All B/R update speculation.

[Lemnear]

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.

Too bad that Alex B. will miss the era of running up to 8 draw-4-for-U...

[testing32]

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.

I fundamentally disagree that diversity isn't about the cards you see.

When they decided to ban mental misstep color diversity was important. Now it doesn't seem to matter.

Having a meta where the choices are basically Death and Taxes, Elves or Brainstorm isn't healthy imo.

"Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep."

[Lord Seth]

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.Drawing 3 is definitely better than drawing 3 and putting back 2 (the only possible exceptions really being if you really want a Delver to flip or want to set up a Miracle), but there's more to the cards than that. Brainstorm is an Instant, which gives it considerable added flexibility as well as letting you hide cards from discard. It also has far fewer restrictions on when it can be cast, allowing it to be played in more decks and is affected by less hate.

There's a reason Brainstorm is considered better than Ancestral Vision. Admittedly, Treasure Cruise is better than Ancestral Vision, but there's more to the comparison than just drawing 3 cards vs. drawing 3 and putting back 2.

[Star|Scream]

I fundamentally disagree that diversity isn't about the cards you see.

When they decided to ban mental misstep color diversity was important. Now it doesn't seem to matter.

Having a meta where the choices are basically Death and Taxes, Elves or Brainstorm isn't healthy imo.

"Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep."

Yeah, but if they ban brainstorm soooo many people will leave the format.

[Lord Seth]

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.This is the kind of idea that seems great ("if Standard fails, they'll support Legacy more and reprint cards!") but doesn't consider how Legacy would have to change as a result.

Standard's rotation helps with something majorly: It avoids power creep. Okay, there's still been some of that, but it hasn't been that large, and in fact there's been some powering down of some elements. This benefits Legacy, because it means that the format manages to have some relative stability.

This all changes if Standard fails and Legacy becomes the new major format (though they'd more likely just switch over to Modern as the major one). Then Magic has to adopt a model more similar to Yu-Gi-Oh to ensure product is being sold.

I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh, but I've talked to some players about it. Yu-Gi-Oh, for those not in the know, has really just one format that doesn't rotate. So Konami has to come up with ways to ensure their products are constantly selling. There are two methods to ensure this: Power creep and bannings. Power creep is self-explanatory; you constantly ratchet up the power of cards so people have to keep getting the new ones to remain competitive. Bannings are the other. While indeed some cards are banned for legitimate reasons (being actually too good), sometimes the true reasons seem to be less savory. Decks using older cards are outperforming your newer ones? Ban those old cards and force players to get the new cards, then eventually unban them when they're no longer as good. These basically achieve the effects of Standard rotation in that it devalues older cards while constantly forcing you to get the newer ones without having to do Standard rotation.

So basically, the death of Standard might mean they'd rescind the Reserved List, reprint the staples, and push Legacy. It'd also mean Legacy would transform into something considerably different than it is because of the above notes. A lot of Legacy players mock Standard, but fact is Standard is required to make Legacy into the format you like by maintaining a reasonably standard power level.

Also, something regarding reprints: I'm not necessarily sure if this is a consequence of their "cards don't rotate" system or has a different reason behind it, but Yu-Gi-Oh is also huge on reprints. This seems great--hey, the cards are cheaper now!--but the way they go about it is far more dramatic than anything Wizards of the Coast has done, even in reprints for expensive stuff like the fetchlands. Let's take an example. Evilswarm Exciton Knight was an extremely in-demand card from the Legacy of the Valiant set, which was released on January 24. Its price was something like $80. Then, 8 months later in August, it got a reprint and its price is now something like $25. And from what I hear about the way they've handled these things in the past, it's likely to get another reprint to crash it further.

[Humphrey]

Yeah, but if they ban brainstorm soooo many people will leave the format.

There might be a few guys upgrading their pools to vintage, but most players will stay at legacy. Overall the card pool stays the same, but the formats speed will drop a whole turn and will spawn new and interesting decks.

[menace13]

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

Awesome non-sequitur is awesome. Mise well just use "look, they have spells".

[HammafistRoob]

If standard dies the whole game goes with it. Quit day dreaming already. Cards don't get banned anymore.

[DLifshitz]

Brainstorm is an Instant, which gives it considerable added flexibility as well as letting you hide cards from discard. It also has far fewer restrictions on when it can be cast, allowing it to be played in more decks and is affected by less hate.

This is true, of course - but there's also less need to cast TC in response to something (I mean, if it were possible) than Brainstorm. Brainstorm mostly gives you card selection, so it's advantageous to keep your options open for as long as possible. With TC, you get all 3 cards anyway, so there's no incentive to wait. The flexibility of an instant just isn't needed as much.

TC (and Ancestral) are just totally different animals from Brainstorm...

[John Cox]

Anyone know offhand when the next banned list update is?

[Dice_Box]

Anyone know offhand when the next banned list update is?

Yep, it's written on the last ban list following the guidelines set out from now on. The week after the next Prerelease.

[Sylphnir]

So it should be mid january, no?
I expect no changes for legacy/vintage though.

[Dice_Box]

Google "next mtg ban announcement" and click the third link down the page.

"Open wide, here comes the aeroplane."

[John Cox]

Thanks,
Tl/Dr;
Jan 19

[FieryBalrog]

Expect Legacy: No Changes.

[testing32]

Expect Legacy: No Changes.

Of course, they have ignored the problem for years now.

WotC could really learn something from Hearthstone when it comes to balance and nurturing a format.

[Sylphnir]

Aaron Forsythe has apparently stated they're discussing the bans of Treasure Cruise for legacy and Jeskay Ascendancy for modern @Pax Australia.
It's not decided yet though.
He also reiterated that they usually don't playtest for eternal.

[Einherjer]

Aaron Forsythe has apparently stated they're discussing the bans of Treasure Cruise for legacy and Jeskay Ascendancy for modern @Pax Australia.
It's not decided yet though.

Any word on whether this will happen before GP NJ or GP Madrid, respectively?

Thank you.

Greetings

[Sylphnir]

They want to wait how it pans out so it might not happen before Dragons of Tarkir if ever. (third set of the khans block)
Changes for this year are rather unlikely.

[Gheizen64]

Aaron Forsythe has apparently stated they're discussing the bans of Treasure Cruise for legacy and Jeskay Ascendancy for modern @Pax Australia.
It's not decided yet though.
He also reiterated that they usually don't playtest for eternal.

Jesus christ no. No. If they seriously ban TC i'm out.

[Barook]

Jesus christ no. No. If they seriously ban TC i'm out.
If the current MTGO game is any indication, then the meta we're heading for is neither interesting, fun or healthy. Introducing 4x Ancestral Recall to the format was a retarded move. Fuck a metagame where you face ~40% Delver decks, because that's what MODO is right now.

Banning Jetski Ascendancy in Modern wouldn't suprise me, even if it doesn't put up results, because it breaks their T4 rule really, really hard. Hilariously enough, somebody on the SCG Open this week found a build that appearently breaks Jeskai Ascendancy for Standard, too - with significantly less derp and the ability to win even without Ascendancy.

[testing32]

Aaron Forsythe has apparently stated they're discussing the bans of Treasure Cruise for legacy and Jeskay Ascendancy for modern @Pax Australia.

Doesn't surprise me. But, I am dissapointed.

[Dice_Box]

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/577678-mtg-pax-australia?page=4#c85

Can't believe I just linked Salvation...

[davelin]

Jesus christ no. No. If they seriously ban TC i'm out.

You are that attached to a metagame about a month old?

[FieryBalrog]

Jesus christ no. No. If they seriously ban TC i'm out.

If they don't ban TC I'm out. So net +0 players either way!

[Gheizen64]

You are that attached to a metagame about a month old?

No i'm disgusted by the fact that they let this format be 80% blue for years because of brainstorm, then suddendly TC come out, the format is as blue as it has ever been, only we finally have new decks popping out and it's a problem. Uuh what is this, players have to think? Ban it! Let's have ten more years of cantrip.dec dominating because that was diverse indeed!

[Lemnear]

No i'm disgusted by the fact that they let this format be 80% blue for years because of brainstorm, then suddendly TC come out, the format is as blue as it has ever been, only we finally have new decks popping out and it's a problem. Uuh what is this, players have to think? Ban it! Let's have ten more years of cantrip.dec dominating because that was diverse indeed!

The decks ran the same fucking Delver and the same damn cantrip shell just got pure cardadvantage on top of that

[bruizar]

I'm fine with bannings, except first I need to sell mine. I got shafted on foil Mental Missteps in the past, and I don't want to get shafted again. I think people will just exchange it for Dig Through Time in a lot of decks (not all).

PS: I hear Twincast is good card draw nowadays.

Twincast:
UU: Draw three cards, you may also cast this in response to Force of Will, if you do, counter it instead.

Fork can be played in Jund and Imperial Painter, doesn't get Pyroblasted either..

[sjmcc13]

Aaron Forsythe has apparently stated they're discussing the bans of Treasure Cruise for legacy and Jeskay Ascendancy for modern @Pax Australia.
It's not decided yet though.
He also reiterated that they usually don't playtest for eternal.

Did those 2 even need playtesting to see....
Legacy and modern are both formats where the yards can fill up fast, so they should have already known that Delve is a problematic ability that can be broken easily.
People latched on to both to fast for me the believe they were not obvious.
Ascendancy is basically read the card, realize it works well with mana dorks and cantrips, then ask is there anything to increase consistency of going off, and tutors and wishes are both long known methods of increasing consistency. There is enough auto build there that they have no realy excuse for not realizing the card was a potential problem.

Sometimes I think they only play test limited.

[Lord Seth]

If the current MTGO game is any indication, then the meta we're heading for is neither interesting, fun or healthy. Introducing 4x Ancestral Recall to the format was a retarded move. Fuck a metagame where you face ~40% Delver decks, because that's what MODO is right now.

Banning Jetski Ascendancy in Modern wouldn't suprise me, even if it doesn't put up results, because it breaks their T4 rule really, really hard. Hilariously enough, somebody on the SCG Open this week found a build that appearently breaks Jeskai Ascendancy for Standard, too - with significantly less derp and the ability to win even without Ascendancy.It doesn't break it if it isn't putting up results. People always bring up the turn 4 rule, but they forget an important caveat: It also has to be a "top-tier deck" (their exact words). Decks like Infect or Griselbrand Reanimator break the turn 4 rule a lot, but neither are major decks in the format so they get a pass. Similarly, if Jeskai Ascendancy continues putting up little to no results, it will also get a pass.

As a side note, if they do ban Treasure Cruise, then Jeskai Ascendancy will be weakened anyway. It actually does have considerable reliance on that card to let it keep going when it's comboing off.

[davelin]

The decks ran the same fucking Delver and the same damn cantrip shell just got pure cardadvantage on top of that

Aye to that sir. Not sure what these new decks that are being referred.

[Rizso]

Dualcaster Mage could be a real card to fight both cruise and dig.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Did those 2 even need playtesting to see....
Legacy and modern are both formats where the yards can fill up fast, so they should have already known that Delve is a problematic ability that can be broken easily.
People latched on to both to fast for me the believe they were not obvious.
Ascendancy is basically read the card, realize it works well with mana dorks and cantrips, then ask is there anything to increase consistency of going off, and tutors and wishes are both long known methods of increasing consistency. There is enough auto build there that they have no realy excuse for not realizing the card was a potential problem.

Sometimes I think they only play test limited.
They've stated they do not test for legacy several times

[ubernostrum]

No i'm disgusted by the fact that they let this format be 80% blue for years because of brainstorm, then suddendly TC come out, the format is as blue as it has ever been, only we finally have new decks popping out and it's a problem. Uuh what is this, players have to think? Ban it! Let's have ten more years of cantrip.dec dominating because that was diverse indeed!

The tweeted reports I've seen are all about Modern, not Legacy. And, well, in Modern Treasure Cruise has done a number on the format; U/R Delver and Burn-splash-Cruise represent 21% of decks in Modern top 8s over the past two months, but a whopping 44% over past two weeks.

[Darkenslight]

The tweeted reports I've seen are all about Modern, not Legacy. And, well, in Modern Treasure Cruise has done a number on the format; U/R Delver and Burn-splash-Cruise represent 21% of decks in Modern top 8s over the past two months, but a whopping 44% over past two weeks.

But they're not talking about TC in Modern; they're talking about Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern. Forsythe was explicitly talking about TC in Legacy. Which, IMO, is arguably the wrong card to ban (although the reasonings are arguably correct.)

And for what it's worth, I don't thi9nk the Ascendancy warrants a ban in Modern...yet, because the wincon is unstable.

[Gheizen64]

Aye to that sir. Not sure what these new decks that are being referred.

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.
Not to say about decks exploring new win conditions, like Helm + RIP actually being main deckable now, or Delvers deck playing Pyromancers. Red presence in deck hasn't been this high in years i think.

TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

The card is right now forcing the meta to change, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if Miracle become the top deck in 3 months from now (which i think it's the best deck right now but w/e), at least we'll see some change from everything is bluetempo.dec

[testing32]

I'm with you Gheizen64. I mean look at this SCG top 8. There were only 5 BS decks instead of the usual 6 or 7. Things are so exciting right now.

Edit: I mean currently on tcdecks of the top 12 decks only 2 don't have BS. How good is that.

[davelin]

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.
Not to say about decks exploring new win conditions, like Helm + RIP actually being main deckable now, or Delvers deck playing Pyromancers. Red presence in deck hasn't been this high in years i think.

TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

From TCdecks Maverick took a couple of T8 in the last few months with a couple of T16 appearances. Young Pyro has certainly been a viable creature in a Delver shell although probably more so with the dump your hand gameplan that TC encourages.

I think it's interesting that Dredge took the top place this Sunday with additional spots in the top 16. Indirectly it seems like the GY-hate isn't quite out there, instead folks want to play with these tools themselves so perhaps GY-hate is on the way down?

[Dice_Box]

I think an ironic side effect for TC demanding free use of the grave has been that decks that run it are not really paying attention to grave hate because they themselves need the use of the grave. While they can run some of the one shot artifact cards, Dredge is fast enough to get around that.

[H]

From TCdecks Maverick took a couple of T8 in the last few months with a couple of T16 appearances. Young Pyro has certainly been a viable creature in a Delver shell although probably more so with the dump your hand gameplan that TC encourages.

I think it's interesting that Dredge took the top place this Sunday with additional spots in the top 16. Indirectly it seems like the GY-hate isn't quite out there, instead folks want to play with these tools themselves so perhaps GY-hate is on the way down?

I think it speaks also to the known fact that we constantly learn in Vintage about Dredge. When Dredge seems worst, it is at it's best. As in, when people feel Dredge is "hated-out" they hedge on no one playing it and cut hate. The paradigm shifts and Dredge is good. When Dredge becomes good, people play the hate again and we cycle back through. I liked Dredge to a force of nature. It is always present and waiting for people to not be prepared.

[honz]

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.

One random goblins deck getting a single top8 isn't a good example of treasure cruise diversifying the format, it is more an example of luck and the power of most legacy decks to win on any given day based off of matchups and hands. Maverick has gotten about two top8s a month in big tournaments for a while now, not the first time in "years" by a long shot. Seeing punishing fire (in maverick and lands) doing well, as well as tezz maindeck leylines, is a good example on how prevalent TC delver is, and how it is warping the format around it. I'll give you slivers though, I have no idea what happened there...



TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

I think the problem alot of people have is that TC isn't that hateable at all. If people bring in graveyard hate against TC delver, the only card it affects is TC. All it takes is 1 brainstorm or 1 FoW and that graveyard hate becomes a dead card. TC also largely ignores a lot of the traditional graveyard hate, like deathrite shaman, extirpate, or relic of progenitus.



The card is right now forcing the meta to change, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if Miracle become the top deck in 3 months from now (which i think it's the best deck right now but w/e), at least we'll see some change from everything is bluetempo.dec

Again, the card isn't forcing the meta to change. The best decks before TC were elves, storm, deathblade, delver, and decks designed to beat delver (D&T and miracles). The only difference now is that some of these decks got a new card to play.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

I think it speaks also to the known fact that we constantly learn in Vintage about Dredge. When Dredge seems worst, it is at it's best. As in, when people feel Dredge is "hated-out" they hedge on no one playing it and cut hate. The paradigm shifts and Dredge is good. When Dredge becomes good, people play the hate again and we cycle back through. I liked Dredge to a force of nature. It is always present and waiting for people to not be prepared.

Only thing now is that, with Containment Priest as the premier hatebear with the most applications game two (Sneak and Show, Reanimator, Vial and GSZ, Dredge's recurring creatures), which means any deck that runs white shouldn't even have to worry about Dredge game 2 and 3 if they're even considering hating out some other deck. More power to them if they're blue, because blue is blue.

[ShiftyKapree]

I personally see no problem with TC ya it does help the delver decks, but it also brings back Combo decks which make the format healthy again instead of fighting just DRS and abrupt decay decks every other round. I'm glad those decks are seeing less play the meta is already adjusting to TC by combo being back. Reanimater, SNT, TES, ANT, and Dredge all are viable again and can be played to tournament success as we've seen in the recent weeks. I also can now see Maverick list coming back into play which I for one am glad to play against. I primarily play RUG Delver but I recently started playing TES again bc the position it has in the current meta. Please just dump your hand while I combo off on turn 2-3. A goblins deck even top 8'd yesterday, even though I feel like the west coast Legacy isn't thriving like the East coast and Europe's scene. If anything is banworthy imo it would be Delver, it kills midrange decks and allows them to race combo at least for U/R and RUG with the burn spells. DRS is another card I would consider banning as it kills KOTR decks but as for now I'd like to see the results of Grand Prix NJ and a few other tournaments till the ban something. As far as banning cards in Modern, that banlist is a joke. Does JTMS really need to be banned? Is he that good?

[FoolofaTook]

Treasure Cruise reopens archetypes that have been shut down for years. That's why they're going to ban it. You can do Esper Landkill with TC to refill your hand and the opponent can also refill their hand similarly but they can't play more than one land a turn and your Trinisphere and Nether Void are making that exercise futile.

I predict a Treasure Cruise ban in one of the next two updates. WotC doesn't want anything to get in the way of their vision for the game and Sinkhole has long been out of favor in that regards.

