All B/R update speculation.

[nevilshute]

When is/was the next / most recent update to the banned list? When I google it all I come up with is May 2014. Surely there had been one since? Or there must be one soon?

[swoop]

In b4 brainstorm needs to go

[Bobmans]

When is/was the next / most recent update to the banned list? When I google it all I come up with is May 2014. Surely there had been one since? Or there must be one soon?

There was, a link was posted on this thread. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?14662-All-B-R-update-speculation&p=835601&viewfull=1#post835601)
WotC seems to have a new site, i noticed that there are two sites. So i guess that this (http://magic.wizards.com/en/gameinfo/gameplay/formats/bannedrestricted) is the correct one.

[Darkenslight]

In b4 brainstorm needs to go

No, surprisingly, this season, it's clearly Treasure Cruise! /s

[Lord Seth]

I think we should all move on from the ban Brainstorm train. It's clear now that being the only skill intensive 1 mana cantrip taht blue has, it can't be banned or the format would instantly become modern and everyone would play midrange.

I think a better target for a ban would be Island honestly. And the good thing is that if you ban island u cna probably unban Gush too.Don't think so. Gush is most powerful in a tempo shell like RUG Delver, which as we know is not well known for playing basics and would be one of the decks least hit by the Island ban.

[wcm8]

How long do people suppose that Treasure Cruise will last? Next ban cycle? Indefinitely?

I personally don't think it's long for this format. This is a card that provides Blue with an unfair advantage over non-Blue decks. Similar to Tarmogoyf, the only 'hoop' you have to jump through to enable Delve is to play a normal game of Magic. Card draw is an extremely powerful mechanic in a game that revolves around cards as resources, and filling the graveyard is especially easy in Eternal formats due to the high density of cheap spells and non-permanent interaction.

TC has proven itself as a viable draw engine in Vintage, where it's competing with cards like Gush. Obviously, Legacy and Vintage are apples to oranges and there are very different considerations for each format. My point is simply to show that while the barrier of playability is much, much higher in Vintage, this is still a card that can step toe-to-toe with cards that are already banned in Legacy.

Personally, I'd prefer to play a format that's less swingy and where powerful draw engines require a bit more setup, e.g. Jace costs 4 mana; Ancestral Visions either needs to be suspended or cascaded into; Glimpse of Nature puts obvious restrictions on the rest of the deck. Conversely: TC is extremely swingy, requires hardly any setup beyond playing the game, and will likely end up adopted by every deck that can reasonably support it (which are numerous). TC decks might push out those that don't run it due to their more consistent game plans. The next Grand Prix results will be telling.

[btm10]

Cruise getting banned wouldn't shock me. The only caveat is that blue decks already have a huge consistency edge over nonblue decks, so that aspect might hide the signal from some people. For now, I think it's worthy of a ban consideration, but it hasn't proven banworthy yet. Unlike TNN, it's not something that can be adapted to or built around - it just draws three cards for U (or 1U, or occasionally, 2U) which is powerful and not easily counteracted.

I give it six months to a year.

[Tammit67]

How long do people suppose that Treasure Cruise will last? Next ban cycle? Indefinitely?



I'm of the opinion that if there was ever a time to hit brainstorm, it would be now. A powerful card that helps enable the breakout star of the format, a card they've probably had their eye on for a while? Seems like a simple decision to me

[Will_L]

Unlike TNN, it's not something that can be adapted to or built around - it just draws three cards for U (or 1U, or occasionally, 2U) which is powerful and not easily counteracted

You sort of contradict yourself... You say it cannot be adapted to or built around, but then later you say it can't be easily counteracted... Implying that there is a way to counteract it.

I agree Cruise is super swingy and requires basically no set up... However it absolutely can be played against and adapted too, rather easily I'd suggest... By using hard GY hate... Leyline of the Void, multiples Crypts/Relics and best of all, Rest in Peace.

I think it's super powerful, one of the most powerful spells we've seen since Delver/SCM maybe... but it certainly can be beat with GY hate.

[rufus]

...
I think it's super powerful, one of the most powerful spells we've seen since Delver/SCM maybe... but it certainly can be beat with GY hate.

Someting like DRS might help, but with most dedicated graveyard hate you'll just lose more slowly. IMO REB or Commandeer are better answers.

[DLifshitz]

but it certainly can be beat with GY hate.

As has been pointed out all over the Internet already, blanket graveyard hate is inefficient against many of the lists that are now playing Cruise. It's always been good against BUG Delver with 4 DRS, 4 Goyfs in addition to Cruise because they have trouble winning while it's in play. The others (Blade, URx Delver) can play around it fairly easily.

[Gheizen64]

Damn i didn't notice it at first but TC is actually non-misdirectable. Jesus christ what a card.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Damn i didn't notice it at first but TC is actually non-misdirectable. Jesus christ what a card.

It is way too early to call for a ban. Right now it does not seem like the meta game has changed. Treasure Cruise is showing up in all sorts of tempo decks or fair decks with cantrips but we can't yet say that the power levels have really shifted.

Brainstorm and Ponder are still a way more common theme among the top decks.

Right now I see Treasure Cruise as a format staple but not banworthy. Actually I think it changes the meta game in an interesting way to further increase the value of Spirit of the Labyrinth, Notion Thief etc..
Not too thrilled about increased value for maindeck gy hate as I think graveyard hate is way too strong at this point.

I really wish WotC designed cards to combat graveyard hate so that these sideboard plans don't completely eliminate gy decks. I would like to see for example a black hatebear that you could sac to return all exiled cards back to the graveyard or a reverse Relic of Progenitus.

[Gheizen64]

I don't think TC need banning, but with blue getting another critical card i could really see BS being banned this time, especially when you consider that a lot of the power of Delver come from it. The GP will tell a lot about the format.
Also, while TC is really good, it's also a pretty unique card in the sense that's a draw spell that encourage you to play a consistently low curve/proactive deck, fit badly in AdN because of its cmc, and become completely dead in face of GY hate. BS is just a generic ( overpowered) cantrip spell and there's already Ponder and Preordain (+ SDT) ready to replace it, unlike TC, TNN or Delver which are way more unique and archetype defining. So if you want to see blue getting powered down but not lose any archetype, BS is the way to go for sure, as much as i hate Delver and TNN conceptually for being absolutely not blue.
Banning BS would also make discard much stronger due to the impossibility the hide key cards, which in turn would make a black core for decks viable and not only blue, since discard would be so much stronger against combo, and combo in general would lose more comparably to control/tempo from losing brainstorm (free mulls are much more valuable in decks which search a particular combination of cards over decks which have redundancy).

That or wait for WotC to print a red/green/white/black mistake instead of their nth blue "mistake" in a row :rolleyes: (Snapcaster = red, Delver = black, TNN = white etc...)

[nedleeds]

How long do people suppose that Brainstorm will last? Next ban cycle? Indefinitely?

I personally don't think it's long for this format. This is a card that provides Blue with an unfair advantage over non-Blue decks. Similar to Tarmogoyf, the only 'hoop' you have to jump through to enable Brainstorm is to play fetchlands. Card draw is an extremely powerful mechanic in a game that revolves around cards as resources, and filling the graveyard is especially easy in Eternal formats due to the high density of cheap spells and non-permanent interaction.

Brainstorm has proven itself as a viable draw engine in Vintage, where it's stone fucking restricted. Obviously, Legacy and Vintage are apples to oranges and there are very different considerations for each format. My point is simply to show that while the barrier of playability is much, much higher in Vintage, this is still a card that can step toe-to-toe with cards that are already banned in Legacy.


Fixed this for you. Brainstorm is more powerful, requires less setup and commitment, and is more ubiquitous. Anyone calling for Cruise to be banned but saying Brainstorm is fucking delusional.

[Barook]

Why not both? Legacy is long overdue to get rid of the blue dominance to unfuck itself.

At the current pace, we're going for a full blue Top 16 with the exception of some Elves as the token nonblue decks at GP Brainstorm.

That said, it's hard to say how much impact TC is going to have at the GP. People are rapidly adopting it now, so the numbers are probably only going to increase alot.

We also have a wild card in form of Commander 2014 where they could drop some TNN-tier horseshit bomb into meta one week before the GP. And knowing Wizards, said bomb is either blue or run in a blue shell for maximum effectiveness.

[nedleeds]

I've given up hope that they care, we can't fire weekly legacy anymore or it barely fires with 8-10, where as we used to get 20-30 ... some people have sold out but the majority still have their cards. At a minimum there have to be some unbannings ... I mean Mind Twist is pretty much laughable at this point -- I twist you and you Brainstorm and hide your Treasure Cruise ... if by some miracle it resolves then you untap and have food for your Ancestral. Nice turn. Unbanning Vise might make people think about drawing back up to 7 at Sorcery speed (or probably not actually ...).

[btm10]

Fixed this for you. Brainstorm is more powerful, requires less setup and commitment, and is more ubiquitous. Anyone calling for Cruise to be banned but saying Brainstorm is fucking delusional.

The difference is that while it's obvious that Brainstorm won't (and I would contend, shouldn't) be banned, there's a fair chance the Cruise would be if it were slotted into every blue deck. Is the format a little stale? Yes. I'd love to see some unbannings too; probably starting with Survival, Earthcraft, and Frantic Search (Mind Twist is, as you said, irrelevant).

But Brainstorm will never be banned.

[easysantiago]

To those who want Brainstorm banned: can you accept Treasure Cruise as a functional reprint with one added caveat that the format will now main board more graveyard hate? In what other ways will the format look different with TC in place of BS?

[Darkenslight]

To those who want Brainstorm banned: can you accept Treasure Cruise as a functional reprint with one added caveat that the format will now main board more graveyard hate? In what other ways will the format look different with TC in place of BS?

Better (in terms of more varied); Tempo would lose its critical Draw-3, Combo would occasionally crap itself and non-Elves! non-Burn aggro might actually stand a chance against Sneak decks. The major losers would be Delver-based aggro and Miracles, as Delver wouldn't be able to fix its flips and Miracles wouldn't be able to put its namesake cards on top from their hand.

[Dice_Box]

To those who want Brainstorm banned: can you accept Treasure Cruise as a functional reprint with one added caveat that the format will now main board more graveyard hate? In what other ways will the format look different with TC in place of BS?
Yay, ban Brainstorm is back. We took a few weeks break but the merry go round continues.

As said above, you would harm Delver and Miracles. You also really need to push on filling your yard to make it work too. I think if you only had TC RIP would become a much more played card and a good amount of the early manipulation that is seen in combo would be hampered. You would see a lot more Blue midrange, a massive reduction in Miracles and Combo and you would see a good amount of the format converge onto one sided grave hate.

Personally, not really what I want to see happen.

[LOLWut]

I've given up hope that they care, we can't fire weekly legacy anymore or it barely fires with 8-10, where as we used to get 20-30 ... some people have sold out but the majority still have their cards. At a minimum there have to be some unbannings ... I mean Mind Twist is pretty much laughable at this point -- I twist you and you Brainstorm and hide your Treasure Cruise ... if by some miracle it resolves then you untap and have food for your Ancestral. Nice turn. Unbanning Vise might make people think about drawing back up to 7 at Sorcery speed (or probably not actually ...).

Maybe Atlanta just sucks? I spend my time in two cities, and both get more for Legacy than in the past. And yes, things should be unbanned.

[Megadeus]

We get above average turn outs for legacy SCGs. Also we got three SCGs this year. The players here just are tired of the format because it's pretty stale at this point.

And to the poster who said he would hate to see a brainstorm ban because then there would be less miracles and delver and more non blue aggro... I'm so confused. You would be unhappy with more viable decks and more variety? I for one loved when I first got into legacy that I could go a whole tourney and not play against the same deck twice. Now? Last star city I played against 2 delver, 2 miracles, stoneblade, and elves. Nice format

[Nielsie]

I am all for a ban on Brainstorm but I would understand we first try some unbannings. With all the blue crap flying around I think the following would be perfectly fine to unban:

- Mind Twist: because nobody cares anyway...
- Black Vise: this would be a great anti-brainstorm card
- Goblin Recruiter: is this realy so degenerate or only time consuming? I don't think it's anymore timeconsuming than an Elves player who is glimpsing, symbioting, etc. or a Storm player trying to find the perfect chain after a not so great adnauseum or a high-tide player... This is the Goblin that Goblins needs to be almost viable again.
- Survival: it doesn't seem all that more degenerate than island, petal, petal, flying spaghetti monster or 7/7 lifelink Yawgmoth's Bargain...
- Memory Jar: this would be MUD's brainstorm

[Wanderlust]

I think an important difference between Treasure Cruise and Brainstorm is that Treasure Cruise is truly card advantage. In Legacy, true card advantage has been hard to come by for a very long time - you either get it at 4 mana (Jace) or it's very vulnerable to removal (Dark Confidant) or you have to jump through hoops in terms of deck building (Glimpse of Nature in Elves, Life from the Loam in Lands, Ancestral Visions in BUG.) Treasure Cruise feels out of place to me in Legacy because it is major card advantage with minimal deckbuilding constraints. And I don't think "just pack more graveyard hate" is going to cut it - the decks in which Cruise is best will laugh at your Rest in Peace or Relic as they beat you down with a horde of 1/1 elementals and 3/2 flyers and Brainstorm their dead Cruises back on top to shuffle them away. Tonight I'm feeling on the Treasure Cruise banwagon: I liked that in Legacy pre-Khans you had to work hard for your card advantage.

And yes to unbannings!

[Gheizen64]

I think an important difference between Treasure Cruise and Brainstorm is that Treasure Cruise is truly card advantage. In Legacy, true card advantage has been hard to come by for a very long time - you either get it at 4 mana (Jace) or it's very vulnerable to removal (Dark Confidant) or you have to jump through hoops in terms of deck building (Glimpse of Nature in Elves, Life from the Loam in Lands, Ancestral Visions in BUG.) Treasure Cruise feels out of place to me in Legacy because it is major card advantage with minimal deckbuilding constraints. And I don't think "just pack more graveyard hate" is going to cut it - the decks in which Cruise is best will laugh at your Rest in Peace or Relic as they beat you down with a horde of 1/1 elementals and 3/2 flyers and Brainstorm their dead Cruises back on top to shuffle them away. Tonight I'm feeling on the Treasure Cruise banwagon: I liked that in Legacy pre-Khans you had to work hard for your card advantage.

And yes to unbannings!

Tbh brainstorm is card advantage that require much less deckbuilding (play fetches). Cruise is more restrictive on deckbuilding and can be hated out more easily mostly because you can't cast Cruise first 3 turns, meaning cards like Chains or SoL are actually effective against it, unlike against BS.

[Sloshthedark]

We get above average turn outs for legacy SCGs. Also we got three SCGs this year. The players here just are tired of the format because it's pretty stale at this point.

And to the poster who said he would hate to see a brainstorm ban because then there would be less miracles and delver and more non blue aggro... I'm so confused. You would be unhappy with more viable decks and more variety? I for one loved when I first got into legacy that I could go a whole tourney and not play against the same deck twice. Now? Last star city I played against 2 delver, 2 miracles, stoneblade, and elves. Nice format

If it's stale it's because of card availability and Scg netdecking circuit ... OMG because you're playing Scg, that's what you get the when game get's more standarded to Standard by articles, opinion makers and no time/experience to make competent decisions, hivemind -> delusion and whining ... dedicated (even soft criteria - playing more than 3 years) Legacy players are much less than 50% of Legacy playing community (because of increase of player base, prices, adulthood etc), for few years legacy is not in hands of legacy players (if it has ever been)

last 2 big European tournaments I played 14 different decks (including 2 trials) out of total 15 rounds and 12 different decks out of 15 rounds (incl sideevent and trial)! In 16 ppl LGS I play 2 same decks in a 4 round event hardly every other week... and I'd be totaly fine with what you played against

problem is netdecking = time and psychology (if you really want difference between legacy 2010 you can add OP splashable new prints like DRS, SFM that limit usable cardpool and the reason why deck are converging or undistinguishable into postmodern roulette - this cannot be undone!, without massive degeneration)

[btm10]

- Memory Jar: this would be MUD's brainstorm

No, no. No, no, no, no, no. Jar is super busted.

More seriously, putting an effectively asymmetric draw7 into Legacy will not do anything good for the health of the format. It will get run in MUD and maybe in 12post. It will definitely be run in combo. I'm all for strengthening combo decks right now, but Jar would probably help too much.

[Lemnear]

No, no. No, no, no, no, no. Jar is super busted.

More seriously, putting an effectively asymmetric draw7 into Legacy will not do anything good for the health of the format. It will get run in MUD and maybe in 12post. It will definitely be run in combo. I'm all for strengthening combo decks right now, but Jar would probably help too much.

The only advantage of Jar is that it doesn't give your opponent a fresh hand to untap with, but 5 mana for a symmetrical draw is still bad for combo. It would be busted for MUD and 12-post however.

[kravkenov]

Tbh brainstorm is card advantage that require much less deckbuilding (play fetches).
Brainstorm is not card advantage but card quality. After resolving Brainstorm, you do not have more card in hand (no card advantage) but better card in hand (card quality).
In contrario, Treasure Cruise is card-advantage. After resolving, Treasure Cruise net you +2 cards in hand.


Cruise is more restrictive on deckbuilding and can be hated out more easily mostly because you can't cast Cruise first 3 turns.

If you choose to fight Treasure Cruise with Grave Hate (assuming you dont play blue) :
- you do not advance your game plan
- you have to keep your hate on the board
- you will never 100% disrupt opponent TC strategies
--> you stay behind Treasure Cruise player (Building your deck to fight a specific card).



Another good card-advantage card is Gush. Despite its "huge" draw-back (return 2 islands), it is a proven effective draw-engine that is banned in legacy because too much effective draw engine.
Treasure Cruise draw-back is "play spells and drop fetch" which IMO is a much less relevant draw-back than Gush while giving you more card advantage.
Resolving even only one TC push you way ahead in the game. It give you gas for casting spells, which set-up your graveyard to chain into your next Treasure.
IMO It is an unfair card that should be banned asap in modern, legacy and vintage (restricted).

[menace13]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er

[Nielsie]

The only advantage of Jar is that it doesn't give your opponent a fresh hand to untap with, but 5 mana for a symmetrical draw is still bad for combo. It would be busted for MUD and 12-post however.
But would it be a problem if MUD and 12 post got to play with this? These decks are now so inconsistant because of their draws and topdecks. Memory Jar would fix this. Many times people who oppose a Brainstorm ban give the argument that the best solution is to provide more card advantage and filtering for the other colors. Memory Jar is doing exactly this but within very strict deck constraints.

Furthermore, it's not like there isn't a 7/7 lifelink draw 7 flying demon being cast consistently for only 3 mana... So the 'draw 7' instruction on Memeroy Jar shouldn't be the only reason for banning it.

[Barook]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er
There are still ~30% nonblue decks left. Wizards are sure working hard to eliminate the rest, too. The average count of blue decks each years since Delver is only increasing.

[btm10]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er

The (implicit) argument about Cruise being banworthy while Brainstorm isn't is that the blueness of the format isn't a problem (for the record, I don't think it is, but that's a separate discussion), but reducing the tempo/midrange matchup and tempo and midrange mirrors to a Treasure Cruise arms race is a problem. In principle, I agree with this, but I'm not convinced that it will come to pass yet.

[HSCK]

There are still ~30% nonblue decks left. Wizards are sure working hard to eliminate the rest, too. The average count of blue decks each years since Delver is only increasing.

Your stats continue to be nonsensical and seemingly drawn from nowhere.

I think it's hilarious that so many of the users that thought TC wouldn't be that good are on the ban train. It's absurdly powerful.

[dog_koko]

I can't believe what I am reading!!! I expected this in Modern players but in Legacy ones...

