All B/R update speculation.

[iGrok]

I'm skeptical of any argument, whether for or against Brainstorm or any other card, that uses GPNJ as evidence. The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything.

A basic statistics example is this:

You are going to enter a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament, in which you must play the same choice every time. You know that 50% of people will play Rock, 35% of people will play Scissors, and 15% of people will play Paper. If you tie, a coin is flipped to determine the winner. Who wins? Paper. Paper has the best chance to win the tournament, even though Rock is the more popular choice. The reason is that Rock defeats most of the Scissors in early rounds, and then anyone left who is playing Paper is very unlikely to play against Scissors.

In this case, we can extremely simplify GPNJ and hypothesize that at GPNJ, 50% played URx Delver, 35% played something that loses to Delver, and 15% played something that beats delver. So Delver was the most popular, and beat all the decks that lose to it, and then the couple decks that are good against delver just had to wade through delver after delver after delver.

This is why looking at just top 8, top 16, or even top 32 for a tournament this size tells us nothing about the health of the format if the base deck choices are so heavily split. We can't determine whether miracles really is that good, or if all the decks that beat it are just getting killed by the hordes of delver players.

We can't determine whether or not Brainstorm is bannable based on any of the results that we're seeing because "Delver" is a much more homogeneous category than "Brainstorm", and Delver decks tend to be good at beating decks that would beat non-Delver Brainstorm decks.

Anyone agree/disagree?

[maharis]

I'm skeptical of any argument, whether for or against Brainstorm or any other card, that uses GPNJ as evidence. The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything.

And you are basing this on what?


A basic statistics example is this:

You are going to enter a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament, in which you must play the same choice every time. You know that 50% of people will play Rock, 35% of people will play Scissors, and 15% of people will play Paper. If you tie, a coin is flipped to determine the winner. Who wins? Paper. Paper has the best chance to win the tournament, even though Rock is the more popular choice. The reason is that Rock defeats most of the Scissors in early rounds, and then anyone left who is playing Paper is very unlikely to play against Scissors.

In this case, we can extremely simplify GPNJ and hypothesize that at GPNJ, 50% played URx Delver, 35% played something that loses to Delver, and 15% played something that beats delver. So Delver was the most popular, and beat all the decks that lose to it, and then the couple decks that are good against delver just had to wade through delver after delver after delver.

This is why looking at just top 8, top 16, or even top 32 for a tournament this size tells us nothing about the health of the format if the base deck choices are so heavily split. We can't determine whether miracles really is that good, or if all the decks that beat it are just getting killed by the hordes of delver players.

We can't determine whether or not Brainstorm is bannable based on any of the results that we're seeing because "Delver" is a much more homogeneous category than "Brainstorm", and Delver decks tend to be good at beating decks that would beat non-Delver Brainstorm decks.

Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."

I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).

I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

And you are basing this on what?



Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."

The lengths that people contort themselves to assure all of us that Brainstorm is not more powerful than the rest of the format is insane. "Oh we can't look at this evidence where this one card was in like 70+% of the 400+ best decks because everyone wanted to play that card for reasons having nothing to do with its power level." Come on. This is what FoaT and nedleeds are talking about. If this card was not blue, there would be no chance it lasts this long with such a high permutation and with so many defenders.

I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).

I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.

Are you saying the game is entirely skill-based? That it isn't important to know which matchups are favorable and which ones are not?

I see your point about matchups not being the be all end all of the game like RPS is, but to dismiss his claim that using only the top decks from GPNJ isn't valid is, as you say, insane.

I'm not arguing against the power of brainstorm (though I will say its impact on the Legacy metagame would be a lot healthier without some other parts of the blue shell), and I'm not arguing that GPNJ Results can't be used to some extent (perhaps analyzing how the decks that made it to Day 2 came out to be on top?). Just saying that variance influenced by matchups still has an impact, perhaps moreso than variance influenced by skill level and blind luck.

Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.

[testing32]

Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.

Can you do that fancy math for someone who decided to play a deck that wasn't running brainstorm? Because that number is going to be a hell of a lot smaller (than someone running brainstorm). Or better yet, top 16 with 2 slots open for non-brainstorm decks.

I would argue that this GP is the best place to draw conclusions about the health of the format. There are more rounds which leads to variance mattering less than in a smaller tournament.

[AznSeal]

Confession bear: I secretly don't want BS banned because I play elves and I don't want to have a target on my back if BS/blue gets banned <_<

[testing32]

Confession bear: I secretly don't want BS banned because I play elves and I don't want to have a target on my back if BS/blue gets banned <_<

No shame in that. Julian is right there with you. And Lemnear doesn't want storm to lose BS.

Edit: But don't say that the format is fine when it clearly is not.

[iGrok]

And you are basing this on what?

I'm basing it off of 3 things: All of the reports that huge numbers of people were playing delver decks, the fact that in Day 2 Delver was 30.7% of the metagame and UR Delver specifically was 20.0%, and decks playing maindeck Hydroblasts to kill off opposing maindeck Red Blasts?

Before you comment on Delver %s, skip to the bottom of this post for a less simplified example.


Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."

I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?


I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).
I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern.


I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.
Sure! But if they are all using the same 75, what card do you ban?



A less simplified example would be the following:
You go to a rock paper scissors tournament, in which you must choose rock, paper, or scissors beforehand. If you would tie, a coin is flipped. However, you can also choose (before the tournament) to play Anti-Rock, Anti-Paper, or Anti-Scissors, which only win against their respective Anti-choices, and lose all other games (a coin is flipped in an Anti-choice matchup).
31% is on Rock, 21% is on Paper, and 12% is on Scissors. 15% is on Anti-Rock, 10% is on Anti-Paper, and 12% is on Anti-Scissors. This is a much better (although still simplified) example of the GPNJ Metagame.

The correct choice is still Paper, or whatever beats delver without losing to everything else.

[Barook]

Why do people use terrible, examples when we have real data?


By the way, the day 2 metagame break down is up, which is like the best paper statistics we ever get:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpnj14/d2meta

and round 14 breakdown:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpnj14/r14meta

The naming conventions are a little annoying. Like Eli's deck is apparently "grixis tempo", UR Golddigger is UR (not izzet?) control and Nic Fit is Jund Midrange (which is different from actual jund midrange).

[iGrok]

Why do people use terrible, examples when we have real data?

Thats the data I used in my second post, with the less simplified example.

[maharis]

I see your point about matchups not being the be all end all of the game like RPS is, but to dismiss his claim that using only the top decks from GPNJ isn't valid is, as you say, insane.

Just to note, I realized after posting that I shouldn't have flown off the handle and I removed that paragraph for a reason, I don't mind that you quoted it or anything but I would like to apologize for being a nut. Not to mention I meant permeation and not permutation. Anyway.


Are you saying the game is entirely skill-based? That it isn't important to know which matchups are favorable and which ones are not?

I'm not arguing against the power of brainstorm (though I will say its impact on the Legacy metagame would be a lot healthier without some other parts of the blue shell), and I'm not arguing that GPNJ Results can't be used to some extent (perhaps analyzing how the decks that made it to Day 2 came out to be on top?). Just saying that variance influenced by matchups still has an impact, perhaps moreso than variance influenced by skill level and blind luck.

Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.

Of course the game isn't entirely skill-based and matchups matter (I always think of MTG as a lot like American football in that regard). The thing is, clearly the BS decks and Delver in particular are viewed by the community to have the best overall matchups (didn't CF and SCG both have articles about the best deck being UR delver?) And despite the fact that people should've come to the tournament with that in mind, a number of little guy + bolt + cantrip decks did well despite everyone gunning for them (or playing them, which is the point about saturation.

I don't understand why every data point is contested. We can only have so much. Every amount of mass analysis we can get — MODO card counts, live tournament top 8s/16s/32s/64s/however far they go, day 2 metagame reports from the Grand Prix — indicate that this card is endemic to the format and that decks with it perform at a high level.

As to whether or not this card is at fault or its the fault of all these additions around it... well, I can see why if you just really love playing with this card why you are willing to give up everything to keep it. It's almost like people say, take delver, take TC, take TNN, take anything but my brainstorm. The issue is that even if WoTC was on the ball enough to monitor legacy at all, then you just end up with every set release holding your breath to see if there's another card that will make Brainstorm insane again and hoping they agree and ban it.

Delver is the closest thing to a mistake that is oppressive but at the end of the day it is a 3/2 creature in a format where Bolt and STP have been staples since day 1 and has added to that Abrupt Decay and so many other removal spells more efficient than Terror. And you look at the top decks or the interesting decks and you see cards like Young Pyromancer, Stoneforge Mystic, and even out of the Delver deck Monastery Swiftspear (which I think might have been even more important to the U/R deck than Treasure Cruise) which aren't blue and aren't really mistakes. They are in color, flavorable, fun, and powerful, but it takes Brainstorm to really break them.

At the same time Treasure Cruise isn't exactly a mistake in a vacuum (I'm not sure it's even played all that much in Standard) but obviously draw 3 cards for 1 in Legacy is crazy. Still, it's not an auto 4-of and having more than one of them when you don't have BS is actually a bummer.

There's no deck that wants 1-3 Brainstorm. If you can cast it, you want 4. I guess the literal only exception is Merfolk, but somewhere you know there's someone playing Merfolk with the High Tide mana base.

I hope it's banned. I think hoping to shake up the format by doing anything else is simply wishful thinking. And the thing is, I don't play a BS deck and I still have fun playing legacy. it's not even about my own personal fun within a game because even if I'm playing against a BS deck I usually have fun. It's more that it's a bummer on the day after a tournament when you look at the decklists hoping to see something cool and it's like.... oh. Same stuff. Or you look in a coverage thread and it's just people complaining about people seeing the same decks. That sucks.

[maharis]

iGrok, don't want to make another wall of text, but anyway please accept my apologies for flying off the handle initially in my response to your first post.

Anyway.

You said: "The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything." But that in itself is wrong. If the strategy was so powerful as to necessitate maindeck hydroblast then there is a problem. At the same time, it wasn't Delver of Secrets or Treasure Cruise that was the most played card in the top decks.

You also said in your second post: "I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?" Of course it does. And most people picked UR delver because it was widely considered to be the best deck. 20% of the field is freakin' huge for a Legacy tournament. And Brainstorm is the best card in the deck. That is shown by the fact that all the "next best" decks were also BS decks. Qweerios, for example, said in the Nic Fit thread that he felt he had no choice but to play BS & FoW in his deck at the GP.

You also said in your second post: "I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern." I actually don't think TC is bannable in any format, but that's a digression. My point was about Delver of Secrets. In standard, Ponder and Preordain were legal with it. In Legacy, Brainstorm added to those two. In Modern, for a long time and still today, Serum Visions was the only one-mana cantrip that could conceivably flip a Delver and the card was nowhere near oppressive. Being able to flip a Delver with multiple one-mana cantrips is what makes the card dangerous. And as for the impact of TC on the modern delver deck, because the deck has to last a little longer than the Legacy version (because t1 delver isn't practically guaranteed to flip) the card advantage is important. Plus it's a common in a deck of uncommons and commons that is very inexpensive compared to previous T1 modern decks. Anyway, digression over.

I don't really understand the stat model you set up at the end. However I respectfully disagree that GPNJ data is somehow unusable or skewed.

[Lord Seth]

I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern.It really isn't. It's a good card, and it elevated a Tier 1.5/2 deck to Tier 1, but quite honestly Lightning Bolt is more banworthy than Treasure Cruise. Heck, based on the results of the Grand Prix, Birthing Pod is more banworthy than Treasure Cruise.

If Wizards of the Coast does think it might be a little powerful for the format, they should try unbanning some of the things that have no business being banned, not banning a card and reverting the meta back to the same stagnation we've had for the last 2 years (broken up only when a good new card gets printed, which of course is always undone by a ban). If they let the format grow a bit in power, maybe it would be better equipped to handle good cards and stop this endless cycle of the metagame getting shaken up only to be completely reverted by a ban.


My point was about Delver of Secrets. In standard, Ponder and Preordain were legal with it.Delver of Secrets was never simultaneously legal with Preordain in Standard. Only Ponder.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Just to note, I realized after posting that I shouldn't have flown off the handle and I removed that paragraph for a reason, I don't mind that you quoted it or anything but I would like to apologize for being a nut. Not to mention I meant permeation and not permutation. Anyway.



Of course the game isn't entirely skill-based and matchups matter (I always think of MTG as a lot like American football in that regard). The thing is, clearly the BS decks and Delver in particular are viewed by the community to have the best overall matchups (didn't CF and SCG both have articles about the best deck being UR delver?) And despite the fact that people should've come to the tournament with that in mind, a number of little guy + bolt + cantrip decks did well despite everyone gunning for them (or playing them, which is the point about saturation.

I don't understand why every data point is contested. We can only have so much. Every amount of mass analysis we can get — MODO card counts, live tournament top 8s/16s/32s/64s/however far they go, day 2 metagame reports from the Grand Prix — indicate that this card is endemic to the format and that decks with it perform at a high level.

As to whether or not this card is at fault or its the fault of all these additions around it... well, I can see why if you just really love playing with this card why you are willing to give up everything to keep it. It's almost like people say, take delver, take TC, take TNN, take anything but my brainstorm. The issue is that even if WoTC was on the ball enough to monitor legacy at all, then you just end up with every set release holding your breath to see if there's another card that will make Brainstorm insane again and hoping they agree and ban it.

Delver is the closest thing to a mistake that is oppressive but at the end of the day it is a 3/2 creature in a format where Bolt and STP have been staples since day 1 and has added to that Abrupt Decay and so many other removal spells more efficient than Terror. And you look at the top decks or the interesting decks and you see cards like Young Pyromancer, Stoneforge Mystic, and even out of the Delver deck Monastery Swiftspear (which I think might have been even more important to the U/R deck than Treasure Cruise) which aren't blue and aren't really mistakes. They are in color, flavorable, fun, and powerful, but it takes Brainstorm to really break them.

At the same time Treasure Cruise isn't exactly a mistake in a vacuum (I'm not sure it's even played all that much in Standard) but obviously draw 3 cards for 1 in Legacy is crazy. Still, it's not an auto 4-of and having more than one of them when you don't have BS is actually a bummer.

There's no deck that wants 1-3 Brainstorm. If you can cast it, you want 4. I guess the literal only exception is Merfolk, but somewhere you know there's someone playing Merfolk with the High Tide mana base.

I hope it's banned. I think hoping to shake up the format by doing anything else is simply wishful thinking. And the thing is, I don't play a BS deck and I still have fun playing legacy. it's not even about my own personal fun within a game because even if I'm playing against a BS deck I usually have fun. It's more that it's a bummer on the day after a tournament when you look at the decklists hoping to see something cool and it's like.... oh. Same stuff. Or you look in a coverage thread and it's just people complaining about people seeing the same decks. That sucks.

Fair enough: I just know Brainstorm has been around since Ice Age and it really hasn't been this ubiquitous until recently. I know how you feel about seeing the same decks over and over again: I am too, and I'm sure back when this thread was created in the heyday of CounterTop strategies that those who voted for SDT were as well.

Perhaps I am wrong in redirecting the blame from Brainstorm onto Delver? While Delver is a good choice to ban for the short term (answers exist to it, true, but the main problem is the evasion), it does nothing in the long term should another Brainstorm-fueled strategy become oppressive. Yet, I can't imagine the format without it, as it does reduce the amount of variance in blue-based decks and thus make blue-based mirrors (or shotos to be more precise) more skill-based.

All in all, if they ban Delver (or at least print something maindeckable that can buy time to dig removal) and make black, red, and white counterparts to Brainstorm (green has pseudo-Brainstorm on a stick in Sylvan Library), I believe the format would be a lot healthier.

Also, I'm primarily a Junk player: actually need to update my signature with my latest projects. While I have tried Brainstorm before, it just didn't work as well I had hoped in BUG Fit.

[AznSeal]

The question is are decks with BS really THAT much more powerful than those without? For instance, pretend it's only a little bit better than the nonblue decks, however pros/competitive players want every single advantage they can get, so that little bit better matters. This way, it can skew metagame data. Pretend blue decks are 10% better than nonblue (random number), but then since that little % matters, it becomes 75% of the tournament. That makes the data seem skewed.

Also, we realize that the blue shell will get weakened but what gets strengthened? Pretend the blue shell becomes less consistent after brainstorm gets banned, and now the best deck by 10% (random number again) is Jund. Now everyone will want that marginal advantage and Jund will be 75% of the field at the next big tournament. Do we cry for Tarmogoyf's ban?

All completely hypothetical btw.

[iGrok]

iGrok, don't want to make another wall of text, but anyway please accept my apologies for flying off the handle initially in my response to your first post.

Anyway.

You said: "The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything." But that in itself is wrong. If the strategy was so powerful as to necessitate maindeck hydroblast then there is a problem. At the same time, it wasn't Delver of Secrets or Treasure Cruise that was the most played card in the top decks.

You also said in your second post: "I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?" Of course it does. And most people picked UR delver because it was widely considered to be the best deck. 20% of the field is freakin' huge for a Legacy tournament. And Brainstorm is the best card in the deck. That is shown by the fact that all the "next best" decks were also BS decks. Qweerios, for example, said in the Nic Fit thread that he felt he had no choice but to play BS & FoW in his deck at the GP.