[Lord Seth]

The tweeted reports I've seen are all about Modern, not Legacy. And, well, in Modern Treasure Cruise has done a number on the format; U/R Delver and Burn-splash-Cruise represent 21% of decks in Modern top 8s over the past two months, but a whopping 44% over past two weeks.If you're using MTG Top 8 at a source, that's false. UR Delver and "Burn-splash-Cruise" is 40%, not 44%; you are including the Burn decks not running Treasure Cruise in your percentage.

[HrishiQQ]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

[MGB]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

The format has other conditional Draw-3s in Ancestral Vision, Standstill, and Thirst for Knowledge. However, the conditions involved in these make them far less consistent and thus far less oppressive to the format. All Treasure Cruise asks is that people play Magic as normal and then they will be able to Draw-3 cards by Turn 4+ every game. Ancestral Vision requires you to wait three long turns after topdecking it, which makes it significantly weaker. Standstill requires you to have a winning or neutral board state AND to play 4+ manlands. Thirst for Knowledge requires you to play 25+ artifacts.

Simply put, Treasure Cruise is not conditional enough.

[Barook]

Dude the last two weeks saw Maverick and Goblin getting T8 after what, years? Plus other hard to see decks like Lands and Tezzeret got both a win and a T8 respectively. We saw freaking Slivers in a T8.
Not to say about decks exploring new win conditions, like Helm + RIP actually being main deckable now, or Delvers deck playing Pyromancers. Red presence in deck hasn't been this high in years i think.

TC being printed condensed blue archetypes into a single, easier to hate shell; aka the dump everything in my hand by T3. And that make cards like Punishing fire which basically kill everything Delver can play, or RIP extremely strong. That and Lifegain.
TC is also actually hateable whereas Brainstorm is not, so the card is already more fair by definition. It's good but let's not pretend it's actually Recall, and not way more like Visions.

The card is right now forcing the meta to change, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if Miracle become the top deck in 3 months from now (which i think it's the best deck right now but w/e), at least we'll see some change from everything is bluetempo.dec
I wouldn't take an inbred meta like e.g. Oakland too serious, considering Eternal Weekend was completely overrun by Delver and MTGO also being ~40% Delver decks.

I would at least wait until the GP where blue can rear its ugly consistency head to judge the situation.

[FoolofaTook]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.

The thing about Treasure Cruise is that it produces plus 2 cards of a quality that varies depending on how powerful the cards that sit alongside it are. I don't lose to UR Delver much because I don't care if they Treasure Cruise given they're going to get cantrips, burn and relatively weak creatures out of it. When I run into BUG Delver playing Treasure Cruise it's a bit of a different story, because their cards are more powerful 1-for-1 than UR Delver. It's harder for them to chain through 2 TC's though because they want to sit with some cards in hand waiting to react to your plays.

The nightmare would be a list that had really powerful cards and could also easily cast Treasure Cruise. That's when it becomes broken.

[Lord Seth]

I'm really confused about WOTC thinking about Treasure Cruise. Since when was a conditional draw spell the main problem ever? Yes, it's card advantage, but we have a number of conditional draw spells that result in card advantage already available to us.

It's not like everything was healthy before Cruise, decks were all the different flavors of Delver even before. The fact that it empowered a powerful archetype doesn't take away the fact that the archetype was already overwhelmingly powerful. Half the Top 8s were filled with Delver decks of random colors.You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

[davelin]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

Why do you say this? They've stated they design for eternal formats, they just don't explicitly test for it.

[HrishiQQ]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the point of this card was in any way to "help" Legacy, or possibly to even do much of anything to Legacy. Most likely it was just intended as an interesting card draw spell in Standard/Limited.

I'm not under such an impression.

[ahg113]

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


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


Took a long time to reply and now it's disagreement time.

@HSCK - all three of those cards get worst with Brainstorm gone.
-While it had it's moment in the sun and it is full of derp, Show and Tell is not the boogyman of the format. It's a solvable problem, in essence like Dredge when one plans for it. Being symmetrical matters.
-Terminus isn't as good either without BS because it sits in your hand until T6, which an aggressive deck should be able to deal with, or it's constantly floated with a SDT and limiting the ability to shuffle one's deck. If a resolved JtMS puts one back on T4, well, there are a bunch of problems then.
-Delver is just a crap card poorly designed. But if Delver goes, then TNN, V. Clique and Snappy should all be ditched too, as off color blue cards that are over aggressive. Said it before, reiterating again- happy to trade 4 awful blue creatures for BS to stay legal.

@Lemnar - agree with some, others not so much
-Cradle is a niche card really only seeing play in Elves. Maybe if it were in Cheerios and some other greater than 0 # of decks it would make a difference. Banning BS discussions are perverted when it becomes neuter green combo.
-SDT banning this and not BS doesn't make sense. While SDT filters the top of your deck, and sometimes draws a card in a pinch, it doesn't fix bad hands. The ability to hide cards from discard is a big beef with BS. If you are speaking of banning both, super cool. Mirri's Guile will be the premier deck top manipulator (after JtMS and Sylvan Library).
-DRS is a non-blue super tool that 1 blue deck makes use of. Don't see a problem with the card, it doesn't pitch to FoW. Banning BS discussions are perverted when it becomes ban G/B creatures.
-SFM isn't as big a problem as Batterskull. More in favor of banning that card than SFM. Cause tutor effects are good for everyone?
-Delver, yup. And Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V = "Delver is just a crap card poorly designed. But if Delver goes, then TNN, V. Clique and Snappy should all be ditched too, as off color blue cards that are over aggressive. Said it before, reiterating again- happy to trade 4 awful blue creatures for BS to stay legal."

So in summation, some of the offered cards are straw-man comparisons (Cradle, SFM, Terminus). Others make some sense (DRS, SDT), and between HSCK and Lemnar, if they're willing to go the extra mile Delver is an accepted and known abomination that banning (with friends) could make improvements.

[Fatal]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29653_Getting-On-The-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.

[Barook]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29653_Getting-On-The-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.
"Ban/Restrict Ancestrall Recall 2.0 in every non-Standard format!" is hard to disagree with.

[Lemnear]

From SCG - Getting On The Banwagon http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29653_Getting-On-The-Banwagon.html
agree mostly with everything what is written.

Once more, Brian wrote an article with a lot of iffy comparisons to underline his point and still misses the most important point of 4 Delver of Secrets being in more than 25% of Legacy decks worldwide atm, as a testament of it's stupid efficiency in a half of dozen flavors

[DLifshitz]

Brian [...] still misses the most important point of 4 Delver of Secrets being in more than 25% of Legacy decks worldwide atm, as a testament of it's stupid efficiency in a half of dozen flavors

The section 'The Legacy Problems' begins with Brian basically saying just that. I mean, on the whole, the reasoning behind his recommendation to ban TC is not very deep, but he does give a half-decent bird's eye view of the format.

[Lemnear]

The section 'The Legacy Problems' begins with Brian basically saying just that. I mean, on the whole, the reasoning behind his recommendation to ban TC is not very deep, but he does give a half-decent bird's eye view of the format.

Yeah, he mentions that Delver was already oppressive, but suggests the new addition to the shell to be banned instead. How should that fix the previous Delver/Brainstorm/Ponder/Daze/FoW derp in various flavors we see/saw each week? Instead of Gitaxian Probe + Treasure Cruise, people will simply return to Stifle/Wasteland/Spell Pierce to support Delver. All the "ban TC" stuff is missing the point: no matter what cards you use, you use them to support your Delver to go the distance before your opponent can win. It's the fucking Autopilot of blue decks.

[Gheizen64]

Errata it to make it black problem solved :cool:

[Lemnear]

Errata it to make it black problem solved :cool:

That would at least remove most of the flavors and limit it to BUG ... Pyroblast proof ;P

[Gheizen64]

That would at least remove most of the flavors and limit it to BUG ... Pyroblast proof ;P

Not having Awesome is huge dude. And i could play RB Pyro/Delver! Discard goes better with pyro anyway.

[Richard Cheese]

Yeah, he mentions that Delver was already oppressive, but suggests the new addition to the shell to be banned instead. How should that fix the previous Delver/Brainstorm/Ponder/Daze/FoW derp in various flavors we see/saw each week? Instead of Gitaxian Probe + Treasure Cruise, people will simply return to Stifle/Wasteland/Spell Pierce to support Delver. All the "ban TC" stuff is missing the point: no matter what cards you use, you use them to support your Delver to go the distance before your opponent can win. It's the fucking Autopilot of blue decks.

This x1000000.

Delver is, to me, doing more damage to the Legacy meta than anything else right now. I don't really care if one color or card is pervasive, as long as there are a variety of viable strategies. The problem with Delver is that it's a build-around card. It requires a certain type of shell to work, but it's so good that it's worth working within those constraints for. You can't run a bunch of support creatures or hatebears, so you run counters to protect Delver. You need to guarantee Delver's going to flip, so you run a bunch of cantrips. Add some burn or cheap removal to keep things out of Delver's way, and you've got a deck.

We now have four of the format's top decks based on the same shell, and they all play so similarly that it just makes the format boring. The last big event I went to felt like Standard. Just staring across the table at the same cards in every matchup.

At least when everyone was bitching about Tarmogoyf being ubiquitous, it was because people were dropping it into basically everything that wasn't storm combo.

[HrishiQQ]

Yeah, he mentions that Delver was already oppressive, but suggests the new addition to the shell to be banned instead. How should that fix the previous Delver/Brainstorm/Ponder/Daze/FoW derp in various flavors we see/saw each week? Instead of Gitaxian Probe + Treasure Cruise, people will simply return to Stifle/Wasteland/Spell Pierce to support Delver. All the "ban TC" stuff is missing the point: no matter what cards you use, you use them to support your Delver to go the distance before your opponent can win. It's the fucking Autopilot of blue decks.

This was exactly what my post was supposed to say, but you explained it much better.

[HSCK]

1 mana to draw three straight up, a 3 power beater, and Hallowed Burial are all too strong to me.

[Griselpuff]

In terms of how good a card is, I'd ban Brainstorm

In terms of how uncolor-ific a card is, I'd ban Delver of Secrets.

In terms of how unfun a card is, I'd ban True-Name Nemesis (even though he's not seen a ton of play recently, he sucks to play against everytime)

In terms of how retarded a card is, I'd ban Show and Tell.

Treasure Cruise also probably deserves the axe, but I don't think it offends any dimension more than any of the previous three cards. I can see them banning it, if simply for the sake of preserving Brainstorm.

[testing32]

http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php?format=Legacy&mess=10&anio=2014

I'm still amazed how someone can look at a list like this and conclude that the 15th most played card is the problem. There are 5 blue cards ahead of it while there isn't even a non-blue non-land card in the top 10.

[FoolofaTook]

If the only blue ban is Treasure Cruise it'll be a slap in the player bases's face by a company that just doesn't give a crap about them.

If they're paying attention to Legacy then they know that Brainstorm and Delver of Secrets are the meta-warping cards, one long-term and one of the last couple of years.

If they somehow come to the conclusion that "oops Treasure Cruise is too good but nothing else is wrong" well that means they're either very dense and unimaginative about their own product or they're slapping the players.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Even if you ban delver, it doesn't change the fact treasure cruise/dig are remarkably powerful cards and vice versa

Brainstorm has been the best/most played card in the format for a while but that argument has been done verbatim so there is little point in discussing it I feel

[nedleeds]

I wouldnt expect a SCG author to call for a Brainstorm ban despite it being obviously better than Cruise (900 to 300 most played, played across archtypes, etc. etc.) 2 weeks before GP Brainstorm which SCG is hosting.

[iGrok]

Even if you ban delver, it doesn't change the fact treasure cruise/dig are remarkably powerful cards and vice versa

Brainstorm has been the best/most played card in the format for a while but that argument has been done verbatim so there is little point in discussing it I feel

If you ban Delver, the delver variants become more varied. Each color group no longer has an efficient one-mana beater, and no longer needs a critical mass of spells.

If you ban Treasure Cruise, people play the next best cantrip in its place, and nothing really changes in the format. All that Cruise has done is change which Delver flavor is on top.

[Barook]

http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php?format=Legacy&mess=10&anio=2014

I'm still amazed how someone can look at a list like this and conclude that the 15th most played card is the problem. There are 5 blue cards ahead of it while there isn't even a non-blue non-land card in the top 10.
224 out of 293 decks (or 76.45%) ran Brainstorm - compare that to ~73% Mental Misstep during its heydays, which was banned because it made the format too blue and went into every deck. Brainstorm just surpassed that.

Both Brainstorm and TC are ban-worthy and need to go down the road, but I see TC as the more urgent problem. While blue decks lose some really dumb interactions and can't semi-mulligan each time, they would replace Brainstorm with another cantrip and still be good to go due 4x Ancestral Recall.

[HrishiQQ]

I wonder, are there any seriously powerful non-blue cards that can be unbanned to balance the power of the delver-goodstuff shell if WOTC are unwilling to ban brainstorm? I feel like even if they go ahead with Cruise and do nothing else (which seems likely) it'll just go back to what it was before Cruise, which wasn't good either.

[Barook]

I wonder, are there any seriously powerful non-blue cards that can be unbanned to balance the power of the delver-goodstuff shell if WOTC are unwilling to ban brainstorm? I feel like even if they go ahead with Cruise and do nothing else (which seems likely) it'll just go back to what it was before Cruise, which wasn't good either.
People should ask them on Twitter until someone's answers them (@wizards_magic for Wizards offical page, @ErikLauer who's responsible for the management of the B&R list, or @mtgaaron since he seems like one of the few people how actually gives a crap about questions.)

If this farce continues, people should call them out on it.

[Darkenslight]

People should ask them on Twitter until someone's answers them (@wizards_magic for Wizards offical page, @ErikLauer who's responsible for the management of the B&R list, or @mtgaaron since he seems like one of the few people how actually gives a crap about questions.)

If this farce continues, people should call them out on it.

We should ask for the unbanning of Bazaar in exchange for a TC banning. :tongue:

[Nielsie]

I guess unbanning Black Vise would help. But most Delver decks aside from BUG wouldn't realy care because they can drop their hand so quickly now. U/R Delver could probably play Vise themselves?

I am not sure if banning Delver would solve any issues. Perhaps it will but in my eyes, the biggest warping card is Brainstorm. Banning Brainstorm nerfs Delver anyway, people would have to use Ponder to flip it, perhaps drawing a not so good card. I simply don't understand the reasoning of "it's already so long in the format, it will never be banned". That is a very wrong reasoning...

[Zombie]

I guess unbanning Black Vise would help. But most Delver decks aside from BUG wouldn't realy care because they can drop their hand so quickly now. U/R Delver could probably play Vise themselves?

I am not sure if banning Delver would solve any issues. Perhaps it will but in my eyes, the biggest warping card is Brainstorm. Banning Brainstorm nerfs Delver anyway, people would have to use Ponder to flip it, perhaps drawing a not so good card. I simply don't understand the reasoning of "it's already so long in the format, it will never be banned". That is a very wrong reasoning...

Unbanning Vise either wouldn't do jack or would do stupid things in a Delver shell because people WILL have large hands when they can't play their stuff.


In terms of how good a card is, I'd ban Brainstorm

In terms of how uncolor-ific a card is, I'd ban Delver of Secrets.

In terms of how unfun a card is, I'd ban True-Name Nemesis (even though he's not seen a ton of play recently, he sucks to play against everytime)

In terms of how retarded a card is, I'd ban Show and Tell.

Treasure Cruise also probably deserves the axe, but I don't think it offends any dimension more than any of the previous three cards. I can see them banning it, if simply for the sake of preserving Brainstorm.

Lovely list there. I don't hate Delver as much as many seem to - it might do bad things to the meta but I don't cringe every time I see it played.
Show and Tell I'd rather ban the stupidest targets so S&T and Reanimator get back on plans where the creature gives them a huge advantage or needs a specific boardstate to be insta-win instead of just winning then and there almost no matter what.

Banlist shortness shouldn't really be valued, IMO. Whether the list is long or short doesn't make one bit of difference on whether the format is fun to play or not, but stupid cards being there or not does.

[Hopo]

To all the people who want to ban Brainstorm because of the numbers it is played: Then what? A new card comes and takes the place of the most ubiquitous one. Should that be banned next? As it seems, there's always the most popular card in a format. You should be happy that in legacy it's apparently a cantrip instead of some truly oppressive shit. Cantrips help you to build your deck more consistent. They come in all flavors and there can be seen some hierarchy among them. How exactly is it any better if people auto-switch the Brainstorms to Ponders and Ponders to some lesser cantrips? It's highly unlikely that players will stop using cantrips in vast numbers in the case of a ban.

It also seems that some of you clump storm, miracles tempo decks as one just because they share among other things a specific cantrip. That's technically correct, of course, but the implications and conclusions are plain stupid.

[Echelon]

To all the people who want to ban Brainstorm because of the numbers it is played: Then what? A new card comes and takes the place of the most ubiquitous one. Should that be banned next? As it seems, there's always the most popular card in a format. You should be happy that in legacy it's apparently a cantrip instead of some truly oppressive shit. Cantrips help you to build your deck more consistent. They come in all flavors and there can be seen some hierarchy among them. How exactly is it any better if people auto-switch the Brainstorms to Ponders and Ponders to some lesser cantrips? It's highly unlikely that players will stop using cantrips in vast numbers in the case of a ban.

It also seems that some of you clump storm, miracles tempo decks as one just because they share among other things a specific cantrip. That's technically correct, of course, but the implications and conclusions are plain stupid.

You aren't quite getting the point. It isn't that people don't like others playing cantrips, it's the quality of that specific cantrip in conjunction with fetchland.

With that being said, perhaps WotC should run a policy where if a non-land card shows up >50% of all possible slots in all top 8's of all registered tournaments w/attendance of >129 players or so for more then 1 year, it'd merrit an auto-ban. This year FoW gets banned? Perhaps next year, some broken-ass combo card (b/c FoW isn't there to keep it in check anymore mayhaps) and so on. The meta would change regularly and problems'll be fixed by WotC if the community doesn't manage to fix it themselves.

Anywho - death to Delver, FoW, Daze, Brainstorm and Ponder! That's a solid 20 I see in roughly 50-75% of my matches at the moment. So boring!