You are crying Wizards to ban a good card instead of trying to "hate" it. I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

I know this card is really good but a magic player can break this

[Zombie]

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/vma/1.jpg

"good card"

[Lemnear]

But would it be a problem if MUD and 12 post got to play with this? These decks are now so inconsistant because of their draws and topdecks. Memory Jar would fix this. Many times people who oppose a Brainstorm ban give the argument that the best solution is to provide more card advantage and filtering for the other colors. Memory Jar is doing exactly this but within very strict deck constraints.

Furthermore, it's not like there isn't a 7/7 lifelink draw 7 flying demon being cast consistently for only 3 mana... So the 'draw 7' instruction on Memeroy Jar shouldn't be the only reason for banning it.

What constraints? They are already running a manabase which gets absurd within 3-4 turns if not immediately molested by landdestruction. There is no adjustment to be made to run Jar. SDT + Jar would just make these decks pretty consistant, Having no color-restriction, 5+ mana by turn 5 and drawing 8 cards per turn makes any non-combo deck without wastelands near unplayable. Jar gets around the natural weakness of those decks which is running out of handcards pretty fast and going into a shabby topdeck-mode.

You miss that S&T is a two-card combo, while Jar is just a single, colorless card which fits naturally into their manabase.


Brainstorm is not card advantage but card quality. After resolving Brainstorm, you do not have more card in hand (no card advantage) but better card in hand (card quality).

Alex B. disagrees ;)

[FoolofaTook]

If the meta turns into Elves, UR Delver and Miracles with the other 2 of the top 8 slots being filled by a rotation of blue lists with the occasional Burn or other tight non-blue list it's hard to see where WotC goes with the ban train.

If UR Delver is getting two top 8 slots consistently and Miracles is getting 2 and 1 or 2 other blue lists are getting a slot it's hard to ban Treasure Cruise off of that. WotC has clearly indicated at this point that they have little interest in banning Brainstorm, so maybe they just let things ride.

If UR Delver is getting 4 top 8 slots, which is very unlikely to happen, then it becomes easier to see Treasure Cruise getting banned. That would be the Survival of the Fittest decision all over again.

If there are 28-32 Brainstorms in most top 8's and UR Delver is not heavily over represented, well that's where the meta has been occasionally in the past and it'll be interesting to see if WotC thinks anything has changed.

I think Elves is going to save blue spells from the ban cycle in January/February. What happens after that is anybody's guess and probably depends at least partly on the broken card in the next set.

[nedleeds]

I can't believe what I am reading!!! I expected this in Modern players but in Legacy ones...

You are crying Wizards to ban a good card instead of trying to "hate" it. I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

I know this card is really good but a magic player can break this

Can't you just brainstorm, draw more gas and shuffle the dead cruise away and win anyway? Without Brainstorm Cruise will be far less consistent <obv>. Brainstorm is enabling all this idiocy because it's hopelessly overpowered.

[nedleeds]

I think it's hilarious that so many of the users that thought TC wouldn't be that good are on the ban train. It's absurdly powerful.

Yet Brainstorm still crushes it in usage. Wow ... Brainstorm must be more than absurdly powerful. Plaid?

[Dice_Box]

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/filestorage/brainstorm-blame-workplace-ecard-someecards.jpg

[Barook]

Can't you just brainstorm, draw more gas and shuffle the dead cruise away and win anyway? Without Brainstorm Cruise will be far less consistent <obv>. Brainstorm is enabling all this idiocy because it's hopelessly overpowered.
Brainstorm is easier to use.

Besides, Treasure Cruise isn't even out a month yet. There are still enough people who think that TC isn't the real deal. Its numbers are going to explode after GP Brainstorm.

[Star|Scream]

Yet Brainstorm still crushes it in usage. Wow ... Brainstorm must be more than absurdly powerful. Plaid?

Yeah, but brainstorm is the most skill-intensive card in Legacy.

Wouldn't you rather be playing Modern?

[Michael Keller]

You can't realistically cast a Treasure Cruise until turn three on average, turn two if you have a sick draw. Since you're basically using every single card in your graveyard as a colorless mana source, a turn three "draw three" spell isn't that attractive. However, what is attractive is its cost to actually play once you incidentally have seven cards in your graveyard. In some sort of way, it is like Ancestral Visions in that you're firing it off after four turns with an initial T1 investment of a single blue mana as opposed to a single blue investment on turn three or four. But an Ancestral Recall it isn't, because you're just not firing the card off on turn one after dumping a hand full of free mana. Not even close.

Cruise, on the other hand, forces you to play cards out of your hand and fill the graveyard quickly in order to cast it for a single blue mana on (generally) the third or fourth turn.

All of this aside, Treasure Cruise will never be banned unless an unholy amount of people play it and it becomes degenerate, which it really isn't. Brainstorm is by far a more powerful card and that's been played in who knows how many decks over the last nineteen years. Cruise is a powerful spell, but IMO it's not anywhere close to being considered ban-worthy. Not before a spell that costs three mana (2U) and adds fifteen mana to your mana pool.

[DLifshitz]

I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

This is the worst-case scenario that doesn't come up very often. It's pretty easy to dodge Daze and even Spell Pierce when you're casting TC for 1 blue. And extra TCs can be pitched or filtered away. I'm not saying anything should be banned (yet), just that TC is not exactly easy to stop/hate out.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Counterspell and Envelop are barely played so countering TC rarely happens unless it is Force of Will in which case you 2 for 1 your opponent so that is fine usually..

Anyway if something gets the Axe it should not be TC since there are more powerful blue cards.

[btm10]

Anyway if something gets the Axe it should not be TC since there are more powerful blue cards.

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

[Gheizen64]

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

You're just arguing semantics. I can say that TC isn't nowhere as good as ancestral becaues of ten thousands reasons, and the same can be said about BS. But the truth is that both cards do a pretty good ancestral impression, and i think data will support BS being closer to Ancestral than TC (aka played in more decks, better correlation between n°played and placement etc...). You can play that bet if you want, but the truth is that all the fabled "BS" answers like Chains or SoL are effective against TC and not against BS just because TC can't be used first 2-3 turns of the game, leaving you time to deploy your proactive answers.

But the truth is that BS support crowd will never admit that the card is way too close to recall to be considered fair and they'll hide forever under the "it's other cards", "it's skill intensive", "you can play modern if you don't like it". Arguments and data just aren't liked around here i guess, better to disregard them and put your faith in the blue church of broken cards.
Meanwhile Twist, Vise, Desire and Survival are still banned.

[Gheizen64]

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

You're just arguing semantics. I can say that TC isn't nowhere as good as ancestral becaues of ten thousands reasons, and the same can be said about BS. But the truth is that both cards do a pretty good ancestral impression, and i think data will support BS being closer to Ancestral than TC (aka played in more decks, better correlation between n°played and placement etc...). You can play that bet if you want, but the truth is that all the fabled "BS" answers like Chains or SoL are effective against TC and not against BS just because TC can't be used first 2-3 turns of the game, leaving you time to deploy your proactive answers. This mean you actually have a chance to fight TC, unlike BS which is often free Mulligan T2.

BS support crowd will never admit that the card is way too close to recall to be considered fair and they'll hide forever under the "it's the other cards and not BS", "it's skill intensive", "you can play modern if you don't like it".
Meanwhile Twist, Vise, Desire and Survival are still banned.

[menace13]

Can't you just brainstorm, draw more gas and shuffle the dead cruise away and win anyway? Without Brainstorm Cruise will be far less consistent <obv>. Brainstorm is enabling all this idiocy because it's hopelessly overpowered.
Exactly. The format hasn't changed. Blue decks still on top. The same blue decks with or without TC.



to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards.
You mean like Brainstorm? Oh, wait, never mind..


This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously.
You mean the keep brainstorm crowd takes its self seriously and the ban brainstorm crowd doesnt take the pro-brainstrom crowd seriously?

Or when the brainstorm crowd says things like:


While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted.
Umm. No, not really. But, ok. Brainstorm, Ponder and Gush were all axed the same with the same restricted announcement.


Announcement Date: June 1, 2008
Effective Date: June 20, 2008
Vintage

Brainstorm is restricted
Flash is restricted
Gush is restricted
Merchant Scroll is restricted
Ponder is restricted


Maybe one should check things like that before they say things they have no clue about. Just saying.

[btm10]

Umm. No, not really. But, ok. Brainstorm, Ponder and Gush were all axed the same with the same restricted announcement.

Maybe one should check things like that before they say things they have no clue about. Just saying.

Or you know, follow up:




Explanation of September 20, 2010 B&R Changes (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/109b)

...

Both Gush and Frantic Search have been in overpowered decks in the past. However, it is not clear that either fits easily in the best performing decks of late, such as Jace, the Mind Sculptor control or various Mishra's Workshop decks. Frantic Search has been restricted for 10 years, and the DCI thinks it is time to see what it can do as a 4-of. Gush was restricted a few years ago. Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll were restricted at the same time, however, and the DCI would like to revisit whether Gush decks can be a healthy addition to the diversity of the format if you can play 4 Gush, but not 4 of either of the other cards.

Still, the suggestion that Brainstorm inhabits the same realm of brokenness as Balance or Yawgmoth's Will or Tinker is a joke.

[FoolofaTook]

Or you know, follow up:



Still, the suggestion that Brainstorm inhabits the same realm of brokenness as Balance or Yawgmoth's Will or Tinker is a joke.

Brainstorm isn't broken the way any of those cards are. However it creates a meta in which everybody either plays blue or plays against blue. Then you get to the 60% plus of top 8 lists using a full playset and I think it's obvious that Brainstorm is boxing in the meta in unhealthy ways and has been doing so almost since Legacy was created.

There are defining cards in every format. They're the cards you see consistently at the top tables at the end of a long tournament. For Legacy those cards are Force of Will and Brainstorm. It wouldn't hurt the format at all to make blue less dominant at the top tables.

In truth the only thing that keeps the top tables from being almost all blue is that many players either can't or won't spend to get the lands required to play blue lists. Blue is a $2500-$4000 investment in Legacy. Many non-blue competitive lists are $600-$2000. One of the reasons we're going to get an explosion of UR Delver at this point is that it can be built for $1600-$2000 depending on whether you already own the fetches and it has most of the blue power in it.

[btm10]

Brainstorm isn't broken the way any of those cards are. However it creates a meta in which everybody either plays blue or plays against blue. Then you get to the 60% plus of top 8 lists using a full playset and I think it's obvious that Brainstorm is boxing in the meta in unhealthy ways and has been doing so almost since Legacy was created.


According to HSCK's data (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28531-10-Months-of-TNN), which is the only full data for the period as far as I know, 41.1% of top twelve decks run Brainstorm over the ten months from the release of Commander 2013 (i.e., the printing of True-Name Nemesis) in October 2013 to 31 August 2014. Of the remaining decks that are tabulated, 10.52% (Elves, D&T, Jund) run no Brainstorms at all, and the 41.07% accounts for almost all mainstream blue archetypes (RUG, BUG, and UWR Delver, Miracles, Shardless BUG, Sneak and Show, ANT, Deathblade, and Stoneblade). The remaining 47.38% of top 8 decks, comprising almost half of the meta, is more than half non-Brainstorm decks like Dredge, MUD, and Burn, though none makes up more than 3% of the top 8 metagame. There may be more Brainstorm than non-Brainstorm decks, but that's a testament to how powerful an enabler of diverse archetypes Brainstorm is than it is an indictment of its brokenness.

[Barook]

According to HSCK's data (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28531-10-Months-of-TNN), which is the only full data for the period as far as I know, 41.1% of top twelve decks run Brainstorm over the ten months from the release of Commander 2013 (i.e., the printing of True-Name Nemesis) in October 2013 to 31 August 2014. Of the remaining decks that are tabulated, 10.52% (Elves, D&T, Jund) run no Brainstorms at all, and the 41.07% accounts for almost all mainstream blue archetypes (RUG, BUG, and UWR Delver, Miracles, Shardless BUG, Sneak and Show, ANT, Deathblade, and Stoneblade). The remaining 47.38% of top 8 decks, comprising almost half of the meta, is more than half non-Brainstorm decks like Dredge, MUD, and Burn, though none makes up more than 3% of the top 8 metagame. There may be more Brainstorm than non-Brainstorm decks, but that's a testament to how powerful an enabler of diverse archetypes Brainstorm is than it is an indictment of its brokenness.
Aren't you just cherry-picking data to your liking while bending the statement? The rest of the meta also contains Brainstorm decks like Reanimator which you tried to lump into your 47.38% part. Even if there are over 20% Brainstorm decks in there, it also makes up a significant part of the meta, which your just tried to brush off like that.

You can also read the data in a way that Brainstorm decks significantly outperform non-Brainstorm decks.

Otherwise, Top 8s wouldn't be close to the ~70% Brainstorm representation in Paper magic. Same for MTGO (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/legacy) with ~68%.

[HSCK]

I feel like data only does not really matter for that camp unfortunately. Or that somehow classifying all decks that have Brainstorm as the the same makes any sense. I'd rather see the 3 most extreme poles of the format banned.

[Ellomdian]

Blue is a $2500-$4000 investment in Legacy. Many non-blue competitive lists are $600-$2000. One of the reasons we're going to get an explosion of UR Delver at this point is that it can be built for $1600-$2000 depending on whether you already own the fetches and it has most of the blue power in it.

Other than the fact you just contradicted yourself...

Wasteland, Gaea's Cradle, and Tabernacle at Pendril Vale would all like to have a chat with you. While Blue (and Black) largely invoke a small premium (percentage wise) on cards, the cost of Legacy is high, whether you are playing Blue Control or Green Combo.

[Dice_Box]

TGC mid has my Elves at 1840, U/R only costs costs a touch more at 2050. The point is valid.

[ahg113]

I feel like data only does not really matter for that camp unfortunately. Or that somehow classifying all decks that have Brainstorm as the the same makes any sense. I'd rather see the 3 most extreme poles of the format banned.

Numbers don't lie, people do.

What are the 3 most extreme poles of the format that you would like to see banned?

[Lemnear]

Numbers don't lie, people do.

What are the 3 most extreme poles of the format that you would like to see banned?

According to the logic of banning the extreme performers and with Miracles, Elves, BUG and D&T being the top 4 decks to beat, doesn't that result in having SFM, Cradle, Delver, DRS and SDT among the top 10 choices to ban? ;)

I'm just waiting for the usual torchwaving on combo

[Meekrab]

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.
When's the last time anybody resolved Balance and had it be worth one good damn?

Am I right in thinking that if upwards of 95% of the only format it's legal in doesn't even play the card, maybe it should be revisted?

[Lemnear]

When's the last time anybody resolved Balance and had it be worth one good damn?

Am I right in thinking that if upwards of 95% of the only format it's legal in doesn't even play the card, maybe it should be revisted?

Look at Vintage: You drop your mananrocks and artifacts onto the field, pay 1W for a Mindtwist + Wrath of God (+Armageddon). Have done this dozens of time in old Vintage 5c Staxx. Due to the fact that Miracles runs out of handcards pretty fast and has their lock-components not affected, don't you think Balance would be silly. Stop dumb and lazy format comparison to have a point. Just because Time Vault and the Vintage Manarocks are banned in Legacy doesn't mean Tinker is fine either and even Tinker isn't the threat anymore it was 2004 because the format got more attached to creatures and therefore also the removal for these increased.

[Nielsie]

What constraints? They are already running a manabase which gets absurd within 3-4 turns if not immediately molested by landdestruction. There is no adjustment to be made to run Jar. SDT + Jar would just make these decks pretty consistant, Having no color-restriction, 5+ mana by turn 5 and drawing 8 cards per turn makes any non-combo deck without wastelands near unplayable. Jar gets around the natural weakness of those decks which is running out of handcards pretty fast and going into a shabby topdeck-mode.
The constraints are your mana-ramping. You need a very fishy manabase and often you need to go all in with your manaramping spells, there is nothing so frustrating as spending your three mana from Monolith on a spell that gets countered or watching your Metalworker die from a Lighting Bolt or whatever. There are so many powerfull things in Magic but once it's something not-blue it gets or stays banned too easily. I understand that workshop is banned because that would be crazy in MUD, but Memory Jar is something I would like to see being tested in Legacy. They can always ban it again...

On the Brainstorm discussion: isn't Mental Misstep banned because it was used by all the top-placing decks? What is the difference between Brainstorm and Mental Misstep in this regard?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

On the Brainstorm discussion: isn't Mental Misstep banned because it was used by all the top-placing decks? What is the difference between Brainstorm and Mental Misstep in this regard?
Brainstorm is the most skill-intensive thing in history of mankind.

[Gheizen64]

Brainstorm is the most skill-intensive thing in history of mankind.

If Brainstorm get banned everyone would just play modern.

[Zombie]

If Brainstorm get banned everyone would just play modern.

Absolutely. Then they'd realize Ponder and Preordain are banned and get back posthaste.

[Lemnear]

The constraints are your mana-ramping. You need a very fishy manabase and often you need to go all in with your manaramping spells, there is nothing so frustrating as spending your three mana from Monolith on a spell that gets countered or watching your Metalworker die from a Lighting Bolt or whatever. There are so many powerfull things in Magic but once it's something not-blue it gets or stays banned too easily. I understand that workshop is banned because that would be crazy in MUD, but Memory Jar is something I would like to see being tested in Legacy. They can always ban it again...

On the Brainstorm discussion: isn't Mental Misstep banned because it was used by all the top-placing decks? What is the difference between Brainstorm and Mental Misstep in this regard?

Who said anything about Metalworker and Monolith? I would go as far saying that both are outdated since Cloudpost/Glimmerpost/Vesuva/Expedition Map came together and ramp beyond the realms of both artifacts by turn 4 without being affected by counter or creature/artifact removal.

WotC isn't unbanning things, just to re-ban them shortly later. Do you understand that this would let them look like idiots? This isn't fucking YuGiOh, banning, unrestricting and restricting the same cards 3 times a year

Misstep was banned because it made 1cc spells unplayable, Legacy turn 1s hilarious (misstep your mistep on my Ponder), killed a bunch of combo decks like storm and with Snapcaster spoilered it woild have gotten even worse

[Barook]

Absolutely. Then they'd realize Ponder and Preordain are banned and get back posthaste.
I think his statement was ironic since one of the standard phrases of Brainstorm defenders is "Don't like Brainstorm? Go play Modern!".


On the Brainstorm discussion: isn't Mental Misstep banned because it was used by all the top-placing decks? What is the difference between Brainstorm and Mental Misstep in this regard?
Not much. Both push the format into being blue.

The only difference is that Brainstorm roughly averages at 68% or so while MM put up ~73% on average during its heydays. Give the trend of putting more and more blue bullshit into the format (with DDT and TC being the latest additions), it can't be that long until this number is reached or even surpassed. The real bullshit would start if it stayed legal at that level, given the official reasoning for the MM ban from Wizards.

[HSCK]

Numbers don't lie, people do.

What are the 3 most extreme poles of the format that you would like to see banned?

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

[Zombie]

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

As an Elves player, please ban those >:D

[Dice_Box]

Got to agree with that assessment. I would hate to see Terminus go though. Outside of Lands, Miracles is the last real control deck left in the format. I would really not want to see it cut down. That said, I can not argue that Terminus is not exactly healthy.

[Zombie]

Got to agree with that assessment. I would hate to see Terminus go though. Outside of Lands, Miracles is the last real control deck left in the format. I would really not want to see it cut down. That said, I can not argue that Terminus is not exactly healthy.

There's plenty of good mass removal in the format. You know, Pyroclasm is a card and kills damn near everything. Could just play a mix of that and Verdict or something.

[Gheizen64]

Got to agree with that assessment. I would hate to see Terminus go though. Outside of Lands, Miracles is the last real control deck left in the format. I would really not want to see it cut down. That said, I can not argue that Terminus is not exactly healthy.