I don't really understand the stat model you set up at the end. However I respectfully disagree that GPNJ data is somehow unusable or skewed.

Ok, here's the "more accurate" Rock-paper-scissors model.

You are going to sign up for a Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament, in which you must choose your pick at the beginning of the day and stick with it. All ties will be broken by coinflip. This part is the traditional decks - Delver, Non-delver brainstorm/elves, and Midrange (Jund, Deadguy, Nic Fit, etc). Delver beats Midrange, Midrange beats non-delver brainstorm/elves, and non-delver brainstorm/elves beats Delver. Again, very simplified.

However, because magic isn't 100% matchup dependent, we have to add another factor into our RPS tournament. Anti-decks, designed to beat a particular deck to the exclusion of all others. These are going to make up probably a third of the field.

A new method of making a fist is developed, so everyone thinks that Rock (delver) is the best choice. This also means that everyone thinks that Paper (midrange) is the weakest choice. Even with nothing new actually happening, here's how people's perceptions can change a metagame.

So excluding Anti-decks, 50% of the people play Delver, 35% play Non-Delver Brainstorm/elves, and 15% play Midrange. But roughly a third of the people are going to play Anti-decks, which leads us to 31% Delver, 24% is on Non-delver Brainstorm/elves, and 12% is on midrange, while 33% are on Anti-decks.

Anti-decks are only actually better than a main choice if the meta is warped to the point that 50% of all participants are playing what you're hating, otherwise you still end up with a losing record. So they won't win.

So if you want to win, you should play Non-delver brainstorm/elves, because conventional wisdom says that you should play delver even if all decks were actually equally powerful. If conventional wisdom said to play non-delver brainstorm/elves, you should play midrange. If conventional wisdom said to play midrange, you should play delver.

Again, these are all assuming 100/0 matchup winrates, BUT while the math does get much harder when you take winrates like 60/40 or 56/43/1 (lol miracles draws), the answer stays the same.

Hopefully this helps you follow the math a bit more.

[Barook]

The question is are decks with BS really THAT much more powerful than those without? For instance, pretend it's only a little bit better than the nonblue decks, however pros/competitive players want every single advantage they can get, so that little bit better matters. This way, it can skew metagame data. Pretend blue decks are 10% better than nonblue (random number), but then since that little % matters, it becomes 75% of the tournament. That makes the data seem skewed.

Also, we realize that the blue shell will get weakened but what gets strengthened? Pretend the blue shell becomes less consistent after brainstorm gets banned, and now the best deck by 10% (random number again) is Jund. Now everyone will want that marginal advantage and Jund will be 75% of the field at the next big tournament. Do we cry for Tarmogoyf's ban?

All completely hypothetical btw.
If you want to win a tournament, you look for every little advantage you can get. If something is better to the point where it becomes significant, it shows up in force. If X is more powerful than anything else, you need a damn good reason not to play X.

Even without Brainstorm, Blue would still be good since the rest of the shell is still intact. Miracles would probably lose some strenght since they can't use Brainstorm to setup/get rid of naturally drawn Miracles, but they still have Top.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Can you do that fancy math for someone who decided to play a deck that wasn't running brainstorm? Because that number is going to be a hell of a lot smaller (than someone running brainstorm). Or better yet, top 16 with 2 slots open for non-brainstorm decks.

I would argue that this GP is the best place to draw conclusions about the health of the format. There are more rounds which leads to variance mattering less than in a smaller tournament.

Might as well answer this while I'm at it:

I'm not saying the GP isn't a good place to start analyzing the result, but to be honest, it seems a lot of arguments on both sides are just looking at it all wrong.

More food for thought: let's say there are just two distinct lists at a 4096 person tournament. List A is the better one, albeit also more expensive. List B is cheaper, but ultimately worse for play.

List A wins 75% and loses 25% of the time against List B. Both Lists win 50% and lose 50% of the time in the mirror match.
List A comprises 25% (1024) of the field. List B comprises the remaining 75% (3072) of the field.

Round 1 Pairings: 37.5% A v B (768); 6.25% A v A (128); 56.25% B v B (1152); 100% (2048) matches total.
Round 1 Results: 704 A advancing; 1344 B advancing. A now comprises 34.375% of the field; B now comprises the remaining 65.625% of the field.

Round 2 Pairings: 462 A v B; 121 A v A; 441 B v B; 1024 Matches total (sorry: having trouble with Excel showing the right amount of decimal places).
Round 2 Results: 467.5 A advancing; 556.5 B advancing (bear with me here: I understand that you can't have half a deck advancing).

Round 3 Pairings: ~254 A v B; ~107 A v A; ~151 B v B; 512 Matches total (well, I think I made my point, which is good since keeping track of this recursive crap is only gonna get trickier)
Round 3 Results: 297.5 A advancing; 214.5 B advancing

After just 3 rounds, the clearly dominant List A went from comprising 25% of the field to comprising >50% of the field.

[Lemnear]

No shame in that. Julian is right there with you. And Lemnear doesn't want storm to lose BS.

Edit: But don't say that the format is fine when it clearly is not.

I play Elves, Miracles and storm, so don't see me as one-dimensional here. Even if I feel pretty competent to build a working storm-shell without Brainstorm within days, I would have a headache to fix decks like Miracles or S&T or even fringe decks like Foodchain. I do care about all these decks and the colateral damage dealt just because people want Delver to become a bit worse, otherwise I would sit here and say "ban Brainstorm, so I can rock the field with Elves!". It seems that either some people can't comprehend that the loss of BS has different impact on various decks running it (from a need to streamline to stay viable to complete extinction) or just give a fuck. The arguing with Delver, which is the archetype which predictable would have minimal problems adapting (See Modern), is dumb and shallow. If you want to push the blue shell back into midrange or control to battle with Loam and Miracles for it's spot in the metagame instead of dominating the first 4 turns, you need to remove Delver from the metagame and give Tempo players the painful choice between Goose & Goyf or Treasure Cruise

[jafar]

So, are you suggesting banning a handful of creatures and never printing another creature that can cost-efficiently be shoe-horned into blue as a beater?

Because I don't see any other way to handle the vise-lock that the blue shell has on the format right now. Even then Miracles would just become the best list by a mile if you did that since it's the blue shell lists with good creatures that do the most to suppress it right now in commonly played matchups.

You have to weaken the shell, maybe significantly with more than one core card ban, to put us in a meta where choice becomes real again.

Think about it: you can't make a rule for cost efficient creatures that they have to have double non-blue color in the casting cost in order to be printed. Even if you did that Abrupt Decay is a major part of BUG and it has double non-blue casting cost.

It's the shell. It's like a gigantic vampire squid eating the face off of Magic on a daily basis.


So what do you suggest instead?

Ban Brainstorm and EVERY other cantrip close to power of brainstorm? We could leave U shell only with cc>3 or more draw cards?

As said before by other users the previous build of RUG (the close deck to UR before delver was printed) weren't so oppressive like is UR now.

Anyway an effective move by WOTC could be UNban some cards to give nonU shell some raw power that lacks at the moment: survival? Workshop?

Bye

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I remember the day when Survival was banned and ppl lost their deck AND several hundred dollars. There's at least one guy in our lgs... who's not in our lgs anymore. Never seen him since the ban.
So, what's the trouble with BS? People really cannot lose their €0.02 card? Morevoer if it's so "easily replaceable by any other cantrip" and all that jazz.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

So what do you suggest instead?

Ban Brainstorm and EVERY other cantrip close to power of brainstorm? We could leave U shell only with cc>3 or more draw cards?

As said before by other users the previous build of RUG (the close deck to UR before delver was printed) weren't so oppressive like is UR now.

Anyway an effective move by WOTC could be UNban some cards to give nonU shell some raw power that lacks at the moment: survival? Workshop?

Bye

Its not potency thats the problem though. Its consistency. And the cards banned for consistency typically produce too much consistency, more so than Brainstorm (the tutors, possibly Bargain since we already have BargainBrand but thats power with consistency, and Survival).

Not arguing against that Delver is a good choice to ban in the short term. Just saying unbanning anything except maybe survival isnt going to help except to make non blue more like toddler with a rocket launcher.

[Gheizen64]

Here's a post i did in the other topic to explain why survival is not a card that get more degenerate with time , but quite the opposite.


There's a big difference between an engine card like survival, and cards like SnT or Tinker or Reanimate. First, it doesn't cheat mana, with the exception of Vengevine and Madness cards. Second, its power don't get better for each good creature that get printed, but for each new creature that do something specific with the discard/graveyard interaction. Third, Survival want your deck to be filled with creatures, ideally at least 15 of them for survival to be a reliable engine (like force, but with creatures).

Those are crucial points.

Because in general, new good creature and spells that are in general better in non-survival decks will vastly outnumber the new creatures that fit in the very narrow subset of "abusable with survival". This mean that on average, survival don't get better, it get worse with time. This was exemplified with Survival history before the printing of Vengevine. When 1.5 was younger, TnT decks, and tradewind survival decks were actual decks, but with time, efficient threats, cheap countermagic, better disruption made so that those strats were no longer as good as before. Getting an answer for G, and hardcasting it, wasn't as good when the opponent deck was either absurdly redundant so that you couldn't get a good answer with SotF, or too fast for SotF to matter.
As such survival got positioned worse with time, at least until Vengevine got printed, at which point a deck that cheated 3 4/3 haste on turn 3.5 on average was too good in the legacy format of that time.

Since Vengevine was printed, other new creatures that got printed abusable with Survival? Legends, if you consider the retainer combo (which is still slow by legacy standards and also Griselbrand isn't good in Survival because you have a deck full of creatures and not of spells you can chain), then what? Reclamation sage is good i guess and SotL is a good hatebear as well. Panglacial Wurm? I honestly can't name a good interaction that wasn't already there or superior to Ooze/Devourer or Retainer /Legend.
On the other hand, many creatures that are really good against and outside Survival got printed:

True-name nemesis, an absurdly strong wall against VV, pratically unbreakable with any equip. Not as good in survival decks because of the mana intensive requirements, and it isn't worth paying 1GG and discard a card to tutor for it.
Containment Priest, a 1W 2/2 flash, that while good vs a lot of the meta, simply exile 3 creatures on cast vs Survival. A good silver bullet for survival decks, but shut off the VV engine, making it really situational.
Delver of Secrets, aka the strongest cheap beater ever printed. On offense, it ignore your vengevines, posing an actual clock when coupled with burn, and on defense it trade with a Vengevine. In Survival decks this is useless because you want to run as many creatures, where delver want a lot of spells, and want to be casted T1, not tutored for.
Young Pyromancer, an almost infinite supplier of token blockers vs non-wonder vengevines variants. Again, this card is bad in survival because it sinergize with spells, not other creatures.
Deathrite Shaman, the strongest mana elf ever printed, and widely played, with the ability to remove your vengevines in response to madness triggers. This is actually good in survival decks, but much moreso against it.
Batterskull with Stoneforge Mystic, allowed for midrangey/control decks like Patriot, to lay down extremely fast 4/4 vigilances lifelink to effectively block Vengevines, especially coupled with the bounce ability. This is also actually good in survival decks, but more against it.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben , basically made D&T a competitive deck, and combined with any equipment from SFM it can block Vengevines all day long. Again, a card that is good in Survival because it encourage you to play creature, but not as good as in other decks because it slow down your survival if you play it before SotF, or come down usually too late if you tutor for it. This is probably the most debatable creature of this list however.

Ignoring creatures, some really good SB cards that kill survival were printed , like RiP.
The best card drawing spells printed in years, TC and DTT, are nonbos with survival both because they exile cards you usually need, and because they sinergize with decks full of cheap spells, not decks full of creatures.

In contrast, cards like Tinker and SnT surely get better with time because of the accelleration part. That means that the subset of really good and mana intensive creatures/artifacts that get printed over time are usually bigger than those of cards that are good against it, like Containment Priest.
And in fact, Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Inktide Leviathan are all pretty recent printings, and i wouldn't ever bet on those card getting worse over time like i would on survival.


Survival is a card that thrive on very specific conditions: low combo presence to give it enough time to assemble its own combo, and low power-spells in general. The more high-power spells a format has, the less survival is interesting because you want to play as many spells as possible. Creatures get better with time sure, but even creatures, as we saw, have to be in a specific-subset to be relevant in SotF decks, whereas the newest creatures that have seen play in this format have been all of the kind that are actively bad in SotF and good against SotF (Delver, TNN, Containment Priest, YP), or good in survival but better in other decks (DRS, SFM+Batterskull, you could make a case for Thalia too).

With TC and DTT printed, there has never been a time where SotF power level relative to the rest of the format card pool has been lower since it was banned.

[testing32]

I play Elves, Miracles and storm, so don't see me as one-dimensional here. Even if I feel pretty competent to build a working storm-shell without Brainstorm within days, I would have a headache to fix decks like Miracles or S&T or even fringe decks like Foodchain. I do care about all these decks and the colateral damage dealt just because people want Delver to become a bit worse, otherwise I would sit here and say "ban Brainstorm, so I can rock the field with Elves!". It seems that either some people can't comprehend that the loss of BS has different impact on various decks running it (from a need to streamline to stay viable to complete extinction) or just give a fuck. The arguing with Delver, which is the archetype which predictable would have minimal problems adapting (See Modern), is dumb and shallow. If you want to push the blue shell back into midrange or control to battle with Loam and Miracles for it's spot in the metagame instead of dominating the first 4 turns, you need to remove Delver from the metagame and give Tempo players the painful choice between Goose & Goyf or Treasure Cruise

The problem isn't delver (which is around the 4th or 5th best card in those decks). And the point is also to weaken Miracles and S&T. BS has higher penetration than mental misstep. That is the problem.

[Lemnear]

Here's a post i did in the other topic to explain why survival is not a card that get more degenerate with time , but quite the opposite.

... and we explained why this is bullshit. WotC keeps printing creature power creep and you ignore that this fact automatically makes Survival more and more potent. You argued that DRS can remove Vengevines from the Graveyard, that Griselbrand off Sneak Attack is stronger as a combo and that TNN can block Vengevines endless, but simply ignore that DRS can also power Survival & creates a lifegain engine every time you cycle a creature, that Retainer + Griselbrand/Emrakul is a cheap trick combo to add to a survival deck for basically no cost at all in terms of deckbuilding and that Survival enables you to drop a fucking TNN turn after turn to stall and overwhelm your opponent which gives a fuck about graveyard-hate like DRS/RIP unlike the KotR+Vengevine combo you tried to argue with in the other thread.

Edit:

The problem isn't delver (which is around the 4th or 5th best card in those decks). And the point is also to weaken Miracles and S&T. BS has higher penetration than mental misstep. That is the problem.

I don't know if it qualifies as a "problem" if the card isn't actively stifling decks like Mental Misstep did with Storm, Countertop and Goblins. The fact that Brainstorm is not banned despite having its Status for years, supports that idea. Survival for example made other aggro decks like Zoo obsolete, Mental Misstep made decks with critical 1cc spells unplayable and was so strong in preventing T1 combos that people dropped even FoW. A lot of Legacy bannings boiled down to that. You can look at Oath or Tinker to see the same concept.

[Gheizen64]

... and we explained why this is bullshit. WotC keeps printing creature power creep and you ignore that this fact automatically makes Survival more and more potent. You argued that DRS can remove Vengevines from the Graveyard, that Griselbrand off Sneak Attack is stronger as a combo and that TNN can block Vengevines endless, but simply ignore that DRS can also power Survival & creates a lifegain engine every time you cycle a creature, that Retainer + Griselbrand/Emrakul is a cheap trick combo to add to a survival deck for basically no cost at all in terms of deckbuilding and that Survival enables you to drop a fucking TNN turn after turn to stall and overwhelm your opponent which gives a fuck about graveyard-hate like DRS/RIP unlike the KotR+Vengevine combo you tried to argue with in the other thread.

You evidently didn't read my post.

EDIT: i've edited since you're clearly being confrontational about this and i'm not here to get provoked into writing shit. I'll pass.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Survival was sooo degenerate card that its numbers declined and declined over the years until it saw nigh zero play when Vengevine came out and safed it from oblivion. Saying that SotF is broken while defending BS seems inappropriate. but I guess that it's about that elusive term "broken".

Turn2 BS->AdN? Oh, it's just a Legacy, we're used to play powerful decks. Go play Modern.
Turn2 SotF, pass? Oh, that's some broken stuff right there, swing the banhammer without delay!

[EpicLevelCommoner]

The problem isn't delver (which is around the 4th or 5th best card in those decks). And the point is also to weaken Miracles and S&T. BS has higher penetration than mental misstep. That is the problem.

Stop citing the penetration of Mental Misstep and Brainstorm as a reason to ban Brainstorm. Mental Misstep wasnt banned because it was in every deck regardless of color; it was banned because of how it completely warped the format. Banning brainstorm would do the same thing as leaving mental misstep unbanned.

Delver, on the other hand, has been warping the format around it ever since its inception. Even though they may play differently, the various Delver archetypes have a similar core (Delver, Brainstorm, Force, Wasteland minimum) which causes a higher penetration of multiple cards, which would suggest that the combination of those cards (aka the decks themselves) is oppressive as to one individual card.