[Zombie]

To all the people who want to ban Brainstorm because of the numbers it is played: Then what? A new card comes and takes the place of the most ubiquitous one. Should that be banned next? As it seems, there's always the most popular card in a format. You should be happy that in legacy it's apparently a cantrip instead of some truly oppressive shit. Cantrips help you to build your deck more consistent. They come in all flavors and there can be seen some hierarchy among them. How exactly is it any better if people auto-switch the Brainstorms to Ponders and Ponders to some lesser cantrips? It's highly unlikely that players will stop using cantrips in vast numbers in the case of a ban.

It also seems that some of you clump storm, miracles tempo decks as one just because they share among other things a specific cantrip. That's technically correct, of course, but the implications and conclusions are plain stupid.

Uh. Brainstorm is an indicator of the format's blueness. The canary in the goldmine, so to speak, because it's so absurdly ubiquitous. The question is not about if there's a most played card. It's about:

1. Brainstorm itself. The card is busted. Strong card selection spells like Ponder, Preordain and GSZ are a category behind.

2. Brainstorm's strength and versatility encourages everyone to play blue. This is a problem because of the starkly limited supply of blue lands and because ubiquitous cantrip shells homogenizes play patterns a ton. All the fair blue decks, despite being very different in strategy, play somewhat similar in individual situations. This would happen less if other colours stood a more even chance. ie. Shardless and Jund feel different despite similar strategy. Elves and Storm feel different to operate despite the underlying operations of make mana, draw shitton of cards, cast busted spell that will kill you being very similar. Or take more Prison-style builds of Miracles vs. D&T. Very different feel. The Shardless, Miracles, Storm will inevitably feel more similar to each other than Jund, Elves, D&T.

3. Brainstorm actively counteracts things like discard that could traditionally be used by other colors to offset blue's consistency advantage for no real investment and enables pretty disgusting unmulligans that weaker card selection spells like Ponder, Preordain and GSZ just can't, or are way slower or more conditional to do (Ancestral, Confidant, Elves' draw engines).

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Honestly? Delver should have never had flying as efficient as it is. Color really doesnt matter except in terms of the card pool available to supplement it, but an evasive 3 power 1 drop in any color means that most spot removal cant trade favorably with it, and most legacy playble 1 drops cant block it. This then means that the possibility of them overextending into a terminus or other sweeper unlikely.

As someone who defended TNN's right to remain unbanned, I should say that Delver comes down two turns earlier with the same power once flipped, and typically TNN is rarely the only creature on the board, making sweepers much more viable.

[Zombie]

Honestly? Delver should have never had flying as efficient as it is. Color really doesnt matter except in terms of the card pool available to supplement it, but an evasive 3 power 1 drop in any color means that most spot removal cant trade favorably with it, and most legacy playble 1 drops cant block it. This then means that the possibility of them overextending into a terminus or other sweeper unlikely.

As someone who defended TNN's right to remain unbanned, I should say that Delver comes down two turns earlier with the same power once flipped, and typically TNN is rarely the only creature on the board, making sweepers much more viable.

TNN has no right to anything, except getting burned at the stake. At least I can point any removal ever at Delver and it will die.

[Echelon]

TNN has no right to anything, except getting burned at the stake. At least I can point any removal ever at Delver and it will die.

Not all removal has to be pointed... There are plenty of answers for it, some coincidentally also working well against decks like Elves! and UR Delver, which is seeing a lot of play at the moment.

TNN never has been nor ever will be a big problem - it's still only a creature. Put it in front of a Moat and it weeps. Is it a silly card? Yes. Is it overpowered? No, not by a long shot.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

TNN has no right to anything, except getting burned at the stake. At least I can point any removal ever at Delver and it will die.

By that logic, Nimble Mongoose should have been banned a long time ago.

Sure Delver dies to most things, but it is never a favorable tempo advantage for the one removing the delver. Combine this with the fact that Delver cannot be blocked efficiently either (best options for trading/walling it are at least 2 cmc) means that riding a single Delver to victory isnt exactly unfeasible.

[Hopo]

Uh. Brainstorm is an indicator of the format's blueness.
Is the idea behind this thinking that format should be 20% of each color, or ~17% if you count artifacts in? If not, I don't get it. If yes, I don't get it.


1. Brainstorm itself. The card is busted.
Agreed. I wouldn't expect less from eternal staples.


2. Brainstorm's strength and versatility encourages everyone to play blue. This is a problem because of the starkly limited supply of blue lands and because ubiquitous cantrip shells homogenizes play patterns a ton.
People want to play strong decks, I get it. I just don't see it as a problem and I haven't seen anything mature or credible that states otherwise.



3. Brainstorm actively counteracts things like discard that could traditionally be used by other colors to offset blue's consistency advantage for no real investment and enables pretty disgusting unmulligans that weaker card selection spells like Ponder, Preordain and GSZ just can't, or are way slower or more conditional to do (Ancestral, Confidant, Elves' draw engines).
Sure. I guess there are many, many powerful cards out there and some of them just happen to be the best at their jobs. Since it's legacy we are talking about here, I don't know what to say to that. Cards are powerful, broken even, but it's hard to say that about a cantrip even when it's a really good cantrip.

[Nielsie]

Is the idea behind this thinking that format should be 20% of each color, or ~17% if you count artifacts in? If not, I don't get it. If yes, I don't get it.


Agreed. I wouldn't expect less from eternal staples.


People want to play strong decks, I get it. I just don't see it as a problem and I haven't seen anything mature or credible that states otherwise.



Sure. I guess there are many, many powerful cards out there and some of them just happen to be the best at their jobs. Since it's legacy we are talking about here, I don't know what to say to that. Cards are powerful, broken even, but it's hard to say that about a cantrip even when it's a really good cantrip.
When you think about it this way, why ban anything? Why do we have a banlist? Unban the whole thing because where do you draw the line? Obviously nowhere...

[Gheizen64]

Is the idea behind this thinking that format should be 20% of each color, or ~17% if you count artifacts in? If not, I don't get it. If yes, I don't get it.


Agreed. I wouldn't expect less from eternal staples.


People want to play strong decks, I get it. I just don't see it as a problem and I haven't seen anything mature or credible that states otherwise.



Sure. I guess there are many, many powerful cards out there and some of them just happen to be the best at their jobs. Since it's legacy we are talking about here, I don't know what to say to that. Cards are powerful, broken even, but it's hard to say that about a cantrip even when it's a really good cantrip.

Except it isn't a cantrip but essentially a :

- draw 3 if u have a fetch
- activate miracle engine
- activate delver engine
- dodge discard engine
- free mulligan engine
- shuffle bombs back into deck engine (relevant with entomb and Oath) + activate counterbalance in a pinch

Ponder, the next best thing there is can do maybe 2 of those things (aka activate delver and miracle), while increasing consistency (dig 3 deep as BS) but is nowhere as good as brainstorm at doing those things AND STILL SEE PLAY AS 4-OF IN MOST BLUE DECKS.
But hey it's a cantrip! Yes, demonic tutor is a cantrip too by that definition then.

[Megadeus]

Same shit, different day. Same lame tired arguments for why brainstorm isn't bannable. #ItMakesLegacyFun #SkillIntensive

[Bed Decks Palyer]

When you think about it this way, why ban anything? Why do we have a banlist? Unban the whole thing because where do you draw the line? Obviously nowhere...
This. And the Demonic Tutor quote too...

Look, I'm all for consistency, and I dislike topdeck wars, mulligans to three and all other stuff that BS prevents, but I cannot understand why people cannot see that BS is level above all other cantrips in Legacy. This isn't "ban BS" argument, in fact I got mixed opinion on the card, as I like to play with (the set of) it, but I cannot be blind to its power.

Enter "blue chokehold" and "price of duals" and all usual things right here...

[testing32]

No one is arguing for even color split. Combo is going to need cantrips to find pieces and control is naturally going to be blue because of counters. But, aggro and midrange being blue too is bullshit.

Current top 8 decks:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º DeathBlade
4º Team America
5º Elves
6º Patriot
7º Reanimator
8º OmniTell

I'd want to see top 8 decks like this:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º Jund
4º Goblins
5º Elves
6º Death and Taxes
7º Reanimator
8º ANT

I don't want to be forced to play one color and 8/12 specific cards to win.

[Barook]

Is the idea behind this thinking that format should be 20% of each color, or ~17% if you count artifacts in? If not, I don't get it. If yes, I don't get it.
Nobody claims that the format should be a perfect 20% of each color. That's just unrealistic. But 76+% of the format being blue isn't healthy.

Wizards banned Mental Misstep for exactly that reason:


R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.

Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
The two reasons they banned MM were:
1) It makes the meta too blue - except Brainstorm is one of the main reasons the current meta is even more blue than during the Mental Misstep era.
2) It goes into every deck, no matter the type - again, the same applies to Brainstorm. It does currently see play in a higher percentage of the meta than MM ever did, and as a full 4-of at that.

And that doesn't take into account how busted the card is.

[Echelon]

Again, you can bump that up to the complete Delver + FoW + Daze + Brainstorm + Ponder-shell.

Add in at least 14 assorted fetch & duals/basics and you've got 34 set-in-stone cards of over 50% of the decks out there. Looks healthy *cough*.

Or cut Delver and get 30 set-in-stone cards in over 70% of the current meta, lol. And yes, this is me saying that that entire shell should be banned, perhaps along Delver - just to stir things up.

[Barook]

Again, you can bump that up to the complete Delver + FoW + Daze + Brainstorm + Ponder-shell.

Add in at least 14 assorted fetch & duals/basics and you've got 34 set-in-stone cards of over 50% of the decks out there. Looks healthy *cough*.

Or cut Delver and get 30 set-in-stone cards in over 70% of the current meta, lol. And yes, this is me saying that that entire shell should be banned, perhaps along Delver - just to stir things up.
Banning FoW + Daze, unlike a Brainstorm ban, would actually increase the number of T1 glass combo decks by a good chunk.

[Hopo]

I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

[Echelon]

Banning FoW + Daze, unlike a Brainstorm ban, would actually increase the number of T1 glass combo decks by a good chunk.

Because things like discard, Leylines, Mindbreak Trap and whatnot suddenly don't exist anymore? I knew this arguement would be the first thing to be said, lol. Even as an Elves!-player, I can stop that shit dead in it's tracks. Blue shells are for pussies.


I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

It makes the meta mindnumbingly boring. I don't even want to know how many times I got a hit naming FoW on a blind Cabal Therapy, even in games where I wasn't sure what my opponent was playing.

[Hopo]

It makes the meta mindnumbingly boring. I don't even want to know how many times I got a hit naming FoW on a blind Cabal Therapy, even in games where I wasn't sure what my opponent was playing.

It would be fair to call that issue mostly subjective. Also, pretty much all other formats have quite strict decks to beat and established matchups. I'm not sure why legacy can't have such.

[Echelon]

It would be fair to call that issue mostly subjective. Also, pretty much all other formats have quite strict decks to beat and established matchups. I'm not sure why legacy can't have such.

Because of the 50%+ overlap in cards and roughly 90% overlap in gameplan..? And yes, I'm generalizing rather fiercely here. Delver X, in its entirety, boils down to stall the early game as long as you can and finish the game as soon as possible. To do so, each build uses the same 20 with 6 to 10 extra in-color creatures and 16 to 20 extra "stallers", ranging from burn to spotremoval to discard to mana denial. Same plan, different means.

[Dice_Box]

You aren't quite getting the point. It isn't that people don't like others playing cantrips, it's the quality of that specific cantrip in conjunction with fetchland.

With that being said, perhaps WotC should run a policy where if a non-land card shows up >50% of all possible slots in all top 8's of all registered tournaments w/attendance of >129 players or so for more then 1 year, it'd merrit an auto-ban. This year FoW gets banned? Perhaps next year, some broken-ass combo card (b/c FoW isn't there to keep it in check anymore mayhaps) and so on. The meta would change regularly and problems'll be fixed by WotC if the community doesn't manage to fix it themselves.

Anywho - death to Delver, FoW, Daze, Brainstorm and Ponder! That's a solid 20 I see in roughly 50-75% of my matches at the moment. So boring!

Force gets banned, next year half the format dies and Beltcher, Burning Wish, Laboratory Maniac, ETW, Dread return, ect, become issues. That sounds like a really bad format.

Force is the one card that if it got banned, I would leave. I don't enjoy playing against it, but then again who enjoys dealing with the Cops? But, when shit hits the fan your glad they are there. Force stays. I can lose Brainstorm, TC, Delver, some number of Elves and whatever else a deck I will stay. At Force though, I draw the line.

You need to refine your idea.

[Echelon]

Force gets banned, next year half the format dies and Beltcher, Burning Wish, Laboratory Maniac, ETW, Dread return, ect, become issues. That sounds like we need to change our sideboards.

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, each and every one of those glass cannons can be anwered without FoWs/Dazes. I honestly don't see the problem. Stifle, Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt, Chalice of the Void, Ethersworn Canonist and god knows what else won't cease to exist. Heck, perhaps we'll run Gemstone Caverns so we can cast answers when our opponent is on the play for all I care.

[Megadeus]

If you think force is an issue, you're an idiot. It's barely even a good card.

[Echelon]

If you think force is an issue, you're an idiot. It's barely even a good card.

I never said it's an issue, you might want to pay more attention to what you are reading before saying such silly things.

I called it boring, which isn't a measure of card quality. I did say it isn't the do-all end-all answer everybody thinks it to be. I merely stated there are more answers available to us as a community then just FoW, but that seems to fall on deaf ears.

[Zombie]

I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

You have different hats you wear at times. What you describe is indeed a correct attitude - for the competitive player. He should play what gets him the best EV, taking into account personal tendencies and metagame etc.

But there are other hats, like game design/balance or the event organizer viewpoint. There, things like color variety, gameplan variety, variety in feel (Shardless/Miracles/Storm v. Jund/D&T/Elves), whether people have fun playing, these kinds of things are the foremost concern. Since this is a general thread about the format, most people tend to speak with their game designer hat on. The cutthroat player hat is worn while at actual tournaments and in the deck-specific threads, trying to break and/or survive the format as well as possible.

[Lemnear]

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, each and every one of those glass cannons can be anwered without FoWs/Dazes. I honestly don't see the problem. Stifle, Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt, Chalice of the Void, Ethersworn Canonist and god knows what else won't cease to exist. Heck, perhaps we'll run Gemstone Caverns so we can cast answers when our opponent is on the play for all I care.

So running niche cards in your MB or auto loosing to combo game 1? Nice format.

[Echelon]

So running niche cards in your MB or auto loosing to combo game 1? Nice format.

Who said anything about MB? Oh Lemnear, I expected more of you, lol. Besides, losing game 1 and winning game 2 and 3 never seems to be a problem for my opponents when I'm piloting Manaless Dredge :tongue:

[Megadeus]

So running niche cards in your MB or auto loosing to combo game 1? Nice format.

This. There's a reason modern has had to ban so many cards

[testing32]

I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

This isn't a competative/casual argument. I played RUG to a top 64 finish at GP DC. I play brainstorm and delver b/c I play to win.

It just sucks when the entire format is the same. It's like caw/blade in its hay day, yeah you play it b/c you want to win but it just sucks.

Edit: and why are we talking about FoW? This format would be awful without FoW.

[Echelon]

This. There's a reason modern has had to ban so many cards

And still people enjoy Modern. So what's your point?


Edit: and why are we talking about FoW? This format would be awful without FoW.

Well, actually I was talking about banning Delver, FoW, Daze, Ponder and Brainstorm but for some reason people crap their pants when FoW is mentioned so we're focusing on that now rather than the entire shell.

[Barook]

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, each and every one of those glass cannons can be anwered without FoWs/Dazes. I honestly don't see the problem. Stifle, Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt, Chalice of the Void, Ethersworn Canonist and god knows what else won't cease to exist. Heck, perhaps we'll run Gemstone Caverns so we can cast answers when our opponent is on the play for all I care.
Aside from the Leylines (and maybe Surgical Extraction against GY decks), you're probably dead against said combos before you can play anything, even with running a subpar card like Gemstone Caverns. Losing like a bitch most of G1s before boarding doesn't sound like a great format.

Without the free counter police, the format would suck. The topic would be more debatable if there was way more "free" combo hate in the format it would be even maindeckable, but as it stands, it's a terrible idea.

[Lemnear]

And still people enjoy Modern. So what's your point?

WotC bans all combo decks which can kill faster than aggro in Modern.

[Dice_Box]

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, each and every one of those glass cannons can be anwered without FoWs/Dazes. I honestly don't see the problem. Stifle, Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt, Chalice of the Void, Ethersworn Canonist and god knows what else won't cease to exist. Heck, perhaps we'll run Gemstone Caverns so we can cast answers when our opponent is on the play for all I care.

I don't like to play the "Go play X format" card, but if you think Force is an issue, Legacy is not the format for you.

[Echelon]

WotC bans all combo decks which can kill faster than aggro in Modern.

So his point is "But I want to play combo, damn it!"?


I don't like to play the "Go play X format" card, but if you think Force is an issue, Legacy is not the format for you.

And another one that can't read... Lol

For the third time, I was talking about banning the entire Delver/FoW/Daze/Brainstorm/Ponder-shell and not because it's an issue but because it's boring. People have the attention span of a chihuahua that needs to piss.

[Dice_Box]

So his point is "But I want to play combo, damn it!"?

No, my point is if you offer no way for the players to police the format, your only option is to call in the National Guard when shit hits the fan.

[Megadeus]

And still people enjoy Modern. So what's your point?



Well, actually I was talking about banning Delver, FoW, Daze, Ponder and Brainstorm but for some reason people crap their pants when FoW is mentioned so we're focusing on that now rather than the entire shell.

I can'ttell if you are trolling or not. Modern doesn't have multiple turn 1 decks. In legacy belcher, oops, dredge, and storm all can kill you on turn 1. The comparison isn't there.

[Echelon]

No, my point is if you offer no way for the players to police the format, your only option is to call in the National Guard when shit hits the fan.

And that is new, how?


I can'ttell if you are trolling or not. Modern doesn't have multiple turn 1 decks. In legacy belcher, oops, dredge, and storm all can kill you on turn 1. The comparison isn't there.

Dice_Box just fixed that one for you, together with Lemnear.

[Lemnear]

So his point is "But I want to play combo, damn it!"?

No, without Ponder, Brainstorm, Daze and FoW, you shrink Combo to Belcher & the like which are near impossible to interact with on the draw. You can either have a diceroll format at this point or swing the banhammer again to neuter Combo right after control, mimicing the Modern metagame structure.