This is really beating a dead horse, but all three of those cards are massively stronger because of Brainstorm, Show and Tell and Terminus especially. Show and tell would probably downright fold if they couldn't hide SnT from discard and/or search it with BS and get bumped down half a tier if not a full tier. Not being able to put a Terminus you drew on top of library would also severely cripple its reliability as a sweeper, and drawing it in your starting 7 would make it useless barring later Jaces or using looting or scroll rack. However i think that if BS really got banned, the probable increase in midrange (and TNN) would stil make Terminus an extremely strong choice even with the decreasd reliability. Delver would probably be the least affected, but it would still make the creature slightly less reliable by both removing the strongest 4 instants from the decks from flipping it, and the ability to put an instant/sorcery on top at demand.
The only thing i dislike is that TNN would probably get better in a post-BS world. And i really dislike that card.

[Dice_Box]

There's plenty of good mass removal in the format. You know, Pyroclasm is a card and kills damn near everything. Could just play a mix of that and Verdict or something.

Oh I know, but I for every list of Pros you make about a card like Verdict, I can make one at lest 3 times as long for Terminus. There is a reason that Terminus is the more heavily played card and should it find itself banned, I think I would stick to playing Lands and Painter when I want to watch the light leave peoples eyes when they see me as their matchup.

[Zombie]

Oh I know, but I for every list of Pros you make about a card like Verdict, I can make one at lest 3 times as long for Terminus. There is a reason that Terminus is the more heavily played card and should it find itself banned, I think I would stick to playing Lands and Painter when I want to watch the light leave peoples eyes when they see me as their matchup.

Obviously Terminus is a million times better. The question is whether you need a removal spell that superlative to keep Miracles as a deck alive now that it's been tuned and when most of the format dies to other cheap mass removal.

[Lemnear]

Obviously Terminus is a million times better. The question is whether you need a removal spell that superlative to keep Miracles as a deck alive now that it's been tuned and when most of the format dies to other cheap mass removal.

We already know that 4 mana sorcery sweepers are unplayable with all the creature power creep and Wastelands. I dunno if there is any card which floats between Terminus and verdict to fill the gap the banning of terminus would leave

[Zombie]

We already know that 4 mana sorcery sweepers are unplayable with all the creature power creep and Wastelands. I dunno if there is any card which floats between Terminus and verdict to fill the gap the banning of terminus would leave

Maybe you can play a mixture. It's not like you have to play Verdict alone. There's a curve to sweeper efficiency too.

[nedleeds]

Miracles is the last real control deck left in the format. I would really not want to see it cut down. That said, I can not argue that Terminus is not exactly healthy.

<gasp> OH NOES ! You'd have to design a new deck! </gasp> Miracles exists solely because of Brainstorm. You'd have to actually you know, pay real mana for super wrath of god and decree of justice. Playing locally post Khans there have been some control decks that don't even use miracles anymore because Dig is so absurd. You can just find Verdict, EE, or spot removal like a champion.

[Lemnear]

Miracles exists solely because of Brainstorm..

Spare me, Sean. It is a deck grounded on SDT which enables Counterbalance & Terminus & Entreat. It's hard to ignore that fact.

[Dice_Box]

Miracles will live on without Brainstorm, it can not live without Top.

Also man, honestly, spare me the bullshit. I have said all I will about Brainstorm now. Leave me out of this crusade of yours and go piss on someone else's toes. My view on the card was well documented before I started playing with it, my views have not changed now I own them. Edge someone else into a fight, if you want to know what I think read the past pages of this thread. If you don't care what I think then don't pull these fucking games with me.

[nedleeds]

Have fun fanning out an opener with Terminus and Entreat and being unable to unmulligan! Miracles without Brainstorm is like playing with 6 Blightsteels. Spare me. Maybe Lat-Nam's Legacy can save the archtype.

[Dice_Box]

4 Jace, a decrees in maindeck Terminaus, perhaps a Personal Tutor or two and a move to builds like Thopter with Toolboxes in them and I would bet that while the deck would take a hit, it would keep on kickin. Not sure what else, people smarter than I would work it out.

Also who the fuck would fan a hand like that and not Mull? Even with Brainstorm as a in the deck, why the fuck would you keep that?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I don't get one thing about the "ban BS" fervor: do we really want less consistent game? Maybe we should return to 1995 rules on mulligan, etc.
I'd rather have similar effects in other colors so that it's not only blue that may play the game with ease instead of hoping to draw relevant cards in relevant times. Is consistency and ease of play something that bad?
Not that BS isn't overpowered, and maybe the format would be better of without it, but there's little appeal in topdeck wars, one-landers, all that stuff.

[Gheizen64]

I don't get one thing about the "ban BS" fervor: do we really want less consistent game? Maybe we should return to 1995 rules on mulligan, etc.
I'd rather have similar effects in other colors so that it's not only blue that may play the game with ease instead of hoping to draw relevant cards in relevant times. Is consistency and ease of play something that bad?
Not that BS isn't overpowered, and maybe the format would be better of without it, but there's little appeal in topdeck wars, one-landers, all that stuff.

Apparently Brainstorm is now the only tool of library manipulation not only in blue, but in all of magic.

Top give any deck much more consistency than any Brainstorm do, with a difference, it require more initial investment and don't cycle any bad card in your hand. Ponder and Preordain both give you access to the top 3 cards of your library to see and put 1 in your hand, with a difference: they don't automatically cycle bad cards in your hand. Most looting spells do pretty much what BS do, but usually at 3 mana (TFK, catalog etc...). Sylvan Library is essentially a Brainstorm every turn that cost 1G but 4 life for each card you want to cycle.
Why would anyone assume that brainstorm is the only possible card manipulation tool blue have and if it's gone suddendly we get modern and topdeck wars? :frown:
Also with TC existing now (and Jace not going anywhere), i really doubt blue decks would ever go to topdeck wars, with or without BS. That and we got Dig throught time too. Late-midgame blue card draw/manipulation is the strongest it has ever been.

[Lemnear]

Why would anyone assume that brainstorm is the only possible card manipulation tool blue have and if it's gone suddendly we get modern and topdeck wars? :frown:
Also with TC existing now (and Jace not going anywhere), i really doubt blue decks would ever go to topdeck wars, with or without BS. That and we got Dig throught time too. Late-midgame blue card draw/manipulation is the strongest it has ever been.

This isn't about blue not being able to keep boarderline playable hands, one-landers or the format folding to combo (as you can still Ponder for your FoW turn 1). The topic of consistancy and switching out cards is primary relevant for combo decks which have to Balance mana/combo parts/protection to stay viable.

[maharis]

We already know that 4 mana sorcery sweepers are unplayable with all the creature power creep and Wastelands. I dunno if there is any card which floats between Terminus and verdict to fill the gap the banning of terminus would leave

Toxic Deluge


Spare me, Sean. It is a deck grounded on SDT which enables Counterbalance & Terminus & Entreat. It's hard to ignore that fact.

Entreat, Terminus, Brainstorm, SDT, Counterbalance, Island, Flooded Strand

can replace its two worst cards with the two best from the next three, AND get a softlock AND get basics online AND find a counterspell.

Entreat, Terminus, Ponder, SDT, Counterbalance, Island, Flooded Strand

is forced to hold two cards that are dead until turn 6, and risks Thoughtseize, Decay, REB or Force ruining its day.

An SDT does nothing about a Miracle that makes it into your hand which is one of the worst things for a Miracles pilot (or any control deck: a card that cannot interact). That's why so many control decks historically have only run 1-2 "finishers." SDT is a powerful card in this shell because it controls drawing future miracles, but Countertop strategies have existed since the cards were printed and none have been as successful as Miracles. It is so because removing the downside from the powerful spells allows more of them to be run.

[maharis]

Also:


This isn't about blue not being able to keep boarderline playable hands, one-landers or the format folding to combo (as you can still Ponder for your FoW turn 1). The topic of consistancy and switching out cards is primary relevant for combo decks which have to Balance mana/combo parts/protection to stay viable.

Decks have come and gone throughout Magic's history, cards have been powerful then invalidated. I would be sad to see Storm go but it could be the case that the health of the format depends on this key card from the deck being banned because its effect is judged too uniquely powerful for the format overall. Surely some decks will be hit harder than others. It's like If MUD somehow got insanely powerful overnight and they decided Chalice of the Void was the problem card, the collateral damage to Loam would be worse. (This might be a bad example.)

When Deathrite Shaman was banned from Modern, I wasn't playing BGx, but I was playing the card, and my Dega deck was killed. Today BGx still exists while my Dega deck is completely off the radar. Too bad for me but Modern is probably a better place now.

[MGB]

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

I think that super efficient and powerful "pillars" of the format gives the format character and identity.

If we banned the most powerful things in this format (Brainstorm, Delver, Stoneforge Mystic, Terminus, Show and Tell) it would just become another Modern - anything goes. Some people might think that "anything goes" is better for a format, but it loses its uniqueness. What would Vintage be without Workshops and Moxen? What would Legacy be without Brainstorm and Show and Tell?

Brainstorm, Terminus, Wasteland, and Delver are keeping many, many other strategies in check right now Do you want to play against green mana ramp + fat guys in random matches at a tournament? I prefer a format that is more constricted because it gives me a better idea of how to metagame for a tournament. I know i *won't* often see anything that just auto-loses to Delver, Wasteland, and Terminus. The last thing I would want Legacy to become is a Standard fatty-fest. Stuff like Terminus, Delver, and Wasteland prevent that from happening.

[HSCK]

I believe in pillars too, but I think that those three polarize the format too far and constrict deckbuilding a little too much. I'd rather keep some of the super powerful cards like DRS and Cruise and see what that format looks like. Diversity wise the last 11 months have looked good, but I don't know if it'll keep that up. While TC is really powerful, and people bay for blood with BS, that those three are the main perpetrators of restriction in the format.

[nedleeds]

4 Jace, a decrees in maindeck Terminaus, perhaps a Personal Tutor or two and a move to builds like Thopter with Toolboxes in them and I would bet that while the deck would take a hit, it would keep on kickin. Not sure what else, people smarter than I would work it out.

Also who the fuck would fan a hand like that and not Mull? Even with Brainstorm as a in the deck, why the fuck would you keep that?

You still don't get it. You would actually have to mulligan hands like that, with Brainstorm in an opener with Miracles its a keep. Two utterly useless cards turn into super wrath and another card.

[menace13]

Or you know, follow up:



Still, the suggestion that Brainstorm inhabits the same realm of brokenness as Balance or Yawgmoth's Will or Tinker is a joke.
So, brainstorms restriction was not, as you said essentially at the cost of having gush unrestricted. Which is a false statement seeing as both were axed at the same time. It is, if anything, the other way around and the gush unrestriction was at the cost of having brainstorm restricted. The minor difference being that brainstorm was not unrestricted because of gush as your claim would lead on, but that gush could come off the list as brainstorm wouldnt.


Funny that they would consider gushbond safer than just brainstorm.

[FoolofaTook]

When's the last time anybody resolved Balance and had it be worth one good damn?

Am I right in thinking that if upwards of 95% of the only format it's legal in doesn't even play the card, maybe it should be revisted?

Balance would be completely broken in Legacy for the same reason it was broken in the single fomat. It's a card that you either play 4x or you construct a list that won't auto-lose to it, which if you're not playing it is hard to do.

When it was last legal as a 4-of targeted discard was just a glimmer in R&D's eye.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Apparently Brainstorm is now the only tool of library manipulation not only in blue, but in all of magic.

Top give any deck much more consistency than any Brainstorm do, with a difference, it require more initial investment and don't cycle any bad card in your hand. Ponder and Preordain both give you access to the top 3 cards of your library to see and put 1 in your hand, with a difference: they don't automatically cycle bad cards in your hand. Most looting spells do pretty much what BS do, but usually at 3 mana (TFK, catalog etc...). Sylvan Library is essentially a Brainstorm every turn that cost 1G but 4 life for each card you want to cycle.
Why would anyone assume that brainstorm is the only possible card manipulation tool blue have and if it's gone suddendly we get modern and topdeck wars? :frown:
Also with TC existing now (and Jace not going anywhere), i really doubt blue decks would ever go to topdeck wars, with or without BS. That and we got Dig throught time too. Late-midgame blue card draw/manipulation is the strongest it has ever been.
You do realize how different is Library from BS? Also, those Ponders and Preordains, I thought they're blue.
The difference between blue and non-blue shells is that for the most part the latter ones rely on topdecks and good hands, at least in the opening turns. It seems like WotC dislike any kind of consistency tools in non-blue (please, Sylvan Library works no later than turn3), while blue has an abundance of hand fixing cards. This leads to a disbalance in color representation which is not a good idea for a game that has five colors and for an Eternal formats that rely on 20+ years old RL dual lands.
I don't get why you think this is about Brainstrom, in fact it's about zero Ponders in non-blue. And I'm not even saying we need them, I'm just curious why in a game of five colors where hand/draw fixation and CA is very important aspect (as anybody playing MtG for more than a few weeks must grasp), some of the colors simply lack those tools, or have less of them, or got a clunky set of wanna-be CQ/CA cardboard like Looting and such.
Anyone trying to out-CQ, out-CA blue with anything as slow as Sylvan Library or whatever non-Symbiote else, is simply doing it wrong and should have really good reasons to why not simply play blue. I find it strange (MtG has five colors), annoying (the convergent decks all over the meta) and stifling (high pricetags on all blue fetch/dual lands). Would it be so bad to print TC in green? Would it be so bad to make reasonable looting? And no, cmc2 permanents that work on turn3 are not comparable to cantrips. If they'd be, you'll see far more Sylvan Libraries than Ponders.
Until WotC change their policy on non-blue CQ+CA tools, nothing will change, at least not for the better... of non-blue.

[insert thine "but, but, but color balance doesn't matter!" arguments below]

[nedleeds]

When's the last time anybody resolved Balance and had it be worth one good damn?

Am I right in thinking that if upwards of 95% of the only format it's legal in doesn't even play the card, maybe it should be revisted?

I clearly need a break from this thread if people are actually discussing Balance. WTF. It's not played in Vintage as much because you can't build your deck around it anymore as a one of (Vintage has a restricted list, Legacy has a banned list). I played vintage regularly in the 4 Balance era, it makes Terminus look like Kirtar's Wrath.

Balance is insane with artifacts / enchantments and now planeswalkers. Enjoy getting wrathed, geddoned and mind twisted for 1W.

[FoolofaTook]

I clearly need a break from this thread if people are actually discussing Balance. WTF. It's not played in Vintage as much because you can't build your deck around it anymore as a one of (Vintage has a restricted list, Legacy has a banned list). I played vintage regularly in the 4 Balance era, it makes Terminus look like Kirtar's Wrath.

Balance is insane with artifacts / enchantments and now planeswalkers. Enjoy getting wrathed, geddoned and mind twisted for 1W.

On the bright side it would be a non-bo with Jace and Elspeth due to every list playing 8 targeted discard to try to win the Balance and counter wars. That and 4 mana being seen about as often in blue or white as 8 is seen now.

Liliana can be ritualed out. That would be the play people would be looking to make.

[Gheizen64]

You do realize how different is Library from BS? Also, those Ponders and Preordains, I thought they're blue.
The difference between blue and non-blue shells is that for the most part the latter ones rely on topdecks and good hands, at least in the opening turns. It seems like WotC dislike any kind of consistency tools in non-blue (please, Sylvan Library works no later than turn3), while blue has an abundance of hand fixing cards. This leads to a disbalance in color representation which is not a good idea for a game that has five colors and for an Eternal formats that rely on 20+ years old RL dual lands.
I don't get why you think this is about Brainstrom, in fact it's about zero Ponders in non-blue. And I'm not even saying we need them, I'm just curious why in a game of five colors where hand/draw fixation and CA is very important aspect (as anybody playing MtG for more than a few weeks must grasp), some of the colors simply lack those tools, or have less of them, or got a clunky set of wanna-be CQ/CA cardboard like Looting and such.
Anyone trying to out-CQ, out-CA blue with anything as slow as Sylvan Library or whatever non-Symbiote else, is simply doing it wrong and should have really good reasons to why not simply play blue. I find it strange (MtG has five colors), annoying (the convergent decks all over the meta) and stifling (high pricetags on all blue fetch/dual lands). Would it be so bad to print TC in green? Would it be so bad to make reasonable looting? And no, cmc2 permanents that work on turn3 are not comparable to cantrips. If they'd be, you'll see far more Sylvan Libraries than Ponders.
Until WotC change their policy on non-blue CQ+CA tools, nothing will change, at least not for the better... of non-blue.

[insert thine "but, but, but color balance doesn't matter!" arguments below]

My concern is purely a power level one. I'm fine with other color best option being SdT, i'm not fine with blue best option being Braincestral. If Braincestral were gone, the relative power level of blue filtering/draw compared to other colors wouldn't be so absurd, and you'd see more decks not centered around blue. More importantly, without brainstorm, discard would become much stronger and a viable anti-combo option, whereas now it's still too unreliable cause thoughtseize into brainstorm, let you see 3 land is fucking game. And that would make black a possible core color for a deck, much more than it is now because of both the weakening of blue and the increase in relative power level of targeted discard.

Also, while card advantage/filtering is pretty much blue and little else, black still has cards like liliana and recurring graveyard cards that do pretty much the same thing, + bob and various drawcardforlife spells and tutors, green has GSZ, it had Survival, it has library, it has glimpse. Red and white are the worst in that department but they still have way to generate a lot of virtual card advantage like Thalia, Pyromancer, Lavamancer, Brimaz, SoL, mom, Monastery swiftspear etc...
If wotc thinks library manipulation is primary ability of the blue slice of the pie, it's a design decision. But giving the better cards to a single color isn't a design decision, is a power level issue, because if for absurd you costed all blue cards 1 mana more, blue would sucks shit except for ancestral at 1U, time walk at 2U and maybe tinker at 3U. It's purely a power level matter.
Consider it like this, in a game where colored mana is hardly an issue, the power level of a card is a function of how much a card is under/overcosted. Ancestral at 3UU is fair, probably at 1UUU too. Brainstorm would be still a good card at 1U. Timewalk is fair at 3UU, maybe even 1UUU. And so on. Moxen are fair at 3 mana. Lotus would be fair at 4, probably even 3. Sol ring is broken at 1, sucks at 4, is a good card at 3. And so on.

If wotc thinks that a card can be present in basically all the top placing deck in the format, then why it has to be brainstorm? Why not Survival? It's skill intensive! It reduces randomness! It doesn't win games by itself, only the rest of the deck do! You can say the same shit about ten other cards currently banned now, but only brainstorm apparently can have an higher penetration than Survival, Misstep, and whatever else you can think of but not get banned.

[Lemnear]

Toxic Deluge


I doubt Miracles can afford to spend life to remove beaters after those slapped the Miracles pilot already 1-2 times. This is especially a problem against stuff like Tarmogoyf. I don't think 3 mana + ~5 lifepoints is adequate and compeditive. Moreover, for a pure control deck without the chance to follow up with your own board presence, Deluge is pretty fast a dead draw due to your life total left.

Entreat, Terminus, Brainstorm, SDT, Counterbalance, Island, Flooded Strand

can replace its two worst cards with the two best from the next three, AND get a softlock AND get basics online AND find a counterspell.

Entreat, Terminus, Ponder, SDT, Counterbalance, Island, Flooded Strand

is forced to hold two cards that are dead until turn 6, and risks Thoughtseize, Decay, REB or Force ruining its day.