[Lemnear]

You evidently didn't read my post, since Survival isn't getting more and more potent automatically, but quite the opposite. But it seems you're fond of calling everything i write "bullshit" or just say i'm writing useless things, while never trying to post a single point of data or anything, just baseless dismissal. Do survival did anything to you? You can tell us.

I played GW Survival myself, was upset as it got banned, but over the years I realized why it was still the right thing to do. I call bullshit if you list cards and argue how they damage Vengevine, but in fact would be likely played alongside Survival if it was legal. Your whole argumentation stretched over two threads simply ignores this possibility and roots soley on "Survival is fair because we have outs to returning Vengevines!" but gladly dodges the fact that GW Survival was so good, because it had an excellent aggro plan B if your opponent shuts down your graveyard, in form of hardcasting a flurry of KotRs and Vines

Edit:

Survival was sooo degenerate card that its numbers declined and declined over the years until it saw nigh zero play when Vengevine came out and safed it from oblivion. Saying that SotF is broken while defending BS seems inappropriate. but I guess that it's about that elusive term "broken".

Turn2 BS->AdN? Oh, it's just a Legacy, we're used to play powerful decks. Go play Modern.
Turn2 SotF, pass? Oh, that's some broken stuff right there, swing the banhammer without delay!

That is too easy. Take a more honest look at your examples:

Turn 2 AN: costs 5 mana - if countered, you lose - if it resolves, you likely going to win via combo

Turn 2 SotF: costs 2 mana - if countered, you just smash faces with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep - if it resolves, you likely going to win either via combo or with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep

Fact is: every deck with more than 16 creatures is better by running Survival, as every Dark Ritual deck would be better by running Necropotence, as any Countertop deck would be better by running Tinker, as any anti-creature control deck would be better by running Oath, as any combo deck would be better running Demonic Tutor. That is degeneration. That is that makes WotC ban cards

[testing32]

I don't know if it qualifies as a "problem" if the card isn't actively stifling decks like Mental Misstep did with Storm, Countertop and Goblins. The fact that Brainstorm is not banned despite having its Status for years, supports that idea. Survival for example made other aggro decks like Zoo obsolete, Mental Misstep made decks with critical 1cc spells unplayable and was so strong in preventing T1 combos that people dropped even FoW. A lot of Legacy bannings boiled down to that. You can look at Oath or Tinker to see the same concept.

Of course brainstorm is actively stifling decks. Pick any non-blue, non-elf deck.


Stop citing the penetration of Mental Misstep and Brainstorm as a reason to ban Brainstorm. Mental Misstep wasnt banned because it was in every deck regardless of color; it was banned because of how it completely warped the format. Banning brainstorm would do the same thing as leaving mental misstep unbanned.

Delver, on the other hand, has been warping the format around it ever since its inception. Even though they may play differently, the various Delver archetypes have a similar core (Delver, Brainstorm, Force, Wasteland minimum) which causes a higher penetration of multiple cards, which would suggest that the combination of those cards (aka the decks themselves) is oppressive as to one individual card.

Taking 14/16 slots, forcing people to play blue and main deck REBs isn't warping the meta? Please.

A question for you guys. If Brainstorm and TC were reversed (TC had been around for 15 years, BS was introduced last month) and BS put 14/16 in the top 16 would you still have the same stance? I seriously doubt it. You are making an emotional argument not a logical one. It's like trying to have a facts based discussion with a religous person.

There was talk to TC being banned last week and its numbers are no where near brainstorms, not even close.

Edit: Some more food for thought. What is the 2nd best card in legacy? I honestly don't know. Ponder, wasteland or FoW probably. Brainstorm is head and sholders above those cards.

Now, think what would happen if WotC unbanned Demonic Tutor. Would it be better than brainstorm, than brainstorm currently is compared to the 2nd best card (ponder/fow/wasteland). I seriously doubt that.

Would it have more penetration than brainstorm currently is? I doubt that as well.

[Barook]

Stop citing the penetration of Mental Misstep and Brainstorm as a reason to ban Brainstorm. Mental Misstep wasnt banned because it was in every deck regardless of color; it was banned because of how it completely warped the format. Banning brainstorm would do the same thing as leaving mental misstep unbanned.
The reasons of the Mental Misstep ban were two-fold, as officially stated, so stop coming up with your own explanations:

a) It goes into every deck (suprise, Brainstorm has now a higher penetration than Mental Misstep (75% vs 73% if you look at the October DtB numbers), since MM actually didn't go into every deck!)
b) It made the format too blue (again, we're more even more blue now than during the MM era).

As for your last statement, of course the meta would change without Brainstorm because the meta is warped around Brainstorm. Higher consistency, discard protection, instant speed digging for answers, semi-mulligans with shuffle effects, tricks with the top of the library (Delver, Miracles, AV, etc.) - it simply does too much for :u:, and that at instant speed, even making mana denial less potent compared to sorcery speed cantrips.

The current meta is a) play Brainstorm, b) play a deck that punishes the blue Brainstorm shell, c) play Elves or d) play a non-blue fringe strategy that completely ignores the opponent.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Of course brainstorm is actively stifling decks. Pick any non-blue, non-elf deck.

Taking 14/16 slots, forcing people to play blue and main deck REBs isn't warping the meta? Please.

A question for you guys. If Brainstorm and TC were reversed (TC had been around for 15 years, BS was introduced last month) and BS put 14/16 in the top 16 would you still have the same stance? I seriously doubt it. You are making an emotional argument not a logical one. It's like trying to have a facts based discussion with a religous person.

There was talk to TC being banned last week and its numbers are no where near brainstorms, not even close.

so much wrong with this post I dont even know where to begin.

A card being present in 14 out of 16 decks isnt warping the format. 14 out of 16 decks being the same or similar is. Take a look at Thragtusk back when Innistrad was in standard. If you ran green, you ran Tusk. But it didnt hurt the meta: in fact it pulled it away from a hyperaggro meta by allowing control more time to stabilize.

And the fact is that we have had Brainstorm for quite some time now, which pretty much proves that itself isnt the problem since it has yet to be banned. Even if it wasnt printed until recently, I would still reach the same conclusion, albeit because I firmly believe Delver is the issue, not Treasure Cruise.

[ryO!]

whining > brewing right ? and that's not a speculation, just a fact. Oh well. At least Lejay tried.
But yeah let's keep harping on banning BS for the next 452 pages, it's an higher cause and something so MUCH more productive. And with a brand new argument in each answer it is so interesting.

I know, i know i might no contribute to the conversation either and i am just stating the obvious but apparently 452 pages of obvious doesn't stop anything from going on and on again.

at least you are on your way to achieve Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon.

an endless loop. but that gives a draw remember ? nothing too useful.

good job.

[MGB]

so much wrong with this post I dont even know where to begin.

A card being present in 14 out of 16 decks isnt warping the format. 14 out of 16 decks being the same or similar is. Take a look at Thragtusk back when Innistrad was in standard. If you ran green, you ran Tusk. But it didnt hurt the meta: in fact it pulled it away from a hyperaggro meta by allowing control more time to stabilize.

And the fact is that we have had Brainstorm for quite some time now, which pretty much proves that itself isnt the problem since it has yet to be banned. Even if it wasnt printed until recently, I would still reach the same conclusion, albeit because I firmly believe Delver is the issue, not Treasure Cruise.

So many tautologies in this post...


"A card being present in 14 out of 16 decks isnt warping the format. 14 out of 16 decks being the same or similar is."

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Let's expand this to criminals: A gun being in the hand of 14 of 16 shooters isn't causing gunfire during the robbery. 14 of 16 shooters owning guns is causing the gunfire. :confused:


"the fact is that we have had Brainstorm for quite some time now, which pretty much proves that itself isnt the problem since it has yet to be banned."

I.e. Just like prior to being banned, Flash, Survival, and Mystical Tutor all had *never* been banned before and therefore were never problems? Let's expand this to criminals - the fact that they haven't been arrested yet means that they can't possibly be committing crime? :cry:

[testing32]

whining > brewing right ? and that's not a speculation, just a fact. Oh well. At least Lejay tried.
But yeah let's keep harping on banning BS for the next 452 pages, it's an higher cause and something so MUCH more productive. And with a brand new argument in each answer it is so interesting.

I know, i know i might no contribute to the conversation either and i am just stating the obvious but apparently 452 pages of obvious doesn't stop anything from going on and on again.

at least you are on your way to achieve Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon.

an endless loop. but that gives a draw remember ? nothing too useful.

good job.

You want to brew. I'll brew with you. First, we want our "brew" to win so lets start with a solid base 4 BS/4 Ponder/4 FoW/2 REB/2-4 TC. We are going to need lands in our sick brew so lets put us down for 16-22 of those.

Sweet, now we have ~20 slots left. How would you like to innovate and break the format from here? The possibilities are endless.

[Gheizen64]

Stop citing the penetration of Mental Misstep and Brainstorm as a reason to ban Brainstorm. Mental Misstep wasnt banned because it was in every deck regardless of color; it was banned because of how it completely warped the format. Banning brainstorm would do the same thing as leaving mental misstep unbanned.

Delver, on the other hand, has been warping the format around it ever since its inception. Even though they may play differently, the various Delver archetypes have a similar core (Delver, Brainstorm, Force, Wasteland minimum) which causes a higher penetration of multiple cards, which would suggest that the combination of those cards (aka the decks themselves) is oppressive as to one individual card.

Mental Misstep was banned because it made the format more blue than ever, literal words from wotc.


I played GW Survival myself, was upset as it got banned, but over the years I realized why it was still the right thing to do. I call bullshit if you list cards and argue how they damage Vengevine, but in fact would be likely played alongside Survival if it was legal. Your whole argumentation stretched over two threads simply ignores this possibility and roots soley on "Survival is fair because we have outs to returning Vengevines!" but gladly dodges the fact that GW Survival was so good, because it had an excellent aggro plan B if your opponent shuts down your graveyard, in form of hardcasting a flurry of KotRs and Vines

Ok i'll try to be more specificly clear. Playing every creature + Survival isn't an actual plan, so you have to actually choose which creatures goes in an actual survival list. If you're arguing that every good creature go in survival lists you're just wrong, because survival as a simple tutor in goodstuff.deck is worse than GSZ. It's way slower (1GG to fetch the first creature), not as versatile as GSZ for getting both accelleration and threats quickly, and require you to have a creature in hand to start. Those are all important points.
The strenght of survival is the ability to be an engine, with Vengevines, and Retainers/Ooze. You can make the survival plan your primary or secondary plan of the deck, but it's harder to make it secondary because of the amount of slots and sub-optimal cards it require, unlike the blue shell for example, that don't make you play "bad" cards at all.
So you can't simply take generic Maverick.deck and put Survivals in it, you have to put also the engine within it, else Survival isn't worth it.

And here come the first point: you're sacrificing slots for survival. Simply because survival isn't worth it unless you cheat vengevines, or legends, or oozes.
And this bring also a quick consequence: your aggro plan is obviously not as good as a really good aggro decks, since you have several 4 cmcs (don't take me wrong, Vengevines are really good, but playing multiple 4cmc cards is not something you want to do in disruption-light decks, or against delver/burn decks) and legends, and 1/1s to trigger out VV. So you can't just play Maverick and add Survivals, you have to sacrifice a consistent amount of slots to it, making your "B" plan of beatdown worse. This isn't Vault/Key level of compact obviously.

Even if GSZ is one-shot, the greater amount of flexibility, much cheaper mana cost, and the ability to work without other specific cards in your hand put it far and above Survival as a "fair" tutor. It's the ability to double as an engine to cheat things into play that make Survival a strong card, without it, it's nothing amazing. And thanks to its speed, GSZ is better at getting answer creatures like Ooze or Qasali. Ooze is especially egregious. With survival, to remove 1 card from a grave with Ooze it cost 1GG+discard a creature+1G+G. If you want to get a cheap answer, survival isn't clearly the best choice here.

If your survival recurr plan is shut off via RiP for example, you don't only have 10+ bad draws in your deck, but you've probably also lost a mana + cards investment. Your "plan B" of aggro is nowhere as good when a big chunk of your deck are now subpar (Walla, Memnite, hardcast VV, Retainer) or simply uncastable cards (Iona/Devourer, Elesh but she's actually just 7 mana so castable if you get Cradle). Also, other decks "aggro" plans are now considerably faster or stronger with Delver, TNN and Pyromancers around, so by relative power levels, your beatdown plan get even worse.

Also, just for a mental exercise, what do you cut from a Maverick List to fit 3 VV, 1 Walla, 1 Memnite, 1 Retainer, 1 Elesh Norn, 4 Survivals? That's 11 cards. The Ooze shell is similar, but slightly slower and Devourer is crap by itself compared to Iona/Elesh which are sometimes hardcastable. You could probably cut the punishing fire suite, that's 4 cards. Then moms? A zenith or 2? It's easy to see why your beatdown plan can't be as good as actual non-survival lists.
Opportunity cost is absolutely relevant for SotF.

Punishing Maverick; Fabian Gorzgen (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76103)
Spells (22+13=35)Lands (25)Sideboard (15)
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg

1 Batterskull
3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Bayou
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Plateau
2 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Thespian's Stage
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Dark Depths
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Choke
2 Engineered Plague
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Bojuka Bog

Or a non-punishing variety:

Maverick; Noel Thompson (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76093)
Spells (24+13=37)Lands (23)Sideboard (15)
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Scryb Ranger
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

1 Batterskull
1 Sylvan Library
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Bayou
4 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Tower of the Magistrate
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Engineered Plague
1 Crop Rotation
1 Krosan Grip
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Life from the Loam
4 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Bojuka Bog

Again those list are incredibly tight. If you remove too many creatures, you may have too little for survival to work efficiently, if you remove removal spells, you lose in flexibility and the ability to answer troublesome permanents. And it's not even only that, but if you for example remove Mom, your beatdown plan is considerably worse and more subsceptible to removal, even if you gain the ability to go off with Vengevines etc...



To get more in the specifics with your post:
I call bullshit if you list cards and argue how they damage Vengevine, but in fact would be likely played alongside Survival if it was legal

I said why those cards would NOT be played alongisde Survival. If you want to tell me that Delver, Pyromancer, or TNN would be played alongisde survival, then i think you're off a bit. I explained why in my previous post that you evidently skipped:



True-name nemesis, an absurdly strong wall against VV, pratically unbreakable with any equip. Not as good in survival decks because of the mana intensive requirements, and it isn't worth paying 1GG and discard a card to tutor for it.
Containment Priest, a 1W 2/2 flash, that while good vs a lot of the meta, simply exile 3 creatures on cast vs Survival. A good silver bullet for survival decks, but shut off the VV engine, making it really situational.
Delver of Secrets, aka the strongest cheap beater ever printed. On offense, it ignore your vengevines, posing an actual clock when coupled with burn, and on defense it trade with a Vengevine. In Survival decks this is useless because you want to run as many creatures, where delver want a lot of spells, and want to be casted T1, not tutored for.
Young Pyromancer, an almost infinite supplier of token blockers vs non-wonder vengevines variants. Again, this card is bad in survival because it sinergize with spells, not other creatures.

And i also said that while some new creatures can obviously be played in Survival, they're better in non-survival decks or good against survival, something that you seems to again have skipped completely, with each card with an explanations on why i think those cards are a relative loss in power level for survival, and not a gain:



Deathrite Shaman, the strongest mana elf ever printed, and widely played, with the ability to remove your vengevines in response to madness triggers. This is actually good in survival decks, but much moreso against it.
Batterskull with Stoneforge Mystic, allowed for midrangey/control decks like Patriot, to lay down extremely fast 4/4 vigilances lifelink to effectively block Vengevines, especially coupled with the bounce ability. This is also actually good in survival decks, but more against it.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben , basically made D&T a competitive deck, and combined with any equipment from SFM it can block Vengevines all day long. Again, a card that is good in Survival because it encourage you to play creature, but not as good as in other decks because it slow down your survival if you play it before SotF, or come down usually too late if you tutor for it. This is probably the most debatable creature of this list however.

So i can safely say that your calling "bullshit" should be a bit more argumented because to me, all those points about those creatures i presented seems pretty strong. Or if you want to show me a Pyro, TNN, Delver Survival list, then go on, i'd be honestly impressed if you managed to get a good list because the conflict between what those cards want and what survival want seems insurmountable to me to be honest.

To answer another point from your post more in detail:


Your whole argumentation stretched over two threads simply ignores this possibility

But this is clearly not true, because i didn't ignore the possibility of Survival playing new craetures, i simply proposed reasons for why playing a lot of the new best creatures along vengevines isn't good at all, basically:

- Survival as a plain creature tutor isn't worth it for some of them because of the mana constraint and time constraint
- opportunity cost is too big because you want to run a lot of creatures with SotF, but a lot of spells with some of those creatures
- some of those creatures are actually incredibly fast and cheap win conditions that want you to protect them with your spells, not to play other creatures

So you can see i never ignored this possibility. In fact, it was the whole point of my post: Survival is getting relatively worse because there are more creatures worse with SotF getting printed, than creatures good in Survival decks. This has been the case for the largest part of Legacy history before the printing of vengevines, another point that you seems to have skipped, cue RecSur, Tradewind Survival, and Tool and Tubbies decks which were faded out by Blue tempo variants and other combo decks, until VV got printed at least.