Expect Elves banhammered soon after, as Cradle, GSZ, NO and DRS are too powerful in a pure aggro/midrange metagame then. A downward spiral

[testing32]

For the third time, I was talking about banning the entire Delver/FoW/Daze/Brainstorm/Ponder-shell and not because it's an issue but because it's boring. People have the attention span of a chihuahua that needs to piss.

I think you would be surprised what a brainstorm ban would do to delver.

[Echelon]

No, without Ponder, Brainstorm, Daze and FoW, you shrink Combo to Belcher & the like which are near impossible to interact with on the draw. You can either have a diceroll format at this point or swing the banhammer again to neuter Combo right after control, mimicing the Modern metagame structure.

Expect Elves banhammered soon after, as Cradle, GSZ, NO and DRS are too powerful in a pure aggro/midrange metagame then. A downward spiral

I know :wink:. We'll end up with Moden + Pernicious Deeds, Hymn to Tourachs and such. Oh, and D&T, Manaless Dredge and Lands, lol.

[Lemnear]

I think you would be surprised what a brainstorm ban would do to delver.

The answer is: nothing. You can still push people against the wall on the back of Delver + denial, can still cantrip T1 into your FoW/Daze against Combo, but don't have to deal with decks like S&T anymore which have a consistancy-problem if they can't shuffle dead combo-parts away.

[Star|Scream]

For the third time, I was talking about banning the entire Delver/FoW/Daze/Brainstorm/Ponder-shell and not because it's an issue but because it's boring.

This is subjective

[Echelon]

This is subjective

So..?

[testing32]

The answer is: nothing. You can still push people against the wall on the back of Delver + denial, can still cantrip T1 into your FoW/Daze against Combo, but don't have to deal with decks like S&T anymore which have a consistancy-problem if they can't shuffle dead combo-parts away.

Exactly. Delver loses consistancy and the ability to quicky change game plans while Terminus and S&T take a big hit.

I would expect that delver could still be played but it should open the door for non-brainstorm decks to be able to prey on it.

[Lemnear]

So..?

We don't understand how your understandable hate for the delver circlejerk links to your suggestion to break the format in half


Exactly. Delver loses consistancy and the ability to quicky change game plans while Terminus and S&T take a big hit.

I would expect that delver could still be played but it should open the door for non-brainstorm decks to be able to prey on it.

Change gameplans? The deck has only 1 damn gameplan! "drop delver and ensure your opponent isn't killing the Delver or yourself before he drops dead"

[Hopo]

Because of the 50%+ overlap in cards and roughly 90% overlap in gameplan..? And yes, I'm generalizing rather fiercely here.
How would this look like without the hyperbole? Of course your arguments sound solid to you if they are based on imaginary figures, which you even admit.

In the other eternal format, vintage, pretty much every deck tries to play as many of the formats broken bombs as possible. Legacy is no different. Stagnant format with a dominating deck is surely problematic but that doesn't seem to be the case here. People can't even figure out if the best deck is blue burn, miracle control or some of the tempo decks. Or even elves or monowhite. Also, new cards find their way to decks all the time, so to speak.

[FoolofaTook]

Force of Will is a crutch that people are "forced" to play because the rest of the blue shell is so good. In that situation it's hard to justify not playing a free counter that will have at least 19 buddies to pitch to it in your list. This despite the fact that you'd only lose on turn 0 about 10% of the time in it's absence and that the lists that will do that tend to be glass cannons that lose more than half the time to obvious hate that can land as early as turn 1 for you.

As people have pointed out FoW isn't even a particularly good card. It's a security blanket that occasionally saves your ass and that deeply discourages many strategies that would otherwise exist in it's absence, primarily fast mana for permanents. The higher the penetration of Force of Will in a metagame the lower the penetration of Dark Ritual for example.

[Star|Scream]

So..?

So it's silly to advocate banning cards based on your definition of fun.

[testing32]

Change gameplans? The deck has only 1 damn gameplan! "drop delver and ensure your opponent isn't killing the Delver or yourself before he drops dead"

I disagree. There have been many games where a turn 2 brainstorm + fetch turns a delver hand from bolts and dudes into spell pierces/dazes/FoW or vise versa. A good brainstorm can end the game on the spot.

[Echelon]

So it's silly to advocate banning cards based on your definition of fun.

But it isn't to do so based on ones definition of whats healthy for a format? It's subjective all the same. That also goes for your conclusion of it being silly.


We don't understand how your understandable hate for the delver circlejerk links to your suggestion to break the format in half

Because I can. The same way someone once suggested we should put a man on the moon (yes, with some attempts to do so having tragical and horrible consequences).

[Star|Scream]

But it isn't to do so based on ones definition of whats healthy for a format? It's subjective all the same.

Well now you're just playing semantics. Health of the format is far less subjective than "boring" to play against.

[Echelon]

Well now you're just playing semantics. Health of the format is far less subjective than "boring" to play against.

Lol, no it isn't. How does one objectively measure subjectiveness?

[Lemnear]

Well now you're just playing semantics. Health of the format is far less subjective than "boring" to play against.

Caring for the health of the format ... by chopping off the head of 70% of decks, leaving only Belcher, Elves, Jund and 12-Post back as the big winners. The last time such a drastic ban orgy happened, it killed Vintage

[Echelon]

Also, for everybody non-Lemnear (since he seems to get it) - I'm trying to discuss the banning of an entire shell.

Why? Meh, why not? Instead of bitching about a single card (FoW at the moment, apparently), try considering what'd happen if the entire shell were to disappear (other than OMG-GLASSCANNONS), just because. But that seems to be too much of a challenge for most since you're only focussing on 1 card.

Let's leave it at Lemnear's final comment and call it a day, shall we?

[Dice_Box]

Lol, no it isn't. How does one objectively measure subjectiveness?

You don't, you define how you measure the health in a set, provable manner. Ask someone playing standard in 2004 how healthy the format was, ask Wizards how many people quit. That's all very definable.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

omg.
I seriously consider account desactivation.

[Gheizen64]

Also, for everybody non-Lemnear (since he seems to get it) - I'm trying to discuss the banning of an entire shell.

Why? Meh, why not? Instead of bitching about a single card (FoW at the moment, apparently), try considering what'd happen if the entire shell were to disappear (other than OMG-GLASSCANNONS), just because. But that seems to be too much of a challenge for most since you're only focussing on 1 card.

Let's leave it at Lemnear's final comment and call it a day, shall we?

Except what you'd want is to commit to a chain of banning since banning FoW would mean this format would be as bad against combo as modern is, and then you have to get 50+ banned cards on the list. At which point you get modern with duals, and who care? A single ban to weaken a dominant archetype wouldn't remove any archetype from the format, wouldn't require any more ban subsequential to it, and would open the space for many T1.5 strats to become actually viable.

What you're proposing make no sense in a real eternal format imho. Banning 10+ cards for a slightly different modern? I don't see the appeal.

[Darkenslight]

Honestly, I think Wizards would be more likely to ban Delver than BS, and I'm not sure that Wizards would be clearly in the wrong. However, that would kill most tempo decks in the format, and I'm not sure that that is such a good move.

[Zombie]

Except what you'd want is to commit to a chain of banning since banning FoW would mean this format would be as bad against combo as modern is

Daze, Hymn, Counterspell and Flusterstorm aren't cards now? O_o'

[Lemnear]

Honestly, I think Wizards would be more likely to ban Delver than BS, and I'm not sure that Wizards would be clearly in the wrong. However, that would kill most tempo decks in the format, and I'm not sure that that is such a good move.

Tempo existed before Delver

[sjmcc13]

Daze, Hymn, Counterspell and Flusterstorm aren't cards now? O_o'
None of them stop a Glass cannon that won the die roll and went first....
Hymn and Counterspell are not active until your second turn.

FoW if not a good card, it is a NECESSARY card to keep Glass Cannon combo's in check.


Honestly, I think Wizards would be more likely to ban Delver than BS, and I'm not sure that Wizards would be clearly in the wrong. However, that would kill most tempo decks in the format, and I'm not sure that that is such a good move.
BS is a powerful card that helps ALL deck archetypes. You can easily splash blue for just it, but it does not constrain your deck choices.
Delver is a powerful card that forces you into 1 archtype.
Strong cards that help multiple archetypes are not a problem, Strong cards that define/restrict the playing field/metagame are a problem

Delver is a tempo card, but it is not the only tempo creature, it is just to far ahead of the rest of them, banning it would not remove Tempo as a strategy, but it would be likely to change the makeup of Tempo decks so they are not all the same Delver shell with good cards from whatever colors you are splashing.

[testing32]

Mental Misstep is a powerful card that helps ALL deck archetypes. You can easily splash blue for just it, but it does not constrain your deck choices.

Fixed that for you.

Edit: and saying that brainstorm does not constrain your deck choice when 76% of winning decks are running brainstorm is just not true.

Have you played Jund before and looked at a hand with 3 lands and a punishing fire as your opponent casts a brainstorm and proceeds to wreck you? I have and at that moment I questioned the decisions I made in my life that lead to me that point.

[nedleeds]

You don't play much eternal if you think Force of Will should be banned. Crafting a hand with sufficient blue cards to use Force optimally is one of the thousand things Brainstorm does at instant speed so a Brainstorm ban would at least make Force tougher to use, or make the choice to use it a little tougher.

If Cruise gets banned and Brainstorm it's a sad statement on how out of touch WotC is with eternal. If they do ban Cruise and not Brainstorm at least come out and say something absurd like, 'Pillar of the Format' 'Go play modern' or 'Skill Intensive' in the announcement.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-OjVQIqt9iIc/VFo7v3Ca_1I/AAAAAAAAEVw/z3w1U66IwPY/w994-h516-no/bs.png

It's not even close. Every reason they gave for Misstep applies here, the usage dwarfs Survival, the power level is absolutely laughable compared to some of the cards currently banned.

If they ban cruise they might as well think about banning dig, it's comparable in control to cruise in tempo. The commitment to at least UU might keep it somewhat sane but barely. Ban Brainstorm and be done with this miserable stagnation, make people build decks again. Or unban Mind Twist, Earthcraft, Survival and Black Vise and see if anything changes. hint: it probably won't.

[Star|Scream]

Fixed that for you.

So you're saying we should unban Mental Misstep? Awesome! Love that card.

[maharis]

BS is a powerful card that helps ALL deck archetypes. You can easily splash blue for just it, but it does not constrain your deck choices.
Delver is a powerful card that forces you into 1 archtype.
Strong cards that help multiple archetypes are not a problem, Strong cards that define/restrict the playing field/metagame are a problem

Delver is a tempo card, but it is not the only tempo creature, it is just to far ahead of the rest of them, banning it would not remove Tempo as a strategy, but it would be likely to change the makeup of Tempo decks so they are not all the same Delver shell with good cards from whatever colors you are splashing.

But Brainstorm is the card that makes Delver so obnoxious. And Brainstorm breaks Terminus, and Treasure Cruise, and arguably Stoneforge Mystic and fetchlands. Brainstorm is the reason a 4-color deck can play TNN and Wasteland and Abrupt Decay. So sure, ban Delver if you want, but eventually WoTC will make another card that is eminently abusable with brainstorm or the tempo shell and we'll be right back where we are now.

I think Delver is far more likely to be banned than Brainstorm, now more than ever. I could see it happening in the next B&R update. However, I do not like the precedent set by banning a creature with no inherent protection or value outside combat in Legacy. Once that happens, the gates are open to have discussions about DRS, SFM, Tarmogoyf, Wirewood Symbiote, TNN, Vendilion Clique, Young Pyromancer, and probably more I'm not thinking of. (I believe TNN is an obnoxious, egregious mistake and is bannable, but I could live with it if it couldn't be hidden from discard at instant speed). That is a road I don't think we want to go down as a format. Even Emrakul and Griselbrand are manageable without the insanity that is Show & Tell. That is why Wizards has always banned enablers instead of the card that's broken by them. Brainstorm is the enabler of the tempo shell.

[Lemnear]

The whole topic with Treasure Cruise is so stupid similar to the Survival dilemma. People think the new addition should be banned (Vengevine) while the problem is the old card (Delver), which becomes more and more oppressive with any future printing. If they ban TC, we just can wait for the next card which pushes Delver archetypes beyond 25% of the metagame.


But Brainstorm is the card that makes Delver so obnoxious. And Brainstorm breaks Terminus, and Treasure Cruise, and arguably Stoneforge Mystic and fetchlands. Brainstorm is the reason a 4-color deck can play TNN and Wasteland and Abrupt Decay. So sure, ban Delver if you want, but eventually WoTC will make another card that is eminently abusable with brainstorm or the tempo shell and we'll be right back where we are now.

I think Delver is far more likely to be banned than Brainstorm, now more than ever. I could see it happening in the next B&R update. However, I do not like the precedent set by banning a creature with no inherent protection or value outside combat in Legacy. Once that happens, the gates are open to have discussions about DRS, SFM, Tarmogoyf, Wirewood Symbiote, TNN, Vendilion Clique, Young Pyromancer, and probably more I'm not thinking of. (I believe TNN is an obnoxious, egregious mistake and is bannable, but I could live with it if it couldn't be hidden from discard at instant speed). That is a road I don't think we want to go down as a format. Even Emrakul and Griselbrand are manageable without the insanity that is Show & Tell. That is why Wizards has always banned enablers instead of the card that's broken by them. Brainstorm is the enabler of the tempo shell.

Delver is the card that makes tempo-strategies to obnoxious, but is a tool for a wide array of decks to acchieve consistancy.

[Lord Seth]

Brainstorm is the reason a 4-color deck can play TNN and Wasteland and Abrupt Decay.Actually, I think Deathrite Shaman is the bigger reason for that.

[Dice_Box]

The whole topic with Treasure Cruise is so stupid similar to the Survival dilemma. People think the new addition should be banned (Vengevine) while the problem is the old card (Delver), which becomes more and more oppressive with any future printing. If they ban TC, we just can wait for the next card which pushes Delver archetypes beyond 25% of the metagame.

I have been thinking, since it is so rare to ban something in Legacy, I wonder if Wizards will take this rare moment of action to react to past issues. I feel like they try and just let the format run itself and hide their own hands behind their back in the hopes that if they do not touch it it will go away. Basically, they have a culture now of inaction so the sudden push to action may allow then to overcome whatever fears they have and ban other cards that are issues that they would not have touched otherwise.

[maharis]

Actually, I think Deathrite Shaman is the bigger reason for that.

I don't think any deathblade player would keep a sketchy hand because it has DRS like they would if it has Brainstorm. The fact that you can cast Brainstorm at any time and have three cracks at your next land or first action card makes it supremely more powerful than DRS. Especially in a control deck with a huge lifegain hammer as its main threat, and in a format where anyone who lets you untap with a DRS is probably losing anyway.

[Megadeus]

I don't think any deathblade player would keep a sketchy hand because it has DRS like they would if it has Brainstorm. The fact that you can cast Brainstorm at any time and have three cracks at your next land or first action card makes it supremely more powerful than DRS. Especially in a control deck with a huge lifegain hammer as its main threat, and in a format where anyone who lets you untap with a DRS is probably losing anyway.
I would actually like to see the percentage of gamesthat I won when I untapped with a deathrite.

[Nielsie]

I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.
So what? I want to play a Shop deck in Legacy but for some strange reason, some jerk decided to ban Shop and all Moxes in Legacy... That's not fair! In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.

I simply don't understand your reasoning...

Now that I think of it, you know what is funny? It's more likely the DCI would unban Mox Sapphire than banning Brainstorm or Delver! Wouldn't that be treat! :tongue:

[maharis]

I would actually like to see the percentage of gamesthat I won when I untapped with a deathrite.

Exactly. You think the UR delver player is casting Delver on their first turn if you cast Deathrite? No, they're bolting the shit out of that guy. That alone should indicate what makes a creature truly powerful. A conditional 3/2 with no ETB ability and no combat damage trigger isn't really all that scary. Eventually any competent deck builder will kill that thing because they play removal or win with their combo within 6 turns. That is, of course, unless the Delver is backed up by pure gas at every draw step. Enter Brainstorm, the best hand-fixing spell ever.

[Lemnear]

Current top 8 decks:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º DeathBlade
4º Team America
5º Elves
6º Patriot
7º Reanimator
8º OmniTell

I'd want to see top 8 decks like this:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º Jund
4º Goblins
5º Elves
6º Death and Taxes
7º Reanimator
8º ANT

I have no clue where you have taken the top list from, as MTG TOP 8 has different numbers for the past two months and decks like OmniTell, Reanimator and Patriot are nowhere close to the top spots of played decks in the last two months, but stuff like D&T, Jund or Infect.

no love for your second list either. I think Goblins deserve, in no way, a spot on that list, mainly for being a deck, which refuses to adapt to a changing metagame since like 10 years (see: Running Wasteland + Ports if you have a significant higher manacurve than your opponents do and still not running control elements against combo) and people still try to take the deck as a measurement for format health.

[testing32]

I have no clue where you have taken the top list from, as MTG TOP 8 has different numbers for the past two months and decks like OmniTell, Reanimator and Patriot are nowhere close to the top spots of played decks in the last two months, but stuff like D&T, Jund or Infect.

no love for your second list either. I think Goblins deserve, in no way, a spot on that list, mainly for being a deck, which refuses to adapt to a changing metagame since like 10 years (see: Running Wasteland + Ports if you have a significant higher manacurve than your opponents do and still not running control elements against combo) and people still try to take the deck as a measurement for format health.

I snagged that list from tcdecks-tier decks from October of this year.

The second list is an example, not to be taken list for list. Replace that with any non-blue deck of your choice for all I care (rock, team italia, mud, maverick, green and taxes, zoo, etc).

And I realize that you are fighting hard for delver over bs because you still want to play TES. Something has to change though because TES is in a bad way right now (and I really like that deck). I'm not sure getting rid of bs would hurt it as much as it would hurt miracles and delver. Might need to switch to ANT over TES b/c of chrom mox but storm should be more competative than it is now.

With so much blue, storm has very few free wins like it used to have.

Edit: and I don't know if anyone else noticed but tcdecks has rug split into UGr threshold and UGr fairies. It really should be 4th on that list.

[FieryBalrog]

How would this look like without the hyperbole? Of course your arguments sound solid to you if they are based on imaginary figures, which you even admit.