I don't see a problem with the later hand as such hands already happen to Ponder-Miracles. You can still use your SDT, Ponder and Counterbalance to bridge the gap into Jace and win from here

An SDT does nothing about a Miracle that makes it into your hand which is one of the worst things for a Miracles pilot (or any control deck: a card that cannot interact). That's why so many control decks historically have only run 1-2 "finishers." SDT is a powerful card in this shell because it controls drawing future miracles, but Countertop strategies have existed since the cards were printed and none have been as successful as Miracles. It is so because removing the downside from the powerful spells allows more of them to be run.


again: so what? Drawing dead cards at times is natural in this game and so is NOT having Brainstorm turn 2. You still have Jace left to get rid of the bricking Miracles later on and SDT+Ponder(+Preordain for example replacing Brainstorm) fix your cardflow till then


Decks have come and gone throughout Magic's history, cards have been powerful then invalidated. I would be sad to see Storm go but it could be the case that the health of the format depends on this key card from the deck being banned because its effect is judged too uniquely powerful for the format overall. Surely some decks will be hit harder than others. It's like If MUD somehow got insanely powerful overnight and they decided Chalice of the Void was the problem card, the collateral damage to Loam would be worse. (This might be a bad example.)

When Deathrite Shaman was banned from Modern, I wasn't playing BGx, but I was playing the card, and my Dega deck was killed. Today BGx still exists while my Dega deck is completely off the radar. Too bad for me but Modern is probably a better place now.


the problem isn't storm getting worse (not even for me), but the general splash damage done to combo and the metagame reaction to combo getting much weaker due to not being able to rid of redundant combo cards (my prediction: even more Aggro-control decks). Drawing Chrome Moxen or several creatures without enabler in S&T decks would be impossible to compensate, ergo the only combo decks aside the belcher-style decks would be the ones with very few actual dead draws (remodeled ANT with only PIF/AN/ToA as "clunky draws") aside the problem of potentially drawing Protection without need.

I don't care for Modern anymore after their first ban-galores and stupid, initial ban-list. I built a deck after the initial ban-list - they ban it. I built a second deck after the first ban announcement - 3 months later it gets banned again. I sold anything not Legacy compatible, as I'm not interrested in a format in which combo simply isn't allowed to win before a mindless "play creatures & turn sideways" deck does and hard control isn't playable due to the initial banlist

[Bed Decks Palyer]

My concern is purely a power level one. I'm fine with other color best option being SdT, i'm not fine with blue best option being Braincestral. If Braincestral were gone, the relative power level of blue filtering/draw compared to other colors wouldn't be so absurd, and you'd see more decks not centered around blue. More importantly, without brainstorm, discard would become much stronger and a viable anti-combo option, whereas now it's still too unreliable cause thoughtseize into brainstorm, let you see 3 land is fucking game. And that would make black a possible core color for a deck, much more than it is now because of both the weakening of blue and the increase in relative power level of targeted discard.

Also, while card advantage/filtering is pretty much blue and little else, black still has cards like liliana and recurring graveyard cards that do pretty much the same thing, + bob and various drawcardforlife spells and tutors, green has GSZ, it had Survival, it has library, it has glimpse. Red and white are the worst in that department but they still have way to generate a lot of virtual card advantage like Thalia, Pyromancer, Lavamancer, Brimaz, SoL, mom, Monastery swiftspear etc...
If wotc thinks library manipulation is primary ability of the blue slice of the pie, it's a design decision. But giving the better cards to a single color isn't a design decision, is a power level issue, because if for absurd you costed all blue cards 1 mana more, blue would sucks shit except for ancestral at 1U, time walk at 2U and maybe tinker at 3U. It's purely a power level matter.
Consider it like this, in a game where colored mana is hardly an issue, the power level of a card is a function of how much a card is under/overcosted. Ancestral at 3UU is fair, probably at 1UUU too. Brainstorm would be still a good card at 1U. Timewalk is fair at 3UU, maybe even 1UUU. And so on. Moxen are fair at 3 mana. Lotus would be fair at 4, probably even 3. Sol ring is broken at 1, sucks at 4, is a good card at 3. And so on.

If wotc thinks that a card can be present in basically all the top placing deck in the format, then why it has to be brainstorm? Why not Survival? It's skill intensive! It reduces randomness! It doesn't win games by itself, only the rest of the deck do! You can say the same shit about ten other cards currently banned now, but only brainstorm apparently can have an higher penetration than Survival, Misstep, and whatever else you can think of but not get banned.

Ok, so you agree with me that the other colors could get some CQ tools? It isn't even anything that "blue" like cantrips, although they are the most obvious (and being cmc1, also flexible), but lets say unban SotF, bring some more draw/filtering in green, reasonable draw in black, reasonable looting in red and in white... idk what could be done in white, but nvm.
Again, if I have to choose between a game where there is too much variance and decks crumble every other game, I'd either play Old School or don't play at all. While variance is an important and inherent part of Magic, it's really frustrating to lose to consistency issues. And that brings us back to non-blue consistency tools (they mostly suck), the reason why color balance might be important (image of game, blue duals' price and their chokehold of format), etc.

[Zombie]

@Lemnear
That reply format is infuriating, can't quote it at all. It's a bit more work, but would you mind using the standard format for other people's sake?

On the topic of post-Brainstorm combo, Elves and Reanimator seem like they'd both probably be fine. As far as Storm decks with the least possible dead draws go, aren't modern ANT builds already very close to that? Or are you thinking about needing to cut IT/LED?

[Lemnear]

@Lemnear
That reply format is infuriating, can't quote it at all. It's a bit more work, but would you mind using the standard format for other people's sake?

On the topic of post-Brainstorm combo, Elves and Reanimator seem like they'd both probably be fine. As far as Storm decks with the least possible dead draws go, aren't modern ANT builds already very close to that? Or are you thinking about needing to cut IT/LED?

I'm very sorry about the format, but for one who's mainly writing on his iPhone 4 on his ways from A to B to C, the whole formating of quotes is a pain in the ass, especially as I tend to comment after 2-6 sentences of the quoted Poster to make clear which part my comment adresses. Over the last two years it therefore became a lazy habit of mine to just hit the "quote"-button within a quote and start writing. :/

Reanimator won't be fine as they have a one more cardtype to Balance than S+T which are the Entombs if we consider the Reanimation/S&Ts the enablers. Modern ANT will have to reconsider it's manabase and disruption suit as discard isn't welcome to race decks like Burn, Dredge or D&T. Aside from this they can get rid of most spells Stuck in their hand by simply casting them for cheap (cantrips) or cycle them (IT). the only 3 exceptions are PIF/ToA/AN with only 1 not being a fine Spell to cast for value instead of full combo. So yeah, ANT should be fine, but TES with the damn Moxen and possibly plenty of Business spells in hand will have a serious Problem

[Gheizen64]

Ok, so you agree with me that the other colors could get some CQ tools? It isn't even anything that "blue" like cantrips, although they are the most obvious (and being cmc1, also flexible), but lets say unban SotF, bring some more draw/filtering in green, reasonable draw in black, reasonable looting in red and in white... idk what could be done in white, but nvm.
Again, if I have to choose between a game where there is too much variance and decks crumble every other game, I'd either play Old School or don't play at all. While variance is an important and inherent part of Magic, it's really frustrating to lose to consistency issues. And that brings us back to non-blue consistency tools (they mostly suck), the reason why color balance might be important (image of game, blue duals' price and their chokehold of format), etc.

Other colors getting CQ tools would be nice but won't happen with WotC policy. And even if happened, it would take years, and it'd never reach the level of old blue CQ options simply because WotC is nerfing spells a lot, even if red is getting some nice tools (Tormenting Voice, Faithless looting etc...). Meanwhile we get a format dominated by blue for years, which could use seeing some more diversity and color representation without killing any deck straight with just banning brainstorm and possibly unbanning 5-6 cards (twist, Vise, SotF, Desire, frantic search, jar).
And combo isn't going anywhere with TC in the format, the card is just absurd for combination decks, even if not in straight AdN storm. There are also other combo decks like TES, Jeskai ascendancy , Reanimator , Elves!, Enchantress, TimeSpiral, SnT, Sneakattack, Omnitell etc... No but honestly TC in combo is absurdly good, i've played some modern games of Jeskai ascendancy to see if it was good as modern players were saying (omg dude it's busted it win T2 ERRY GAME!), and the card is just ancestral in that deck, so pretty good. But at least that mean i can play Dryad militant or Thalia and win the format :cool:

[btm10]

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

I think this is actually a productive discussion, so I'll join in. I agree with Delver and Show and Tell being major constraints on the format, but I'm less sold on Terminus. It may be how Miracles shuts aggro down in most cases, but Counterbalance/Top is what stops aggro from getting back into the game post-Terminus in most cases, isn't it? Deadguy and Dega both run Bob, and he's also in some builds of Junk Maverick, as is Sylvan Library. So unless these matchups usually play out differently than I've observed from watching other people play them, the Counterbalance/Top lock is probably more constraining than Terminus. The fact that Abrupt Decay answers CB/Top is probably a big part of what makes BUG the best positioned Delver variant right now.


I don't get one thing about the "ban BS" fervor: do we really want less consistent game?


An interesting corollary of this is that if Brainstorm were banned, the number of viable tier 1/1.5 decks would almost surely decrease, especially at the lower end, because without Brainstorm, decks like Food Chain wouldn't be consistent enough to slog through even a medium-length event.

[FoolofaTook]

An interesting corollary of this is that if Brainstorm were banned, the number of viable tier 1/1.5 decks would almost surely decrease, especially at the lower end, because without Brainstorm, decks like Food Chain wouldn't be consistent enough to slog through even a medium-length event.

The thing that makes most tier 1 lists tier 1 is the consistency with which they find good cards early in a game and their ability to persevere through mediocre opening lines by changing the draw line that would otherwise defeat them.

In the process those tier 1 lists invalidate most other lists in the meta which are not capable of that type of card selection early on, this regardless of the card power available to them.

I played in a meta in which blue card advantage essentially consisted of 2 cards in every list: Ancestral Recall and Timewalk, which produces a second draw in the TW turn alongside all the tempo of being able to untap with that draw. People played one each of these because that's what the format rules were. They won a large percentage of the games in which they resolved Ancestral Recall and the opponent didn't. They won many of the games where they resolved Time Walk and the opponent didn't.

There was room however for many other archetypes than blue aggro-control and control in that meta and the people sitting at the final tables in the old single elimination format were by and large playing 8 different lists and trying to do 3 or 4 different things among them.

The format was not Channel-Fireball format and it wasn't Fastbond-Timetwister-Time Walk format and it wasn't T1 Juzam Djinn, T2 Serendib Efreet, T3 Sengir Vampire format, although all of those things were playable and did get played. It wasn't Burn format and Millstone format and Winter Orb format although all of those things were also playable and did get played. It wasn't White Weenie format and it wasn't Mono-black Aggro Control format and it wasn't Red Green Aggro format although all of those things would be at the top tables from time to time and were definitely playable.

The thing that kept the format from being dominated by big blue was that you only had 2 or 3 ways (Demonic Tutor) to go get that blue card advantage and while the advantage was really big when you got it you just didn't see it every game the way you do in Brainstorm-Ponder-Force of Will format. That left room for a lot of powerful cards to make an impact on the format and the meta was extremely varied with good homebrews often sitting at the last tables at the end.

If Brainstorm were banned you'd wind up with more opportunity for non-blue lists to become tier 1, because their biggest flaw - which is that they're not extremely consistent the way Brainstorm-Ponder lists are would become much less of a flaw. Yeah, the blue lists would still benefit a lot from Ponder when they saw it and they'd certainly start playing Preordain in some numbers to make up the difference. However Preordain doesn't do what Brainstorm does in terms of helping fix a weak situation and turning it into a strong one. Blue consistency would still be there but it wouldn't be the only show in town.

You know why Elves is so strong right now? Because it's one of the few non-blue lists that has the kind of consistency available that blue does. It has this because it has Glimpse of Nature to give it a lot of card draw and multiple ways to create mana from creatures and essentially break the summoning sickness paradigm that almost all other lists labor under. It has an amazing set of tutors in Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order. It has built-in ramp with all the creatures that give ways to produce mana from themselves and other creatures on the turn they are cast.

That kind of consistency shouldn't be limited to lists that play blue and the one creature list that WotC has chosen to favor at this point. It really shouldn't be in any lists, since that kind of consistency essentially drives 90% of other competitive lists into the ground.

We're playing in one of the most boring formats possible at this point. It isn't going to get better any time soon. Not unless blue becomes less consistent and other things that it is suppressing with its consistency that are really hostile to Elves become playable.

[Lemnear]

The thing that makes most tier 1 lists tier 1 is the consistency with which they find good cards early in a game and their ability to persevere through mediocre opening lines by changing the draw line that would otherwise defeat them.

In the process those tier 1 lists invalidate most other lists in the meta which are not capable of that type of card selection early on, this regardless of the card power available to them.

I played in a meta in which blue card advantage essentially consisted of 2 cards in every list: Ancestral Recall and Timewalk, which produces a second draw in the TW turn alongside all the tempo of being able to untap with that draw. People played one each of these because that's what the format rules were. They won a large percentage of the games in which they resolved Ancestral Recall and the opponent didn't. They won many of the games where they resolved Time Walk and the opponent didn't.

There was room however for many other archetypes than blue aggro-control and control in that meta and the people sitting at the final tables in the old single elimination format were by and large playing 8 different lists and trying to do 3 or 4 different things among them.

The format was not Channel-Fireball format and it wasn't Fastbond-Timetwister-Time Walk format and it wasn't T1 Juzam Djinn, T2 Serendib Efreet, T3 Sengir Vampire format, although all of those things were playable and did get played. It wasn't Burn format and Millstone format and Winter Orb format although all of those things were also playable and did get played. It wasn't White Weenie format and it wasn't Mono-black Aggro Control format and it wasn't Red Green Aggro format although all of those things would be at the top tables from time to time and were definitely playable.

The thing that kept the format from being dominated by big blue was that you only had 2 or 3 ways (Demonic Tutor) to go get that blue card advantage and while the advantage was really big when you got it you just didn't see it every game the way you do in Brainstorm-Ponder-Force of Will format. That left room for a lot of powerful cards to make an impact on the format and the meta was extremely varied with good homebrews often sitting at the last tables at the end.

If Brainstorm were banned you'd wind up with more opportunity for non-blue lists to become tier 1, because their biggest flaw - which is that they're not extremely consistent the way Brainstorm-Ponder lists are would become much less of a flaw. Yeah, the blue lists would still benefit a lot from Ponder when they saw it and they'd certainly start playing Preordain in some numbers to make up the difference. However Preordain doesn't do what Brainstorm does in terms of helping fix a weak situation and turning it into a strong one. Blue consistency would still be there but it wouldn't be the only show in town.

You know why Elves is so strong right now? Because it's one of the few non-blue lists that has the kind of consistency available that blue does. It has this because it has Glimpse of Nature to give it a lot of card draw and multiple ways to create mana from creatures and essentially break the summoning sickness paradigm that almost all other lists labor under. It has an amazing set of tutors in Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order. It has built-in ramp with all the creatures that give ways to produce mana from themselves and other creatures on the turn they are cast.

That kind of consistency shouldn't be limited to lists that play blue and the one creature list that WotC has chosen to favor at this point. It really shouldn't be in any lists, since that kind of consistency essentially drives 90% of other competitive lists into the ground.

We're playing in one of the most boring formats possible at this point. It isn't going to get better any time soon. Not unless blue becomes less consistent and other things that it is suppressing with its consistency that are really hostile to Elves become playable.

This post started good and then gave it sadly away. I beg to differ on Vintage. During Gifts-/2nd Gush-era you ran Mystical, Vampiric, Demonic Tutor, Imperial seal (2nd Gush era mainly) and 4 Merchant scroll to grab all your restricted stuff like Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Y.Will, etc. whenever you need it. I can not remember a blue mirror i played in all the years without Ancestral Recall being cast. Period

Elves is a tier 1 atm not because of Glimpse alone, but because of running the green versions of Ancestral Recall, Tinker and Tolarian Academy, paired with a total of 2 different draw engines (Symbiote+Visionary/Glimpse) and up to 8 Tutors (NO/GSZ). There is not much to say in addition to that redundancy available (unless you want to mention the cream topping of machinegun DRS activations possible in that deck).

[dog_koko]

Please, you are crying because blue has the cantrip spells???

Black has the discard and the spot removal
White the protection and the mass removal
Red has 'fire' and good small creatures
Green has mana accelerators and big mosters


I love this game because you have to deal with these limitations instead of crying like babies

PS: And stop comparing Brainstorm with Balance or I will compare Ponder with Yawgmoth's Will :D

[Lemnear]

Please, you are crying because blue has the cantrip spells???
Black has the discard
White the spot and mass removal
Red has 'fire'
Green has big monsters
Blue has the card selection
Blue has the protection
Blue has the good small creatures
Blue has the mana acceleration (High Tide & S&T)

I love this game because you have to deal with these limitations instead of crying like babies

PS: And stop comparing Brainstorm with Balance or I will compare Ponder with Yawgmoth's Will :D

Let me fix that post.

PS: No one compared Brainstorm to Balance. Balance was brought up seperately.

[dog_koko]

Let me fix that post.

PS: No one compared Brainstorm to Balance. Balance was brought up seperately.

Really S&T is mana acceleration???
Please name TWO blue small good creatures (please, they have to be top creatures)
Are you serious about Blue having the protection??? It's white!!!

[menace13]

Please, you are crying because blue has the cantrip spells???

Red has 'fire' and good small creatures


Blue has better small creatures. Delver, Snapcaster, TNN, even Clique are more played than red's best little guy Youngpyro.




Green has mana accelerators and big mosters


Funny, that. The format's top two premier big mosters decks play blue and not any green mosters in sight. Or any green mana accelerators. No mosters in green are even worth playing unless youre on elves or cloudposts.





I love this game because you have to deal with these limitations instead of crying like babies

If taking the best spells in any colors and accessing them through card filtering is what you mean by limitations then I take pity upon your abuse of definitions of words on a daily basis. They must get progressively worse as the day wears on.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

This thread makes me hate the MtG community even more.

Ok, so there's some interesting and serious discussion on interesting and serious MtG theme and every ten posts someone jumps in with "stop crying, babies"? Then what's the point of discussion? Even more: what's the point of joining a discussion forum when you cannot stand other people's opinions?

Lemnear (and many others) sorted the reasons why blue is OP, and I will repeat myself that one color being clearly above the others is not good for marketing/image/gameplay, moreover it brings the extreme pressure on some RL cards like blue duals, etc., all those aspects limit the deck design, turned this game into golden youth hobby, etc.

Now when blue has efficient threats (Delver, TNN, Clique, JTMS), hand disruption (Clique, but also that 1/1 discard dude I'd love to play against combo and Piracy Charm or w/e), stack control, CA+CQ, mana acceleration, cheat spells, theft effects and protection, the last hole to fill is land destru... oh wait, Stifle... ok, blue lacks real removal. But wait no longer than year or two and we'll get our blue Bolt.

[Lemnear]

Really S&T is mana acceleration???
Please name TWO blue small good creatures (please, they have to be top creatures)
Are you serious about Blue having the protection??? It's white!!!

Yeah, Show & Tell enables you for 3 mana to drop your 8-mana Griselbrand or 15-mana Emrakul from hand into the battlefield. Ergo it is basically a ritual-like effect to ramp you from 3 mana to 8/15 if you think about it.

The precious poster gave you enough examples ranging from Delver to TNN over the whole batch of 2cc meerfolk lords, while red has Young Pyromancer, Goblin Guide, Goblin Lackey and now, Swiftspear. Render me not impressed especially if you keep the years in mind these red creatures saw print.