... and roots soley on "Survival is fair because we have outs to returning Vengevines!" but gladly dodges the fact that GW Survival was so good, because it had an excellent aggro plan B if your opponent shuts down your graveyard, in form of hardcasting a flurry of KotRs and Vines

Again, this is not what i said at all. What i've said is that the plan of returning vengevines isn't as good as before because of the new factors existing that weaken the vengevine beatdown plan. This is a matter of opportunity cost, if your combo plan isn't as autowin as it used to be, the trade for losing consistency, options and redundancy get worse. And in turn this make survival as a card worse. For example, Delver burn decks are now often faster than straight Vengevine beatdown which win around T4.
I also never dodged the fact that survival was also an aggro deck, i simply posited that that "plan B" by today standards is much worse than it was because (a) decks now have new, extremely efficient threats that don't fit in survival decks, and (b) that survival decks, by concession of fitting a consistent engine in them, have already a worse aggro plan compared to conventional Green based aggro decks like maverick. Your "excellent" plan B, is not "excellent" anymore by modern standards, it's simply a plan B. Probably around Elves! beatdown plan.

Those things are all pretty clear when you start brewing with survival. The opportunity cost isn't negligible, in fact, it's big by modern legacy standard. And to be honest that's what i like the most from Survival: the fact that you can't play goodcards.deck with it, but you have to build around it consistently, using Vengevines or abusing the graveyard in other ways (Like welder TnT which was one of my favourite legacy decks). You can't play URg burn delver with survival, or miracle Survival, or storm survival etc... The decks enabled by survival are by far and large decks defined by the card itself, completely NEW decks in the current legacy metagame. You will have some similiarity with Maverick lists, or stompy lists, but a vast amount of card would be different, and this is a huge breath of fresh air for the metagame.
To add on this, a lot of cards that are good against survival are also the kind of cards you can easily play maindeck because they hit a lot of different strategies: needles, Containment priests, Oozes, DRS, Wear//Tear, Spell Snare etc...

EDIT:


Edit:


That is too easy. Take a more honest look at your examples:

Turn 2 AN: costs 5 mana - if countered, you lose - if it resolves, you likely going to win via combo

Turn 2 SotF: costs 2 mana - if countered, you just smash faces with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep - if it resolves, you likely going to win either via combo or with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep

Fact is: every deck with more than 16 creatures is better by running Survival, as every Dark Ritual deck would be better by running Necropotence, as any Countertop deck would be better by running Tinker, as any anti-creature control deck would be better by running Oath, as any combo deck would be better running Demonic Tutor. That is degeneration. That is that makes WotC ban cards

First this isn't necessarily true. Blue-based decks, even if they were to run 16 creature, wouldn't still run survival. Example? 3 TNN, 4 SFM, 4 Delvers, 3 SFM, 2 Snapcaster mage + blue shell.
D&T would just probably run 4 Containment priest or something else main and ignore survival. Would Elves! run survival? It's probable but it wouldn't be the main strategy of the deck.

Second, even in creature heavy lists like Maverick, running survival has an opportunity cost: you'd have to cut removals, or utility creatures like Mom. If the meta get too hostile for it, it's possible the opportunity cost isn't worth the possibility of the combo anymore, and survival may actually be just detrimentals for those decks.

Third, how many 16+ creatures lists are dominating the format? The format has been dominated for years by blue strategies, and for good reasons. Even if a survival lists managed to get on top of the format by crushing all "fair" decks, it would still have unfavourable matchups against a lot of combo decks, be them SnT or storm, because you aren't disrupting a lot when you run 4 survival + 16 creatures.

And finally, the argument you just said is way more true for brainstorm than for survival. Every combo deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, every dark ritual deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, every anti-creature deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, and any countertop deck is better with brainstorm. So no, i don't think that could count as a reasonable argument for banning a card.

[Dice_Box]

Of course brainstorm is actively stifling decks. Pick any non-blue, non-elf deck.

Ok, I have G/R Combo lands in my hand right now, what should I do with it?

[testing32]

Ok, I have G/R Combo lands in my hand right now, what should I do with it?

Play with it whenever your LGS has a casual night.

Edit: when brainstorm gets banned you can bring it to a real event since you won't need to play brainstorm to win anymore.

[Dice_Box]

Play with it whenever your LGS has a casual night.

Haha. You should give it more credit. Loam is one of the best draw cards in the game.

[Darkenslight]

so much wrong with this post I dont even know where to begin.

A card being present in 14 out of 16 decks isnt warping the format. 14 out of 16 decks being the same or similar is. Take a look at Thragtusk back when Innistrad was in standard. If you ran green, you ran Tusk. But it didnt hurt the meta: in fact it pulled it away from a hyperaggro meta by allowing control more time to stabilize.

And the fact is that we have had Brainstorm for quite some time now, which pretty much proves that itself isnt the problem since it has yet to be banned. Even if it wasnt printed until recently, I would still reach the same conclusion, albeit because I firmly believe Delver is the issue, not Treasure Cruise.

The key thing is that the logic behind the three most recent bannings can all be applied to Brainstorm and Force of Will right now. IF you do not think that that is an issue, then there's something gravely wrong.

[Dice_Box]

Regardless of format Penetration, Force must stay.

[Gheizen64]

Copying for new page, if it's too big a mod can cut it and i'll just link the post:


I played GW Survival myself, was upset as it got banned, but over the years I realized why it was still the right thing to do. I call bullshit if you list cards and argue how they damage Vengevine, but in fact would be likely played alongside Survival if it was legal. Your whole argumentation stretched over two threads simply ignores this possibility and roots soley on "Survival is fair because we have outs to returning Vengevines!" but gladly dodges the fact that GW Survival was so good, because it had an excellent aggro plan B if your opponent shuts down your graveyard, in form of hardcasting a flurry of KotRs and Vines

Ok i'll try to be more specificly clear. Playing every creature + Survival isn't an actual plan, so you have to actually choose which creatures goes in an actual survival list. If you're arguing that every good creature go in survival lists you're just wrong, because survival as a simple tutor in goodstuff.deck is worse than GSZ. It's way slower (1GG to fetch the first creature), not as versatile as GSZ for getting both accelleration and threats quickly, and require you to have a creature in hand to start. Those are all important points.
The strenght of survival is the ability to be an engine, with Vengevines, and Retainers/Ooze. You can make the survival plan your primary or secondary plan of the deck, but it's harder to make it secondary because of the amount of slots and sub-optimal cards it require, unlike the blue shell for example, that don't make you play "bad" cards at all.
So you can't simply take generic Maverick.deck and put Survivals in it, you have to put also the engine within it, else Survival isn't worth it.

And here come the first point: you're sacrificing slots for survival. Simply because survival isn't worth it unless you cheat vengevines, or legends, or oozes.
And this bring also a quick consequence: your aggro plan is obviously not as good as a really good aggro decks, since you have several 4 cmcs (don't take me wrong, Vengevines are really good, but playing multiple 4cmc cards is not something you want to do in disruption-light decks, or against delver/burn decks) and legends, and 1/1s to trigger out VV. So you can't just play Maverick and add Survivals, you have to sacrifice a consistent amount of slots to it, making your "B" plan of beatdown worse. This isn't Vault/Key level of compact obviously.

Even if GSZ is one-shot, the greater amount of flexibility, much cheaper mana cost, and the ability to work without other specific cards in your hand put it far and above Survival as a "fair" tutor. It's the ability to double as an engine to cheat things into play that make Survival a strong card, without it, it's nothing amazing. And thanks to its speed, GSZ is better at getting answer creatures like Ooze or Qasali. Ooze is especially egregious. With survival, to remove 1 card from a grave with Ooze it cost 1GG+discard a creature+1G+G. If you want to get a cheap answer, survival isn't clearly the best choice here.

If your survival recurr plan is shut off via RiP for example, you don't only have 10+ bad draws in your deck, but you've probably also lost a mana + cards investment. Your "plan B" of aggro is nowhere as good when a big chunk of your deck are now subpar (Walla, Memnite, hardcast VV, Retainer) or simply uncastable cards (Iona/Devourer, Elesh but she's actually just 7 mana so castable if you get Cradle). Also, other decks "aggro" plans are now considerably faster or stronger with Delver, TNN and Pyromancers around, so by relative power levels, your beatdown plan get even worse.

Also, just for a mental exercise, what do you cut from a Maverick List to fit 3 VV, 1 Walla, 1 Memnite, 1 Retainer, 1 Elesh Norn, 4 Survivals? That's 11 cards. The Ooze shell is similar, but slightly slower and Devourer is crap by itself compared to Iona/Elesh which are sometimes hardcastable. You could probably cut the punishing fire suite, that's 4 cards. Then moms? A zenith or 2? It's easy to see why your beatdown plan can't be as good as actual non-survival lists.
Opportunity cost is absolutely relevant for SotF.

Punishing Maverick; Fabian Gorzgen (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76103)
Spells (22+13=35)Lands (25)Sideboard (15)
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg

1 Batterskull
3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Bayou
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Plateau
2 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Thespian's Stage
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Dark Depths
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Choke
2 Engineered Plague
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Bojuka Bog

Or a non-punishing variety:

Maverick; Noel Thompson (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76093)
Spells (24+13=37)Lands (23)Sideboard (15)
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Scryb Ranger
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

1 Batterskull
1 Sylvan Library
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Bayou
4 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Tower of the Magistrate
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Engineered Plague
1 Crop Rotation
1 Krosan Grip
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Life from the Loam
4 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Bojuka Bog

Again those list are incredibly tight. If you remove too many creatures, you may have too little for survival to work efficiently, if you remove removal spells, you lose in flexibility and the ability to answer troublesome permanents. And it's not even only that, but if you for example remove Mom, your beatdown plan is considerably worse and more subsceptible to removal, even if you gain the ability to go off with Vengevines etc...



To get more in the specifics with your post:
I call bullshit if you list cards and argue how they damage Vengevine, but in fact would be likely played alongside Survival if it was legal

I said why those cards would NOT be played alongisde Survival. If you want to tell me that Delver, Pyromancer, or TNN would be played alongisde survival, then i think you're off a bit. I explained why in my previous post that you evidently skipped:



True-name nemesis, an absurdly strong wall against VV, pratically unbreakable with any equip. Not as good in survival decks because of the mana intensive requirements, and it isn't worth paying 1GG and discard a card to tutor for it.
Containment Priest, a 1W 2/2 flash, that while good vs a lot of the meta, simply exile 3 creatures on cast vs Survival. A good silver bullet for survival decks, but shut off the VV engine, making it really situational.
Delver of Secrets, aka the strongest cheap beater ever printed. On offense, it ignore your vengevines, posing an actual clock when coupled with burn, and on defense it trade with a Vengevine. In Survival decks this is useless because you want to run as many creatures, where delver want a lot of spells, and want to be casted T1, not tutored for.
Young Pyromancer, an almost infinite supplier of token blockers vs non-wonder vengevines variants. Again, this card is bad in survival because it sinergize with spells, not other creatures.

And i also said that while some new creatures can obviously be played in Survival, they're better in non-survival decks or good against survival, something that you seems to again have skipped completely, with each card with an explanations on why i think those cards are a relative loss in power level for survival, and not a gain:



Deathrite Shaman, the strongest mana elf ever printed, and widely played, with the ability to remove your vengevines in response to madness triggers. This is actually good in survival decks, but much moreso against it.
Batterskull with Stoneforge Mystic, allowed for midrangey/control decks like Patriot, to lay down extremely fast 4/4 vigilances lifelink to effectively block Vengevines, especially coupled with the bounce ability. This is also actually good in survival decks, but more against it.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben , basically made D&T a competitive deck, and combined with any equipment from SFM it can block Vengevines all day long. Again, a card that is good in Survival because it encourage you to play creature, but not as good as in other decks because it slow down your survival if you play it before SotF, or come down usually too late if you tutor for it. This is probably the most debatable creature of this list however.

So i can safely say that your calling "bullshit" should be a bit more argumented because to me, all those points about those creatures i presented seems pretty strong. Or if you want to show me a Pyro, TNN, Delver Survival list, then go on, i'd be honestly impressed if you managed to get a good list because the conflict between what those cards want and what survival want seems insurmountable to me to be honest.

To answer another point from your post more in detail:


Your whole argumentation stretched over two threads simply ignores this possibility

But this is clearly not true, because i didn't ignore the possibility of Survival playing new craetures, i simply proposed reasons for why playing a lot of the new best creatures along vengevines isn't good at all, basically:

- Survival as a plain creature tutor isn't worth it for some of them because of the mana constraint and time constraint
- opportunity cost is too big because you want to run a lot of creatures with SotF, but a lot of spells with some of those creatures
- some of those creatures are actually incredibly fast and cheap win conditions that want you to protect them with your spells, not to play other creatures

So you can see i never ignored this possibility. In fact, it was the whole point of my post: Survival is getting relatively worse because there are more creatures worse with SotF getting printed, than creatures good in Survival decks. This has been the case for the largest part of Legacy history before the printing of vengevines, another point that you seems to have skipped, cue RecSur, Tradewind Survival, and Tool and Tubbies decks which were faded out by Blue tempo variants and other combo decks, until VV got printed at least.


... and roots soley on "Survival is fair because we have outs to returning Vengevines!" but gladly dodges the fact that GW Survival was so good, because it had an excellent aggro plan B if your opponent shuts down your graveyard, in form of hardcasting a flurry of KotRs and Vines

Again, this is not what i said at all. What i've said is that the plan of returning vengevines isn't as good as before because of the new factors existing that weaken the vengevine beatdown plan. This is a matter of opportunity cost, if your combo plan isn't as autowin as it used to be, the trade for losing consistency, options and redundancy get worse. And in turn this make survival as a card worse. For example, Delver burn decks are now often faster than straight Vengevine beatdown which win around T4.
I also never dodged the fact that survival was also an aggro deck, i simply posited that that "plan B" by today standards is much worse than it was because (a) decks now have new, extremely efficient threats that don't fit in survival decks, and (b) that survival decks, by concession of fitting a consistent engine in them, have already a worse aggro plan compared to conventional Green based aggro decks like maverick. Your "excellent" plan B, is not "excellent" anymore by modern standards, it's simply a plan B. Probably around Elves! beatdown plan.

Those things are all pretty clear when you start brewing with survival. The opportunity cost isn't negligible, in fact, it's big by modern legacy standard. And to be honest that's what i like the most from Survival: the fact that you can't play goodcards.deck with it, but you have to build around it consistently, using Vengevines or abusing the graveyard in other ways (Like welder TnT which was one of my favourite legacy decks). You can't play URg burn delver with survival, or miracle Survival, or storm survival etc... The decks enabled by survival are by far and large decks defined by the card itself, completely NEW decks in the current legacy metagame. You will have some similiarity with Maverick lists, or stompy lists, but a vast amount of card would be different, and this is a huge breath of fresh air for the metagame.
To add on this, a lot of cards that are good against survival are also the kind of cards you can easily play maindeck because they hit a lot of different strategies: needles, Containment priests, Oozes, DRS, Wear//Tear, Spell Snare etc...

EDIT:


Edit:


That is too easy. Take a more honest look at your examples:

Turn 2 AN: costs 5 mana - if countered, you lose - if it resolves, you likely going to win via combo

Turn 2 SotF: costs 2 mana - if countered, you just smash faces with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep - if it resolves, you likely going to win either via combo or with creatures which get more powerful with WotCs continuous power creep

Fact is: every deck with more than 16 creatures is better by running Survival, as every Dark Ritual deck would be better by running Necropotence, as any Countertop deck would be better by running Tinker, as any anti-creature control deck would be better by running Oath, as any combo deck would be better running Demonic Tutor. That is degeneration. That is that makes WotC ban cards

First this isn't necessarily true. Blue-based decks, even if they were to run 16 creature, wouldn't still run survival. Example? 3 TNN, 4 SFM, 4 Delvers, 3 SFM, 2 Snapcaster mage + blue shell.
D&T would just probably run 4 Containment priest or something else main and ignore survival. Would Elves! run survival? It's probable but it wouldn't be the main strategy of the deck.

Second, even in creature heavy lists like Maverick, running survival has an opportunity cost: you'd have to cut removals, or utility creatures like Mom. If the meta get too hostile for it, it's possible the opportunity cost isn't worth the possibility of the combo anymore, and survival may actually be just detrimentals for those decks.

Third, how many 16+ creatures lists are dominating the format? The format has been dominated for years by blue strategies, and for good reasons. Even if a survival lists managed to get on top of the format by crushing all "fair" decks, it would still have unfavourable matchups against a lot of combo decks, be them SnT or storm, because you aren't disrupting a lot when you run 4 survival + 16 creatures.

And finally, the argument you just said is way more true for brainstorm than for survival. Every combo deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, every dark ritual deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, every anti-creature deck that run blue is better with brainstorm, and any countertop deck is better with brainstorm. So no, i don't think that could count as a reasonable argument for banning/keeping banned a card.

[Gheizen64]

Regardless of format Penetration, Force must stay.

This should be obvious to everyone unless we want modern 2.0 with 60+ banned card list.

[testing32]

Regardless of format Penetration, Force must stay.