In the other eternal format, vintage, pretty much every deck tries to play as many of the formats broken bombs as possible. Legacy is no different. Stagnant format with a dominating deck is surely problematic but that doesn't seem to be the case here. People can't even figure out if the best deck is blue burn, miracle control or some of the tempo decks. Or even elves or monowhite. Also, new cards find their way to decks all the time, so to speak.

Ironically, Vintage actually has a more diverse meta because there Shop and Bazaar exist. Making two strong pillars of non-blue strategies which can support aggro, combo and control.

Meanwhile in Legacy there is no alternative pillar to Brainstorm period. There is, uh, Elves, and the increasingly diminished D&T, but those are just particular decks, not broad deck construction ideas, and are not even dominant decks at that.

I've been playing Legacy long enough to remember when Aether Vial was an actual pillar of Legacy deck construction, so were the Sol Lands, even Life from the Loam was reasonable at one point to build around. Giving alternatives to blue (of course, the best vial deck itself was usually Merfolk, but R&D has always adored blue, so that's not surprising). All of those are increasingly crap. Yes, you see a non-D&T Vial deck every other month, hooray.

[Barook]

I have been thinking, since it is so rare to ban something in Legacy, I wonder if Wizards will take this rare moment of action to react to past issues. I feel like they try and just let the format run itself and hide their own hands behind their back in the hopes that if they do not touch it it will go away. Basically, they have a culture now of inaction so the sudden push to action may allow then to overcome whatever fears they have and ban other cards that are issues that they would not have touched otherwise.
Wizards would probably ban one card at best.

Making the Banned list as short as possible is a noble goal (especially considering how they went full retard on the Modern bannings), but the function of the Banned list is keeping the format healthy, not being a list as short as possible. A short banlist does jackshit if the format goes to hell in the meantime. Think about how much broken (blue or blue-related) shit Wizards has thrown into the format since Innistrad.

[Lemnear]

And I realize that you are fighting hard for delver over bs because you still want to play TES. Something has to change though because TES is in a bad way right now (and I really like that deck). I'm not sure getting rid of bs would hurt it as much as it would hurt miracles and delver. Might need to switch to ANT over TES b/c of chrom mox but storm should be more competative than it is now.

With so much blue, storm has very few free wins like it used to have.

I don't care much about TES per se; I like the storm mechanic in general and so I don't have a problem with playing ANT, DDFT or TNT instead. The point is that decks like DDFT/SneakShow/TES/etc have plenty of "dead" combo elements they will stumble over without Brainstorm available. ANT has a much easier time compensating a potential loss of Brainstorm than the beforementioned decks and I don't see it as desirable that these decks all extinct, just to make the Delver-autopilot a bit weaker and reduce Miracle-Brainstorms to Jace. I doubt that banning brainstorm would actually "help" storm.

[maharis]

I don't care much about TES per se; I like the storm mechanic in general and so I don't have a problem with playing ANT, DDFT or TNT instead. The point is that decks like DDFT/SneakShow/TES/etc have plenty of "dead" combo elements they will stumble over without Brainstorm available. ANT has a much easier time compensating a potential loss of Brainstorm than the beforementioned decks and I don't see it as desirable that these decks all extinct, just to make the Delver-autopilot a bit weaker and reduce Miracle-Brainstorms to Jace. I doubt that banning brainstorm would actually "help" storm.

But like you said upthread:


I think Goblins deserve, in no way, a spot on that list, mainly for being a deck, which refuses to adapt to a changing metagame since like 10 years (see: Running Wasteland + Ports if you have a significant higher manacurve than your opponents do and still not running control elements against combo) and people still try to take the deck as a measurement for format health.

Storm pilots will have to adapt like you implore goblin pilots to do. There will likely be a storm deck in Legacy if that's what you like playing. To truly compensate for the power of Brainstorm you'd have to ban way more than just Delver and it is just so much cleaner to put one card on the list than to constantly wait for them to ban the next card that's broken by Brainstorm and is taking over the format like TC has.

What about all the people who liked playing green toolbox decks when Survival was banned? Should they have just taken Vengevine so Survival could continue until the next broken graveyard creature?

That's not how WOTC has made choices in the past and not what they should do now.

[testing32]

I don't care much about TES per se; I like the storm mechanic in general and so I don't have a problem with playing ANT, DDFT or TNT instead. The point is that decks like DDFT/SneakShow/TES/etc have plenty of "dead" combo elements they will stumble over without Brainstorm available. ANT has a much easier time compensating a potential loss of Brainstorm than the beforementioned decks and I don't see it as desirable that these decks all extinct, just to make the Delver-autopilot a bit weaker and reduce Miracle-Brainstorms to Jace. I doubt that banning brainstorm would actually "help" storm.

I agree that it's tough to say but I look at modern's storm success as a guide. They didn't have bs or LED and it was wildly successful b/f heavy bannings. I also think it would be hard for storm to be positioned poorer than it is now.

I don't think that banning brainstorm would be the end of combo. Less blue means more free wins for combo decks.

[Megadeus]

I agree that it's tough to say but I look at modern's storm success as a guide. They didn't have bs or LED and it was wildly successful b/f heavy bannings. I also think it would be hard for storm to be positioned poorer than it is now.

I don't think that banning brainstorm would be the end of combo. Less blue means more free wins for combo decks.
They also have significantly less cheap and free counter magic/mana denial to fight through.

Fiery Balrog makes an excellent point about shops and bazaar in vintage providing non blue pillars of the format while brainstorm is seemingly unopposed

[wonderPreaux]

I agree that it's tough to say but I look at modern's storm success as a guide. They didn't have bs or LED and it was wildly successful b/f heavy bannings. I also think it would be hard for storm to be positioned poorer than it is now.

I don't think that banning brainstorm would be the end of combo. Less blue means more free wins for combo decks.

This is wildly poor context, saying "storm without brainstorm works in modern" is ignorant because modern also doesnt have cards like force of will, wasteland, top, daze, proper duals etc. also, modern storm relies a lot on goblin burst and not fizzling off of cantrip chains, which legacy cards can do a lot to counteract. saying a lower-power version of a deck is successful in a lower power format isnt a very good indicator of how a gimped legacy storm would be in legacy. as i mentioned earlier in the thread, as much as brainstorm is cantrip 1-4 of 8-12 in tempo shells or w/e, it is THE card that lets a lot of combo decks be competitively powerful for a number of reasons. whether or not someone argues for brainstorm being in the format or not would likely be inseparably linked to that person's preference for combo vs. aggro/midrange creature stuff (see the "desired" top 8 post above that includes Goblins, Jund and DnT yet weirdly deems ANT as a DTB despite losing a powerful card. lolwut?).

[Lemnear]

I agree that it's tough to say but I look at modern's storm success as a guide. They didn't have bs or LED and it was wildly successful b/f heavy bannings. I also think it would be hard for storm to be positioned poorer than it is now.

I don't think that banning brainstorm would be the end of combo. Less blue means more free wins for combo decks.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about storm at all. Just lets not forget that Modern and Legacy work different and have other predators. Banning Brainstorm would not end combo, but I can asure you that combo, as a whole, would take a bigger hit than Delver.


Storm pilots will have to adapt like you implore goblin pilots to do. There will likely be a storm deck in Legacy if that's what you like playing. To truly compensate for the power of Brainstorm you'd have to ban way more than just Delver and it is just so much cleaner to put one card on the list than to constantly wait for them to ban the next card that's broken by Brainstorm and is taking over the format like TC has.

What about all the people who liked playing green toolbox decks when Survival was banned? Should they have just taken Vengevine so Survival could continue until the next broken graveyard creature?

That's not how WOTC has made choices in the past and not what they should do now.

Without a doubt they would need to adapt and they do. If storm is unplayable in Legacy for some reason: shit happens.

I don't remember a CARD that was ever "broken by brainstorm" the way Survival would have stayed broken by Loyal Retainers + Emrakul even if they banned vengevine. Brainstorm does not break Delver; it's the cantrip/counter/removal core which is the problem by itself that makes the Delver auto-flip and you can't ban the whole core just because WotC fucked up with the condition Delver flips.

It's like printing an Elf for 1 green mana with an EtB effect of drawing 3 cards, if you control 2 more green creatures and think the condition is any restricting lawl

[Zombie]

What about all the people who liked playing green toolbox decks when Survival was banned? Should they have just taken Vengevine so Survival could continue until the next broken graveyard creature?

There's a big difference between the playability of the replacements in these cases. Survival => Fauna Shaman is abominable, Brainstorm => Ponder+Preordain hurts but you still have functional, really strong cards. Now we have GSZ of course, which is great, but the range of creatures that can be fetched is a bit too low to make it a suitable replacement for ETB Toolbox.dec

[Bed Decks Palyer]

With BS ban, wouldn't TES position improve compared to ANT, which is right now imo the better storm deck? Imagine going off and being stuck with useless chaff, isn't it better to have 4x BW that needs no hellbent?
And good point on "storm pilots also need to adapt", it was cruel, but I like it. It's not like only the Goblin pilots should start to tinker with their steam age deck...
Speaking of that: it's pretty annoying how the "you need to adapt" very often meant "quit playing non-blue" so far, as most of the non-blue lists were either too weak at all, or at least to weak to insertbogeyman, so the competitive players switch to more powerful decks naturally, and that'S leading them to Islands, as that's where the power is at least since always.

The downsides are obvious, but I'm going to repeat them once more as it looks like some people missed the previous posts; mostly it's about the pricing chokehold of blue duals, the convergent deck design and thus convergent gameplay experince, the swingy-bomby nature of Legacy and if I'm missing something, correct me.
There are hardly any pillars left (be it SotF, Vial, 8Tombs or whatever), altough I must admit that there's archetypical difference in decks played (Storm combo, UWx control, Uxx Delver/DRS tempo, W(g) prison, Show and Win), but these cannot be compared with Bazaar/Drain/Shop (do I have it correctly?) as those are... umm... lets say "engines" for the lack of a different word (no they're not engines, but that's how to circumvent the "pillar" word), as those promote different strategy and gameplay experience with their own subsets of archetypes/decks. (ok, it's not exactly true that Bazaar feeds anything else than Ichorid, but there are what, three or four major builds of Shop...) And tis makes me a bit sad that I hadn't jumped into the Vintage boat back when it was a little bit more feasible, as it seems that Vintage might be much more interesting format than Legacy.

On the bright side... If the people are willing to accept Underground Sea as one of the pillar of the format (simulating Shop now even price-wise... yeah, and I don't even care to pretend that I know how much Shop costs neither will I check that), the other pillar being Trop/Volc with the last pillar represented by Tundra, and if the Storm/Delver/Terminus triade is what makes the people thrilled, than there's the pro of a really stable (static? stationary?) format where there's little to explore, little to forget about, little to chase for, a simple format that lives of 250 cards and ignores the 19750 remaining ones.

Legacy: the Old Schooling

[HrishiQQ]

Me being a Vintage player was the reason behind my question. Mishra's Workshop is powerful and broken enough that it serves to keep blue in check. Similarly with Bazaar of Baghdad. Are there any such options to enter the Legacy cardpool if WOTC are unwilling to change the Delver-goodstuff shell?

[testing32]

It would be rougher for TES b/c they can get some really awful draws like 2x chrom mox. Also, with more action, it's easy to get multiple pieces stuck in your hand.

I'm fine with trading BS for unbanning some help for combo.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Me being a Vintage player was the reason behind my question. Mishra's Workshop is powerful and broken enough that it serves to keep blue in check. Similarly with Bazaar of Baghdad. Are there any such options to enter the Legacy cardpool if WOTC are unwilling to change the Delver-goodstuff shell?

I don't know. I played lots of games with RUG against DnT and I'm not sure that it's that bad matchup. Depends on your flex suite, but with 6-7 burn spells and some Snare to stop Thalia, SFM and RiP, it isn't a lost cause.
Elves are so so, because they are pretty fast and they can kill you out of nowhere with you sitting with Rough in your hand waiting for the right moment.
Ichorid was a solid deck, but I haven't touched it in years. One may argue that it's a blue deck, it revolves around several powerful spells and effects that got :u: in mana/activation cost.
I'm not sure what's left. Burn is a deck, right? So Burn...

[Star|Scream]

What about banning brainstorm but unbanning mystical tutor?

[testing32]

I was thinking like mind's desire or bargin. Something that delver couldn't use. They are both busted but you can hate storm, unlike brainstorm.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

What about banning brainstorm but unbanning mystical tutor?
Both cards are busted.



I was thinking like mind's desire or bargin. Something that delver couldn't use. They are both busted but you can hate storm, unlike brainstorm.
Mind's Desire is dangerous card, imo, yet it's pretty unreliable, too. I guess it's abit harder to build around it than around PiF or AdN, but it may give some free "oops I win" due to good luck.
Bargain? With Grislebrand in format, YB might be unbanned. Then again it's easier to cast and use. You cannot draw 19 cards of Grisly...

Mind Twist (and yeah, it's not about BS anymore...) is another card that neither Storm nor Delver might use. Even with DRS in picture, you'll be Twisting for what, four cards at most? On turn3+? Laughable... namely once the opponent plays BS in resp. (so it is about BS once again) to hide TC and refuel the hand.
Nice. Time Walk.

[Barook]

What about banning brainstorm but unbanning mystical tutor?
No, blue doesn't need more help.

I don't think Mystical Tutor is safe. Aside them the combo shenanigans that still work, it also got Miracles and TC to make it even more busted.

[HrishiQQ]

I was thinking like mind's desire or bargin. Something that delver couldn't use. They are both busted but you can hate storm, unlike brainstorm.

I like this actually. Mind's Desire is busted in half but I have huge doubts whether Desire.dek is actually better than the Delver shell (that sounds crazy to even type..)

As the above poster said, unless you generate a certain amount of storm it can be quite unreliable. Generating 4UU is also a little harder without access to Tolarian Academy, although I have no doubt you could design a deck to be able to do it consistently.

More of a personal thing.. but Mind's Desire has the best feeling ever when casting it. It feels like you are opening Christmas presents each time you flip a card over. :laugh:

[Gheizen64]

I don't think combo would suffer a lot even if BS got banned. I mean, TC and DTT are two new pretty good card in any combo that isn't named AnT. Blue.dec losing a little of popularity would also probably make the archetype better positioned in general.
And also, Bargain and Desire are pretty safe unbans i think. Yes, Bargain is busted, but it cost freaking six. In this format for 6 mana get you sneak attack +2 activations, and you need just 1 to win the game. Entomb-> reanimate or SnT grizzly are better anyway. Grizzly is so much better if u ever get to untap it isn't even funny. Desire is in a similar ballpark, even if it still scare me because of the uncounterable aspect that make hate cards for it pretty niche. But in general, big, costly spells, in a format full of cheap countermagic, targeted discard, and tax effects hardly scare me as much as pseudo-recalls and cheap evasive beaters.

[bruizar]

Well, eldrazi's are being hardcast in this format. Minds desire sounds like playing with fire. Bargain is a 1 mana combo. Its just one mana more than ad nausea , and ad nauseam Is played. Also, academic rector can help put it into play via cavern of souls (omniesciemce if its in hand, bargain if its not in hand, depending on what u have) and the cabal therapies further protect you. The difference with ad nauseam is that ad nauseam must be played in a storm deck since it only works until end of turn. Bargain can be slow rolled by control decks.

[Megadeus]

Good luck casting twist for anything higher than x=3 in a format of wasteland, daze, spell pierce and force of will. And that is only a simple 3 for 1 which at this time can be achieved simply by paying 1U and delving

[bruizar]

Metalworker likes twist. Ub tezz can ramp to 5 mana on turn 2. Losing 4 cards by turn 1 on the draw sucks. Probably save to come off though. Nice card for nic fit.

[maharis]

Metalworker likes twist. Ub tezz can ramp to 5 mana on turn 2. Losing 4 cards by turn 1 on the draw sucks. Probably save to come off though. Nice card for nic fit.

Mind Twist doesn't affect the board... Why am I using my 5 mana on turn 2 for that instead of just dropping Jace or Tezz? Why am I Metalworking into that instead of Wurmcoil Engine? Similar with Nic Fit. Can't get it with GSZ, no impact on board. Give me Siege Rhino.

Mind Twist is a safe unban that is laughable, but it won't affect Legacy a bit, I'm afraid.

I really think people are underestimating how important Brainstorm is to delver decks. Take Bob's UR list, replace Brainstorm with Preordain and goldfish a couple games. Your hand gets clogged with lands and Squires very quickly. The deck is still good, but it's not a juggernaut. That's what taking Brainstorm out does.

[bruizar]

Your logic is flawed. Treasure cruise doesnt affect the board either, yet it still wins. If # of permanents would lead to higher # of wins, BW tokens would be a deck to beat, and tendrils of agony doesnt exist in tournament play?

[bruizar]

Also, everyone can stop discussing the banning of brainstorm. Brainstorm is the single card that defines eternal play more than anything else (yes, including power9 and force of will). When BS was restricted in vintage, many people stopped playing the game.

[maharis]

Treasure Cruise can the board, because you draw cards that you can use to affect the board, like Lightning Bolt to punch the last 3 through. And if you draw more lands or cantrips, you lose. Discarding cards from your opponent's hand doesn't affect the board at all.

Tendrils of Agony affects your life total. It's also a 1-2 of as a combo finisher. It's not like people are playing the effect in any other form outside of, like, Siege Rhino (Which does affect the board, of course).

Your Brainstorm argument is handwaving, and it's what nedleeds always refers to. Brainstorm only defines eternal play (and especially Legacy) because it's beyond ubiquitous. It is so powerful relative to the rest of the cardpool that it's by far the most played card in the format. The fact that it was restricted in Vintage should only cement how powerful it is, and people shouldn't be shouted down for suggesting a ban of a card that is that powerful and format warping, and re-broken every time Wizards messes around with the design space of a zone Brainstorm affects.

[btm10]

Mind's Desire is dangerous card, imo, yet it's pretty unreliable, too. I guess it's abit harder to build around it than around PiF or AdN, but it may give some free "oops I win" due to good luck.


As much as I like Storm and want it to be good, Desire seems way too dangerous. It's not like we have the option of just restricting it and having it be a psuedo-uncounterable super draw7 - Desire into Desire is a real possibility if the card were unbanned, and it's unbelievably hard to not win once that's happened.