About blue not having protection: TRUE NAME NEMESIS! Let that one sink in while thinking about "counterspells" in terms of "protection". Embarrassing

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I especially liked how TNN and VClique are expensive, while "every goblin you like from tribal deck" are cheap. I guess some MtG patch went out while I was sleeping, because last time I checked, neither Chieftain, Matron, Ringleader nor SCG were below cmc3. Oh yeah, Vial and Warchief... But then again why twiddle with a long dead tribe to play 2/2 for 3R, when you may simply SnT into 15/15 omnomnom6 spaghettazi?

[FoolofaTook]

This post started good and then gave it sadly away. I beg to differ on Vintage. During Gifts-/2nd Gush-era you ran Mystical, Vampiric, Demonic Tutor, Imperial seal (2nd Gush era mainly) and 4 Merchant scroll to grab all your restricted stuff like Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Y.Will, etc. whenever you need it. I can not remember a blue mirror i played in all the years without Ancestral Recall being cast. Period

That's because I wasn't talking about Vintage.

I was talking about the single format before WotC split into type I and type II. That format ran for a year from January 1994 to February 1995.

Vintage has been broken from shortly after it's inception due to the accumulation of power cards and the strategy of using card restrictions instead of bannings to limit their effect on the format in most cases.

Note that when type I and type II were split the biggest difference was not the loss of blue power, which was essentially a random element in most games. It was the loss of most of the fast mana and loss of the ability to easily color fix without true dual-lands.

A much wiser approach to the competitive Magic environment would have been to stay one format for constructed, get rid of restricted cards entirely - which the DCI did not do even after the formats split, and then make periodic bans based on which cards were consistently appearing as a 3 or 4-of in more than half the lists at the top tables.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

A much wiser approach to the competitive Magic environment would have been to stay one format for constructed, get rid of restricted cards entirely - which the DCI did not do even after the formats split, and then make periodic bans based on which cards were consistently appearing as a 3 or 4-of in more than half the lists at the top tables.
I don't like that. So do you really want to have Solomox, LoA, Strip Mine or w/e completely banned from Magic? Even Shahrazad banned makes some ppl cry, but if you'll cut the whole P9+stuff... idk, it seems bad.
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af160b

[DragoFireheart]

About blue not having protection: TRUE NAME NEMESIS! Let that one sink in while thinking about "counterspells" in terms of "protection". Embarrassing

TNN is a fair and balanced card. Not sure what the fuss is about.

[FoolofaTook]

I don't like that. So do you really want to have Solomox, LoA, Strip Mine or w/e completely banned from Magic? Even Shahrazad banned makes some ppl cry, but if you'll cut the whole P9+stuff... idk, it seems bad.
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af160b

Yeah, I'd have liked to see Magic with 25K cards available and about 5x as many of them actually playable. That's where the meta would have been interesting. Then if you get a card or archetype that just squats all over the meta for a prolonged time period you make it go away and everything is good again.

I was against the Survival of the Fittest ban when it happened because I thought WotC hadn't allowed the meta to clearly demonstrate that there were no good answers against the lists being developed. Just printing Rest in Peace earlier would have given some archetypes an edge on SotF.

My take on that ban is that SotF threatened the blue shell in a way that nothing before had really come close to in Legacy and WotC went into a fetal curl with a reflexive ban. Bad business that.

[rufus]

TNN is a fair and balanced card. Not sure what the fuss is about.

Both of those are readily abused words. It's fair, in the sense that it's beatable, but unfair in that it breaks a lot of conventions and rules. Similarly it's balanced in the sense that it's beatable, but unbalanced in the sense that there aren't many reasonable ways to deal with it.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Yeah, I'd have liked to see Magic with 25K cards available and about 5x as many of them actually playable. That's where the meta would have been interesting. Then if you get a card or archetype that just squats all over the meta for a prolonged time period you make it go away and everything is good again.
It's so much different from what we're used to that I don't even have an opinion, esp. when I'm not sure if I get the bold part right.
It's like forgetting the whole history of tournament MtG and speaking about a completely different game. I cannot even imagine the price of P9 and such being those cards banned some time back in early/mid 1990's.
Definitely not a bad idea per se, just that it's absolutely distinct from what situation we got today and what MtG was about in last two decades. I wouldn't mind if you'll start a different thread on this matter, somethng like say "Alternative Magic history", or w/e, it may spark some interesting discussion.



...Survival of the Fittest...
Yeah.
If my thirteenth salary won't suck, I'll purchase the set just in case.

[DLifshitz]

I think Delver, Terminus, and Show and Tell are the 3 most constraining cards in the format honestly.

Looking at the current metagame (http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy), I would say that Terminus and Treasure Cruise are the constraining cards in the format. Delver (the card) is widely played but I wouldn't say it places heavy constraints on the way other decks behave. A range of different decks (Jund, D&T, Pox, Nic Fit, ...) used to have a good matchup against Delver until recently. On the other hand, Treasure Cruise addresses the biggest weakness of Delver decks - that they run out of gas very fast. Terminus obviously does have a very heavy influence on the format. Show and Tell... not so much.

Also, the metagame is very inbred. You have Miracles going toe-to-toe with the various iterations of Treasure Cruise-fueled tempo, and everything else is marginalized.

[Gheizen64]

Tbh i'd be sad to see Cruise gone before BS. At least cruise you can sort of prepare against, with grave hate, spheres effects and chain effects. The card is also extremely susceptible to counters because then your next one cost 1 billion mana. It would also be extremely hypocritical if they banned it after like 4-5 months in the format, leaving it little time to adapt to it.
I would've liked it a lot more if it was misdirectable, but i don't feel like the card is oppressive, not anymore than the blue-cantrip shell at least. Yes counterburn is an archetype again and RUG ******** isn't the top dog anymore but really, it's been what, 5-6 years of green-blue tempo decks being T1? I can live with it. D&T just need Kor Firewalker, and maybe some Rest in peace, to hate UR delver, and in general there are some absurd hate cards against red in almost all colors (lifegainers, chill, beb etc..).

EDIT: ahahahah ******** is still censored :D

[FoolofaTook]

Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time smell like cards that were printed for one of two reasons, either to allow WotC to ban something they printed in blue without everybody getting upset or to enable WotC banning an old staple that had created a stale format without everybody getting upset.

DTT actually is an extremely powerful card but it's not clear that it's any more powerful than Intuition. I expect it to stick around and I wish I had bought the playset at $3 instead of just buying 2 of them.

Treasure Cruise or Brainstorm. That's how I see things going down.

[Ellomdian]

...Vintage has been broken from shortly after it's inception due to the accumulation of power cards and the strategy of using card restrictions instead of bannings to limit their effect on the format in most cases...

...and then make periodic bans based on which cards were consistently appearing as a 3 or 4-of in more than half the lists at the top tables....

...Yeah, I'd have liked to see Magic with 25K cards available and about 5x as many of them actually playable. That's where the meta would have been interesting. Then if you get a card or archetype that just squats all over the meta for a prolonged time period you make it go away and everything is good again...

...My take on that ban is that SotF threatened the blue shell in a way that nothing before had really come close to in Legacy and WotC went into a fetal curl with a reflexive ban. Bad business that...

Just quoting a few choice lines for posterity.

I don't really understand why you hate vintage, and want to see it ruined. The point of Vintage is that EVERYTHING is legal (excepting cards that affect tournament function in some way.) Don't like that Vintage is defined by the same core of 15 cards, which happen to be the most powerful effects ever printed in the game? Don't play it! It's funny that you are tossing these complaints out now, when Vintage is easily the healthiest it's ever been (Thanks MODO!) Just watch the Vintage League streams - good players playing good Magic, with a variety of strategies. Bitching that more cards aren't viable is bitching that there have been half a dozen different ideas for game design over the history of the game. Your suggestion is to turn Magic into the gaming equivalent of Harrison Bergeron - everyone is artificially handicapped until everyone is 'equal.'

That you cling to the old chestnut of WotC somehow prefering/requireing Blue strategies is just icing on the foul cake of your logical lunacy. Why can't anyone sane and rational make arguments for bringing SotF back - everyone seems to sound like a complete idiot when they mention it.

[Star|Scream]

That you cling to the old chestnut of WotC somehow prefering/requireing Blue strategies is just icing on the foul cake of your logical lunacy.

Anyone else picture Jon Lovitz dressed as Hamlet speaking these words?

[btm10]

That you cling to the old chestnut of WotC somehow prefering/requireing Blue strategies is just icing on the foul cake of your logical lunacy. Why can't anyone sane and rational make arguments for bringing SotF back - everyone seems to sound like a complete idiot when they mention it.

I agree that it really sounds like people are in the tinfoil hat club when they suggest that the DCI has some interest in engineering the format to keep blue good, but I digress...

I don't think that most Survival discussons start out as problematic, though I'll grant that his post did. I think that Vengevine/Survival actually presents a lot of interesting counterplay to Terminus and would help quell people complaining about aggro not being good enough without doing anything banworthy.


Looking at the current metagame (http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy), I would say that Terminus and Treasure Cruise are the constraining cards in the format. Delver (the card) is widely played but I wouldn't say it places heavy constraints on the way other decks behave. A range of different decks (Jund, D&T, Pox, Nic Fit, ...) used to have a good matchup against Delver until recently. On the other hand, Treasure Cruise addresses the biggest weakness of Delver decks - that they run out of gas very fast. Terminus obviously does have a very heavy influence on the format. Show and Tell... not so much.


Show and Tell dictates certian deckbuilding decisions (for instance, running Karakas in a deck that wouldn't want it without Emrakul and Griselbrand running around) and probably makes D&T better positioned than it might be otherwise.

I'm going to restate my point from earlier because no one addressed it: why is Terminus the card people single out rather than Counterbalance or Top? Terminus resets the board, but most creature-based decks have ways of refilling their hands and shuffling the guys back into their decks. The issue in my experience seems to be that creature decks facing Miracles can't reassemble a meaningful board through CB/Top post-Terminus rather than Terminus itaelf being the thing that beats them. Sweepers have existed as long as the game and aggro has been fine; Terminus is obviously the best one, but between a highly mana efficient sweeper and a soft lock that shuts down a lot of noncreature strategies as well, the lock seems to be the more oppressive element.

[uncletiggy]

The one mana instant speed sweeper is unparralled and is oppressive. Before its printing counter top was fragile and almost non existent. Zoo and goblins were still players terminus warped the format in the same sense misstep did. There is a clear best deck that has invalidated an entire archetype (aggro). Brainstorm is an enabler its not actually doing anything other then filtering. It may be the best filter ever period, but it doesnt single handedly invalidate entire deckbuilding options. Cruise is fresh and the meta hasnt adapted to fight it its new and powerful so everyones playing it cards exsist to keep it in check they just arent being implemented.

[Gheizen64]

The one mana instant speed sweeper is unparralled and is oppressive. Before its printing counter top was fragile and almost non existent. Zoo and goblins were still players terminus warped the format in the same sense misstep did. There is a clear best deck that has invalidated an entire archetype (aggro). Brainstorm is an enabler its not actually doing anything other then filtering. It may be the best filter ever period, but it doesnt single handedly invalidate entire deckbuilding options. Cruise is fresh and the meta hasnt adapted to fight it its new and powerful so everyones playing it cards exsist to keep it in check they just arent being implemented.

If you ban terminus -> deck die, control probably too.

If you ban BS -> Terminus become a lot less consistent, but stay alive, and aggro get more viable too.

Why would u want to ban Terminus really? The card saw no play in standard (Bonfire did) it should be clear why that is. Because legacy has a lot of enablers, the best of them being Brainstorm that not only can give you instant wraths from T2 onward but is also the best Draw engine in the format with fetchlands.

[Dice_Box]

If you ban terminus -> deck die, control probably too.

Lands would live on untouched.

[uncletiggy]

If you ban terminus -> deck die, control probably too.

If you ban BS -> Terminus become a lot less consistent, but stay alive, and aggro get more viable too.

Why would u want to ban Terminus really? The card saw no play in standard (Bonfire did) it should be clear why that is. Because legacy has a lot of enablers, the best of them being Brainstorm not only can give you instant wraths from T2 onward but is also the best Draw engine in the format with fetchlands.

The deck would not die without terminus it would require less efficient sweepers like supreme verdict and possibly even devastation tide. Banning brainstorm is never going to happen it doesnt do anything on its own its been the corner stone of the entire format since its conception and realistically is probably the entire reason the format even still exsists. brainstorm makes the format tick period. If brainstorm was banned i seriously doubt something like terminus would still see play its only good with the threshold of ways to set it up which is precisely why it wasnt played in standard not that standard should have any refelection on legacy.

[DLifshitz]

Show and Tell dictates certian deckbuilding decisions (for instance, running Karakas in a deck that wouldn't want it without Emrakul and Griselbrand running around) and probably makes D&T better positioned than it might be otherwise.

I'm going to restate my point from earlier because no one addressed it: why is Terminus the card people single out rather than Counterbalance or Top? Terminus resets the board, but most creature-based decks have ways of refilling their hands and shuffling the guys back into their decks. The issue in my experience seems to be that creature decks facing Miracles can't reassemble a meaningful board through CB/Top post-Terminus rather than Terminus itaelf being the thing that beats them. Sweepers have existed as long as the game and aggro has been fine; Terminus is obviously the best one, but between a highly mana efficient sweeper and a soft lock that shuts down a lot of noncreature strategies as well, the lock seems to be the more oppressive element.

The occasional 1 Karakas is just a minor concession to the existence of S&T and Reanimator. I really wouldn't say that these decks are currently shaping the format to any great extent, their metagame presence is too low.

Regarding Miracles, IMVHO it's the other way round. For many creature-based decks (Jund, Nic Fit, D&T, Maverick, MUD), CB/Top on an empty board is not yet game over, for various reasons (Abrupt Decay, Vial, Cavern of Souls, GSZ, very high CMC cards). But these decks usually can't prevent Terminus from resolving, and they struggle to generate enough card advantage to stay in the game after Terminus backed up by StP.

I do not believe that anything from Miracles should be banned, just saying Terminus controls the format to a much greater extent than Counterbalance.

Anyway, cards aren't played individually, if you attribute the success of Miracles to CB/Top more than Terminus, so be it, the point remains, the only deck that plays all of these cards has a very strong influence on the metagame.

[Gheizen64]

The deck would not die without terminus it would require less efficient sweepers like supreme verdict and possibly even devastation tide. Banning brainstorm is never going to happen it doesnt do anything on its own its been the corner stone of the entire format since its conception and realistically is probably the entire reason the format even still exsists. brainstorm makes the format tick period. If brainstorm was banned i seriously doubt something like terminus would still see play its only good with the threshold of ways to set it up which is precisely why it wasnt played in standard not that standard should have any refelection on legacy.

Survival, Workshop, Goblin and Dragon want a word with you :rolleyes:

Even after the list separation from Vintage, Goblin was the best deck for a while.

Also the famous the sole reason the format exist [cit.], repeating this ad nauseam doesn't make it true. Nowadays i'm just imagining magic players repeating this as a mantra 100 times every night before going to bed :laugh:

[Zombie]

My pile of little pointy-eared gits clearly exists because of Brainstorm.

[bruizar]

Anyway, cards aren't played individually, if you attribute the success of Miracles to CB/Top more than Terminus, so be it, the point remains, the only deck that plays all of these cards has a very strong influence on the metagame.

Finally someone that gets it.

As a matter of fact, I reckon if you do the appropriate analysis, you might even find cards that are attributed to success but are never discussed in this thread. If I had to guess, Lightning Bolt and Spell Pierce are responsible for more wins than Sensei's Divining Top or Terminus. (K-Means clustering of decks/wins could reveal that in fact, Lightning Bolt or some other overlooked card is the one whose future we should be discussing.)

edit: reasoning ->

Lightning Bolt doubles as a removal spell that can swing board states by being able to destroy planeswalkers, utility (Deathrite Shaman, Dark Confidant) / combo creatures (Painter's Servant, Elves) or a clock, e.g. delver, as well as being able to race (Amplified by the presence of Snapcaster Mage). In many cases it's better than Swords to Plowshares (Negating life gain) and, as just explained, much more versatile.

Spell Pierce often counters critical, big-investment spells and develops tempo. This trade in mana (Spell Pierce on Sneak Attack is a 1 mana vs 4 mana trade) is hard to recover from and it's one of the reasons why delver tempo decks are so effective (Not without reason that they run bolt and pierce). Spell Pierce is also one of the biggest barriers to the success of stax-type decks.

[bruizar]

Also, [bold statement] I think that everyone here is building decks the wrong way, including myself.

I believe that we should first analyze the meta-game, then analyze sideboard cards that most effectively address the meta-game, then match those 15 cards with the most postboard-resistant and powerful strategy in those colors, and only then settle on a main deck.

In other words, people should not construct decks from the perspective of deck archetypes (The Control/Combo/Aggro paradigm), but from the perspective of competitive strategic reasoning by exploiting the weaknesses of the meta-game in the postboard matches. Start from your goal and work backwards. Pre-board games are (at most) 50% of any given match and at worst 33% of any given match. By contrast, post-board games constitute 50%-66% of a match. By starting off from the paradigm of the main deck, you essentially reduce your odds of winning to lower than 50%; all else being equal.

[uncletiggy]

[QUOTE=Zombie;841995]My pile of little pointy-eared gits clearly exists because of Brainstorm./QUOTE]

Clearly mine does too...

Personally im fine with brainstorm getting the ax I just cant realistically see it happening. To be honest id love to see either brainstorm go or survival come back I'm just not getting my hopes up.

[Bobmans]

Nothing changed in this discussion since 2009. First see then believe.

[bruizar]

With Brainstorm banned green will take over with Natural Selection...

In all seriousness, that card was so close to being one of the most expensive cards in magic, if only it drew a card.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

bruizar, although you're inverted deck building is not witjhout a reason, note that it's pretty hard to exploit weaknesses of even the local metagame, as it shifts over and over, and it's unpredictable due to th nature of Legacy (with its lots of decks and generally older players that sometimes come for the toruney, sometimes they don't).

[Zombie]

The inverted approach is kinda asinine to begin with, insofar that your maindeck can just kill people anyway. Including the sideboard from the get go is definitely a good idea, but focusing primarily on it is probably even worse of an idea than focusing primarily on the maindeck is. The Elephant Method seems like the sanest approach to tackling the problem (ie. you figure out a blob of roughly related cards that you want to play in the meta, build from those postboard 60's for the main matchups and then finagle those lists together into a 60+15 that can come close to any of those proto-decks postboard)

[Nuke is Good]

Was Reanimator the main reason mystical tutor was banned back in the day? I never got to play around at the time but I could imagine much more broken things were occuring at the time.

[Zombie]

Was Reanimator the main reason mystical tutor was banned back in the day? I never got to play around at the time but I could imagine much more broken things were occuring at the time.

Reanimator and ANT. If memory serves mana could still be floated between steps back then, so Upkeep Mystical, break LEDs, draw step Nauseam, you died. Plus it basically allowed those decks to run wishboard style SBs so they didn't have to dilute their deck much at all and would still be able to find answers consistently.

[The Doctor]

Was Reanimator the main reason mystical tutor was banned back in the day? I never got to play around at the time but I could imagine much more broken things were occuring at the time.Mystical Tutor decks were dominating everything. The community was screaming for a ban because of how busted Reanimator and ANT were at the time. No one was at all surprised when Tom LaPille stepped in and announced the banning of the ungentlemanly, format warping abomination.
Source: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/96

[easysantiago]

Mystical Tutor decks were dominating everything. The community was screaming for a ban because of how busted Reanimator and ANT were at the time. No one was at all surprised when Tom LaPille stepped in and announced the banning of the ungentlemanly, format warping abomination.
Source: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/96

"Our research took another turn, however, when we investigated how Legacy is played in the real world. We discovered something rather interesting, and that is that Mystical Tutor decks were quite rare at Legacy tournaments that did not have tons of money on the line. At Grand Prix and other cash tournaments, people were happy to bust out their Mystical Tutorss. However, in the comfort of their home stores they seemed to prefer doing other things that were more fun, if perhaps less powerful. This struck me as being a sort of gentleman's agreement; everyone knew what sick decks were out there, but they chose not to play them."

