's a complicated discussion that is very easy to get wrong in many places (I'm probably wrong in a dozen places here). Sorry if someone has discussed this recently or if I'm missing some relevant discussion, I've been reading here for years but not everything.
When many people argue for opposite actions, banning card X or Y, based on the same understanding of the situation, a stale and monotonous meta, we can basically accept that both lines of argumentation will hold. It is not someone's logic that is failing. Most people playing such a complex game are capable of logical thinking. What makes someone pick a side is usually the values that they hold higher. So perhaps we should all spend some time discussing and understanding these values, too, not just fighting each other with logical arguments. That's the most likely way to get closer to agreeing on something, or understanding and accepting other's viewpoints.
Edit: some don't think the format needs changing, that is a valid opinion of course but one that I did not include here since I wanted to address the people who feel that something needs to be banned.
I also think that trying to summarize a discussion is good for understanding it better. Try to include pros and cons and a complete picture in a line of reasoning. Having a collectively written and agreed upon problem description and pro and contra argumentation would probably help the discussion a lot. Whatever single argument is provided can always have a counter argument. Spreading it out over hundreds of posts makes it impossible to overview. But creating such a uniform description of the situation is a bit too much of an undertaking.
The ban Deathrite camp thinks the blue shell is good, this is what they are valuing: it is fun to play, it makes for interactive games, it helps players leverage skill, it helps enable otherwise vulnerable combo decks. And Deathrite Shaman is good enough that with it the blue shell becomes too large for a meaningful variation of decks, games become monotonous and boring, it also invalidates mana denial strategies; the blue shell including Deathrite is too good to be combated efficiently. And Deathrite isn't really that important in fighting graveyard strategies, sometimes graveyard strategies go off before it gets active - we'll find other ways to deal with graveyards.
The ban Brainstorm camp wants to remove the one card that seems to homogenize the format into: cards that use Brainstorm to achieve superior consistency, and decks that try to fight that consistency advantage. The latter has been limited to decks using Chalice/Thalia/Vial or super redundant decks such as Lands/Elves/Burn. A third category is graveyard based combo or synergy decks. These people think that a meta defined by Brainstorm and anti-Brainstorm strategies is too narrow, and that removing Brainstorm would weaken the blue shell enough that other competing strategies than the anti-Brainstorm and graveyard-based strategies would flourish. The anti-Brainstorm camp values a diversity of the format that enables other strategies than those that use Brainstorm, different as they may be, and those that try to compete with Brainstorm. Such other strategies could be the Rock, Nic Fit, Painter, Maverick, Zoo, Pox, Goblins, Cloudpost, any glass-cannon combo deck, Jund, and above all the decks that haven't been invented due to the blue shell supremacy. This would include diversity well beyond strategic diversity.
I will not go into the ban Probe or ban TNN arguments now as they seem less relevant. I don't think banning either would have a large effect on the metagame and the diversity of the format, which is the main question discussed, although I would enjoy a game where both are banned more. More fun, more interaction, more skill, less boring. Not crucial for format diversity perhaps.
So, I was talking about understanding values. I tried to address values in the sections above. When I look at it again to better understand what these values say, I think that a possible interpretation would be that the players in the pro-Brainstorm camp value the technical aspects of the playing experience higher, while players in the ban-Brainstorm camp value the format diversity and room for innovation in deck building higher. I think this is a relevant aspect to discuss, to better understand what people are arguing for.
In addition to this, I think Wizards are likely to avoid banning what is considered a pillar of the format, and a popular such, to avoid alienating players. They need to be pragmatic.
Edit: I forgot the alternative that Wizards seem to have been working with, a bit inefficiently, for years. They have been printing cards that provide some meaningful interaction with Brainstorm. Unfortunately, the only good enough option they provided was blue, that would be Leovold. I'm talking about, in order of appearance: Notion Thief (2013), Spirit of the Labyrinth (2014), Leovold, Emissary of Trest (2016), Alms Collector (2017)
I personally hope they try to give legacy the diversity that I am envious of modern for, and that is by weakening the blue shell. I don't believe they will, but I hope so. If this means that combo decks such as ANT and TES become unplayable, then that is probably too high a price to pay since they are very elegant decks that provide a strategic diversity that make it a beautiful format, somehow. I think however these blue based combo decks would still be able to use the consistency engine from the remaining cantrips to be a very relevant factor in a post-Brainstorm meta. Remember that the decks they are trying to fight will be hurt by losing Brainstorm too. And the non-Brainstorm decks of today will still have to fight a superior consistency engine in the remaining cantrips, only a more fair setup of cantrips. But we won't know the effects until a long time after such a ban. I think if someone would hold a series of tournaments with certain cards banned or unbanned that would be a very interesting and fun experiment.
Last edited by pettdan; 04-10-2018 at 10:34 AM.
Great summary, pettdan.
I'd like to correct on one thing: I love technical play, and part of why I'd like to tone the cantrip shell down enough to where other engines can compete is to have different technical/executional feel to decks' play: Playing cantrips, playing a raw draw spell based deck, playing Loam and playing Elves all feel different to operate. The Xerox shell is probably just the best way to play Magic, but you can implement the principle in different ways at least, or keep it weak enough where other things are competitive in a real way. Right now, they just aren't.
I like cantrips, casting them is stupidly interesting, but a blue stew format is just more boring than a non blue stew format.
By Pettdan:
NAILED IT.When many people argue for opposite actions, banning card X or Y, based on the same understanding of the situation, a stale and monotonous meta, we can basically accept that both lines of argumentation will hold. It is not someone's logic that is failing. Most people playing such a complex game are capable of logical thinking. What makes someone pick a side is usually the values that they hold higher. So perhaps we should all spend some time discussing and understanding these values, too, not just fighting each other with logical arguments. That's the most likely way to get closer to agreeing on something, or understanding and accepting other's viewpoints.
In regards to the whole post, GET THIS MAN A BEER. He's earned it.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
I’m not in any “ban camp” I’m in the anti-ban camp. Let’s discuss which cards to unban not vice versa. If the power level of cards in Legacy is too much for you to handle, consider playing modern or other formants like @taconaut said. Legacy should be every card ever printed minus power minus joke cards minus obviously broken cards or Classically Broken like @BirdsOfParadise mentioned (and sdt is certainly not one of those cards).
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