Bargain? With Grislebrand in format, YB might be unbanned. Then again it's easier to cast and use. You cannot draw 19 cards of Grisly...


Maybe it's safe? I think Storm would still want Ad Nauseam because it costs less and can draw more cards than Bargain, but unleashing Bargain could lead to some absurd deck pretty easily. I guess some kind of Junk Nic Fit combo deck? Seems bad, though.



Mind Twist (and yeah, it's not about BS anymore...) is another card that neither Storm nor Delver might use. Even with DRS in picture, you'll be Twisting for what, four cards at most? On turn3+? Laughable... namely once the opponent plays BS in resp. (so it is about BS once again) to hide TC and refuel the hand.
Nice. Time Walk.

The only argument against Mind Twist is the fact that someone would run it in Pox and have the occasional Swamp, Ritual, Ritual, Mind Twist opener, which would be the least fun thing ever once both players had 3 card hands and were in topdeck mode for an entire game. Since the odds on that one are fairly low, I'm fine with Twist being in the format and unplayed.

Seriously though, Earthcraft would be nice. I can't even imagine something banworthy that could be done with it at this point.

[Lemnear]

With BS ban, wouldn't TES position improve compared to ANT, which is right now imo the better storm deck? Imagine going off and being stuck with useless chaff, isn't it better to have 4x BW that needs no hellbent?
And good point on "storm pilots also need to adapt", it was cruel, but I like it. It's not like only the Goblin pilots should start to tinker with their steam age deck...
Speaking of that: it's pretty annoying how the "you need to adapt" very often meant "quit playing non-blue" so far, as most of the non-blue lists were either too weak at all, or at least to weak to insertbogeyman, so the competitive players switch to more powerful decks naturally, and that'S leading them to Islands

I doubt it would improve, simply because the case of drawing Chrome Moxen or multiple Tutors can't be solved elegant, while ANT can simply burn through their cantrips unless all they have in their hand are discard, Rituals, Infernals and value draws like Ad Nauseam or PIF themselves.

"[insert deck] needs to adapt" is fine, but I also understand that it sometimes does not work and decks vanish. There is still no reason most Goblin players continue to play the deck like a tempo shell with Wastelands/Ports against opposing 1-2cc threats and without any tools like discard to battle combo.

"Adapt" has nothing to do with playing blue. Adapting to the metagame, means analyzing your own problems against certain decks and finding solutions. The combo problem for Goblins can be adressed via stuff like Karakas + Thalia, Thorn of Amethyst, Discard, whatsoever, but I don't see anything serious tried or established. Blue isn't always the solution if you face a problem.


Edit:

As much as I like Storm and want it to be good, Desire seems way too dangerous. It's not like we have the option of just restricting it and having it be a psuedo-uncounterable super draw7 - Desire into Desire is a real possibility if the card were unbanned, and it's unbelievably hard to not win once that's happened.

Maybe it's safe? I think Storm would still want Ad Nauseam because it costs less and can draw more cards than Bargain, but unleashing Bargain could lead to some absurd deck pretty easily. I guess some kind of Junk Nic Fit combo deck? Seems bad, though.

Desire is stupid. Revealed Rituals make +3/+5 mana if removed with Desire, it's uncounterable, totally life independent and ... most important ... can be played as a playset unlike Ad Nauseam.

Bargain is an option to run 4 MB "Ad Nauseams" without affecting your deckbuilding in terms of Self-inflicted damage due to High cmc cards in the deck. There would be no reason to durdle with Burning Wish/Grim Tutor for a higher threat-density in storm as you can run 4 Infernal + 4 Bargains. I don't have to mention naturally drawing Bargain, is in fact even a mana cheaper than Chaining infernal for your one-off Ad Nauseam.

[bruizar]

Treasure Cruise can the board, because you draw cards that you can use to affect the board, like Lightning Bolt to punch the last 3 through. And if you draw more lands or cantrips, you lose. Discarding cards from your opponent's hand doesn't affect the board at all.

By your own logic, if TC can affect the board without being a permanent or a card that interacts with permanents, then mind twist also affects the board because it affects treasure cruise by potentially discarding it.

The fact that mind twist can lead to manaless hands on turn 1 means it DOES affect the board. Even though it's an indirect effect, treasure cruise is more indirect. Treasure cruise has a fair shot of grabbing 3 cards that are neither permanents nor cards that interact with the board. Mind Twist has a 100% shot at grabbing a permanent or a card that interacts with the board EXCEPT against manaless dredge, because the very nature of this game requires you to have permanents in your opening hand or be forced to mulligan.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Blue isn't always the solution if you face a problem.
Yet quite often it is.
The only real non-blue, non-hate deck left in ETB is Elves, right? DnT exists only becasue of how inbred the metagame is, and its whole plan is to make the environment as hostile as possible for the decks that rely on five real lands and 32 cantrips. (Ok, ok...)

Everything else is of lower tier (one may argue that it doesn't mean anything, as in Legacy even Tier2 decks are pretty powerful, especially if they're designed to fight the meta, e.g. Blood Moon decks, Pox, Burn), and it's fairly known fact that every % you gain by not playing blue cantrip shell (resistent to and able to play Choke, Cotv or w/e, higher threat density, md/sb material like Chains of M., etc.) are lost due to the unreliability of the non-blue shells that force he players to a) build extremely consistent decks that have little to none flexibility or b) build a flexible pile that lacks consistency. As long as RUG is winning against say MUD, a deck designed to beat the blue metagame, something is wrong. And while the obvious bombs are Ancient Grudge and 5/6 Goyfs, the real working horses are the cantrips that find the end-game cards (and in case of BS they also unmulligan).

Feel free to use any other Ux vs. Anti-U matchup as an example, jst that I played the mu recently and was surprised how easily I won unless there was a turn1 CotV@1.

[Barook]

As far as draw spells are concerned, does Frantic Search really break the format harder than Brainstorm?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

As far as draw spells are concerned, does Frantic Search really break the format harder than Brainstorm?
Definitely not. I cannot understand why it's still on the list. It does nothing. So High tide would be better? Reanimator would get Careful Study that's extra vulnerable to Daze, FLusterstorm and Spell Pierce? Madness would be a Tier2 deck? Where's the trouble?

[Lemnear]

As far as draw spells are concerned, does Frantic Search really break the format harder than Brainstorm?

Apples and Oranges? It's pointless to try drawing parallels here, because there is no one. It's totally out of context.


Edit:

Definitely not. I cannot understand why it's still on the list. It does nothing. So High tide would be better? Reanimator would get Careful Study that's extra vulnerable to Daze, FLusterstorm and Spell Pierce? Madness would be a Tier2 deck? Where's the trouble?

Reanimator gets careful Study 5-8, High Tide /12-post get a Ritual + card-selection spell

[Barook]

It's totally out of context.
Question is whether or not Frantic Search is more powerful than Brainstorm, considering one is on the Banned List while the other is not.

[Lemnear]

Question is whether or not Frantic Search is more powerful than Brainstorm, considering one is on the Banned List while the other is not.

Any matching criteria for "powerful" in regards to these two cards? You can compare Ad Nauseam to Griselbrand to Bargain to discuss why one is banned and the other is not. The same applies to Tinker vs. Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle vs. Tolarian Academy or Intuition vs Gifts Ungiven in Vintage.

The question to ask in regards to unbannings is: "Would the unbanning of this card make the format more diverse and enjoyable?" If the answer is "no" or "potentially the opposite", WotC does not give a fuck.

You can expect something random coming off the list if they decide to swing the banhammer on the Delver + TC circlejerk, for the sake of keeping the ban-list small, so they can pat their own shoulders for "balancing the format without a Giant banlist"

[Echelon]

I'm glad to see some consensus on the power level of the blue shell.

I do find it laughable that people'd consider unbanning Mind's Desire. That card isn't funny in an environment with LEDs. You can pretty much just slide in into the ANT-shell, replacing Ad Nauseam. It Ad Nauseams without the lifeloss AND lets you cast whatever you draw while also combo-ing with PiF. OMG, lol. I used to play it when it was Extended-legal, but even there I could pull of T2 kills when having the utter nuts. Just chain Mind's Desires & Sins of the Pasts FTW. Now let's try that in a format that lets you run LED & buddies.

[FoolofaTook]

Except what you'd want is to commit to a chain of banning since banning FoW would mean this format would be as bad against combo as modern is, and then you have to get 50+ banned cards on the list. At which point you get modern with duals, and who care? A single ban to weaken a dominant archetype wouldn't remove any archetype from the format, wouldn't require any more ban subsequential to it, and would open the space for many T1.5 strats to become actually viable.

What you're proposing make no sense in a real eternal format imho. Banning 10+ cards for a slightly different modern? I don't see the appeal.

If you ban Force of Will then people start playing fast mana again in things other than combo. Plays like Dark Ritual - Dark Ritual big whomping creature come back into play. Plays like Dark Ritual - Chalice of the Void at 1 or Trinisphere come back into play. As Force of Will leaves the format Dark Ritual re-enters and we're back to black as something other than a splash color for a few power cards.

Blue doesn't become just a splash color for a few powerful cards in that situation either. It maintains Threshold, Stifle, Daze with Treasure Cruise to refill. Merfolk is still a big list with Cursecatcher and Chalice as options to suppress combo. Blue-based control might even re-emerge from the shadows that blue aggro control creates.

The DTB list is no longer 4 or 5 blue lists with a couple of non-blue shells. Now it's 4 or 5 non-blue lists with a couple of blue shells. That's a much more healthy meta that allows the majesty of Magic to re-appear after a long absence. Legacy has been broken since at least 2010. That's when the blue shell became the best shell with the banning of Survival of the Fittest and we've had bland sameness at the top ever since.

[Tylert]

Isn't Force of will a necessary evil to counter decks like belcher?
From my point of view, Force of will is a fine card because it's Card disadvantage.
The blue shell itself is too powerfull, and brainstorm with the possibilities it offers (Unmulliganing, hiding card from discard... etc...) is the usual suspect of the blue shell.

[rufus]

...
I do find it laughable that people'd consider unbanning Mind's Desire. That card isn't funny in an environment with LEDs. You can pretty much just slide in into the ANT-shell,...

There are safer cards to unban, but I'm not sure what makes you think that Mind's Desire would work as a drop-in replacement for Ad Nauseam.

Desire is strong, but not that much stronger than cards which are already available. Typically when Mind's Desire is likely to win, so is tutoring for Tendrils of Agony.

[Lemnear]

If you ban Force of Will then people start playing fast mana again in things other than combo. Plays like Dark Ritual - Dark Ritual big whomping creature come back into play. Plays like Dark Ritual - Chalice of the Void at 1 or Trinisphere come back into play. As Force of Will leaves the format Dark Ritual re-enters and we're back to black as something other than a splash color for a few power cards.

Blue doesn't become just a splash color for a few powerful cards in that situation either. It maintains Threshold, Stifle, Daze with Treasure Cruise to refill. Merfolk is still a big list with Cursecatcher and Chalice as options to suppress combo. Blue-based control might even re-emerge from the shadows that blue aggro control creates.

The DTB list is no longer 4 or 5 blue lists with a couple of non-blue shells. Now it's 4 or 5 non-blue lists with a couple of blue shells. That's a much more healthy meta that allows the majesty of Magic to re-appear after a long absence. Legacy has been broken since at least 2010. That's when the blue shell became the best shell with the banning of Survival of the Fittest and we've had bland sameness at the top ever since.

You are the only one prefering to cast a creature, a Chalice or a Trinisphere rather than Ad Nauseam after double Dark Ritual -.-

[FoolofaTook]

You are the only one prefering to cast a creature, a Chalice or a Trinisphere rather than Ad Nauseam after double Dark Ritual -.-

How many Ad Nauseum's does an ANT list have?

Using Dark Ritual to support fast mana in lists that won't win the game right away is what has gone missing in the meta since the blue shell began to dominate and define what everybody else could do.

The right way to look at it is that Force of Will and the blue shell has destroyed combo and fast mana aggro. That's something we can point at with no fear of contradiction. Combo is about 5% of the metagame right now after Elves is taken out of the picture. Fast mana aggro even less than that.

Everybody talks about how combo will absolutely dominate and destroy the meta if Force of Will is removed. Why don't we all talk about how having Force of Will in the meta has destroyed countless other archetypes over the years?

[Megadeus]

I can't believe people are actually arguing for a force of will ban. Do you people play legacy or vintage?

[iamajellydonut]

The right way to look at it is that Force of Will and the blue shell has destroyed combo and fast mana aggro. That's something we can point at with no fear of contradiction. Combo is about 5% of the metagame right now after Elves is taken out of the picture. Fast mana aggro even less than that.

Force of Will has not "destroyed" combo. Combo is alive and healthy in various forms, and Force of Will acts as an "oh shit" to keep combo in check. If there is anything "dead" about combo, it is only through lack of interest. With your comment about combo only representing 5% of the meta without Elves, I assume you're talking about something like ANT only remaining and not considering things like Show and Tell and Dredge and Reanimator as combo. They would of course represent a much smaller percentage considering Elves's performance, but it wouldn't really be anything that's not directly comparable to how control would look without Miracles or aggro without UR Delver. Long live midrange.

Also, I'm not sure how you mean your comment about fast mana aggro (fucking really?) being dead because of Force of Will. If you mean players shifted from junky unreliable shells with few reasonable global answers to decks that were capable of playing Force of Will, you hit the nail on the head. If you mean to imply that aggro actually gives a fuck about playing against Force of Will, you're very incorrect.

[Megadeus]

Theonly reason I don't like force now is because the blue decks can overcome the card disadvantage with Cruise now. Before, force of will was a bad bad card.

[rufus]

...
Everybody talks about how combo will absolutely dominate and destroy the meta if Force of Will is removed. Why don't we all talk about how having Force of Will in the meta has destroyed countless other archetypes over the years?

I think that cards like Force of Will that punish game plans which heavily invest in a single spell are important to the diversity of the format, and that instead of banning it, it would be nice to see cards with a similar profile in other colors.

[maharis]

I think that cards like Force of Will that punish game plans which heavily invest in a single spell are important to the diversity of the format, and that instead of banning it, it would be nice to see cards with a similar profile in other colors.

A-greed. Force is fine. After 20 years of cards, fair decks have way too much threat density and value to make a Force backbreaking to their plan. Turning your whatever spell into a Hymn to Tourach, then you just cast some other bomb, is fine. Combo decks have to play around it but that's the price of going all-in on a powerful instant-win plan. I know it's just as omnipresent as Brainstorm but its actual utility is sorely limited (and Brainstorm makes it better at times where it would be a dead card).



Yet quite often it is.
The only real non-blue, non-hate deck left in ETB is Elves, right? DnT exists only becasue of how inbred the metagame is, and its whole plan is to make the environment as hostile as possible for the decks that rely on five real lands and 32 cantrips. (Ok, ok...)

This is the real issue with the metagame at this time. One argument I've heard for keeping BS in the format is that decks like Food Chain or Aluren need it to work. That's great, but it's not like you show up at a tournament and you just get overrun by Food Chain decks because so many people love it. There are more powerful combos, there are more powerful creature decks, and there is really no other reason other than pure love of the game why you would play a second-tier deck when you have all the staples for the most powerful decks.

Meanwhile, if you lack those staples or simply don't want to spend $40 and your whole Sunday playing Delver mirrors, your deck which may be full of very powerful cards in a vacuum simply can't compete with the raw efficiency of the blue tempo shell. So what do you do? You try to cut off their advantage. That means instead of playing more powerful cards, you are stuck playing lame hatebears that just make your deck some sort of inferior D&T. Go take a look in the Rock, Jund, DGA, Maverick threads. We're basically discussing which hatebears are maindeckable and how cool cards like Hymn or Liliana are invalidated by the card advantage and selection of the blue shell. Sure, that includes some discussion of style points cards like Chains, but if you play Chains yourself, you end up policing your own fun as well. Or you just cave and play blue yourself and we have mirror after mirror of the same counterburn decks. It's making the format stale.

Brainstorm is warping the format around it. You play a Brainstorm deck, you play one of three decks like Elves, Burn, or Dredge that can sort of ignore Brainstorm, or you overload your deck with Brainstorm hate like D&T, or you lose. That's the simple fact.

[ahg113]

I can't believe people are actually arguing for a force of will ban. Do you people play legacy or vintage?

The talk of banning FoW seems to be a complicit, "If we can't ban BS because reasons, we'll pick off a known associate." Not the best remedy, but something more than nothing.

[Megadeus]

The talk of banning FoW seems to be a complicit, "If we can't ban BS because reasons, we'll pick off a known associate." Not the best remedy, but something more than nothing.

Except a ban of force would actually hurt the format rather than help it. As much as you can scream about there being a multitude of free counters (foil, MB Trap, and such) they are completely terrible and if you are playing them, you probably are losing.

[Lemnear]

You play a Brainstorm deck, you play one of three decks like Elves, Burn, or Dredge that can sort of ignore Brainstorm, or you overload your deck with Brainstorm hate like D&T, or you lose. That's the simple fact.

I see Tezz, 12-Post, Goblins, Jund, Imperial Painter, Maverick, Slivers, Dragon Stompy, Meerfolk, Junk, Nic Fit, Foodchain, Lands.dec and Oops! All Spells! with top 8 Performances within the last two months.

[FoolofaTook]

Force of Will has not "destroyed" combo. Combo is alive and healthy in various forms, and Force of Will acts as an "oh shit" to keep combo in check. If there is anything "dead" about combo, it is only through lack of interest. With your comment about combo only representing 5% of the meta without Elves, I assume you're talking about something like ANT only remaining and not considering things like Show and Tell and Dredge and Reanimator as combo. They would of course represent a much smaller percentage considering Elves's performance, but it wouldn't really be anything that's not directly comparable to how control would look without Miracles or aggro without UR Delver. Long live midrange.

Also, I'm not sure how you mean your comment about fast mana aggro (fucking really?) being dead because of Force of Will. If you mean players shifted from junky unreliable shells with few reasonable global answers to decks that were capable of playing Force of Will, you hit the nail on the head. If you mean to imply that aggro actually gives a fuck about playing against Force of Will, you're very incorrect.

In a meta ruled by the blue shell and FoW the logical answer for aggro lists is to have many redundant threats that take FoW and basically say "fine 2-for-1 yourself and I'll put out another threat next turn and make you pay for it". The alternate approach of trying to do something spectacularly aggro on turn 1 just doesn't pay when 40% of the time the opponent is just going to FoW your end result and another 40% of the time the threat will be removed afterwards.