I was not playing around this time but I find this moment in MTG history to be fascinating; thanks for sharing. I can't imagine something like this ever happening again.

[Gheizen64]

Was really LaPille in charge for that decison thought? Wasn't the DCI in charge? The dude has turned everything he touched literally to shit.

[MGB]

Legacy Champs Top8:

1. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
2. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 3 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
3. Maverick
4. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 2 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
5. Tezzerator
6. URG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
7. UBG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 1 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
8. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm

Ok so until a ban of some part of the deck archetype occurs, all foreseeable top8s at large Legacy tournaments will be 70%+ U/x Delver decks with 4 Brainstorm, 4 Delver, and some amount of Treasure Cruise.

Sounds like fun.

[ESG]

Reanimator and ANT. If memory serves mana could still be floated between steps back then, so Upkeep Mystical, break LEDs, draw step Nauseam, you died.

Nope, mana could not be floated that way at that time.


Plus it basically allowed those decks to run wishboard style SBs so they didn't have to dilute their deck much at all and would still be able to find answers consistently.

This is a factor, but it was also about high-profile results. Reanimator won GP Madrid, and there was an ANT mirror in the semis (with Saito losing). The Mystical Tutor ban came as a surprise to most Sourcers, but I would say that it's clear to most people now that the card should stay banned, given how much stronger it would be in today's environment.

[JanoschEausH]

Legacy Champs Top8:

1. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
2. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 3 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
3. Maverick
4. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 2 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
5. Tezzerator
6. URG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
7. UBG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 1 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm
8. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm

Ok so until a ban of some part of the deck archetype occurs, all foreseeable top8s at large Legacy tournaments will be 70%+ U/x Delver decks with 4 Brainstorm, 4 Delver, and some amount of Treasure Cruise.

Sounds like fun.

Looks like Delver or Brainstorm are favourites here. But if they ban Brainstorm, Legacy dies - so they better ban Delver I guess.

[Darkenslight]

Looks like Delver or Brainstorm are favourites here. But if they ban Brainstorm, Legacy dies - so they better ban Delver I guess.

Nah, they'll probably end up banning Glimpse. Or something.

[Gheizen64]

Vampiric is probably worse than Mystical nowadays anyway: a bit worse with AdN and reanimating devices (reanimate->grizzle put you in bolt range if you used vamp), and it doesn't have Awesome. In combo, the only card it can pick that mystic couldn't is LED (and you keep the information hidden), which while very good, make me doubt it would be THAT much better considering you pay life and don't have Awesome. Keep in mind that in the meanwhile, Thalia, Flusterstorm, and i think even Spell Pierce were printed, meaning combo in general got considerably worse from the times of mystical.
That, and Vampiric would also get played in other archetypes, fetching permanents, but more importantly, lands (monoblack POST :cool: )

[Fatal]

I think Green Sun's Zenith and Cahlice is a problem - look two other decks !

/sarcasm

Anyway I wouldn't mind to bring new tools but they should consider them also in other colors... sad but true.

[jamis]

Vampiric is probably worse than Mystical nowadays anyway: a bit worse with AdN and reanimating devices (reanimate->grizzle put you in bolt range if you used vamp), and it doesn't have Awesome. In combo, the only card it can pick that mystic couldn't is LED (and you keep the information hidden), which while very good, make me doubt it would be THAT much better considering you pay life and don't have Awesome. Keep in mind that in the meanwhile, Thalia, Flusterstorm, and i think even Spell Pierce were printed, meaning combo in general got considerably worse from the times of mystical.
That, and Vampiric would also get played in other archetypes, fetching permanents, but more importantly, lands (monoblack POST :cool: )

Vampiric also grabs a one-of Pithing Needle, or can tutor for a creature when Reanimator has Careful Study + Reanimation effect in-hand, or even grabs a land when Reanimator opens with a one-lander with swamp+entomb+exhume. Or literally any other card it needs. I don't think in 2010 when Iona was the best thing to Reanimate that the mystical ban was necessary, but now with Griselbrand and friends, allowing the deck to run singleton maindeck show+tell and bounce spell whether through mystical, or vampiric, or demoic is far beyond acceptable. If they unbanned both at the same time, though, and only allowed you to play one-or-the-other, I think I'd jump to Vampiric rather easily.

[btm10]

Looks like Delver or Brainstorm are favourites here. But if they ban Brainstorm, Legacy dies - so they better ban Delver I guess.

Counting the number of a card in any given top 8 is silly, and is demonstrably not useful (cf., Force of Will). Cruise is super broken, and more and more I'm thinking it needs to go.

[FoolofaTook]

Looks like Delver or Brainstorm are favourites here. But if they ban Brainstorm, Legacy dies - so they better ban Delver I guess.

Don't you think it's kind of dramatic to suggest that the fate of an entire format rests on one card?

If they ban Brainstorm one of a zillion other 1cc or 2cc blue cantrips will become next best and take it's place.

[wonderPreaux]

Don't you think it's kind of dramatic to suggest that the fate of an entire format rests on one card?

If they ban Brainstorm one of a zillion other 1cc or 2cc blue cantrips will become next best and take it's place.

No other cantrips offers the same mix of card selection and card filtering though. do you know how shitty storm would be if you couldnt brainstorm to swap lands for other stuff to get hellbent, or how awkward control would be without the ability to protect 4-drops/counters from discard etc. Brainstorm, alongside Wasteland, and Force of Will, at least, are pretty much pillars of the format.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'd be interested what other pillars do we have. (If the pillars thing is even real.) Goyf? Maybe back in 2010.

Uhm, got it: Delver.

[FoolofaTook]

No other cantrips offers the same mix of card selection and card filtering though. do you know how shitty storm would be if you couldnt brainstorm to swap lands for other stuff to get hellbent, or how awkward control would be without the ability to protect 4-drops/counters from discard etc. Brainstorm, alongside Wasteland, and Force of Will, at least, are pretty much pillars of the format.

Storm is 3% of the meta right now according to mtgtop8.com. Hard to see how doing anything at all to them has a major impact on the meta.

4-drops and counters get protected by counters. Brainstorm to hide a card from discard is the single factor that most invalidates discard as a playable archetype.

Look, Brainstorm is the every card. It does so many different things that you either play it or you play Elves, Burn or D&T at this point. That's not a healthy card in the meta. It shouldn't be available if it's an auto-include in most top 8 lists. That's exactly the type of card that WotC has always claimed they'd ban if it presented itself. Well, it's presented itself.

[maharis]

Just look at all the mechanics that are broken by Brainstorm.

Top of the deck (Delver, Miracles)
Shuffle effects (fetches, SFM)
Filling the graveyard (Delve, Goyf)
Spell triggers (Pyromancer, prowess, storm)
Discard defense

Whenever Wizards explores this kind of design space, Brainstorm will always be the best companion card. Treasure Cruise is ridiculous, but it's possible that both it and Brainstorm are broken.

[btm10]

4-drops and counters get protected by counters. Brainstorm to hide a card from discard is the single factor that most invalidates discard as a playable archetype.

Look, Brainstorm is the every card. It does so many different things that you either play it or you play Elves, Burn or D&T at this point. That's not a healthy card in the meta. It shouldn't be available if it's an auto-include in most top 8 lists. That's exactly the type of card that WotC has always claimed they'd ban if it presented itself. Well, it's presented itself.

The thing invalidating discard as an archetype is the fact that it's actively terrible. Pox has been around as an archetype for ages and has never generated more than a niche following or token performances despite being more oppressive than a pure discard deck. This happens because it has no way of pressing the positional advantage it generates, and by the time you change the deck enough to capitalize on your disruption, you're playing BUG, Deadguy, Jund, or Junk.

As for this being an opportunity to ban Brainstorm, the only way you could conclude that the metagame shifts coinciding with the legality of Khans are cause to ban Brainstorm instead of Treasure Cruise is if you already had it out for Brainstorm. I'm opposed to bans in all but the most egregious circumstances on the principle that the banned list should be as small as possible while still differentiating Legacy for Vintage and Modern and having the format not fall apart from brokenness, but Treasure Cruise is severely broken, and my opinion hardens the more I'm playtesting for GP NJ. So many blue-deck matches come down to who resolves Cruise more, and the sudden surge in UR Delver is almost completely attributable to how good Cruise is at fueling Young Pyromancer and Monastery Swiftspear. The fact that it powers up the other blue archetypes is just icing on the cake.

[Nuke is Good]

I never liked Delver and wouldn't mind it being banned, so I can use my Flying Men again! However I seriously doubt it's ban worthy though.

[Humphrey]

Counting the number of a card in any given top 8 is silly, and is demonstrably not useful (cf., Force of Will). Cruise is super broken, and more and more I'm thinking it needs to go.

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:


http://i.imgur.com/iIJ4SJZ.png

http://i.imgur.com/MaMl3Y5.png

http://i.imgur.com/OHV5STd.png

http://i.imgur.com/5vVcHZX.png

[Gheizen64]

The thing invalidating discard as an archetype is the fact that it's actively terrible. Pox has been around as an archetype for ages and has never generated more than a niche following or token performances despite being more oppressive than a pure discard deck. This happens because it has no way of pressing the positional advantage it generates, and by the time you change the deck enough to capitalize on your disruption, you're playing BUG, Deadguy, Jund, or Junk.

As for this being an opportunity to ban Brainstorm, the only way you could conclude that the metagame shifts coinciding with the legality of Khans are cause to ban Brainstorm instead of Treasure Cruise is if you already had it out for Brainstorm. I'm opposed to bans in all but the most egregious circumstances on the principle that the banned list should be as small as possible while still differentiating Legacy for Vintage and Modern and having the format not fall apart from brokenness, but Treasure Cruise is severely broken, and my opinion hardens the more I'm playtesting for GP NJ. So many blue-deck matches come down to who resolves Cruise more, and the sudden surge in UR Delver is almost completely attributable to how good Cruise is at fueling Young Pyromancer and Monastery Swiftspear. The fact that it powers up the other blue archetypes is just icing on the cake.

No the thing invalidating black as a core is pretty much brainstorm. Thoughtseize is a very strong card, and Cabal therapy too. If you weren't certain to whiff against blue decks 50% of the times, you'd see much more black around.
No one is arguing for discard as the strategy of a deck, but as the supporting pillar, much like FoW + Daze are the supporting pillar of every blue strat that allow it to be good against everything.

[Nielsie]

Legacy Champs Top8:

1. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 4 FOW, 4 Ponder
2. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 3 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 4 FOW, 4 Ponder
3. Maverick
4. UWR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 2 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 3 FOW, 3 Ponder
5. Tezzerator
6. URG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 4 FOW, 4 Ponder
7. UBG Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 1 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 4 FOW, 4 Ponder
8. UR Delver w/ 4 Delver of Secrets, 4 Treasure Cruise, 4 Brainstorm, 4 FOW, 4 Ponder

Fixed that for you!

I don't know how many people have actualy noticed but lately the core of blue decks isn't anymore 4 Brainstorm, 4 Force of Will. 3-4 Ponder is now in every blue deck too. This format is getting pretty damn stale when about 12-16 cards overlap in 70% of the meta...

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Fixed that for you!

I don't know how many people have actualy noticed but lately the core of blue decks isn't anymore 4 Brainstorm, 4 Force of Will. 3-4 Ponder is now in every blue deck too. This format is getting pretty damn stale when about 12-16 cards overlap in 70% of the meta...

Certainly Brainstorm is the most bannable card among those followed by Ponder.

Something will have to happen eventually. The alternative would be to print cheap draw hate cards.

Something like Notion Thief, Chains of Meph. , Spirit of the Labyrinth on steroids. Maybe an artifact for in the mold of Relic of Progenitus.

Relic of Card Draw Hate (1)
T - When target player draws a card that is not the first on his turn, he draws no card instead.
1 - Sacrifice Relic, target player can't draw cards this turn besides the first card. Draw a card.

Maybe add a static clause to it "players can't draw cards on their opponents turn" with some additional wording to prevent abusing otherwise symmetrical effects like Wheel of Fortune.

[FoolofaTook]

Something will have to happen eventually. The alternative would be to print cheap draw hate cards.

Something like Notion Thief, Chains of Meph. , Spirit of the Labyrinth on steroids. Maybe an artifact for in the mold of Relic of Progenitus.

Relic of Card Draw Hate (1)
T - When target player draws a card that is not the first on his turn, he draws no card instead.
1 - Sacrifice Relic, target player can't draw cards this turn besides the first card. Draw a card.

Maybe add a static clause to it "players can't draw cards on their opponents turn" with some additional wording to prevent abusing otherwise symmetrical effects like Wheel of Fortune.

The problem with this idea is that to save a single card you'd hose what blue does in the normal course of business, which is to cantrip and draw extra cards.

Much better just to get rid of the card that is most abusive in that circumstance. It's not Treasure Cruise, because we already had 60-70% Brainstorm penetration before Treasure Cruise was printed. It's Brainstorm. That's what feeds the 60-70% blue meta in the final tables.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I think hosing blue card draw is better than banning stuff.

Black graveyard engines (core black ability) have many hate cards and nothing to fight through since WotC still has not managed to print cards that combat gy hate by for example putting exiled cards back into the GY.

The card draw hate they printed so far is just too fragile and in specific colors.

I like hate cards more since that shifts the powerlevel a little towards Jund or Team Italia and other non-blue strategies. Just banning Brainstorm for example would imo just result in the same decks still being on top just not playing Brainstorm.


The fact is that format needs hate cards in the worst way against blue. It's mindboggling to think how much saturation there is in the meta of Brainstorm/Ponder/Force of Will/Treasure Cruise but the hate cards you see that punish those cards in sideboard are very very few (Thalia, Spirit of the Lab, Notion Thief, Chains of M.)...

Also unban Black Vise and Mind Twist god damn it! Black Vise is perfectly reasonable and Mind Twist also and even got worse due to Treasure Cruise basically countering a big mind twist.

[Zombie]

Harsh hate cards just make for miserable gameplay. Yay I resolved RIP I wons such skill wow. Is fun cackling once, gets old pretty fast. Then again, people play Show and Tell.

Or think about Dredge.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Banning brainstorm does very little to improve the internal inconsistencies of non-blue decks. Instead of un-mulligans and hiding cards from discard via BS, blue would use the second best cantrip (Preordain?) and still be miles ahead speaking of filtering for CQ and situational solutions. Until other colors get these tools which should be present in the game that wishes to be more than a Random Numbers contest, not much will change.

Inb4 "but blue would absorb those CQ effects" and "color balance doesn't matter". Why would blue absorb anything when it already has its own tools? And if the color balance is unimportant, then why it shouldn't be there?
Ok, blue part of color pie, blah, blah, color of trickeries, wutnot... The color pie is more than blurred in this moment in time, and in fact it maybe ceased to matter long time ago, at least ever since blue has everything.
But I worte this several times before and I'm not going to repeat myself again. The reasons why this situation sucks (be it price of blue duals, etc.) were already listed, moreover I'm starting to dislike how WotC are having fun of the players' base when they repeat the old mistakes (7/7 flying lifelink Yawgmoth's Bargain) and add absurd cards to the pool with a clear reasoning that "they're blue, that's what blue does" while other colors get jackshit so you're either limited to hatedecks, topdeck roulette, blue splash or semi-casual builds; elves will forgive.



Black graveyard engines (core black ability) have many hate cards and nothing to fight through since WotC still has not managed to print cards that combat gy hate by for example putting exiled cards back into the GY.

Similar cards exist, e.g. Riftsweeper. Their weakness is that it's a hate against hate which is ridiculously crappy.

[Nielsie]

SotL would have been so much better being a 2/2 with flash

[kravkenov]

SotL would have been so much better being a 2/2 with flash

Agree.

[nedleeds]

Relic of Card Draw Hate (1)
T - When target player draws a card that is not the first on his turn, he draws no card instead.
1 - Sacrifice Relic, target player can't draw cards this turn besides the first card. Draw a card.


Wouldn't the same cantrip mafia blue decks just all then play 4 of these? Furthering the inbreeding. This would be an auto include and would reduce deck building space from the ~48 cards down to ~44 cards.

The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.

#skillintensive #pillaroftheformat #formatstaple #reducesvariance #goplaymodern #everyonewouldquit #somethingnonsensicalaboutvintage

[Lemnear]

SotL would have been so much better being a 2/2 with flash

Captain Obvious? Doesn't die to -1/-1 effects like Golgari Charm, Electrickery, Zealous Persecution AND with an additional ability without costing more? It's like saying "damn! SFM would be better if it had shroud!"

[nedleeds]

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:


http://i.imgur.com/iIJ4SJZ.png

http://i.imgur.com/MaMl3Y5.png

http://i.imgur.com/OHV5STd.png

http://i.imgur.com/5vVcHZX.png

Hand 1 is a keeper since you'll either fill your yard enough to cruise or certainly find Brainstorm with that many Ponders. While you are doing all this you'll surely flip your 3/2 flyer for U.

Hand 2 could be a keep on the draw. You'll see another card, and then hopefully get your Island and see 3 or 3+1 random from Ponder. On the play it still might be fine, since you play the cantrip mafia and only have to put like ~18 lands in your deck there's a good chance your Ponder shows you some gas. Maybe it shows you pitch magic and a card to setup Delver and you're fine with just giving that a go. You also have another fetch if the 3rd card on Ponder is poop.

Hand 3 is fucking fantastic since it has Brainstorm and 2 fetches. you get to Ancestral and maybe save an Ancestral for a couple of turns later oh ... and you get a flying 3/2 for U.

Hand 4 is fantastic also you are likely Cruising on the 3rd or 4th turn with a flipped delver.

In order of power

1) Brainstorm
2) Ponder
3) Delver
4) Cruise

Cruise is the biggest brick in your opener, the worst to have multiples of in your opener and is subject to graveyard disruption.

[Sloshthedark]

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:


http://i.imgur.com/iIJ4SJZ.png

http://i.imgur.com/MaMl3Y5.png

http://i.imgur.com/OHV5STd.png

http://i.imgur.com/5vVcHZX.png

Misty. Just keeps comming :eek:

Also how comes reading this thread often invokes in me an unparalleled urge to punch people?

[Michael Keller]

Treasure Cruise just has incidental strength that makes it a powerful card turns three and four when you're most likely to cast it. The fact that you really invest nothing into turning each card in your graveyard into a colorless mana aside from playing cheap spells is what fuels its broken nature.

Sure, Brainstorm is powerful and always has been. It's also multifaceted and in the end is a strictly more powerful card than Cruise. People are just hungry to play Cruise because it's new, and while I get it that it's incredibly powerful, its popularity will fade slightly when folks adjust to beating strategies that splash it only for good measure. It doesn't fit in all decks the same way, which is why I kind of feel the madness will fade slightly after the GP.

I just don't think it's ban-worthy. Drawing three cards at sorcery-speed realistically on turns three or four - even for a single blue mana - just doesn't sell me on a ban. People thought the same thing about Griselbrand, and that's still here.

For me, personally, I think Show and Tell is easily the most broken card in Legacy no matter how symmetrical it may be. And it's still in the format.

[menace13]

The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.

#rekt

[AngryTroll]

Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:


http://i.imgur.com/iIJ4SJZ.png

http://i.imgur.com/MaMl3Y5.png

http://i.imgur.com/OHV5STd.png

http://i.imgur.com/5vVcHZX.png

Misty x2, Delver x3, Brainstorm, and anything is better than all of those hands. Shoot, even Misty x2, Delver x3, Ponder, Treasure Cruise is still better than hand one, two, and three.