Agreed. I want there to be a cost to playing force though. If you want to beat combo play force, but you give up something to aggro/midrange. Currently the format is "play bs and force with no draw backs".

[Dice_Box]

Agreed. I want there to be a cost to playing force though. If you want to beat combo play force, but you give up something to aggro/midrange. Currently the format is "play bs and force with no draw backs".

I disagree. Striping yourself of two cards to stop one is a larger cost than people think. At least is was before TC. When I was playing Jund, having something Forced was normally advantageous not problematic. The tempo loss is something you give up in Midrange games and that is why they are often sided out.

Also, the other cost is the one very few people see, the inability to play some cards in your hand when your low on cards. Even if you do not have a Force in your hand, knowing you might need to keep a card to pitch to it is a skill in of itself. You have to hold cards you can otherwise play just on the chance you may draw a Force. That is something few people foresee and I have seen people get caught out on this time and time again. If you do not keep that card in your hand, you might draw dead and if you do keep it in your hand, you risk tempo loss for a pay-off that may never come.

[Gheizen64]

Agreed. I want there to be a cost to playing force though. If you want to beat combo play force, but you give up something to aggro/midrange. Currently the format is "play bs and force with no draw backs".

The cost of playing force is playing 16+ blue cards, and having to lose card advantage. Force is fine. If it feel like it isn't it's because of Treasure cruise and BS probably.

[Quasim0ff]

Agreed. I want there to be a cost to playing force though. If you want to beat combo play force, but you give up something to aggro/midrange. Currently the format is "play bs and force with no draw backs".
Force, as a card, is pretty terrible. The only thing it does is limit haymakers to run the game.

[testing32]

The cost of playing force is playing 16+ blue cards, and having to lose card advantage. Force is fine. If it feel like it isn't it's because of Treasure cruise and BS probably.

We are all agreeing here. Currently the cost of playing force is almost zero because of the ability to shuffle it away or regain the lost card advantage with TC. This observed through the inability of other decks to punish the blue decks for running force.

And running 16+ blue cards isn't a drawback right now. That is what you should be doing anyways.

[Barook]

Force is fine, but it certainly wouldn't hurt other colors to get in-color answers to prevent the broken, too, e.g.:


Ruler of Law :1::w::w:
Creature - Human Cleric
You may exile a white card from your hand rather than pay Ruler of Law’s mana cost.
Flash
Each player can’t cast more than one spell each turn.
1/3

Force is a necessity because other colors lack the tools to fight the broken. That's one approach to make running FoW (and therefore blue) less of a necessary evil, since other card quality engines have a high chance of getting incorporated into a blue shell.

I wouldn't mind more (defensive) pitch cards as long as they offer interesting trade-offs.


Take a look at Thragtusk back when Innistrad was in standard. If you ran green, you ran Tusk. But it didnt hurt the meta:
Isn't Thragtusk considered a mistake by Wizards? :eyebrow: The printing of Lifebane Zombie is a direct result of them fucking up.

[Benrobnu]

Agreed. I want there to be a cost to playing force though. If you want to beat combo play force, but you give up something to aggro/midrange. Currently the format is "play bs and force with no draw backs".

There's a very real cost to playing FOW, it's often your worse card in non combo matchups. I've long been of the opinion that modern would be a lot better with force of will in it and a slightly looser band list. (Blazing Shoal and Seething Song...)

[JamieW89]

Some terrible hasty data with bad deck classifications etc.
The percentage is the r14 contention (33p+) penetration compared to the day-2 penetration (1% day2 and 2% r14=+100% and the other way around is -50%). So it should give an idea how well the deck performed during day-2, although there are several other factors not taken into account as well as my deck classifications being very bad, I just wanted to give an impression.

FoW Combo +130% (Reanimate, SnT variants)
U Control +104% (Miracles, Landstill, Golddigger)
U-Blade +36%
Prison +18% (Lands, MUD, DnT)
Delver -22% (Included Grixis Tempo, but apparantly this doesn't play Delver, so the real result is worse. UWR did score well.)
Non-U Combo -28% (Elves did score positive, but jank like Belcher, Dredge, Painter etc scored really bad)
Non-Delver Aggro -52%
Storm -62% (Surprising, seemed well positioned)
Bgx, Shardless, Mav -63%

According to this the blue non-delver decks, UWR Delver, Elves and prison decks performed well on day-2 whereas most delver decks and non-prison non-blue decks performed bad.
This supports the idea that current legacy mainly supports blue decks, elves and anti-blue (prison) decks. These blue decks are, however, not uniform at all. Combo, control (with and without permanents), Tempo and Midrange variants all scored well within blue.

As for variance within Delver variants:
UWR +49%
BUG -20%
UR -34%
RUG -100%

[rlesko]

I like how everyone is using the fact that people are main decking pyroblasts as a reason to hate on brainstorm. Newsflash: this was for Treasure Cruise. Brainstorm has been around for years without main deck narrow hate like Pyro. It was a meta call because the UR mirror match often comes down to who resolves TC first.

Bye

[testing32]

I like how everyone is using the fact that people are main decking pyroblasts as a reason to hate on brainstorm. Newsflash: this was for Treasure Cruise. Brainstorm has been around for years without main deck narrow hate like Pyro. It was a meta call because the UR mirror match often comes down to who resolves TC first.

Bye

ummmm.... miracles was running 2 md pyroblasts b/f TC was printed.

[iGrok]

I think that's in part because non-delver blue decks beat delver. Like I was saying yesterday, the best deck in a vacuum won't win the tournament, whatever beats it will.
So stoneblade/miracles do much better than delver day 2, even though delver is stronger against the day 1 field.

Edit: I'm pretty sure miracles was running 1 red blast main not two before cruise, and it was the only deck doing that - which makes sense the deck with the best card filter. The real worrying thing is the hydroblasts imo

[Gheizen64]

I like how everyone is using the fact that people are main decking pyroblasts as a reason to hate on brainstorm. Newsflash: this was for Treasure Cruise. Brainstorm has been around for years without main deck narrow hate like Pyro. It was a meta call because the UR mirror match often comes down to who resolves TC first.

Bye

Red blast were played because of the fact that the blue shell was the most played by far: TC isn't even the best card in said shell, i'd hate for it to getting banned because it revived a archetype that had been dead for years (super fast aggro), even if in blue. And you're welcome to come back any time.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Isn't Thragtusk considered a mistake by Wizards? :eyebrow: The printing of Lifebane Zombie is a direct result of them fucking up.

If it is/was considered a mistake by WotC, then I doubt WotC actually knows what they're doing when it comes to banning/unbanning cards.

A card itself cannot be oppressive unless there are literally 0 tools to fight against it, and at that point one has to wonder how it even saw print. It's the combination of cards within a shell or deck that is oppressive. And while we cannot just ban the entirety of the Delver shell (Force of Will being the necessary evil here), we can at least cripple it without causing splash damage to more diverse archetypes (Brainstorm being one of the better "glue" cards in Legacy for a variety of archetypes).

That is why I advocate a ban against Delver itself: it hurts the most popular blue archetype without causing splash damage to things like Storm, Miracles, S&T, High Tide, etc.

[rlesko]

ummmm.... miracles was running 2 md pyroblasts b/f TC was printed.

Some builds were doing it, but that is one deck with the most card selection in Legacy. By nitpicking my statement, what were you trying to prove?

[testing32]

Some builds were doing it, but that is one deck with the most card selection in Legacy. By nitpicking my statement, what were you trying to prove?

You said that no one was main decking blasts before TC. I was mearly pointing out that was not the case.

[rlesko]

Red blast were played because of the fact that the blue shell was the most played by far: TC isn't the best card in said shell, i'd hate for it to getting banned because it revived a archetype that had been dead for years (super fast aggro), even if in blue. And you're welcome to come back any time.

I'm not saying TC was the best card in the shell, but its probably the most back breaking if it resolves.

[rlesko]

You said that no one was main decking blasts before TC. I was mearly pointing out that was not the case.

Point taken, my point was all these delver / stoneblade strategies now including Pyroblasts maindeck isn't suddenly because they realized brainstorm was good. Its to make sure your cruise resolves or to stop your opponent from cruisin'

[jafar]

I would just ask WOTC to print this:

"Rage of the granny treefolk"

:r::g:

Instant

Split Second

Counter target noncreature spell.

Blue has efficient beater? Give to the poor colors an efficient counterspell FTW!

Bye

[Rizso]

You said that no one was main decking blasts before TC. I was mearly pointing out that was not the case.

But there probly should have been before tc got released anyway. Red wasnt as good before tc as it is now. Swiftspear and youngpyromancer power has come from TC existing. Red is right now the 2nd most played color from least played with a print of a red and a blue card.

Treasure Cruise is really the best Red card printed :P

[Barook]

I like how everyone is using the fact that people are main decking pyroblasts as a reason to hate on brainstorm. Newsflash: this was for Treasure Cruise. Brainstorm has been around for years without main deck narrow hate like Pyro. It was a meta call because the UR mirror match often comes down to who resolves TC first.

Then why did Painter place in the Top 8 at GP Paris earlier this year? Same bullshit with 14/16 Brainstorm decks, an anti-blue deck (Painter) and Elves.

@jafar: So what? Blue would splash for it anyway if they can afford to run it. It certainly didn't stop them from running AD. Same thing with Pyro.

[CabalTherapy]

But there probly should have been before tc got released anyway. Red wasnt as good before tc as it is now. Swiftspear and youngpyromancer power has come from TC existing. Red is right now the 2nd most played color from least played with a print of a red and a blue card.

That has something to do with budged and people tending to netdeck and play simple stuff such as Delver Burn. UR ist one of the cheapest decks right now +easy to play = overload.

[testing32]

Point taken, my point was all these delver / stoneblade strategies now including Pyroblasts maindeck isn't suddenly because they realized brainstorm was good. Its to make sure your cruise resolves or to stop your opponent from cruisin'

No doubt. TC didn't help the situation. Delver doesn't help the situation. Ponder doesn't help. TNN doesn't help either.

But there is one card that makes all of this work. Have force in a match up that doesn't need it? Have 2 TCs early in the game and need some gas? Want to fill up your GY fast and fix that land flood in your hand? Want to run 16 lands in a non-combo deck? Got some bad luck an drew your batterskull?

Focusing on the 4th or 5th best card in a subsection of these decks (delver/TC) as the problem is disingenuous.

[Lemnear]

Ok i'll try to be more specificly clear. Playing every creature + Survival isn't an actual plan, so you have to actually choose which creatures goes in an actual survival list. If you're arguing that every good creature go in survival lists you're just wrong, because survival as a simple tutor in goodstuff.deck is worse than GSZ. It's way slower (1GG to fetch the first creature), not as versatile as GSZ for getting both accelleration and threats quickly, and require you to have a creature in hand to start. Those are all important points.
The strenght of survival is the ability to be an engine, with Vengevines, and Retainers/Ooze. You can make the survival plan your primary or secondary plan of the deck, but it's harder to make it secondary because of the amount of slots and sub-optimal cards it require, unlike the blue shell for example, that don't make you play "bad" cards at all.
So you can't simply take generic Maverick.deck and put Survivals in it, you have to put also the engine within it, else Survival isn't worth it.

You ignore that GSZ can only fetch green creatures while Survival can get you any. That's why I suggested running both alongside in the other thread for a certain redundancy. A peoblem I had with your list in the other thread was, that it was full of crappy 1-offs and three angles of attack based in the graveyard. I'm convinced that you can reduce the situational cards to a minimum. For example: Retainer + Griselbrand are two cards while Vengevines, Rootwalla and Memnite take up to 6. There is a lot of space for design. Who knows, maybe Squee + TNN can do the trick as well without having to run 4 mana 4/3 beaters?


And here come the first point: you're sacrificing slots for survival. Simply because survival isn't worth it unless you cheat vengevines, or legends, or oozes.

Have you considered that this is not the case? Maybe a steady stream of creatures (like DRS+SFM+Thalia+MoR+Reclamation Sage?) is enough? This would require testing.


And this bring also a quick consequence: your aggro plan is obviously not as good as a really good aggro decks, since you have several 4 cmcs (don't take me wrong, Vengevines are really good, but playing multiple 4cmc cards is not something you want to do in disruption-light decks, or against delver/burn decks) and legends, and 1/1s to trigger out VV. So you can't just play Maverick and add Survivals, you have to sacrifice a consistent amount of slots to it, making your "B" plan of beatdown worse. This isn't Vault/Key level of compact obviously.

Look back at what Survival did to zoo and goblins! The deck pushed both out of the format, because of the aggro-combo it was able to execute. Try to leave the idea behind that survival takes up a guaranteed dozen of spots.


Even if GSZ is one-shot, the greater amount of flexibility, much cheaper mana cost, and the ability to work without other specific cards in your hand put it far and above Survival as a "fair" tutor. It's the ability to double as an engine to cheat things into play that make Survival a strong card, without it, it's nothing amazing. And thanks to its speed, GSZ is better at getting answer creatures like Ooze or Qasali. Ooze is especially egregious. With survival, to remove 1 card from a grave with Ooze it cost 1GG+discard a creature+1G+G. If you want to get a cheap answer, survival isn't clearly the best choice here.

It offer the potential as an engine, but you can still use it to convert your Dryad Arbors you draw into rock-hard beatz. Your example of removing card from a graveyard with Survival costs exactly 1 green mana because Fairy Maccabre is a card. It's in fact cheaper than GSZ for Ooze. Just saying.


If your survival recurr plan is shut off via RiP for example, you don't only have 10+ bad draws in your deck, but you've probably also lost a mana + cards investment. Your "plan B" of aggro is nowhere as good when a big chunk of your deck are now subpar (Walla, Memnite, hardcast VV, Retainer) or simply uncastable cards (Iona/Devourer, Elesh but she's actually just 7 mana so castable if you get Cradle). Also, other decks "aggro" plans are now considerably faster or stronger with Delver, TNN and Pyromancers around, so by relative power levels, your beatdown plan get even worse.

The topic repeats. Get Walla, Memnite and shit out of your head. Dropping TNNs every fucking turn because you convert your Arbors & DRS' gets easily out of hand. I consider GSZ, Arbor and SotF an excellent combination, as you can tell.


Also, just for a mental exercise, what do you cut from a Maverick List to fit 3 VV, 1 Walla, 1 Memnite, 1 Retainer, 1 Elesh Norn, 4 Survivals? That's 11 cards. The Ooze shell is similar, but slightly slower and Devourer is crap by itself compared to Iona/Elesh which are sometimes hardcastable. You could probably cut the punishing fire suite, that's 4 cards. Then moms? A zenith or 2? It's easy to see why your beatdown plan can't be as good as actual non-survival lists.
Opportunity cost is absolutely relevant for SotF.

If you cut the P.Fire engine and some manadorks (because the list below doesn't even run Arbor) you can fit in Survival and stuff. You still have SFM, KotR and Vengevines for the aggro plan if we take the list below as a base, which I don't recommend, because I don't neccessarily see the need of MoR if you gain additional redundancy via survival


Punishing Maverick; Fabian Gorzgen (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76103)
Spells (22+13=35)Lands (25)Sideboard (15)
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg

1 Batterskull
3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Bayou
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Plateau
2 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Thespian's Stage
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Dark Depths
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Choke
2 Engineered Plague
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Bojuka Bog

Or a non-punishing variety:

Maverick; Noel Thompson (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76093)
Spells (24+13=37)Lands (23)Sideboard (15)
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Scryb Ranger
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

1 Batterskull
1 Sylvan Library
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Bayou
4 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Tower of the Magistrate
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Engineered Plague
1 Crop Rotation
1 Krosan Grip
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Life from the Loam
4 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Bojuka Bog

Again those list are incredibly tight. If you remove too many creatures, you may have too little for survival to work efficiently, if you remove removal spells, you lose in flexibility and the ability to answer troublesome permanents. And it's not even only that, but if you for example remove Mom, your beatdown plan is considerably worse and more subsceptible to removal, even if you gain the ability to go off with Vengevines etc...

-snip-

To get more in the specifics with your post:

I said why those cards would NOT be played alongisde Survival. If you want to tell me that Delver, Pyromancer, or TNN would be played alongisde survival, then i think you're off a bit. I explained why in my previous post that you evidently skipped:

I did not skip it; I think it's inadequate. GW Survival pilots know how desasterous efficient it was to drop several Tarmogoyfs/KotRs if the graveyard was shut down and we know that SFM and TNN outclassed them by today. It's not off to think that these might replace the graveyard-dependant heavy-hitters of old.


So i can safely say that your calling "bullshit" should be a bit more argumented because to me, all those points about those creatures i presented seems pretty strong. Or if you want to show me a Pyro, TNN, Delver Survival list, then go on, i'd be honestly impressed if you managed to get a good list because the conflict between what those cards want and what survival want seems insurmountable to me to be honest.

I don't see a conflict with Survival if you improve the beatz-aspect the deck ever had as a plan B, to not rely on the graveyard like Goofy & KotR did. You are totally free to toy with a BANT shell aka SFM+Hierarch+TNN+Retainer+GSZ+, a BUG shell aka DRS+Vengevine+TNN or a GW shell with SFM+Hierarch+Retainer+hatebears. We can assume that the 2010 Survival lists ARE outdated and don't give an image of the true potential.