Malakir Bloodwitch would be an interesting card to play in this meta were it not for Force of Will. It would be the logical successor to the Juzam Djinn lists that also went out of favor at exactly the point that Force of Will emerged as a staple.

[testing32]

I see Tezz, 12-Post, Goblins, Jund, Imperial Painter, Maverick, Slivers, Dragon Stompy, Meerfolk, Junk, Nic Fit, Foodchain, Lands.dec and Oops! All Spells! with top 8 Performances within the last two months.

And some people live to be 90 while smoking a pack a day. What is your point?

[wonderPreaux]

And some people live to be 90 while smoking a pack a day. What is your point?

I think his point is that none of those decks are elves, burn, dredge, or DnT, as the previous poster attested. the argument that these results are flukes feels pretty sketchy when Lem listed over a dozen examples...

[FoolofaTook]

I think that cards like Force of Will that punish game plans which heavily invest in a single spell are important to the diversity of the format, and that instead of banning it, it would be nice to see cards with a similar profile in other colors.

The problem with this approach is that Magic is not Chess and forcing players to play with a very limited defined set of spells doesn't change that fact. There's still a luck element involved and when you herd people towards reducing that luck element you make the game much blander than it ought to be. That's what the blue shell does.

There are dozens of viable archetypes that play off in a rock-paper-scissors format in which several lists are not all of rock-paper and scissors. That's what the best Delver lists are now. They're rock-paper-scissors all wrapped up in one. Their weaknesses only express themselves against other Delver lists and a few tier 1 non-Delver lists. That's because all of those lists are also rock-paper-scissors but skewed a bit off of the Delver list in question.

We'd be much better off back in the 2007 paradigm where there was a rock-paper-scissors list in Landstill but it could be beaten by several other things that were just faster than it or came at it from a tough angle. We'd be better off in the 2009 paradigm where there was a rock-paper-scissors list in Threshold CounterTop but it could be beat by very threat dense mid-range lists once they'd flipped it and it still had issues against things like Goblins.

What we have now is a much wider range of rock-paper-scissors lists but almost all of them are focused on the blue shell and as a group they heavily suppress the other archetypes that would prey on any one of them but can't match up well against the field of them.

That's just bad for Magic. It's not Chess. It's Magic.

[maharis]

I think his point is that none of those decks are elves, burn, dredge, or DnT, as the previous poster attested. the argument that these results are flukes feels pretty sketchy when Lem listed over a dozen examples...

http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy&fecha=2014-10

68% of the decks are Brainstorm decks.

12% of the decks are Dredge, Burn, Elves, or D&T.

About 20 other archetypes are represented in the other 10%.

You were .3% likely to top an event with The Rock in October. You were 2.5% likely to do so with Dredge. That is 8 times more likely. You are 6.8 times more likely to top an event with a random Brainstorm deck than you are with a random non-Brainstorm, non-Elves/D&T/Burn/Dredge deck.

That is the difference between outliers and real data.

[Lemnear]

http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy&fecha=2014-10

68% of the decks are Brainstorm decks.

12% of the decks are Dredge, Burn, Elves, or D&T.

About 20 other archetypes are represented in the other 10%.

You were .3% likely to top an event with The Rock in October. You were 2.5% likely to do so with Dredge. That is 8 times more likely. You are 6.8 times more likely to top an event with a random Brainstorm deck than you are with a random non-Brainstorm, non-Elves/D&T/Burn/Dredge deck.

That is the difference between outliers and real data.

Maybe you should learn to interpret numbers. You are NOT more likely to Top 8 just because of playing Brainstorm based on that numbers. In fact, all these numbers have absolutely ZERO effect on you being able to top 8 an event.

It's plain obvious that if 68% of the field play Brainstorm, the Chance that you see Brainstorm in a Top 8 is more likely than Golgari Gravetroll which is in only 2,5% of decks.


Edit: if more than 30% of decks in Top 8s don't run Brainstorm, I would step back from making bold statements a la "Play Brainstorm or loose"

[FoolofaTook]

Maybe you should learn to interpret numbers. You are NOT more likely to Top 8 just because of playing Brainstorm based on that numbers. In fact, all these numbers have absolutely ZERO effect on you being able to top 8 an event.

It's plain obvious that if 68% of the field play Brainstorm, the Chance that you see Brainstorm in a Top 8 is more likely than Golgari Gravetroll which is in only 2,5% of decks.

Yes, however if 68% of the field play Brainstorm then you have a meta warped by Brainstorm so it doesn't matter that they don't get into the top 8 at higher percentages than their play level. They certainly do suppress other lists that would otherwise be a bigger part of the field and likely cut into the dominance of Brainstorm lists in the top 8.

[Lemnear]

Yes, however if 68% of the field play Brainstorm then you have a meta warped by Brainstorm so it doesn't matter that they don't get into the top 8 at higher percentages than their play level. They certainly do suppress other lists that would otherwise be a bigger part of the field and likely cut into the dominance of Brainstorm lists in the top 8.

It would be helpful if you start realizing that it's not Brainstorm itself which wins games, warps the metagame or offends some players, but the whole shell, which is tuned to create a redundancy, which other colors can't mimic.

It doesn't matter if you chop Brainstorm, if Preordain could replace it in most lists. All you do is hurting decks which need to shuffle dead pieces away, which is most likely if you play combo.

[maharis]

What is the reason to play a deck without Brainstorm if 68% of top decks do, though? How is that not format-warping? Cards entering the format are judged by how well they interact with Brainstorm.

I highly suggest you test a Delver deck with 4 Preordain instead of 4 Brainstorm. It is far less consistent against fair decks, but it retains the exact same blue count and ability to dig for Force of Will in matchups where that is relevant (since your consistent argument against banning Brainstorm is that we would be overrun with glass-cannon combos).

Both Preordain and Brainstorm dig you three cards from the top of your library to find Force when the only thing that matters is that you have it in your hand. The only slight differences are the cases where you do not have a blue card besides the cantrip itself in your hand or if you are trying to do it at instant speed for some reason.

What you can't do with Preordain is replace the land and Spell Pierce in your hand with a Goyf and a removal spell when you are facing down an army of attackers. You still have to hold the dead cards and choose between a blocker or removal that turn.

[Lemnear]

What is the reason to play a deck without Brainstorm if 68% of top decks do, though? How is that not format-warping? Cards entering the format are judged by how well they interact with Brainstorm.

I highly suggest you test a Delver deck with 4 Preordain instead of 4 Brainstorm. It is far less consistent against fair decks, but it retains the exact same blue count and ability to dig for Force of Will in matchups where that is relevant (since your consistent argument against banning Brainstorm is that we would be overrun with glass-cannon combos).

Both Preordain and Brainstorm dig you three cards from the top of your library to find Force when the only thing that matters is that you have it in your hand. The only slight differences are the cases where you do not have a blue card besides the cantrip itself in your hand or if you are trying to do it at instant speed for some reason.

What you can't do with Preordain is replace the land and Spell Pierce in your hand with a Goyf and a removal spell when you are facing down an army of attackers. You still have to hold the dead cards and choose between a blocker or removal that turn.

If everyone would Judge cards simply because how well they play with Brainstorm, Punishing Fire and 12-Post would never have seen the Light of Day as engines. Thanks god, not everyone is that narrow minded.

You know that being less consistent overall in terms of Delver is a big difference to being unplayable if we talk about decks like S&T/Reanimator/etc.? In regards to glas-Cannon combo: The talk was primary about banning FoW. On a secondary Position within that topic, Glas-Cannon combo would increase as a result of traditional, resistant combo like S&T suffering. I doubt the overall number of combo decks would increase and I never said we would be "overrun" because of a Brainstorm-Ban.

It's pointless to throw in examples of current deckdesign which grounds on "Brainstorm can switch cards out if neccessary" and just switch Brainstorm with Preordain. I suspect, people would credit the fact that they can't shuffle dead cards away anymore with their deckbuilding and remove most of the conditional stuff we run today, especially if the whole metagame is changing and makes certain cards unnecessary for example. The idea that people switch 4 cards out and call it a day is stupid.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

If everyone would Judge cards simply because how well they play with Brainstorm, Punishing Fire and 12-Post would never have seen the Light of Day as engines. Thanks god, not everyone is that narrow minded.
Then there are lots of narrow-minded people out there in the lgs/scg scene, as I see far more DelverHerpGo decks than anything from above list. Which brings me back to the fact that I should honestly build the RUG PFire Vexing Sphinx Counterbalance deck...

[Ellomdian]

It's plain obvious that if 68% of the field play Brainstorm, the Chance that you see Brainstorm in a Top 8 is more likely than Golgari Gravetroll which is in only 2,5% of decks.


Honestly, this is the biggest issue with statistical analysis based on results - we don't get to tie an 'Expected to perform' value to a result. If you have a 100 person tournament, and 50 people play brainstorm, 25 people play Elves, 24 people play Storm, and 1 person plays Dredge, you should expect to see the top 8 have 4 Brainstorm, 2 Elves, and 2 Storm. If that Dredge player makes the Top 8 (and especially if they win) then the deck significantly over-performed.

Most of the analysis here seems to be done regardless of the composition of the field, and seems to discount a very crucial factor: 40-60% of the attendance at Legacy events either enjoy or choose to cast Brainstorm. The argument to ban Brainstorm has nothing to do with your individual likelihood to win a given tournament by playing or not playing a certain card, and everything to do with the perception that a vocal minority of active players seem to hold: That banning Brainstorm would somehow make Legacy "Better." And yet, we are sitting a week out from the largest Legacy GP in NA, and what could very well be the largest Legacy GP ever.

And guess what? It will likely be won by a deck playing Brainstorm. And that's OK.

[bruizar]

Without significance testing, those percentages don't say a whole lot. Especially for distinguishing rogue decks' lucky top 8's and valid new contestants of the meta, proper analysis should be conducted. Does anyone know if it's possible to obtain / crawl detailed data from MTGO? Offline magic is pretty much useless for proper analysis.

[bruizar]

If I had the data I'd use discriminant analysis or multinomial logit to predict upcoming meta games at the tournament / city level. You could even use time series analysis to fine tune choice modeling using assumptions that if player X plays sneak and show the last Y times, the odds that Sneak and Show is his only deck Z increases with some arbitrary amount.

That means you'd get a model that, over time, quiet literally maps all players / DCI numbers and the decks they own / deck choice evolution.

You could cluster (non-hierarchical clustering & k-means) DCI numbers using geographic distance / willingness to travel and identify which players will be most likely to attend, and which ones will be too far away from the tournament. You could then moderate that willingness to travel using tournament size (Bazaar of Moxen / Ovinogeddon) and event coverage (Chance of Camera time @ SCG / WOTC tournament).

and this is why

http://archive.wizards.com/dci/judge/images/result_slip.jpg


sucks


edit:

This is also why Hearthstone, in the end, will be the more successful game. Analysis > Intuition

[maharis]

Honestly, this is the biggest issue with statistical analysis based on results - we don't get to tie an 'Expected to perform' value to a result. If you have a 100 person tournament, and 50 people play brainstorm, 25 people play Elves, 24 people play Storm, and 1 person plays Dredge, you should expect to see the top 8 have 4 Brainstorm, 2 Elves, and 2 Storm. If that Dredge player makes the Top 8 (and especially if they win) then the deck significantly over-performed.

Most of the analysis here seems to be done regardless of the composition of the field, and seems to discount a very crucial factor: 40-60% of the attendance at Legacy events either enjoy or choose to cast Brainstorm. The argument to ban Brainstorm has nothing to do with your individual likelihood to win a given tournament by playing or not playing a certain card, and everything to do with the perception that a vocal minority of active players seem to hold: That banning Brainstorm would somehow make Legacy "Better." And yet, we are sitting a week out from what looks to be the largest Legacy GP in NA, and what could very well be the largest Legacy GP ever.

And guess what? It will likely be won by a deck playing Brainstorm. And that's OK.

It's almost impossible to get a full metagame report from any Legacy tournament, so your 40%-60% number isn't tied to anything at all other than your feeling. Of course, both values fall under the 68% actual reported penetration of the card in top 8s, which means that if it is as low as 40%-60% at an average tournament, then Brainstorm decks do outperform their expected results, sometimes significantly so. In fact, I would posit that the Elves, D&T, Burn, Dredge decks are outperforming their expected results because so much of the field is on a Brainstorm deck. Which goes back to what I said: You play Brainstorm, or you play one of a few non-Brainstorm meta-stalking decks, or you likely lose.

It's great that a lot of people like playing legacy. I am one of them. I'm not ranting about Brainstorm in new posts or anything, I'm doing it in the thread that's for ban list discussion specifically. And in this thread when people suggest that the currently most broken card in all of Legacy is a 1/1 that's a conditional 3/2 with no innate protection from removal... well, that just doesn't seem right. Powerful, out of flavor, sure. But I can't take seriously the concept that a french vanilla creature is the most broken card in a format where the threshold for banning is a card like Oath of Druids or Yawgmoth's Bargain.

Many of the non-Brainstorm cards that are discussed ITT impact the top of the library: Delver, Terminus, SDT, Counterbalance, even Treasure Cruise to an extent. Controlling what you draw is one of the most powerful effects in the game. The fact is that Brainstorm's effect is so unique that it is often one of the only ways to influence the way these cards work is why it is so powerful. Cards like Sylvan Library, SDT or Ponder don't let you put cards from your hand back to the top of the library, and certainly not for one mana at instant speed.

While I understand that this unique and powerful effect is attractive to many players, the same could be said about a lot of unique and powerful effects currently on the banned list for being too powerful. All available data and the eye test indicate that this card is warping the metagame in that you are playing it, overtuning to fight it, or losing. Banning Brainstorm rather than Delver would be right in line with Wizards' history of banning enablers in Legacy instead of kill conditions. That is why Mystical Tutor, Windfall, and Mind's Desire are banned instead of Tendrils of Agony.

[bruizar]

The intuition suggests that brainstorm is a problem card, but it MIGHT NOT be Brainstorm. Correlation is not causation. It could very well be that Force of Will or Lightning Bolt are the true culprits (FoW being a necessary evil to contain combo). As it stands, NO ONE knows how badly Brainstorm warps the meta in favor of blue decks because no one here has the empirical evidence with statistical rigor to prove that Brainstorm is the correct ban.

Inferring from the fact that Wizards doesn't even TEST for eternal, I DOUBT that they will have done anything more than look at mtgtop8.com for their ban decisions.

[Lord Seth]

I think one key point in regards to Force of Will vs. Brainstorm that should be noted: Force of Will is unimpressive or even flat-out bad in some matchups. It's often sided out for a reason. How many people have ever sided out a Brainstorm in Legacy?

[bruizar]

Basically, everybody is talking out of his ass here. Both camps, for and against Brainstorm, are grounded in anecdotal evidence, opinions and are equipped with weak empirical evidence. Top 8's mean nothing if you don't get the full meta breakdown. You guys aren't cardslingers, you're a bunch of tarot readers :)

[bruizar]

I think one key point in regards to Force of Will vs. Brainstorm that should be noted: Force of Will is unimpressive or even flat-out bad in some matchups. It's often sided out for a reason. How many people have ever sided out a Brainstorm in Legacy?

That's a valid observation. I think that if you want to ban Brainstorm, you'd need to take into account the 'tenure' of the card (it's been getting top 8's since the Y2K bug), and compare that to other cards' tenure while looking at the composition of the meta for every tournament (e.g. proportion of brainstorm decks in total, how many top8). This way you can see which cards are 'flavors of the months' and which ones are true staples you cannot do without. I wanted to build a brainstorm quotient before, but since tournament organizers are terrible data collectors there's not much that I can do.

No data = no insights. Guess work is a terrible basis for ban-decisions.

If we ever want to progress the eternal format, tournament organizers must work to collect the data so that we can do proper analysis on them. This means more elaborate result slips (note play or draw), reporting of all FULL deck lists NOT just top 8's and standings in between EACH round; as well as more camera event coverage to add context to findings (e.g. player cheats on camera, mark as an outlier in following datasets; but also to gain a better understanding as a community of the development of matches / fundamental turns / key spells.).

[menace13]

Basically, everybody is talking out of his ass here. Both camps, for and against Brainstorm, are grounded in anecdotal evidence, opinions and are equipped with weak empirical evidence. Top 8's mean nothing if you don't get the full meta breakdown. You guys aren't cardslingers, you're a bunch of tarot readers :)
Some of the most nonsensical bullshit I've ever heard on this forum. Sorry, but your Brainstorm quotient isn't even used by the DCI on any card nor will it ever be. They look at winning deck lists. Evidenced by every past banning.

[nedleeds]

I think that if you want to ban Brainstorm, you'd need to take into account the 'tenure' of the card

Why? 'True Staple' isn't a ban criteria. It's up there with 'Pillar of the Format', 'Skill Intensive', 'Skill Tester', 'Go play modern'.

[bruizar]

Some of the most nonsensical bullshit I've ever heard on this forum. Sorry, but your Brainstorm quotient isn't even used by the DCI on any card nor will it ever be. They look at winning deck lists. Evidenced by every past banning.

If 100% of the decks in a tournament run Brainstorm, then winning with Brainstorm is as meaningless as it is to win with basic island.


Why? 'True Staple' isn't a ban criteria. It's up there with 'Pillar of the Format', 'Skill Intensive', 'Skill Tester', 'Go play modern'.

You wouldn't ONLY look at tenure. You would look at several criteria of which tenure would be a part. Not looking at tenure causes knee-jerk reactions like Mental Misstep and potentially now Treasure Cruise too. The toxicity of a card becomes more evident when you use time series analysis. It helps remove guesswork from the equation by giving more statistical rigor / empirical support.

[Barook]

If 100% of the decks in a tournament run Brainstorm, then winning with Brainstorm is as meaningless as it is to win with basic island.
So what? That's 100% placing Brainstorm decks, and that's what Wizards cares about.

[bruizar]

@Barook: Again, correlation and causation are two different things. Maybe it's because Brainstorm is too good; maybe it's because people just LIKE to play blue in eternal formats. There is no way to tell this with certainty. It's entirely subjective. If WOTC want to ban a card that's as iconic for eternal as Brainstorm, at least they should provide good analysis and support the argumentation with statistical tests, unless WOTC actively WANTS to incite the entire community.