[wonderPreaux]

The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.

isn't a lot of the rationale for banning brainstorm that W and/or G and/or B midrange can't compete? if you wanna ban cards to support other cards you like, i see no reason not to argue for keeping cards in the format to support other cards you like. i would miss being able to play combos that aren't all-ins like Dredge/Charbelcher, for instance. That reason why Brainstorm has such saturation is that it does contribute to many decks being playable, since most of the complaints are about Delver/Cruise decks, why take away the card that enables combo and control, as opposed to the literal flagship card (imo, Delver)

if you want to ban something to stop the all-terrain blue concept, take their clock away. we've had the 1-mana draw-3 by turn 3/4 concept for a while in ancestral visions, cruise is just somewhat higher variance in that you can top-deck it, but otherwise it feels somewhat tame. As for Brainstorm, I would argue that it enables as many decktypes as it suppresses-by-opportunity-cost, and arguments for banning/keeping it would pretty much always boil down to what your personal vision of the metagame would look like, in other words, cards you like

[FoolofaTook]

Banning brainstorm does very little to improve the internal inconsistencies of non-blue decks.

I don't think this is true though. I do think Preordain would be the replacement for Brainstorm but it isn't half as powerful as Brainstorm is. You can't draw and keep multiple cards with it. You can't hide stuff on top of the library with it. You can't use it plus fetches to shuffle away trash for good stuff.

I think the prospects of non-blue lists would go up dramatically with the banning of Brainstorm. I think they'd still be the best lists in Legacy for the most part but right now they're the Godzilla-stomping best lists and that would likely go away.

WotC has been completely disingenuous on what it is that they try to accomplish with the cards they print and the cards they ban. It's embarrassing at this point. They need better internal consistency than they've shown in the past.

[Gheizen64]

WotC just don't care or is terrible at this format. Land Tax needed what, 3 years to come of the list and saw how much play? Grim monolith also needed a couple years iirc, and the worst thing is that whenever wotc unbanned one of those turds they'd rant on how good they are and how scared they are of their format-warping effect, all of this while they see play as 4 copies in the span of an year. And both Mind Twist and Vise are on the list, cards that would play an amount of play comparable to Mystic Snake in this format.

[DragoFireheart]

Well regardless I'm glad no one thinks Show and Tell is ban worthy anymore. Now lets hurry up and ban Brainstorm so the format can collapse.

[Admiral_Arzar]

WotC just don't care or is terrible at this format. Land Tax needed what, 3 years to come of the list and saw how much play? Grim monolith also needed a couple years iirc, and the worst thing is that whenever wotc unbanned one of those turds they'd rant on how good they are and how scared they are of their format-warping effect, all of this while they see play as 4 copies in the span of an year. And both Mind Twist and Vise are on the list, cards that would play an amount of play comparable to Mystic Snake in this format.

I would LOVE to play 4x Black Vise against all this Treasure Cruise-fueled blue nonsense. But agree, it's pretty obvious they don't even pay attention to the format considering how many obvious unbans there are. Most of the cards on the list that aren't obvious Vintage brokenness are less busted than things we have available now anyways.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I don't think this is true though. I do think Preordain would be the replacement for Brainstorm but it isn't half as powerful as Brainstorm is. You can't draw and keep multiple cards with it. You can't hide stuff on top of the library with it. You can't use it plus fetches to shuffle away trash for good stuff.

I think the prospects of non-blue lists would go up dramatically with the banning of Brainstorm. I think they'd still be the best lists in Legacy for the most part but right now they're the Godzilla-stomping best lists and that would likely go away.

WotC has been completely disingenuous on what it is that they try to accomplish with the cards they print and the cards they ban. It's embarrassing at this point. They need better internal consistency than they've shown in the past.

Sure yeah, that's right. My point was that while BS is op, it still shines also because non-blue sucks hard in CQ dept. And that's the trouble, because you may ban BS and cut down the consistency of ex-BS decks, thus making the non-blue better postioned, but it still does very little about the fact that they'd still suck, although it won't be that glaring compared to the old, pre-ban Brainstorm decks.
While making blue worse improves the metagame position of non-blue (I hope that no one chimes in with "color balance doesn't matter"), it still doesn't miraculously improve the "4x land, 2x KotR, 1x random" opening hands which are a pest to enjoy. In short: I'm all for consistency, as it's more funny to play the game than mull to oblivion or topdeck like crazy. And still, this isn't "give us non-blue Brainstorms", it's just me wondering why the concept of CQ/CA that seems to be extremely important in a game of variance and skill, is kinda limited to one color only, while the company designing the game clearly wants to sell all other remaining colors; insert something about marketing here.

Btw, while Twist and Vise are weak, and they might be unbanned right now, I'd much rather see SotF come off the list. Just please, don't do it before I purchase the set...

[Richard Cheese]

I'd also love to have Vise back, although I don't think it would do much against Cruise, at least in the UR deck. Every time I playtest with that deck Cruise ends up being part of a mini-combo turn to power Swagspear up to 4/5 and make a bunch of tokens and enable another cruise next turn.

[Humphrey]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

Yeah, this. I just don't know what to cut from RUG, seems like either Mongoose (as it's slow) or Goyf (as it's expensive) or maybe some mix of them; Goyf's big (although cmc2 sucks) and Mongoose is hard to remove. I may always BS-shuffle away the one that's situationally inappropriate... d(-_-)b

[SevenInTheQueue]

There's a chance that if any bans are put into motion, WotC would rather take out Brainstorm than a newer card like Cruise. While Cruise is certainly the topic du jour, let's not forget how slowly they move when it comes to Legacy. Removing Brainstorm from the format weakens the boogie-men archetypes of the format, while "dealing" with the problem at hand.

As for unbanning, the following are all safe candidates for removal:

Black Vise
Mind Twist
Earthcraft


All this said, we could just be in store for another year of ~nothing changing~

[Zombie]

i would miss being able to play combos that aren't all-ins like Dredge/Charbelcher, for instance.

What's with this assumption that non-belcher/dredge combo decks would instantly implode and wither away from the face of the Earth the moment Brainstorm is gone? Other formats have had perfectly functional Brainstorm-less Storm decks over the years, shouldn't be impossible to construct a good Storm deck sans BS. Harder? Probably. Impossible. I highly doubt it. Also...

*cough*
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=152556&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=151095&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=290529&type=card
*cough*
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=278193&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=45859&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=75241&type=card
*cough*
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=221559&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=3671&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=240027&type=card



Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autowins like wasteland against slow hands.

I keep telling this to people that want Vise back. The chance that it would do anything good to the format is miniscule, chances are it'd either do nothing or be incorporated into Delver and make life hell for people. It's a risk for basically no probable benefit.

They don't listen :/

[Gheizen64]

Id probably play vise in delverdecks lol. This card provides random autolose against 80% of the decks of the format which ignore it.

Fixed.

[[SLAYER]chaos]

If blue tempo decks get everything good forever I only think it's fair that Necro gets unbanned.

[FoolofaTook]

I'd also love to have Vise back, although I don't think it would do much against Cruise, at least in the UR deck. Every time I playtest with that deck Cruise ends up being part of a mini-combo turn to power Swagspear up to 4/5 and make a bunch of tokens and enable another cruise next turn.

There are no lists that consistently hold 5+ cards from turn to turn however that's only half the story with vise. The other half is play a vise and then wasteland and stifle you to death, which certainly would happen.

You're right about UR Delver not caring about vise against it. Since they don't play wastes and stifles they probably wouldn't play it either.

[wonderPreaux]

What's with this assumption that non-belcher/dredge combo decks would instantly implode and wither away from the face of the Earth the moment Brainstorm is gone? Other formats have had perfectly functional Brainstorm-less Storm decks over the years, shouldn't be impossible to construct a good Storm deck sans BS. Harder? Probably. Impossible. I highly doubt it. Also...

If youre relying on a 4-of like SnT or Infernal Tutor or entomb, or other disproportionately powerful cards you want Brainstorm so as not to get sniped out by random Thoughtseizes. If you need a balance of certain pieces, say not-too-many lands for hellbent, or just enough untaps for High Tide, you need a way to adjust the balance. brainstorm-less combo is possible but not as viable unless all your cards are equally proportionately effective (elves), consistently interactive inherently (dredge) or built to go off t1 so as not to be vulnerable to drawing too many lands/fatties/rituals (belcher/oops).

combo decks like storm, reanimator, omni tell etc are held up by brainstorm to filter and protect the various pieces. you COULD try to play without them, but you suddenly start losing a lot of games to preventable circumstances like random topped discard, land flood/screw, etc.

*also, considering elves has a poor matchup against storm and a few other combo decks, and has as many silver-bullet hate cards as storm might face, its likely not the best example for you to start coughing up regarding the topic

[FoolofaTook]

If youre relying on a 4-of like SnT or Infernal Tutor or entomb, or other disproportionately powerful cards you want Brainstorm so as not to get sniped out by random Thoughtseizes. If you need a balance of certain pieces, say not-too-many lands for hellbent, or just enough untaps for High Tide, you need a way to adjust the balance. brainstorm-less combo is possible but not as viable unless all your cards are equally proportionately effective (elves), consistently interactive inherently (dredge) or built to go off t1 so as not to be vulnerable to drawing too many lands/fatties/rituals (belcher/oops).

combo decks like storm, reanimator, omni tell etc are held up by brainstorm to filter and protect the various pieces. you COULD try to play without them, but you suddenly start losing a lot of games to preventable circumstances like random topped discard, land flood/screw, etc.

*also, considering elves has a poor matchup against storm and a few other combo decks, and has as many silver-bullet hate cards as storm might face, its likely not the best example for you to start coughing up regarding the topic

Getting sniped out by random Thoughtseizes should be an element that everybody has to consider. It's not like Thoughtseize is unreasonably costed at 2 life plus black mana for a 1-for-1 trade. It's just one of the things that blue doesn't have to worry about most of the time due to Brainstorm.

[Zombie]

If youre relying on a 4-of like SnT or Infernal Tutor or entomb, or other disproportionately powerful cards you want Brainstorm so as not to get sniped out by random Thoughtseizes.

It's a question nonblue players have needed to ask for forever.


If you need a balance of certain pieces, say not-too-many lands for hellbent, or just enough untaps for High Tide, you need a way to adjust the balance. brainstorm-less combo is possible but not as viable unless all your cards are equally proportionately effective (elves)

Elves needs to balance it's pieces. It's doable with ponder/preordain equivalents, no brainstorm needed. The cards themselves most certainly aren't equally effective.


combo decks like storm, reanimator, omni tell etc are held up by brainstorm to filter and protect the various pieces. you COULD try to play without them, but you suddenly start losing a lot of games to preventable circumstances like random topped discard, land flood/screw, etc.

And other decks don't have to suffer through these? Also not like Brainstorm is the only cantrip in existence, manaflood/screw is easily manageable with Ponder/Preordain.


*also, considering elves has a poor matchup against storm and a few other combo decks, and has as many silver-bullet hate cards as storm might face, its likely not the best example for you to start coughing up regarding the topic

What does the strength of Elves' Storm matchup have to do with it's quality as a deck?

[Gheizen64]

chaos;843050']If blue tempo decks get everything good forever I only think it's fair that Necro gets unbanned.

Isn't Bargain worse in legacy anyway? In vintage both black engines have been replaced by grizzly because grizzly can be cheated in play more easily and is a win condition in himself already. I'd be curious to See how actually busted they are nowadays

[Dark Ritual]

Bargain is vastly inferior to necropotence. Necropotence is a draw 14 for BBB whereas bargain costs infinite especially off of infernal tutor.

If you ban brainstorm cruise is still a gigantic problem. So you don't have BS anymore. Replace with preordain and still keep ancestral recalling yourself with cruise and not having to put the cards back. Treasure cruise is a mistake on the level of skullclamp, SFM, JTMS, etc. etc. it's nuts in every format with fetchlands. It's wrecking face in modern without brainstorm and in vintage where you get that lone brainstorm. Remove brainstorm here but not cruise? Cruise would continue to warp the format around itself still. It is an obscene magic card that shouldn't have seen print but WotC fell off their rocker.

[wonderPreaux]

It's a question nonblue players have needed to ask for forever.
Nonblue-midrange decks dont have the disparity in card relevance that you get between having SnT/Entomb vs not having SnT/Entomb. Yes, all decks can get thoughtseized, but when a small portion of your deck is very disproportionately more relevant, it stands to reason that without an ability to protect that, the deck becomes much less viable. Thats my point: combo decks without brainstorm become a lot less viable, just like people argue nonblue midrange isnt as viable in the face of cantrip-cores right now. banning brainstorm or not pretty much boils to what decks you think should be in tier 1.5 vs 2.5, especially since delver, the deck everyone points to as the example of why cantrips are bad, would be solved by just axxing delver itself.


Elves needs to balance it's pieces. It's doable with ponder/preordain equivalents, no brainstorm needed. The cards themselves most certainly aren't equally effective.
ponder/preordain cant get a land out of my hand to get me hellbent, it also cant let me see multiple needed pieces of my combo like if i need Omniscience AND Enter the Infinite. if elves want to see multiple new cards, they have glimpse of nature or just the backup plan of beating people to death if things arent quite balanced to combo, thats the vague sort of "general" effectiveness of on-board synergies that elves has in comparison to other combo decks that ive mentioned


And other decks don't have to suffer through these? Also not like Brainstorm is the only cantrip in existence, manaflood/screw is easily manageable with Ponder/Preordain.
i really dont think preordain/ponder fixes a manaflood quite as well as a brainstorm, but i suppose theyre all pretty fair at finding lands


What does the strength of Elves' Storm matchup have to do with it's quality as a deck?
because elves was offered up as some example of successful combo with no brainstorm, but in reality it just isnt as fundamentally strong at being a combo deck as a deck like storm, hence the worse matchup; and with glimpse, NO, and GSZ, its not as though elves doesnt have its own strong core of card filtering/fixing.

[FoolofaTook]

Bargain is vastly inferior to necropotence. Necropotence is a draw 14 for BBB whereas bargain costs infinite especially off of infernal tutor.

If you ban brainstorm cruise is still a gigantic problem. So you don't have BS anymore. Replace with preordain and still keep ancestral recalling yourself with cruise and not having to put the cards back. Treasure cruise is a mistake on the level of skullclamp, SFM, JTMS, etc. etc. it's nuts in every format with fetchlands. It's wrecking face in modern without brainstorm and in vintage where you get that lone brainstorm. Remove brainstorm here but not cruise? Cruise would continue to warp the format around itself still. It is an obscene magic card that shouldn't have seen print but WotC fell off their rocker.

It's not clear that Treasure Cruise is dominating Modern at this point. It's in the most likely top 8 list in the form of UR Delver, however it's not in the next 4 lists (RDW, UWx Mid-range, Birthing Pod, Twin Exarch. It's not in Affinity or Scapeshift either. It's not in Zoo.

It's in one list that will soon be the #1 target for hate in the Modern meta if things continue as they are. It's not powering multiple lists to dominate over the others.

I think it may be overpowered for the metas it is in play in but at the moment Modern is not clearly displaying that trend. UR Delver is OP at the moment.

[Dice_Box]

Elves wins though blunt force. Tinker, Demonic Tutor, Recall on Steroids, Repeatable recall (At 6 mana) and a land that taps on its own for more mana that any other in the format. You do not need filtering, you just go around it with seeing a massive amount of cards. "Shit I need X, I will just use combat tricks to hold you off while I draw 3 cards a turn till I find it." You just take the most broken things you can, put them together and go to town. But that I am sure is news to no one. Also to say its not a deck with Brainstrom, well you give me Tinker, two flavours of Recall and Academy and I am sure I would not need Brainstorm either.

To say Elves needs to balance it's pieces is like saying to someone you need to learn how to play the deck, every dam deck with more options than "Tap dood, pimp slap guy in face" (Read: every deck in this format) needs to balance its pieces. The comment is silly. As a combo deck also you need to know what your doing, as is the same for any other combo deck. Personally the only thing I can see that Elves loses by not playing Blue is that you can not get away with a 14 card mana base... Oh wait, you can, we did it for years only changing to the 19/20 mana base thanks to the changing of game rules that made running 4 Cradle a thing.

Edit: Oh and DRS helped add to the mana base.

[Rizso]

Think Dig Through time and Cruise will get restricted in vintage or Thirst for Knowledge unrestricted.

Seem strange in modern that Ancestral Vision is banned but cruise isnt. Modern doesnt even have the good Cascade cards.

Kinda strange to have more powerful spell legal then the similar banned cards.

[Lord Seth]

Think Dig Through time and Cruise will get restricted in vintage or Thirst for Knowledge unrestricted.

Seem strange in modern that Ancestral Vision is banned but cruise isnt. Modern doesnt even have the good Cascade cards.

Kinda strange to have more powerful spell legal then the similar banned cards.Ancestral Vision has long been thought of as a card that has little business being banned. It's not as much of a joke as Golgari Grave-Troll is, but as I've said Golgari Grave-Troll would do so little in the format that the main reason to want it unbanned is on principle. Ancestral Vision might at least boost some decks that are in need of a power boost.

But yeah, it is rather amusing for Ancestral Vision to be banned, but then for them to print Treasure Cruise, which is much better and goes into more decks (Ancestral Vision is really limited to control decks). If they do decide to ban Treasure Cruise, it'd be nice if they'd unban Ancestral Vision at the same time.

[Megadeus]

Oh god. I'm totally building modern thirst, cruise, dig deck

[Barook]

But yeah, it is rather amusing for Ancestral Vision to be banned, but then for them to print Treasure Cruise, which is much better and goes into more decks (Ancestral Vision is really limited to control decks). If they do decide to ban Treasure Cruise, it'd be nice if they'd unban Ancestral Vision at the same time.
It was recently stated by somebody of Wizards that stuff like GZS and AV are here to stay on the Modern banned list due to power level.

TC not being banned in the next announcement would be a farce.

[Lemnear]

It was recently stated by somebody of Wizards that stuff like GZS and AV are here to stay on the Modern banned list due to power level.

TC not being banned in the next announcement would be a farce.

Their whole B&R management is a farce: Banning combo and control cards from the start, but let Nacatl + Tarmogoyf + BBE + Thoughtseize + Liliana run rampant for years. Keep Black Vise banned but print Delver (for the 3 damage tick in mana denial-strategies). Keep Gush banned because it would be absurd in Tempo but print TC. Keep Bargain banned for power reasons but print Griselbrand which is much easier to cheat on the field. The list goes on and on

[Lord Seth]

It was recently stated by somebody of Wizards that stuff like GZS and AV are here to stay on the Modern banned list due to power level.

TC not being banned in the next announcement would be a farce.Who said that about Ancestral Vision and when? If you're talking about the comments mentioned here (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/567422-i-just-personally-spoke-with-aaron-forsythe-at-pro), he said nothing about Ancestral Vision. He did mention Green Sun's Zenith (alongside Seething Song, Jace, and Stoneforge Mystic) as stuff that have made a grave for themselves concerning Modern, but nothing about Ancestral Vision.

It is comical to see the better Treasure Cruise be legal while Ancestral Vision is banned, but I don't think Ancestral Vision should be banned anyway.

[testing32]

It is comical to see the better Treasure Cruise be legal while Ancestral Vision is banned, but I don't think Ancestral Vision should be banned anyway.

I would argue that brainstorm is better than mystical tutor, mind twist, black vise and earthcraft. I find that comical.

[Star|Scream]

I would argue that brainstorm is better than mystical tutor, mind twist, black vise and earthcraft. I find that comical.


Yes, but brainstorm is a pillar of the format.

[Rizso]

Who said that about Ancestral Vision and when? If you're talking about the comments mentioned here (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/567422-i-just-personally-spoke-with-aaron-forsythe-at-pro), he said nothing about Ancestral Vision. He did mention Green Sun's Zenith (alongside Seething Song, Jace, and Stoneforge Mystic) as stuff that have made a grave for themselves concerning Modern, but nothing about Ancestral Vision.