So you can see i never ignored this possibility. In fact, it was the whole point of my post: Survival is getting relatively worse because there are more creatures worse with SotF getting printed, than creatures good in Survival decks. This has been the case for the largest part of Legacy history before the printing of vengevines, another point that you seems to have skipped, cue RecSur, Tradewind Survival, and Tool and Tubbies decks which were faded out by Blue tempo variants and other combo decks, until VV got printed at least.

I don't know why you think creature power creep makes creature tutors worse. Really, no clue.


Again, this is not what i said at all. What i've said is that the plan of returning vengevines isn't as good as before because of the new factors existing that weaken the vengevine beatdown plan. This is a matter of opportunity cost, if your combo plan isn't as autowin as it used to be, the trade for losing consistency, options and redundancy get worse. And in turn this make survival as a card worse. For example, Delver burn decks are now often faster than straight Vengevine beatdown which win around T4.

And that's why I think, we should take a honest look on Survivals potential rather than clinging to Vengevine.


I also never dodged the fact that survival was also an aggro deck, i simply posited that that "plan B" by today standards is much worse than it was because (a) decks now have new, extremely efficient threats that don't fit in survival decks, and (b) that survival decks, by concession of fitting a consistent engine in them, have already a worse aggro plan compared to conventional Green based aggro decks like maverick. Your "excellent" plan B, is not "excellent" anymore by modern standards, it's simply a plan B. Probably around Elves! beatdown plan.

There is no proof formthe bolded part. I don't see a reason Survival can't adopt these threats.

I make a break here as some topics repeat

[rlesko]

No doubt. TC didn't help the situation. Delver doesn't help the situation. Ponder doesn't help. TNN doesn't help either.

But there is one card that makes all of this work. Have force in a match up that doesn't need it? Have 2 TCs early in the game and need some gas? Want to fill up your GY fast and fix that land flood in your hand? Want to run 16 lands in a non-combo deck? Got some bad luck an drew your batterskull?

Focusing on the 4th or 5th best card in a subsection of these decks (delver/TC) as the problem is disingenuous.

Yes brainstorm is a very powerful card. Its probably the best card in legacy, I'm not arguing that.

I'm not trying to focus on any particular card. Just getting in on this thread and wanting to make it clear that in every deck except certain miracles builds, it was never correct to run a maindeck Pyroblast before the printing of Treasure Cruise. What I see is

Pre Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast side

Post Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast main

yes/no?

[Dice_Box]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

[rlesko]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

Yes but they also run Painter's Servant. Comparing this to say miracles running main deck Pyro is apples to oranges.

[iGrok]

I would like to just point out that Painter too also happens to have 6 to 8 REB's it its 75. Just to correct everyone that is saying that Miracles was the only deck doing it.

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Painter ran them for quite different reasons than anyone else, so perhaps that is why people aren't mentioning it.

[FoolofaTook]

Yes brainstorm is a very powerful card. Its probably the best card in legacy, I'm not arguing that.

I'm not trying to focus on any particular card. Just getting in on this thread and wanting to make it clear that in every deck except certain miracles builds, it was never correct to run a maindeck Pyroblast before the printing of Treasure Cruise. What I see is

Pre Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast side

Post Khans:
Brainstorm main, Pyroblast main

yes/no?

Pyroblasts/REB's main is a result of blue going well over critical mass in the meta after Treasure Cruise was printed. It's not specifically for Treasure Cruise it's for the mass of blue cards that will kill you now, particularly near the end of a long tournament. It's no accident that 4 or the 5 blue shells in the top 8 main listed Pyroblast.

The blue killers at the moment:

Delver of Secrets
Treasure Cruise
Brainstorm (to put a Miracle back on top of the pile)
True-Name Nemesis
Force of Will

That's why people were main-listing Pyroblasts. Most of the lists in top 32 were going to feature several of those threats and an answer for :r: was very valuable.

[Megadeus]

Isn't Thragtusk considered a mistake by Wizards? :eyebrow: The printing of Lifebane Zombie is a direct result of them fucking up.

Tusk was actually one of their fixer cards. They printed it in response to the Geist/Snap caster/Delver tempo decks that were successful thanks to vapor snag. Hence the leaves, not dies clause on its second ability

[Dice_Box]

Yes but they also run Painter's Servant. Comparing this to say miracles running main deck Pyro is apples to oranges.

I disagree. There is a reason that you can run 6 Blasts main is that they are often not dead draws without Painter.

It is a deck with only Top as a way to filter draws that otherwise chooses to run 6 dead draws without a combo piece on the table? That does not seam like smart deck-building unless there is more to it than that. Painter as a deck exists only on the back of decks like Delver being strong in the environment. I think it proves a very strong point and one that should not be overlooked or discarded when you start talking about things like this.

We have a deck that before TC could win events with 6 cards that, should should you go up against a non Blue deck with any creature removal, are totally dead. But with it you can win events. That says something. It says a lot.

[Gheizen64]

You ignore that GSZ can only fetch green creatures while Survival can get you any. That's why I suggested running both alongside in the other thread for a certain redundancy. A peoblem I had with your list in the other thread was, that it was full of crappy 1-offs and three angles of attack based in the graveyard. I'm convinced that you can reduce the situational cards to a minimum. For example: Retainer + Griselbrand are two cards while Vengevines, Rootwalla and Memnite take up to 6. There is a lot of space for design. Who knows, maybe Squee + TNN can do the trick as well without having to run 4 mana 4/3 beaters?

Redundancy come at the expense of playing actual cards. If you run both GSZ and survival, plus lots of creatures, suddendly you have very little space in your deck. You propose retainer + Griselbrand as the only concessions, but Griselbrand isn't that good in a deck with little spells and many creatures, and viceversa for survival. Emrakul is a better choice, even if it's a bit clunkier because you leave yourself open to Swords. And then why wouldn't you just play recurring nightmare with a singleton Entomb? Squee + TNN is cute but again, it's an extremely slow and roundabout way to gain card advantage, which could've been good in 2005 maybe. Survival was available FOR YEARS before VV was printed, and no deck using it and any reanimating tricks, or card advantage engine using squee were ever really top decks aside for maybe the very beginning of the format. The reasons for this are the inherently slowness of the card as a card-advantage engine when combined with things with squee, and the design constraints it put on your deck + slowness as a card filtering/tutoring engine.



Have you considered that this is not the case? Maybe a steady stream of creatures (like DRS+SFM+Thalia+MoR+Reclamation Sage?) is enough? This would require testing.

Again, if your deck is so redundant, why play survival at all? Decks of old almost never played survival for a reason: they wanted to play few, efficients threats, and protect them to victory. Survival is an unnecessary step. A slow, steady stream of creatures, with little way to get carda advantage sounds like a good plan to lose against all but maybe midrange decks.



Look back at what Survival did to zoo and goblins! The deck pushed both out of the format, because of the aggro-combo it was able to execute. Try to leave the idea behind that survival takes up a guaranteed dozen of spots.

If you don't take the survival combo with survival, survival is the card that was before VV was printed, a T2 strategies enabler. The demise of Goblins and Zoo has been attributed to so many different factors and i'll take that as a joke, since they're still nowhere to be seen (unless you consider UR delver basically a Zoo). And goblin has been a viable deck for years while survival was in the format, so if anything there are more indications of goblin being good when survival is legal than when it is banned.



It offer the potential as an engine, but you can still use it to convert your Dryad Arbors you draw into rock-hard beatz. Your example of removing card from a graveyard with Survival costs exactly 1 green mana because Fairy Maccabre is a card. It's in fact cheaper than GSZ for Ooze. Just saying.

Again, you think the card as a tutor is efficient, but you're paying 1GG to cycle 1 creature. I don't see that as efficient at all, especially if you just cycle for a "rock-hard" beat, which basically mean you're going at it like the slowest midrange aggro deck ever. Also, Fairy Macabre is a card, but one that has an opportunity cost because it does nothing but exiling cards, which is why i didn't even consider it as i wanted to play as less dead cards as possible.



The topic repeats. Get Walla, Memnite and shit out of your head. Dropping TNNs every fucking turn because you convert your Arbors & DRS' gets easily out of hand. I consider GSZ, Arbor and SotF an excellent combination, as you can tell.

"Shit" was what pushed Survival to being too good for this format. Not Goyf, nor Emrakul, (which was printed in the same set as VV), nor Iona, nor KotR. It was Vengevine, that and only that, because of the ability to cheat for mana costs. Just tutoring, at card parity, for G, was nowhere as good enough for the format, nor is good enough now if you don't include the cheating aspect of the card.




If you cut the P.Fire engine and some manadorks (because the list below doesn't even run Arbor) you can fit in Survival and stuff. You still have SFM, KotR and Vengevines for the aggro plan if we take the list below as a base, which I don't recommend, because I don't neccessarily see the need of MoR if you gain additional redundancy via survival

And i agree here, but i've noticed that you have little to no way to gain card advantage if Survival/Vengevines get negated, which is why Mom was a good card here, providing tons of virtual CA.



I did not skip it; I think it's inadequate. GW Survival pilots know how desasterous efficient it was to drop several Tarmogoyfs/KotRs if the graveyard was shut down and we know that SFM and TNN outclassed them by today. It's not off to think that these might replace the graveyard-dependant heavy-hitters of old.

I don't see a conflict with Survival if you improve the beatz-aspect the deck ever had as a plan B, to not rely on the graveyard like Goofy & KotR did. You are totally free to toy with a BANT shell aka SFM+Hierarch+TNN+Retainer+GSZ+, a BUG shell aka DRS+Vengevine+TNN or a GW shell with SFM+Hierarch+Retainer+hatebears. We can assume that the 2010 Survival lists ARE outdated and don't give an image of the true potential.

Ok so you think Survival as a sort of library/top to clear the chaff of your topdeck and always get a relevant beater is good, but there are tons of cards that do this and don't require you to play as many creatures, or the green color, at all. The fact survival do this in green should be a plus, not a cons. Goyf and KotR were green and not as mana intensive as TNN is. Again you're ignoring the cost of running such mana intensive engines and cards, when the end result is a 3/1 on the board. There's a reason even TNN as good as it is it's not played as a 4-of, and there's also a reason for Goyf playing a lot less play right now: you can't afford to clog your hand and do nothing early turns when people play 3/2 flying for U and infinite tokens with YP, or SnT emrakuls T3.



I don't know why you think creature power creep makes creature tutors worse. Really, no clue.

Because that's exactly what happened for years before VV got printed. History taught me that Survival was good in decks that abused the graveyard interaction, and nowhere as good in other decks. TnT, RecSur, Angry Tradewind Survival were all based on grave interactions: TnT had welder+squee, RecSur had Recurring Nightmare, and ATS had squee, genesys and E. Witness.




And that's why I think, we should take a honest look on Survivals potential rather than clinging to Vengevine.

Again, survival was a non-card for YEARS, until Vengevine got printed. And power creep has always been there, but never did anything but push Survival more and more out of the metagame until Vengevine got printed and gave him a second life as a combo finisher.




There is no proof form the bolded part. I don't see a reason Survival can't adopt these threats.


So you think that survival decks can play TNN, Delvers, Pyromancers? Thalias? You aren't feeling already the clunkyness of those hands, of all that non-green mana you need to play TNNs? Of the fact that without getting card advantage from your survival, your opponent can jsut 1for1 you all day long adn then play TC or DTT, or just miracle out your board? Or the fact that survival isn't giving you anything in the first turns of the game because you'll want to already play the threats you have in hand, and not search for a combo to give you insane virtual card advatnage with it ? I feel the clunkyness of those hands and those survival as it was yesterday, playing TnT decks that were still sorta good by those days standards.

Threats aside, what about Treasure cruise? Or containment priest? You're just being dishonest if you really think that better creatures being printed just make survival better ignoring :
- the history of the game that point out the opposite with the only exception of Vengevine, and squee before that
- the context in which those better creatures operate at their best which is more often something that's not survival rather than survival decks because of their colors, mana cost, overall strategy they fit within

[testing32]

I disagree. There is a reason that you can run 6 Blasts main is that they are often not dead draws without Painter.

It is a deck with only Top as a way to filter draws that otherwise chooses to run 6 dead draws without a combo piece on the table? That does not seam like smart deck-building unless there is more to it than that. Painter as a deck exists only on the back of decks like Delver being strong in the environment. I think it proves a very strong point and one that should not be overlooked or discarded when you start talking about things like this.

We have a deck that before TC could win events with 6 cards that, should should you go up against a non Blue deck with any creature removal, are totally dead. But with it you can win events. That says something. It says a lot.

You have a point. There is a reason that it's not blue based and running hydroblasts.

[rlesko]

You have a point. There is a reason that it's not blue based and running hydroblasts.

Ya, because Imperial Recruiter, Goblin Welder, Blood Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, Magus of the Moon, and Lightning Bolt aren't blue...

[Dice_Box]

No, but Brainstorm, Force, Transmute Artifact, Tezzeret, Academy Ruins and Intuition are.

If Hyroblast was as good in this format as REB was, Painter would be just as fitting as a Blue deck.

[rlesko]

No, but Brainstorm, Force, Transmute Artifact, Tezzeret, Academy Ruins and Intuition are.

If Hyroblast was as good in this format as REB was, Painter would be just as fitting as a Blue deck.

Do note I agree that REB/Pyro is far better in the format than BEB/Hydro. It would be foolish to argue that.

Hey, that deck doesn't sound half bad...

[gainsay]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC. WotC is pushing for everything being creature-centric, and as a result, push creature power creep on blue. That just gave legacy's best color a way of being better that it didn't need. Wizards needs to address powercreep and creature-centrism. I enjoy legacy mainly because there's competitive styles you're allowed to play that aren't just turning creatures right

[FoolofaTook]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC. WotC is pushing for everything being creature-centric, and as a result, push creature power creep on blue. That just gave legacy's best color a way of being better that it didn't need. Wizards needs to address powercreep and creature-centrism. I enjoy legacy mainly because there's competitive styles you're allowed to play that aren't just turning creatures right

You do have a point here. Traditionally creatures have been weak due to summoning sickness and the opponent's ability to interact with them in additional ways before they do damage.

Insectile Aberration is often a good-sized evasive beater before the opponent can setup to interact with it effectively. True-Name Nemesis is a largely non-interactive creature that is problematic for many lists to deal with once it lands. It does seem as though WotC has made a point of emphasis on giving blue creatures that are hard to interact with effectively when they are backed up by the blue shell.

Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf were also in this class prior to the blue additions. Mishra's Factory was sometimes in this class depending on how the blue shell was configured.

The blue shell is the problem though. It is what makes the creatures hard to interact with effectively.

[CabalTherapy]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC.

Tell me, where does Delver constantly win everything?
Delver decks shouldn't be even in the top5 "Legacy's best strategies" because playing a cc1 1/1 which flips into a mighty 3/2 flying is a joke.
People should rearrange their minds and play real decks that demand brainpower or are simply more powerful and evil. :cool:
I consider Storm, Miracles, Reanimator, UW Blade or even Deathblade and SneakShow stronger than Delverdeck.

[FoolofaTook]

Tell me, where does Delver constantly win everything?
Delver decks shouldn't be even in the top5 "Legacy's best strategies" because playing a cc1 1/1 which flips into a mighty 3/2 flying is a joke.
People should rearrange their minds and play real decks that demand brainpower or are simply more powerful and evil. :cool:
I consider Storm, Miracles, Reanimator, UW Blade or even Deathblade and SneakShow stronger than Delverdeck.

Other than the blade lists you have a lot of once or twice and done in that group. Delver lists are powerful precisely because they are so redundant and losing their first threat is just an even trade for them. They're powerful because the hate for them is very limited.

The blade lists are in the same category but a bit stronger depending on configuration.

[gainsay]

Nice, we're back into "this card isn't too good because it can die" territory

[ReAnimator]

.

Honest question, are you actually Andrew Cuneo or are you just using his user name that he's been using on everything forever?

If you are not that's cool, whatever, but i'm probably not the only one who might be confused.

[eays]

my two cents: I personally don't like what treasure cruise has done to the format. It's existence has pushed several long standing, interesting, and healthy deck archetypes over the cliff and into obsolescence on it's own, and as far as I can tell it hasn't actually created anything cool or new besides the abomination of that is UR Delver. The cards from Khans have just taken the deck types that were already on top of the format and made them even more resiliant.

I think whether people are willing to admit it or not though, a big component to the whole ban/don't ban xyz card debate revolves around the type of archetypes and decks each person prefers/has bought into.

I enjoy non-blue based control/attrition/resource denial/toolbox strategies, and these have all but been invalidated by treasure cruise, therefore I find myself hoping that the card gets cut.

Many of my friends who enjoy the same style of play and who have invested in those types of decks feel similarly.

Conversly, blue aggro tempo, blue control, and blue combo players that I interact are all giddy with their new card draw tools and are adamant that the format is fine with them existing. (although there are a few blue playing friends I know who don't think the card is healthy).

Also, I think people who play MODO are much more in agreeance that TC is problematic, because the metagame on MODO is currently revolving much more around the card than paper tournaments I've been to...

Will the Legacy metagame adapt? Yes, but when the dust settles, there will be a much narrower field of decks and strategies to pick from, because the new bar for a deck to compete in the format is "can you keep up with U: Draw 3 + fast clocks + permission + brainstorm", and that is an extremely high bar to meet.