EDIT:

Let's assume for instance that 100% of legacy players play brainstorm
Let's assume that 100% of legacy players do so because they love playing the card (having options is more fun than having no options!)
Let's assume that WOTC will ban Brainstorm.

Is this a net positive for the game/players? No! Why take away something that people like? IF these assumptions largely hold true, than that means that Brainstorm's power is irrelevant to the question whether or not it will get banned because it holds virtual 'immunity' comparable to the cards on the reserved list.

That would mean that discussing Brainstorm as a potential card for banning is the same as discussing whether or not dual lands will be reprinted.

[Gheizen64]

Let's assume for a moment that 10% of the players play mystical tutor
Let's assume for a moment that 100% of those players do so because they love the card
Let's assume that WotC ban Myst.... oh wait.

Players "liking" a card has never been a criteria for banning and never will be. Either Survival, Mystical etc... would never have been banned.
If anything, it's the opposite. When playing against a strat get deemed "unfun" it's more likely to get banned (see: every combo ban ever by WotC). And tbh i'm pretty annoyed to see 4xbrainstorm everymatch, but more than that, i'm annoyed that exist no way to actually fight the strat of mass cheap cantrips because the card deemed to hate such strategies are leap and bounds below them in powerlevel, meaning the format has no meaningful way to shift away from the dominant strat.

In circle
Forever

[Bed Decks Palyer]

And guess what? It will likely be won by a deck playing Demonic Tutor. And that's OK.
Ftfy, and there goes the idea of BS being ok. People will play w/e gets them to the top, but this doesn't mean that those cards are fine and balanced.
Also, it doesn't even mean that they enjoy the game, I for one wasn't at a tournament for months and don't plan to attend one for another months or maybe years, but the mere fact that MtG is a drug is enough for me to dick around Source and/or virtually sleeve virtual Brainstorms while wasting my time with MWS.

[DTC]

Bandwagoning post here, since I can't play Legacy except when I travel to Premier events, my vote for brainstorm is almost entirely in theoretical argument. I haven't really seen any arguments I like about brainstorm getting banned.

While I don't give a damn about brainstorm's nostalgia in the format, I just don't see any argument for banning it. The card is definitely a skill pillar. It's one of the most flexible blue cards in the game, and the way it's played can be a huge factor in a lot of games. It's not degenerate and doesn't hurt the format. I've seen some people play poorly with brainstorm and get punished. The brainstorm lock is real. The people who get the most value out of brainstorm are those who are playing it skillfully, why ban a card that helps skilled players gain a further edge?

Playing around opposing brainstorms is also a skill that a lot of people playing fair blue decks will often take into consideration. Knowing when to counter their brainstorms to be able to answer it. Or force a play where they will use brainstorm to hide their key cards in situations like thoughtseize or v. clique plays, and you can capitalize on it with a counter to 2for1. It's also an information tool. If an opponent brainstorms at instant speed it can often mean that they are trying to protect a card in hand, or desperately seek for an answer.

It can set up plays as well, or be a nice end of turn play if you have a fetch land uncracked in play and basically recall your opponent. Of course also standard things like using it with any shuffle effect to filter your hand is an important tool.

In general I still feel there's too much reason for Legacy to keep brainstorm around. The reason it's played in such high numbers is because it's one of the most versatile cards in the format while also being very balanced for its cost. 100% of decks in a top8 might include a set of brainstorms, and that's fine because it's not the brainstorm that's getting them there in the first place.

[HrishiQQ]

Honestly all those arguments could conceivably be made for a number of cards sitting on the banned list.

[Lemnear]

So what? That's 100% placing Brainstorm decks, and that's what Wizards cares about.

If that was an actual argument, Wizards would have banned Fetchlands in all formats and Tarmogoyf in Modern ... oh! .... and Mystical Tutor would be still Legacy legal!

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

The card is definitely a skill pillar. It's one of the most flexible blue cards in the game, and the way it's played can be a huge factor in a lot of games.

The returns to skill on Brainstorm are vastly overstated by its proponents. While Brainstorm is an extremely versatile card, what to do with it is usually clear for the overwhelming majority of hand/game states. Demonic Tutor is a pretty versatile card too...you can grab any card in your deck! But in most cases the card to pluck from the pile is patently obvious.

Plus, it's silly to discuss the "skill levels" of cards, anyway. Cards aren't hard to play, decks and formats are. And looking at things from this level, Brainstorm tends to remove just as much, if not (in all likelihood) more "skill points" out of the format as it brings in. Consider:

-In a format without Brainstorm, deck construction becomes a much more interesting affair. Shells that rely upon cantrips don't have one clear best choice in Brainstorm, and have tougher decisions to make. Preordain versus Ponder is going to be a tough decision in many 75s, which often may depend on the meta. Decks that need a lot of cantrips are forced to dig deep into the back catalogue; oldies like Portent and Predict could become relevant, or a sly player's super secret tech. Currently, Brainstorm simply muscles them ot of the format...it's simply [i]so[/] much better than it's "peers".

Not to mention a lot of the more greedy manabases become untenable, forcing those playing archetypes like U/x/y Tempo to make the choice between more colors or more consistency.

-Discard actually becomes a serious factor in the metagame, forcing adaptation around it. Not only will players actually have to learn how to play around discard (in a ways that don't involve tapping an Island and putting two cards on top of their deck), but it makes deckbuilding, sideboarding, and metagaming more interesting. Players will be forced to consider anti-discard measures rather than having them as an auto-4-of in every deck with Blue.

-The ability to evaluate opening hands and mulligan becomes a much more important skill. Brainstorm allows for stupid keeps, as it can essentially swap out 3 cards in hand, making the art of the mulligan a less necessary discipline to train in.


All in all, Brainstorm's removal would make for a much more skill-intensive Legacy format than the current one, testing player's deckbuilding, metagaming, and play skills more than the one where 75% of the field jams 4x Swiss Army Spell into their lists without question. This argument is also a lot more concrete than one that maintains that because Brainstorm can do a lot of things, there are necessarily difficult decisions in a majority of situations; the stance adopted by many Brainstorm proponents.

[bruizar]

stuff.

+1

I can agree with pretty much everything you said. The only thing you missed is that part of the appeal of an eternal format is power level. Why play vintage when you can't play with SOLOMOXEN? Why play legacy when you can't play with Brainstorm? Modern offers a less competitive environment where there's a lot of room for innovation given the fact that reprints are so abundant in the last few years (namely, 10x rav duals 10x fetch)

[Lemnear]

The returns to skill on Brainstorm are vastly overstated by its proponents. While Brainstorm is an extremely versatile card, what to do with it is usually clear for the overwhelming majority of hand/game states. Demonic Tutor is a pretty versatile card too...you can grab any card in your deck! But in most cases the card to pluck from the pile is patently obvious.

Plus, it's silly to discuss the "skill levels" of cards, anyway. Cards aren't hard to play, decks and formats are. And looking at things from this level, Brainstorm tends to remove just as much, if not (in all likelihood) more "skill points" out of the format as it brings in. Consider:

-In a format without Brainstorm, deck construction becomes a much more interesting affair. Shells that rely upon cantrips don't have one clear best choice in Brainstorm, and have tougher decisions to make. Preordain versus Ponder is going to be a tough decision in many 75s, which often may depend on the meta. Decks that need a lot of cantrips are forced to dig deep into the back catalogue; oldies like Portent and Predict could become relevant, or a sly player's super secret tech. Currently, Brainstorm simply muscles them ot of the format...it's simply [i]so[/] much better than it's "peers".

Not to mention a lot of the more greedy manabases become untenable, forcing those playing archetypes like U/x/y Tempo to make the choice between more colors or more consistency.

-Discard actually becomes a serious factor in the metagame, forcing adaptation around it. Not only will players actually have to learn how to play around discard (in a ways that don't involve tapping an Island and putting two cards on top of their deck), but it makes deckbuilding, sideboarding, and metagaming more interesting. Players will be forced to consider anti-discard measures rather than having them as an auto-4-of in every deck with Blue.

-The ability to evaluate opening hands and mulligan becomes a much more important skill. Brainstorm allows for stupid keeps, as it can essentially swap out 3 cards in hand, making the art of the mulligan a less necessary discipline to train in.


All in all, Brainstorm's removal would make for a much more skill-intensive Legacy format than the current one, testing player's deckbuilding, metagaming, and play skills more than the one where 75% of the field jams 4x Swiss Army Spell into their lists without question. This argument is also a lot more concrete than one that maintains that because Brainstorm can do a lot of things, there are necessarily difficult decisions in a majority of situations; the stance adopted by many Brainstorm proponents.

Hilarious. People will just run Preordain AND Ponder (AND Gitaxian Probe) for the same number of card selection and digging like they did with Brainstorm to support their Delvers! Look at fucking Modern which has a 44% penetration of UR Delver atm just because how stupid Delver + TC is with plenty of Cantrips to chain together. The only thing you won't see anymore are greedy, conditional cards because you can't shuffle them away on demand. There the deckbuilding will be a factor, but other than that, we already know that Delver just works perfect without Brainstorm to setup the flip.

[bruizar]

It really ain't so hard to beat delver of secrets; at least in UR Delver (which uses cruise). Sudden Shock, Abrupt Decay or Volcanic Fallout are ways to beat it. Once you kill their clock, you just make land drops until all their tempo counters become irrelevant. If Delver decks are the problem here, people should just start playing with uncounterable removal. Afraid of Young Pyromancer tokens? Sudden Shock + Volcanic Fallout. Afraid of Monastery Swiftspear? Sudden Shock when you have priority.

A deck running Spell Pierce, Force of Will, and a bunch of cantrips with super fragile threats becomes a pile when you can remove the creatures without a way to interact with you.

rug delver is much harder because of goyf and mongoose, but they dont run TC.


If 44% of the field is UR Delver, then just board in 15 hate cards. You'll have a 44% chance of getting a bye every round.

[Lemnear]

It really ain't so hard to beat delver of secrets; at least in UR Delver (which uses cruise). Sudden Shock, Abrupt Decay or Volcanic Fallout are ways to beat it. Once you kill their clock, you just make land drops until all their tempo counters become irrelevant. If Delver decks are the problem here, people should just start playing with uncounterable removal. Afraid of Young Pyromancer tokens? Sudden Shock + Volcanic Fallout. Afraid of Monastery Swiftspear? Sudden Shock when you have priority.

A deck running Spell Pierce, Force of Will, and a bunch of cantrips with super fragile threats becomes a pile when you can remove the creatures without a way to interact with you.

Then they cantrip into the next creature, because cantrips and the threats are so cheap. If hating out Delver is soooooo easy, I wonder why the fucking creature/strategy just top 8s in large numbers everywhere for years.

[bruizar]

Then they cantrip into the next creature, because cantrips and the threats are so cheap. If hating out Delver is soooooo easy, I wonder why the fucking creature/strategy just top 8s in large numbers everywhere for years.

The creature strategy used to be about 2 for 1's (Bloodbraid Elf, Snapcaster Mage, Baleful Strix, Stoneforge Mystic, Lingering Souls, Shardless Agent) and those that could survive lightning bolt and / or swords to plowshares (Nimble Mongoose, Tarmogoyf, Geist of Saint Traft). Now it's about toughness 1 and 2 creatures. Those are easily hated out.

Let them cantrip (e.g. durdle at this stage) while you make your land drops. Tempo needs an early clock to win. Once you have enough land drops, they only have Force of Will, which you by then can probably force a decent threat through.

[Zombie]

stuff

Let's not forget the simple decision of whether to cantrip or to keep counter mana up.

[Echelon]

Then they cantrip into the next creature, because cantrips and the threats are so cheap. If hating out Delver is soooooo easy, I wonder why the fucking creature/strategy just top 8s in large numbers everywhere for years.

It's all about dat shell :cool:. Good luck explaining it to the masses!

[Lemnear]

It's all about dat shell :cool:. Good luck explaining it to the masses!

The shell reduces variance. Less variance = more wins. All you can do at this point is either banning the shell and turn Legacy into quasi Modern, accept Status quo or chop the head off of the Hydra in terms of threats and let pilots of the shell work for their victories.

I'm annoyed by the ever same bullshit of the ever same crowd complaining about the blue cantrip shell, combo and why Loam/Goblins/Zoo are no longer top performers.

[M+1]

And tbh i'm pretty annoyed to see 4xbrainstorm everymatch, but more than that, i'm annoyed that exist no way to actually fight the strat of mass cheap cantrips because the card deemed to hate such strategies are leap and bounds below them in powerlevel, meaning the format has no meaningful way to shift away from the dominant strat.

There is no strategy of mass cheap cantrips. Many Legacy decks of all colors play 5-10 blue cantrips for consistency, and this is great for the format. Legacy has the best blue cantrips of all formats, and Brainstorm happens to be the best of them. Brainstorm is a huge part of the reason why many Modern players are tempted by Legacy, and some of them do in fact make the jump these days.

To be fair, U/R SwiftCruise do go completely overboard with cantrips. That deck is a bit different, because it abuses the spell casting triggers and Cruise.

Chalice, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Thalia, and Eidolon are four high power Legacy cards that see play precisely because they punish cantrips severely. The cost is that you don't get to play cantrips of your own, and therefore have to find other ways to increase consistency. And no, that is not easy. Not easy at all. But what you call annoying, I call a strategical challenge.

One way to increase consistency (a little) is to go mono color.
Death and Taxes and monored Burn are both fairly well positioned right now, because they can effectively punish the Brainstorm/Probe decks.

I enjoy playing with Brainstorm. I enjoy playing against Brainstorm when they play it correctly, and even more when they (most often) don't.
And, even though I know it is extremely difficult, I enjoy figuring out new ways to play without cantrips and punish decks that do.

I am baffled by some of the post in this thread. I really don't know what your problem is.
Are you absolutely sure that you still have the capacity to enjoy the game, even if your perceived "annoying" power card would be gone?



A deck running Spell Pierce, Force of Will, and a bunch of cantrips with super fragile threats becomes a pile when you can remove the creatures without a way to interact with you..
Indeed.

[testing32]

I call a strategical challenge.

I call it playing with worse cards.


Death and Taxes and monored Burn are both fairly well positioned right now, because they can effectively punish the Brainstorm/Probe decks.

So well positioned

http://tcdecks.net/tierdecks.php


If you have the cards and don't some some love affair with a crap deck, there are 0 reasons to not be playing brainstorm if you want to maximize your chances to win.

[Dice_Box]

If you have the cards and don't some some love affair with a crap deck, there are 0 reasons to not be playing brainstorm if you want to maximize your chances to win.

Elves?

[M+1]

I call it playing with worse cards.
Of course, that is the challenge. A good deck is more than the sum of the (objective) powerlevel of its cards.

So much resignation in this thread. Shrug.

http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15144&iddeck=112373

[bruizar]

If you have the cards and don't some some love affair with a crap deck, there are 0 reasons to not be playing brainstorm if you want to maximize your chances to win.


i'm inclined to agree with this statement but most of us do have a love affair with certain decks. I for one, am a sucker for MUD, even though I know it's a pretty bad deck, I like to specialize in decks that have room for innovation / improvement. This is rooted in my experience of seeing T1 Workshop, Metalworker way back in the days. It had something magical. Also, not everybody has all cards.

I think instead of talking about banning Brainstorm, we just need more cards like Sylvan Library and Green Sun's Zenith. Those cards reduce variance, are competitive and are on color.

We used to have Scroll Rack / Land Tax, but that hasn't been competitive for years. It's not too crazy to think of a dude like this:
:w: Tax Auditor
Creature - Human
:1:T: Put back X White cards from your hand, draw X cards.
1/2 :

This would be really great with a card like Squadron Hawk and Land Tax (not land tax itself - but those type of cards), but wouldn't fit in cantrip.dec. The ability would probably best go with Death & Taxes, but not in blue decks (not even good enough for Entreat or Terminus in Miracles).

These type of cards could help make non-blue more competitive.

[Echelon]

It's not too crazy to think of a dude like this:
:w: Tax Auditor
Creature - Human
:1:T: Put back X White cards from your hand, draw X cards.
1/2 :

These type of cards could help make non-blue more competitive.

How is this a white card..? Also, how can you not see your card doesn't do shit when it's ability is phrased like that..? It's put-3-cards-on-top-of-your-library-then-draw-3. Gee, which cards do you think you will draw..? And please don't say "Yes, but you can use fetch to shuffle your library" because you can't do anything whilst resolving an ability.

And while I'm at it - your solution is to make every color blue..?

[Dice_Box]

How is this a white card..?

Your solution is to make every color blue..?

It's a weak Land Tax/Scroll Rack effect on a creature. That's an engine White uses already.

Edit:
The idea is that you exile X cards from your hand, draw X cards and them place the exiled cards on the top of your library.

[Echelon]

It's a weak Land Tax/Scroll Rack effect on a creature. That's an engine White uses already.

Edit:
The idea is that you exile X cards from your hand, draw X cards and them place the exiled cards on the top of your library.

Except I can't remember the last time I've seen anyone play those cards...

[Dice_Box]

Except I can't remember the last time I've seen anyone play those cards...

I have, but very very rarely. That said, it's not the point, I was simply answering your accusation that the idea was to make the other colours all turn Blue. This is not outside Whites sphere of influence. I feel the Scroll Rack engine is far superior though.

[Echelon]

I have, but very very rarely. That said, it's not the point, I was simply answering your accusation that the idea was to make the other colours all turn Blue. This is not outside Whites sphere of influence. I feel the Scroll Rack engine is far superior though.

Except that Land Tax tutors lands when you are running behind on land drops rather then manipulate the top of your library and Scroll Rack isn't a white enchantment but a colorless artifact. So your comparison is utterly out of place. Land Tax isn't Scroll Rack and Scroll Rack isn't white, so a walking Scroll Rack is out of whites' reach.

[Dice_Box]

It's not my example, it's what the inspiration for that card is. Also last time I checked, White could use colourless cards.

[Echelon]

It's not my example, it's what the inspiration for that card is. Also last time I checked, White could use colourless cards.

That still doesn't make colorless artifacts white, which was the point. The card he suggested should be a colorless card rather than a white one. That one might choose to play it in a white shell doesn't change that.

[Dice_Box]

Whatever, talk to him about it. I answered your question, take your views on it up with person making the suggestion.