It is comical to see the better Treasure Cruise be legal while Ancestral Vision is banned, but I don't think Ancestral Vision should be banned anyway.

If Cruise gets the axe then probly dig will get it as well. The single blue of cruise at least can give the format "diversity" unlike the UU of dig.

[HSCK]

Dig is far from broken, why would it get banned?

[Lord Seth]

I would argue that brainstorm is better than mystical tutor, mind twist, black vise and earthcraft. I find that comical.Thing is, those aren't really as comparable because they do such different things. Treasure Cruise basically is a better version of Ancestral Vision, which is why the dissonance of Ancestral Vision being banned is especially notable.

Note that I'm not arguing for a ban on Treasure Cruise yet. But if Wizards of the Coast actually thinks Ancestral Vision is so overpowered it needs to be banned (and I don't think it is), it's rather humorous to print what amounts to a better version of it into the format.

[testing32]

Yes, but brainstorm is a pillar of the format.

What I also find funny is the reaction to TC being "everywhere" and talk of bans when its numbers aren't even close to BS. Also, the commentators for eternal weekend talking about how brainstorm wasn't the best card in delver anymore was pretty humorous.

If powerlevel or color diversity isn't a reason for a ban anymore, I think we should just unban demonic tutor and call that a pillar of the format. I had more fun playing with that card than brainstorm.

[Rizso]

Dig is far from broken, why would it get banned?

Have you played with it? There is a reason twin have raised a mile above pod and scapeshift have move into a tier1 deck. 2 Mana 2 card demonic tutors for the decks.

[rufus]

Dig is far from broken, why would it get banned?

I honestly don't think people have worked out how good it is.

[Gheizen64]

Dig is amazing in control but really, both of those new cards are still nowhere as played as Brainstorm or even Ponder. Calm your tits.

[HSCK]

Have you played with it? There is a reason twin have raised a mile above pod and scapeshift have move into a tier1 deck. 2 Mana 2 card demonic tutors for the decks.

I have, but isn't this a Legacy discussion?

[Rizso]

I have, but isn't this a Legacy discussion?

We did talk about it in a modern ot, for legacy I dont think it will be. Cruise might not be axed even.

[FoolofaTook]

I honestly don't think people have worked out how good it is.

It's an instant that gives card advantage and deep dig. How can that not be broken when the realistic cost of casting it for the first time is :1::u::u: delve 5 with 1 mana left open for Daze or going :u::u: delve 6 if you're worried about Spell Pierce?

It's wrecked in a control list that can reliably get the opponent to 1 or 2 cards in hand and then start baiting with :2::u::u: tapouts as early as turn 4 or 5. If you get forced or dazed or whatever it doesn't matter because then they're hellbent and you're control and we all know how that story ends 95% of the time. I'm just surprised it hasn't turned into a 2 or 3 of in Miracles at this point. Yes, it doesn't have full synergy but it is ridiculously powerful in that type of list anyway.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm just surprised it hasn't turned into a 2 or 3 of in Miracles at this point.

Nobody wants to play 63-cards deck.

[mlschuma]

I would argue that brainstorm is better than mystical tutor, mind twist, black vise and earthcraft. I find that comical.

Mind Twist, Black Vise, and Earthcraft I'll give you, but no one thinks those really need to be on the banned list anyways.

Mystical Tutor on the other hand? Crazy Talk.

[Lemnear]

It's an instant that gives card advantage and deep dig. How can that not be broken when the realistic cost of casting it for the first time is :1::u::u: delve 5 with 1 mana left open for Daze or going :u::u: delve 6 if you're worried about Spell Pierce?

It's wrecked in a control list that can reliably get the opponent to 1 or 2 cards in hand and then start baiting with :2::u::u: tapouts as early as turn 4 or 5. If you get forced or dazed or whatever it doesn't matter because then they're hellbent and you're control and we all know how that story ends 95% of the time. I'm just surprised it hasn't turned into a 2 or 3 of in Miracles at this point. Yes, it doesn't have full synergy but it is ridiculously powerful in that type of list anyway.

1) because it's another card beside Jace, Terminus and Entreat you don't want to see in your opener
2) it's cmc is jackshit for Counterbalance
3) The cardadvantage isn't much relevant with CounterTop & Terminus already creating cardadvantage
4) the card selection is pointless with Brainstorm/Ponder/SDT/Fetchlands/Jace already part of the deck.
5) Aside the cantrips, Fetches and Plowshares, the deck mainly runs permanents that don't feed DTT

[testing32]

Mystical Tutor on the other hand? Crazy Talk.

Before mystical tutor was banned it had no where near the penetration that brainstorm does now. It wouldn't see play in delver.

Edit: How many current decks would trade in their brainstorms for mystical tutors? Mystical would be pretty sick with miracles but I'm not even convinced that deck would get better if BS got the axe. You would be left with Jace as your only option to put miracle cards back on top of your deck. I don't think Show and Tell gets better and I'm not even sure that a storm player would want to make that trade.

So, Mystical fits into fewer decks and the decks it does fit into it probably isn't as good as brainstorm.

[FieryBalrog]

#skillintensive #pillaroftheformat #formatstaple #reducesvariance #goplaymodern #everyonewouldquit #somethingnonsensicalaboutvintage

Sticky this imo :laugh:

[Lemnear]

Before mystical tutor was banned it had no where near the penetration that brainstorm does now. It wouldn't see play in delver.

Edit: How many current decks would trade in their brainstorms for mystical tutors? Mystical would be pretty sick with miracles but I'm not even convinced that deck would get better if BS got the axe. You would be left with Jace as your only option to put miracle cards back on top of your deck. I don't think Show and Tell gets better and I'm not even sure that a storm player would want to make that trade.

So, Mystical fits into fewer decks and the decks it does fit into it probably isn't as good as brainstorm.

Delver? What about jamming 4 Mystical + 1 Treasure Cruise + 1 Temporal Mastery into the deck? TimeWalk and Ancestral Recall on demand without bricking your hand and both flip Delver if placed with mystical tutor on top of your Library.

OmniTell would no longer need to run clunky stuff like Dream Halls because ... hey ... virtual 8 S&Ts!

Storm had with 4 Infernals and 4 Mysticals basically 9 Ad Nauseams and 9 Past in Flames in the deck instead of 5. Land, LED, LED, Gitaxian Probe, respond to Probe with Mystical, respond to Mystical by breaking the Diamonds, YOLO

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Mystical Tutor is way too good with all the miracles cards -> Entreat, Terminus, Temporal Mastery, Bonfire ..

[Fatal]

2) it's cmc is jackshit for Counterbalance

already unlocked achivement - counter opponent TC / with Dig on top :)

[rufus]

...
Edit: How many current decks would trade in their brainstorms for mystical tutors? Mystical would be pretty sick with miracles but I'm not even convinced that deck would get better if BS got the axe.

I would expect that at some critical density, top deck tutors + Temporal Mastery/Reforge the Soul becomes degenerate.

[Finn]

I may have missed something here, but there is Personal Tutor for those, though I don't pretend it is the same thing.

[Barook]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.

[Finn]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.

On that subject, I am already moaning about the dumbasses who read the runes and say "There are more Brainstorms than Treasure Cruises in the top x of tournmants y and z. Treasure Cruise is not the problem.

[Gheizen64]

I may have missed something here, but there is Personal Tutor for those, though I don't pretend it is the same thing.

No instant is a big deal i guess. I'm not sure it would be too good, but mystical would be surely played, and played quite a bit. It's no Tax.

[Vicar in a tutu]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.
Agreed. I hope they ban Treasure Cruise and keep Brainstorm legal.

[iamajellydonut]

I may have missed something here, but there is Personal Tutor for those, though I don't pretend it is the same thing.

There is also Entomb->Noxious Revival.

Super Viable

[FoolofaTook]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.

Is UR Delver going to be on top for long after the meta has adjusted to the fact that it *is* here to stay?

Is it going to be more dominant than RUG Canadian was for awhile?

Both of those things have to be true for WotC to ban something in the next B&R announcement.

The odds are really good that UR Delver isn't even the best list once you take TC and DTT into account. It's just the most obvious one and so people are flooding towards it. If it's getting people to actually buy Volcanics at inflated prices and enter the Legacy meta in the process the store owners will be happy. That's lots of additional sales of various overpriced staples down the road. That's all WotC cares about.

Maybe TC was designed to do exactly that? Put a little cheap thrill out in front of the next generation and see if you can get them to buy $1,000's worth of staples in the process.

[Barook]

Is UR Delver going to be on top for long after the meta has adjusted to the fact that it *is* here to stay?

Is it going to be more dominant than RUG Canadian was for awhile?

Both of those things have to be true for WotC to ban something in the next B&R announcement.

The odds are really good that UR Delver isn't even the best list once you take TC and DTT into account. It's just the most obvious one and so people are flooding towards it. If it's getting people to actually buy Volcanics at inflated prices and enter the Legacy meta in the process the store owners will be happy. That's lots of additional sales of various overpriced staples down the road. That's all WotC cares about.

Maybe TC was designed to do exactly that? Put a little cheap thrill out in front of the next generation and see if you can get them to buy $1,000's worth of staples in the process.
Wizards doesn't give a shit about what price one buys his Volcanics. They want to sell current product.

One of the current trends to counter UR Delver is playing UWR Delver, because you can still run TC, more removal and SFM which gives UR Delver alot of trouble.

But in the end, all you do is switching a few cards to end up with the same core.

[FoolofaTook]

Wizards doesn't give a shit about what price one buys his Volcanics. They want to sell current product.

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.

[davelin]

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.

Didn't Ben say that SCG was in favor of removing the reserve list when asked by Wizards a few years ago?

[Barook]

Didn't Ben say that SCG was in favor of removing the reserve list when asked by Wizards a few years ago?
Maybe, maybe not.

He could also be lying since we have no way to tell that he's actually telling us the truth.

Fact is that they make tons of money with Legacy.

[Dark Ritual]

I would gladly trade brainstorm for mystical tutor in storm, reanimator, and show and tell. Sure brainstorm is great but mystical tutor is vampiric tutor/completely broken. You weren't getting turn 2 kills in legacy mystical ANT via brainstorm it was all mystical tutor end of turn 1 for ad nauseam or infernal tutor, dump your hand into said card, win. Mystical tutor is obscene as it is actually dark ritual, demonic tutor, yawgmoth's bargain, or a protection spell all at the low cost of minus 1 card in hand and a blue mana. That kind of flexibility is unrivaled in legacy currently. Mystical tutor is never getting unbanned. Compare it to land tax? The power level difference between land tax and mystical tutor is enormous. They are different cards sure but land tax is unplayable in eternal hell I would argue that it would be fine in modern. Mystical is just flatout busted though.

[Jander78]

Maybe, maybe not.

He could also be lying since we have no way to tell that he's actually telling us the truth.

Fact is that they make tons of money with Legacy.

Yes, he was in favor of it. (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/16737-Insider-Trading-Should-Wizards-Do-Away-With-The-Reserve-List.html) His arguments are (were) very solid. In an already fluctuating market, with the non-reserve list reprints or power creep replacements of older cards, it wouldn't really affect the secondary businesses.

[Lord Seth]

WotC really wants to keep the store owners happy. They want to keep the online superstores happy. If this wasn't the case we'd have no reserve list, regardless of what WotC had said in the past on the subject. You want to know who the "big collectors" who spoke up for the reserve list idea were when WotC was trying to figure out if breaking the old promise was a good idea or not? They were mostly LLC's and corporations who do a lot of business in the eternal collectible market and who also not coincidentally do a lot of current business with and for WotC.Except stores, especially the big ones, are really the ones least affected by a Reserved List retraction. Cards lose value, but their assets are fairly liquid so they're hurt less. As someone explained to me, all they really have to do drop down the buying price while also lowering the selling price and they're surprisingly unaffected by price drops. Buy a card at $40, sell a card at $80, buy a card at $39, sell a card at $79, buy a card at $38, sell a card at $78, and so on.

Not to mention that all those stores still get affected by reprints of non-Reserved List cards in the same way as they'd do with actual Reserved List cards. If they'd lose money if the dual lands all got reprinted, they're still losing that money thanks to the fetchlands and shocklands getting reprinted. Unless they're a store that's actually only selling Reserved List cards, in which case they're probably not much of a store.

The people who would be actually threatened by the removal of the Reserved List aren't stores, and certainly aren't the "online superstores". They're the speculators who buy a bunch of copies of a card and sit on them hoping for a price spike. The Reserved List makes such speculations significantly safer; you know you can stock up on Tundras without fear of a reprint, but something like a Liliana of the Veil is much more dangerous due to the possibility of a reprint.

[Dark Ritual]

The amount of product that would move if ABUR dual lands were reprinted in, say, a fall block would be enormous. For you to lose money as a store when you're selling every pack you get in insanely fast would take tons of dual lands/actual thousands as the amount of product you would move would be absolutely insane numbers wise. Not to mention there's no evidence that revised and unlimited duals would drop much. Revised yes I can see a drop. Unlimited taiga is just as hard to find as unlimited black lotus/fairly scarce. FBB's would maintain value in all likelihood. Alpha and beta would go up in value no doubt about it. All of this is a moot point as the list is staying as much as it sucks.

[apple713]

The amount of product that would move if ABUR dual lands were reprinted in, say, a fall block would be enormous. For you to lose money as a store when you're selling every pack you get in insanely fast would take tons of dual lands/actual thousands as the amount of product you would move would be absolutely insane numbers wise. Not to mention there's no evidence that revised and unlimited duals would drop much. Revised yes I can see a drop. Unlimited taiga is just as hard to find as unlimited black lotus/fairly scarce. FBB's would maintain value in all likelihood. Alpha and beta would go up in value no doubt about it. All of this is a moot point as the list is staying as much as it sucks.

*not calling you out, just quoting for context

when the company is hurting for money their "values" will get compromised and the reserve list will go away. Business is 1 sided...the best interest of the shareholders. so when the time comes where abolishing the list outweighs keeping it there will be no question about whether or not it stays. The only question that remains is when that time will come?

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I really wonder where we're heading with basically 4x Ancestral Recall legal in the format. The number of UR Delver decks are constantly rising on MTGO, and so does the number of Brainstorm decks (currently 74.26%).

We are certainly approaching slowly but surely a level where something has to be banned.

That is just stupid.

Brainstorm is far closer to an actual ancestral recall than Treasure Cruise is.

Brainstorm is the by far stronger card. Treasure Cruise is not banworthy.

[Sloshthedark]

I would gladly trade brainstorm for mystical tutor in storm, reanimator, and show and tell. Sure brainstorm is great but mystical tutor is vampiric tutor/completely broken. You weren't getting turn 2 kills in legacy mystical ANT via brainstorm it was all mystical tutor end of turn 1 for ad nauseam or infernal tutor, dump your hand into said card, win. Mystical tutor is obscene as it is actually dark ritual, demonic tutor, yawgmoth's bargain, or a protection spell all at the low cost of minus 1 card in hand and a blue mana. That kind of flexibility is unrivaled in legacy currently. Mystical tutor is never getting unbanned. Compare it to land tax? The power level difference between land tax and mystical tutor is enormous. They are different cards sure but land tax is unplayable in eternal hell I would argue that it would be fine in modern. Mystical is just flatout busted though.


The read it again... how is it possible you do not know what are you talking about?.. Storm is the best BS deck but would be far from being the best Mystical Deck... do your homeworks and build it, or build a current AnT with Mystical tutor, legacy is much different than in 2010 and current for of Ant superior to that of 2010, you would not even play 4 Mysticals if it was unbanned

damn I really should not open this thread

[Bobmans]

So with the release of Commander 2014, will there be an update on the B&R list for Legacy/Vintage the monday after? I wasn't able to find the next date while searching the new WotC site.

[DLifshitz]

Brainstorm is far closer to an actual ancestral recall than Treasure Cruise is.

I was about to explain how the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed and became dominated by Miracles and Delver - mainly U/R - after that, which does suggest that Treasure Cruise may the problem card, and that banning it might lead to a diverse metagame again. And that drawing 3 really is much better than drawing 3 then putting back 2. But the quoted statement struck me as so funny that I will just say:

Only if you aren't playing on camera.

[H]

when the company is hurting for money their "values" will get compromised and the reserve list will go away. Business is 1 sided...the best interest of the shareholders. so when the time comes where abolishing the list outweighs keeping it there will be no question about whether or not it stays. The only question that remains is when that time will come?

I've said for a few years now that the failure of Standard will be the redemption of Legacy and Vintage. Fight the good fight and convert kids over from Standard and eventually we will have our reprints. The question is, to me, not if this happens, but, do they essentially kill the game trying not to do it. This is, however, the wrong thread to discuss these kinds of things though.

[testing32]

the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed

Hilarious

Edit: I think the problem here is that you and I have different definitions of diverse. When I see a top 8 like this:

BUG Delver
RUG Delver
Miracles
Miracles
Reanimator
Deathblade
Shardless
Elves

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards".

Edit 2:

One more thought on the mystical tutor topic. I could be wrong and enough people seem to disagree to think that.

I think you guys are glossing over how large of a loss BS would be. Delver would flood out. Show and tell would have multiple business spells with no fatty and no way to put them back. The magic Christmas land miracle decks would have no way to put 5/6/7 mana spells back into their deck.

And mystical was legal with BS in storm for a long time and by most accounts the ban was unwarranted. The only thing that has changed since then is probe and past in flames.

[DLifshitz]

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards".

Yes, but of these 7, 2 are tempo, 2 are control, 1 is combo and 2 are dissimilar midrange decks. Playing in such a metagame would reward experience, knowledge of the format, and good play, rather than just picking the "best" deck. It shouldn't be monotonous. And on average the metagame was actually less homogeneous and blue-heavy than that, see the top-8/16 metagame breakdown at tcdecks:
http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy&fecha=2014-9

I mean, of course it would be nice if the metagame would be less blue-centric, but I don't see it as the biggest problem right now.

[Lemnear]

I think you guys are glossing over how large of a loss BS would be. Delver would flood out. Show and tell would have multiple business spells with no fatty and no way to put them back. The magic Christmas land miracle decks would have no way to put 5/6/7 mana spells back into their deck.

And mystical was legal with BS in storm for a long time and by most accounts the ban was unwarranted. The only thing that has changed since then is probe and past in flames.

The printing of Gitaxian Probe was huge in terms of how the card would interact with Mystical Tutor. For a blue mana and 2 lifepoints you have a Demonic Tutor and the interaction also works with Past in Flames in the exact same way.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I was about to explain how the format was reasonably diverse and balanced before Treasure Cruise was printed and became dominated by Miracles and Delver - mainly U/R - after that, which does suggest that Treasure Cruise may the problem card, and that banning it might lead to a diverse metagame again. And that drawing 3 really is much better than drawing 3 then putting back 2. But the quoted statement struck me as so funny that I will just say:

Only if you aren't playing on camera.

ahahahhaha

The diversity of the format is unchanged since Treasure Cruise. It has not changed the slightest.

[Julian23]

I don't think "What a diverse meta". I think "Holy crap, 7/8 decks share 8 of the exact cards"

Look, ALL of them are playing lands. That's not very diverse, is it?

How is that even relevant when you have several completly different strategies present? It's like looking at a game of football and saying that the game is boring because all of them are playing with with a striker.

Diversity is not about the cards you see, why would it be? Diversity is about how much your mind is challenged.

[FieryBalrog]

Yeah, "blue tempo decks are really fucking good" is not exactly a new thing in this format.

Beyond that, "decks that play brainstorm are overwhelmingly favored to win stuff" is also not exactly new.