[aluisiocsantos]

The bottom line is: STOP GIVING BLUE DECKS AWESOME CARDS WIZARDS!!!

[Gheizen64]

my two cents: I personally don't like what treasure cruise has done to the format. It's existence has pushed several long standing, interesting, and healthy deck archetypes over the cliff and into obsolescence on it's own, and as far as I can tell it hasn't actually created anything cool or new besides the abomination of that is UR Delver. The cards from Khans have just taken the deck types that were already on top of the format and made them even more resiliant.

I think whether people are willing to admit it or not though, a big component to the whole ban/don't ban xyz card debate revolves around the type of archetypes and decks each person prefers/has bought into.

I enjoy non-blue based control/attrition/resource denial/toolbox strategies, and these have all but been invalidated by treasure cruise, therefore I find myself hoping that the card gets cut.

Many of my friends who enjoy the same style of play and who have invested in those types of decks feel similarly.

Conversly, blue aggro tempo, blue control, and blue combo players that I interact are all giddy with their new card draw tools and are adamant that the format is fine with them existing. (although there are a few blue playing friends I know who don't think the card is healthy).

Also, I think people who play MODO are much more in agreeance that TC is problematic, because the metagame on MODO is currently revolving much more around the card than paper tournaments I've been to...

Will the Legacy metagame adapt? Yes, but when the dust settles, there will be a much narrower field of decks and strategies to pick from, because the new bar for a deck to compete in the format is "can you keep up with U: Draw 3 + fast clocks + permission + brainstorm", and that is an extremely high bar to meet.

I don't agree at all.

Before the format was just as blue, but even more stale. At least now it seems unconventional decks like lands and MUD decks appear more often.
TC also put specific restrictions on deckbuilding; play a lot of cheap spells. Things like Thalia or trinishpere or CotV are amazing against those decks, as well as decks who just ignore Delvers and Pyromancers tokens like lands. If anything has to be banned, just weaken the blue shell of cantrip that power all blue decks, not TC that isn't even used in a lot of them, like Miracle, Storm or Sneak and Show. If TC get banned, we just get back Miracle vs U tempo vs Elves exactly like before anyway.

[maharis]

my two cents: I personally don't like what treasure cruise has done to the format. It's existence has pushed several long standing, interesting, and healthy deck archetypes over the cliff and into obsolescence on it's own, and as far as I can tell it hasn't actually created anything cool or new besides the abomination of that is UR Delver. The cards from Khans have just taken the deck types that were already on top of the format and made them even more resiliant.

I think whether people are willing to admit it or not though, a big component to the whole ban/don't ban xyz card debate revolves around the type of archetypes and decks each person prefers/has bought into.

I enjoy non-blue based control/attrition/resource denial/toolbox strategies, and these have all but been invalidated by treasure cruise, therefore I find myself hoping that the card gets cut.

Many of my friends who enjoy the same style of play and who have invested in those types of decks feel similarly.

Conversly, blue aggro tempo, blue control, and blue combo players that I interact are all giddy with their new card draw tools and are adamant that the format is fine with them existing. (although there are a few blue playing friends I know who don't think the card is healthy).

Also, I think people who play MODO are much more in agreeance that TC is problematic, because the metagame on MODO is currently revolving much more around the card than paper tournaments I've been to...

Will the Legacy metagame adapt? Yes, but when the dust settles, there will be a much narrower field of decks and strategies to pick from, because the new bar for a deck to compete in the format is "can you keep up with U: Draw 3 + fast clocks + permission + brainstorm", and that is an extremely high bar to meet.

This is a very good post. The thing is, though, that even if you've bought into some BGx/BWx attrition cards, you don't have to do that much to get into UR delver (for example). You can turn your Bobs, Lilianas, and extraneous duals into Forces and Volcs without much extra cost. The rest is commons and uncommons, and with the reprint of the Onslaught fetches, even if you can't get Tarns nothing else is more than what, 12-15 bucks? Heck, even the Junk Nic Fit list I played at the GP is less than $100 under the cost of the stock UR delver list and it doesn't play Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, or Tarmogoyf. (Granted, I do play Karakas and one Lili in the board, but it's still negligibly close for a Legacy player).

Of course, if everyone did that, prices on Force and Volc would go up. But just theoretically at this point, you could do that. Still that isn't fun for anyone. Even the people who like blue-based strategies probably would tire of playing the near-mirror all the time. Just look at the comments in the coverage thread when SCG was running delver after delver.

That's why everyone should want WoTC to take some action now. Maybe it's Brainstorm, maybe it's Delver, maybe it's Ponder. But something has to be done because like you said, every new printing invalidates old archetypes. I mean, I'm not even sure Treasure Cruise is the true culprit. Monastery Swiftspear is insanely good when you can chain one-mana spells into it (or worse, more than one).

[eays]

I don't agree at all.

Before the format was just as blue, but even more stale. At least now it seems unconventional decks like lands and MUD decks appear more often.
TC also put specific restrictions on deckbuilding; play a lot of cheap spells.

As someone who owns and plays lands myself, I can tell you the viability of that archetype has not changed much. It's just as good now as it was pre-treasuire cruise. the strongest forms of GY hate are a bit passe' right now and many former Pox, Rock, Aggro loam players are switching to lands because their deck of choice is now tier 3 or below so you're seeing it represented more.

Also, what evidence do you have that MUD decks appear more often now? The same ppl who've always played MUD still play MUD, and 1 fluky top 8ing does not a contender make. Chalice decks are chalice decks. They have the power level to beat blue/combo but not consistently so.

The restrictions on treasure cruise are not many. It basically slots right in as a 1-4 of in most any BS, Ponder, Force deck, being slightly better in those that also toss in gitax, and run countermagic. midrange decks can make great use of TC just like UR delver. And if they don't want cruise, they probably want Dig, which delivers a similar if not even more powerful effect for the decks that want it.

[Megadeus]

This is a very good post. The thing is, though, that even if you've bought into some BGx/BWx attrition cards, you don't have to do that much to get into UR delver (for example). You can turn your Bobs, Lilianas, and extraneous duals into Forces and Volcs without much extra cost. The rest is commons and uncommons, and with the reprint of the Onslaught fetches, even if you can't get Tarns nothing else is more than what, 12-15 bucks? Heck, even the Junk Nic Fit list I played at the GP is less than $100 under the cost of the stock UR delver list and it doesn't play Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, or Tarmogoyf. (Granted, I do play Karakas and one Lili in the board, but it's still negligibly close for a Legacy player).

Of course, if everyone did that, prices on Force and Volc would go up. But just theoretically at this point, you could do that. Still that isn't fun for anyone. Even the people who like blue-based strategies probably would tire of playing the near-mirror all the time. Just look at the comments in the coverage thread when SCG was running delver after delver.

That's why everyone should want WoTC to take some action now. Maybe it's Brainstorm, maybe it's Delver, maybe it's Ponder. But something has to be done because like you said, every new printing invalidates old archetypes. I mean, I'm not even sure Treasure Cruise is the true culprit. Monastery Swiftspear is insanely good when you can chain one-mana spells into it (or worse, more than one).

I mean... If the solution is "trade all of your non blue thingsfor blue things, then you'll have fun!" Then why play at all?

[Star|Scream]

I mean... If the solution is "trade all of your non blue thingsfor blue things, then you'll have fun!" Then why play at all?

He specifically said it wasn't fun

[rlesko]

I would really enjoy if there was an attrition style deck that was viable. Chains of Mephistohpeles reprint please.

[Gheizen64]

As someone who owns and plays lands myself, I can tell you the viability of that archetype has not changed much. It's just as good now as it was pre-treasuire cruise. the strongest forms of GY hate are a bit passe' right now and many former Pox, Rock, Aggro loam players are switching to lands because their deck of choice is now tier 3 or below so you're seeing it represented more.

Also, what evidence do you have that MUD decks appear more often now? The same ppl who've always played MUD still play MUD, and 1 fluky top 8ing does not a contender make. Chalice decks are chalice decks. They have the power level to beat blue/combo but not consistently so.

The restrictions on treasure cruise are not many. It basically slots right in as a 1-4 of in most any BS, Ponder, Force deck, being slightly better in those that also toss in gitax, and run countermagic. midrange decks can make great use of TC just like UR delver. And if they don't want cruise, they probably want Dig, which delivers a similar if not even more powerful effect for the decks that want it.

I said it seems because the last two tournaments i watched (GP and SGC not sure where) had Slivers, 2 MUD, 2 copies of lands iirc, more storm and other things than i remember. Grantly, i watched much less before since it was blue tempo vs blue tempo all the time, and started watching more legacy again lately after TC got printed so my perception is skewed and there were many of those decks (as in, 1 or 2 every T8) even before.

[Megadeus]

He specifically said it wasn't fun

Apparently reading comprehension isn't a strength ofmine

[eays]

I would really enjoy if there was an attrition style deck that was viable. Chains of Mephistohpeles reprint please.

Haha. Trust me, the availability of Chains of mephistopheles is NOT what is holding back the viability of attrition style decks. Chains is a sweet old card but it's just not good in practice. I was once bright eyed and bushy tailed as you, and bought into a pair of these bad boys. Needless to say I no longer own them..

[rlesko]

Haha. Trust me, the availability of Chains of mephistopheles is NOT what is holding back the viability of attrition style decks. Chains is a sweet old card but it's just not good in practice. I was once bright eyed and bushy tailed as you, and bought into a pair of these bad boys. Needless to say I no longer own them..

Well, that makes me feel good about the current state of my Pox deck ;)

[mikeshimoji]

Honestly I think delver constantly winning everything is just a result of a lack of design vision on part of WotC. WotC is pushing for everything being creature-centric, and as a result, push creature power creep on blue. That just gave legacy's best color a way of being better that it didn't need. Wizards needs to address powercreep and creature-centrism. I enjoy legacy mainly because there's competitive styles you're allowed to play that aren't just turning creatures right

Though I don't think delver is "constantly winning everything," I agree with this post. I don't think blue drawing cards is the problem per se, though treasure cruise is a bit much, but the fact that they can protect the creatures which are already hard to kill (tnn, geist of saint traft), small investment (delver at one mana) or simple card advantage (scm) is what I find hard to deal with. Yes, we non-blue players have the answers to them, but they are 1) narrow, 2) vulnerable to counter spell. It is the saddest thing when our council's judgement gets forced while tnn with jitte is bashing through tarm, knight of the reliquary, thalia, wild nacatl, mom and the like.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Well, that makes me feel good about the current state of my Pox deck ;)

It's true. As someone who has actually played 4x Chains in a list, the card isn't actually great - the reason is it still doesn't stop Delver from just killing you.

[FoolofaTook]

Haha. Trust me, the availability of Chains of mephistopheles is NOT what is holding back the viability of attrition style decks. Chains is a sweet old card but it's just not good in practice. I was once bright eyed and bushy tailed as you, and bought into a pair of these bad boys. Needless to say I no longer own them..

Chains had a lot of potential that people couldn't unlock in the old meta also. The classic list was Chains of Mephistopheles - Land Tax - Balance - Howling Mine - Winter Orb - Relic Barrier - Icy Manipulator with Racks and/or Black Vises as the kill mechanism. It had huge redundancies built in to gain card advantage and to make opposing creatures miserable and it got it's effect into play consistently. The effect just wasn't strong enough fast enough even with Black Lotus, Moxes and Sol Ring powering it out. Too many cards in the list that did something but not enough unless a couple of other cards were out.

TL;dr - Chains of Mephistopheles does nothing if both players are just playing Magic and avoiding making a play now and then that would be routine otherwise. That makes it very weak general hate and a really bad play if the opponent is already ahead.

[aluisiocsantos]

The card does punish greedy players keeping bad hands because of cantrips though. I love the card, just wish I could avoid people calling the judge everytime I play it :p

[EpicLevelCommoner]

From the Color Pie and Disruption thread:


Sylvan Library is not good enough, which is why you don't see a lot of good lists playing 4x Sylvan Library. It lands too late to help you straighten out a bad draw when you're on the draw. The other guy is already up and running and you're not fixing anything until after his turn 3. This is true in a hyper-organized meta in which the blue shell dictates that turn 3 is too late to fix things.

A Sylvan Library effect that casts for :g: and allows you to look at the top 3 cards during your second upkeep (Mirri's Guile) is not good enough.

An effect that allowed you to look at the top 3 cards and pay 4 life to put one in hand during your upkeep is what you need to keep up with the blue shells Ponders and Brainstorms. Even then it might not be good enough because it would be unusable against Burn and a lot of fast aggro, whereas Ponder and Brainstorm are equally good against all archetypes.

The Legacy meta is too engineered around the mull and the blue shell at this point. That's what takes the majesty out of the game.

In the old single meta you only got to mull if you had all lands or no lands. The only cantrip effects available were Ancestral Recall x1 and Timewalk x1. There were no free counters available. There was lots of turn 1 and turn 2 creature disruption available (Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Paralyze, Balance, Boomerang, Spirit Link, etc.) There was lots of artifact disruption available (Crumble, Disenchant, Shatter, Energy Flux, Shatterstorm, etc.) There was a ton of fast mana available (Black Lotus, Moxes, Sol Ring, Dark Ritual, Mana Vault, etc.)

The first MTG World Championship in July of 1994 was won by Zak Dolan playing an early version of the blue shell. This despite all the fast mana and heavy combos and big creatures available turn 1. How did he do it? He build a solid list with 27 mana sources and 33 spells around UW and he slowly wore people down.

The second MTG World Championship in July of 1995 was won by Brian Weissman playing a more evolved version of the blue shell. This despite all the fast mana and heavy combos and big creatures available turn 1. How did he do it? He splashed red into the UW shell and added Jayemdae Tomes to give him card advantage late and inevitability. He was also playing 27 mana sources and 33 spells.

WotC's response to all of this was to dumb the game down by removing all the fast mana (except Dark Ritual, Sol Ring, Mana Vault and Mishra's Workshop) because somehow the fast mana was the root of Magic's problems, not the fact that it is a game of chance in which 15 cards out of the 60 you see will in all probability win or lose for you most of the time.

That meta, before WotC dumbed everything down was a much better meta than anything we have seen since. The two blue shell lists won because nobody really saw them coming. The internet basically consisted of Prodigy and Compuserve and Listserv at that point and almost nobody was tuned in. If that meta had been allowed to evolve appropriately we'd have come closer to the real vision of Magic, when it was created, than we have at any point since.

I'd go on a long explanation of the Black/Green/Blue list that I was developing at the time of the split but that would be self-serving. Suffice it to say that I got to the rounds of 16 twice in a row at 512+ person single elimination tourneys with it and got ousted by extremely efficient Burn each time after knocking off carbon copy after carbon copy of "The Deck" to get there.

It was a great meta and it had the early version of the blue shell and was not dominated by it despite Dolan and Weissman's achievements. Then everything went to hell and somehow out of that we got a meta in which the blue shell is dominant and the only thing that matters. That's like a 20 year rolling nightmare at this point.

In response to this, I can't say much: I started playing MtG during Lorwyn and got competitive around the time that Halimar Depths was a thing in standard.

However, I have to say that Sylvan Library is pretty strong by itself, and multiples generally don't contribute much to it. Mirri's Guile is pretty much a Green Top with timing restrictions in exchange for minimal mana investment, so I can see why it wouldn't be good enough.

Anyhow, I'll post in the Shitty Card Creation thread to give an idea of what I'm talking about in terms of giving other colors access to a Brainstorm affect, and possibly a fixed Brainstorm so that if it is banned, it won't cause too much splash damage to decks that use Brainstorm as a glue.

[FoolofaTook]

WotC did make one oh-so-close to fixing some problems card a couple of sets ago but they chickened out on the casting cost.

Grisly Salvage would have been a major fixer for Green and Black if it was 1cc and cost :b:/:g: instead of :b::g:. That would have been a major draw fixer for black and green lists at 1cc as an instant. At 2cc it is just too slow.

[Zombie]

WotC did make one oh-so-close to fixing some problems card a couple of sets ago but they chickened out on the casting cost.

Grisly Salvage would have been a major fixer for Green and Black if it was 1cc and cost :b:/:g: instead of :b::g:. That would have been a major draw fixer for black and green lists at 1cc as an instant. At 2cc it is just too slow.

It did do a ton of work in Standard.

[FoolofaTook]

It did do a ton of work in Standard.

See, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Grisly Salvage is great in Standard but mediocre to nearly unplayable in Legacy and Modern. Then Treasure Cruise is printed to yawns in Standard but it drives the eternal formats.

Why does WotC keep doing stuff like this? Do they not respect their own product enough to see what they're doing to it?

And yes, I get that they print OP blue crap when they want to drive attendance at eternal events (Jace in 2010, Treasure Cruise this year) up but that always backfires on them in the end. Jace drove players out of Standard until WotC had to ban him there due to declining attendance. Treasure Cruise may have just contributed to a huge Grand Prix event but it's also gotten the blue shell haters in a bigger lather than anything WotC has done in years.

Really, why ban things like Survival of the Fittest in Legacy and Deathrite Shaman in Modern when you're still printing stupid blue stuff? What's the point? SotF was banned in Legacy because WotC thought it was too consistent and would lead to a meta defined by SotF. Well, why not have that meta instead of the blue shell? All SotF lists weren't going to be cookie-cutter, even with Vengevine out there. DRS was banned in Modern because it was creating too many Golgari lists with red or white splashed in. Well, why not have that meta? It certainly can't be worse than the Delver + combo-midrange meta that Modern has turned into.

[Barook]

See, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Grisly Salvage is great in Standard but mediocre to nearly unplayable in Legacy and Modern. Then Treasure Cruise is printed to yawns in Standard but it drives the eternal formats.

Why does WotC keep doing stuff like this? Do they not respect their own product enough to see what they're doing to it?

And yes, I get that they print OP blue crap when they want to drive attendance at eternal events (Jace in 2010, Treasure Cruise this year) up but that always backfires on them in the end. Jace drove players out of Standard until WotC had to ban him there due to declining attendance. Treasure Cruise may have just contributed to a huge Grand Prix event but it's also gotten the blue shell haters in a bigger lather than anything WotC has done in years.

Really, why ban things like Survival of the Fittest in Legacy and Deathrite Shaman in Modern when you're still printing stupid blue stuff? What's the point? SotF was banned in Legacy because WotC thought it was too consistent and would lead to a meta defined by SotF. Well, why not have that meta instead of the blue shell? All SotF lists weren't going to be cookie-cutter, even with Vengevine out there. DRS was banned in Modern because it was creating too many Golgari lists with red or white splashed in. Well, why not have that meta? It certainly can't be worse than the Delver + combo-midrange meta that Modern has turned into.
The better question is which retard in R&D thought that Delve on a sorcery speed recall is a good idea. They learned absolutely nothing from Tarmogoyf.

[rufus]

The better question is which retard in R&D thought that Delve on a sorcery speed recall is a good idea. They learned absolutely nothing from Tarmogoyf.

Or Tombstalker... except maybe that the next delve cards should be Awesome(tm).

[Darkenslight]

The better question is which retard in R&D thought that Delve on a sorcery speed recall is a good idea. They learned absolutely nothing from Tarmogoyf.

Correction: they learned the wrong lesson.

[Lord Seth]

See, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Grisly Salvage is great in Standard but mediocre to nearly unplayable in Legacy and Modern. Then Treasure Cruise is printed to yawns in Standard but it drives the eternal formats.

Why does WotC keep doing stuff like this? Do they not respect their own product enough to see what they're doing to it?I'm confused what the issue here is. The fact that some cards that are great in Standard aren't great in other formats and the fact that some cards that are weak in Standard are great in other formats? What's the problem with that? Am I missing something?


And yes, I get that they print OP blue crap when they want to drive attendance at eternal events (Jace in 2010, Treasure Cruise this year) up but that always backfires on them in the end.I doubt they were printed to try to drive attendance at eternal events. Jace was printed because they wanted to make something to beat Jund (the dominant deck at the type) as well as push Blue forward because it had been so weakened in Shards of Alara (due to Faeries being such a problem causing them to scale back its power)). Additionally, he also suffered from the "last minute change that wasn't playtested enough" when his +2 got changed to fateseal.


Jace drove players out of Standard until WotC had to ban him there due to declining attendance.Actually, Caw-Blade was what drove players out of Standard. Jace was great, but he was only a part of that deck's power. The fact that after Batterskull got printed, it became a one-deck metagame is what drove people out of Standard (before Batterskull there was still Valakut Ramp as a major force in the format). Jace was only part of it.


Treasure Cruise may have just contributed to a huge Grand Prix event but it's also gotten the blue shell haters in a bigger lather than anything WotC has done in years.I doubt Treasure Cruise make the Grand Prix so popular. Star City Games plus the general scarcity of Legacy Grand Prix did that.


DRS was banned in Modern because it was creating too many Golgari lists with red or white splashed in. Well, why not have that meta? It certainly can't be worse than the Delver + combo-midrange meta that Modern has turned into.I played in that meta, and I can tell you right now: It really was worse.

Well, not worse for me, personally, because my deck was better positioned. But it was worse than what's currently going on.

A Bloodbraid Elf unban might not be bad, though.

[Dice_Box]

I would rather see new cards push the envelope and find themselves banned then have nothing printed for us ever again.

Asking why Wizards did not catch this is foolish, I am thankful for the shake up and even if it goes away, glad even for a short while things changed.

[Finn]

I don't think it is foolish (not polish; wtf auto-correct) to expect wizards to know treasure cruise would be ridiculous. I made one deck, not even an especially good one, and tried the card for under an hour. That is how much effort it took me to discover that it was broken. They have whole teams, plural, of people whose job it is to get this right. Getting new cards right is WHAT THE COMPANY DOES.

It is tantamount to a reporter who sucks at reporting or a fisherman who can't catch fish. They really do need to catch the obvious stuff.

[testing32]

It is tantamount to a reporter who sucks at reporting or a fisherman who can't catch fish. They really do need to catch the obvious stuff.

TC is fine

[Finn]

Yep. Treasure Cruise is fine. Great, amazing, perfect when you got it. But anyone else looking at you when you are using it knows that shit ain't right. Just like cocaine.

[testing32]

Yep. Treasure Cruise is fine. Great, amazing, perfect when you got it. But anyone else looking at you when you are using it knows that shit ain't right. Just like cocaine.

Ok, maybe I should elaborate. TC isn't even close to the most widely played or best blue card. It's not even close to the best card in the best TC deck (UR).

So, I see talk of "shit ain't right" I agree with you but there are bigger problems than TC. TC doesn't help though.

[MGB]

If you ever listen to Mark Rosewater's podcasts about design & development, you'll realize that they just don't test for eternal formats. According to him, 98% of the testing is done solely to determine the impact of new printings on the Standard, Block, Sealed and Limited environments.

I'm sure they did plenty of testing of Treasure Cruise in the current Type 2 format with minimal cantrips, and determined that it was fair and only moderately playable (which it is). The fact that it is basically broken in Legacy with the sheer amount of cantrips was simply not a priority for them to determine through testing.

[Lord Seth]

I don't think it is polish to expect wizards to know treasure cruise would be ridiculous. I made one deck, not even an especially good one, and tried the card for under an hour. That is how much effort it took me to discover that it was broken. They have whole teams, plural, of people whose job it is to get this right. Getting new cards right is WHAT THE COMPANY DOES.Thing is, they did get it right for what they were testing for. They were testing for Standard (and Limited) and correctly decided that the card was not a problem in that environment. They've stated over and over again they don't test much if at all for Modern or Legacy, just Standard and Limited.

Also, I strongly disagree that Treasure Cruise is broken in Legacy. Certainly it's extremely powerful, but so are plenty of cards that are legal. It isn't any more "broken" than the rest of the format. Modern is a little more arguable, but it does seem like the metagame is settling down a bit more and people have adapted to the card, with UR Delver's metagame share being dramatically lower than what it was a month ago.

[sjmcc13]

If you ever listen to Mark Rosewater's podcasts about design & development, you'll realize that they just don't test for eternal formats. According to him, 98% of the testing is done solely to determine the impact of new printings on the Standard, Block, Sealed and Limited environments.
There is a difference between not testing for eternal formats, and throwing out the lessons of the past by making cards that those lessons and common sense say are obviously mistakes.

Treasure Cruise is a mistake, plain and simple, but it is also so obvious a mistake if you know anything about eternal formats and the history of the game that R&D has absolutely no excuse for not realizing it was a mistake. cheap draw 3's are broken or problematic. They have known this since the first Banned and Restricted lists was made. Delve is a mechanic that makes things cheap. A draw 3 with delve is an instant warning sign for anyone with any common sense. I can understand not testing most of the sets for eternal formats, but and card that hits any of the warning signs for the lessons of the past of magic (like having cards with similar effects currently being banned in eternal formats) needs to at least be considered during testing.

The problems with Treasure Cruise were discovered so fast is is not funny. The card is obviously a mistake for any format where your deck is almost all creatures and lands. It's existence means either R&D is incompetent or they made the card the card on purpose, both possibilities are bad for player confidence in the game.

Worse is that this is not the first card in recent years that they should have caught and did not. Delver is an obvious mistake, a 1 mana 3 power with evasion is and no real draw backs should have been caught. Grisslebrand is to close to Bargain with legs (well wings which is worse) that they should have tested it more, Making JtMS shortly after restricting BS and Ponder in vintage was a major WTF moment where they should have looked at the card closer, the rest of his abilities just make it worse.

I have long since some to the belief that the do not test for eternal formats comment is little more than an attempt to mask R&D's incompetence and laziness, and think MaRo is a has been way past his prime. If a card takes 6 months to make an impact, or is broken in connection with weak, obscure or all but forgotten cards then not testing is a valid excuse, if you can just slap 3-4 copies in a known deck type and that takes the deck over the edge then not testing is not an excuse, if there have been similar problem cards in the past then not testing is not a valid excuse because you should have known of the potential.

TC should have been cheaper and only draw 2. If it was Thoughtcast with delve instead of affinity I doubt it would have been broken, and it would likely have still been good in std and probably modern.

[Finn]

Back when wizards was just a few guys with mismatched socks, they had the luxury of alpha testing Alpha with no restrictions on which cards were allowed to be used in which quantities. It must have been a blast. But there is this story (that I think Skaff Elias tells) about when they first discovered that Giant Growths were too good. And a few weeks later, they found out that actually War Mammoths were way too good. Then it was like Uthden Trolls or something. Turns out, Ancestral Recall was a popular filler card among several of the playtesters. They would routinely drop 4-6 in a deck of 40-50 cards. And amazingly, those were the same guys who continued to bust these ordinary cards. It was not until later that they figured out what was making this happen. But once they took out the ARs, the decks were not very good at all.

UR Delver was not very good before and URW Delver, with its pathetic manabase had fallen out of favor. Did the wind blow chance their way? No. They are just the two best decks for Treasure Cruise.

You can't give people draw 3 for :u:. UR Delver can maintain card advantage over Miracles. Miracles, man; the de-facto control deck of the format. You can't have aggro decks able to do that and expect a healthy environment.

When Caleb Durward put Vengevines in Survival of the Fittest something eerily similar happened. His deck was able to deal damage faster than Zoo, still a potent force at the time. And he had counterspells, Brainstorm, and company. That is a big no-no.

They should have known. It simply would not have taken much effort to get this card right. Now it is time to do what they do when they fuck up.

[kingsey]

When is the next update?

And what do you think the chances of bargain coming off the banned list?

[Lord Seth]

There is a difference between not testing for eternal formats, and throwing out the lessons of the past by making cards that those lessons and common sense say are obviously mistakes.Odd you say it's "obviously" a mistake when there was a lot of skepticism by Legacy players initially. Obviously they were shut up when it put up results quickly, but it's not like it's as "obvious" as you claim it was.


Treasure Cruise is a mistake, plain and simple, but it is also so obvious a mistake if you know anything about eternal formats and the history of the game that R&D has absolutely no excuse for not realizing it was a mistake. cheap draw 3's are broken or problematic. They have known this since the first Banned and Restricted lists was made. Delve is a mechanic that makes things cheap. A draw 3 with delve is an instant warning sign for anyone with any common sense. I can understand not testing most of the sets for eternal formats, but and card that hits any of the warning signs for the lessons of the past of magic (like having cards with similar effects currently being banned in eternal formats) needs to at least be considered during testing.You seem to be under the odd impression that they particularly care what effect a card has on Legacy. They've demonstrated time and time again, for better or for worse, that it's not a format they care much about. While this does have the negative effect of lack of testing for the format, it also has the positive effect of the format being less micro-managed, which Legacy players appear to like.


The problems with Treasure Cruise were discovered so fast is is not funny. The card is obviously a mistake for any format where your deck is almost all creatures and lands.Huh? Almost all creatures and lands? Aren't those the decks that would be least interested in Treasure Cruise? I'm confused.


It's existence means either R&D is incompetent or they made the card the card on purpose, both possibilities are bad for player confidence in the game.Or maybe it's exactly what they've said: They care principally about Standard and Limited. Their philosophy towards the other formats is largely "if a card is too good, we'll ban it." They do seem to pay a little more attention to Modern, but that's it.

And, you know, I'd like to point out again... Treasure Cruise is incredibly powerful, but it's not really any more broken than the rest of Legacy. It's not even the best card in the decks that do play it. The fact people go on and on about how broken it is when something like Brainstorm is actually better (and sees substantially more play) is rather baffling. I guess Treasure Cruise is the "new kid on the block" but let's not pretend that it's somehow the most broken card in the format.

There were 10 copies of Treasure Cruise in the GP New Jersey Top 8. There were 28 copies of Brainstorm. How in the world people can whine and complain about Treasure Cruise being so overpowered but being oddly okay with Brainstorm is highly confusing.


Worse is that this is not the first card in recent years that they should have caught and did not. Delver is an obvious mistake, a 1 mana 3 power with evasion is and no real draw backs should have been caught.Oh for the love of...Delver absolutely has real drawbacks. True, the decks that run it try their hardest to minimize the drawbacks, but there are still going to be those times your Delver stubbornly refuses to transform turn after turn.

If it has "no real drawbacks" then every deck would be playing it. Every deck is not playing it. You therefore cannot claim it has no real drawbacks. It sees play in the decks that can minimize those drawbacks. That's often how cards are good: They can really only work in certain decks, but they work really well in those decks. The balancing factor is that they can only really work well in certain decks.

Now, it might be more fair to point out that Delver, combined with Ponder, was able to rule over Standard for a season. That's something that maybe they should have noticed better. Then again, that was also a spectacular Standard season in my opinion, so I can't exactly fault them for it.


Grisslebrand is to close to Bargain with legs (well wings which is worse) that they should have tested it more,They obviously did test it well for Standard because it was really never an issue there. There were just better targets for the reanimation spells.


Making JtMS shortly after restricting BS and Ponder in vintage was a major WTF moment where they should have looked at the card closer, the rest of his abilities just make it worse.Jace is not even remotely comparable to Brainstorm or Ponder. He costs 4 freaking mana. He's still an incredibly powerful card, but there's a huge difference between an Instant-speed Brainstorm for one mana and a Sorcery-speed Brainstorm for 4 mana. True, Jace can do other things besides Brainstorm, but they're not really a comparison that makes any sense.

Additionally, you bring up Vintage as if that's a format they care--or maybe even should care--about much. They've been extremely hands off in Vintage, even more so in Legacy.

And, yet again, as I've stated repeatedly... Treasure Cruise isn't any more crazy than the stuff already in the format. If Treasure Cruise needs a ban, then there's several other better cards that need a ban as well.

The funny thing is, if they got all the cards "right" for Legacy starting with Worldwake (the oldest set a card you list is from), then there would've been basically nothing added for the format in the past 4 or so years. Getting the cards "right" leads to sets like Gatecrash or Dragon's Maze, where everything is neutered and nothing really sees Legacy play. And then the Legacy players all complain about the sets being dull and boring.

[jafar]

Staples for legacy:

4x Relic of progenitus
4x Sudden shock


Bye

[Darkenslight]

If you ever listen to Mark Rosewater's podcasts about design & development, you'll realize that they just don't test for eternal formats. According to him, 98% of the testing is done solely to determine the impact of new printings on the Standard, Block, Sealed and Limited environments.

I'm sure they did plenty of testing of Treasure Cruise in the current Type 2 format with minimal cantrips, and determined that it was fair and only moderately playable (which it is). The fact that it is basically broken in Legacy with the sheer amount of cantrips was simply not a priority for them to determine through testing.

It isn't even fair there, though it's by no means oppressive in Standard, because hard aggro is A Thing. I mean, I can easily cast a turn 3 TC in Standard with either UW Heroic, Jeskai combo or even Sultai (BUG) Reanimator. And yes, Wizards sometimes derps (see: Innistrad's cheap blue stuff, Umezawa's Pointéd Stick of Doom)

[Gheizen64]

Yep. Treasure Cruise is fine. Great, amazing, perfect when you got it. But anyone else looking at you when you are using it knows that shit ain't right. Just like cocaine.

Are we really arguing that a situational draw engine for blue deck is now broken? Can i remember everyone that this card see about a third the play that BS does, and half Ponder's one? Shall i remember that the decks that are using it are all-in decks that use it to refill hands for bolts, or decks which have no other card advantage engines like Countertop? The only effective thing TC did was killing BUG cascade for UR delver. Good fucking riddance. And if you're seeing a lot of TCs is probably because UR delver is one of the cheapest, but still good, legacy decks. God may save us from all those poor plebians that came to ruin our format.

We'll talk when the card see play 24+ copies for T8 on average for 3 years at least, cause that's the stnadard BS has used us to.

[testing32]

Are we really arguing that a situational draw engine for blue deck is now broken? Can i remember everyone that this card see about a third the play that BS does, and half Ponder's one? Shall i remember that the decks that are using it are all-in decks that use it to refill hands for bolts, or decks which have no other card advantage engines like Countertop? The only effective thing TC did was killing BUG cascade for UR delver. Good fucking riddance. And if you're seeing a lot of TCs is probably because UR delver is one of the cheapest, but still good, legacy decks. God may save us from all those poor plebians that came to ruin our format.

We'll talk when the card see play 24+ copies for T8 on average for 3 years at least, cause that's the stnadard BS has used us to.

Agreed. As far as I'm concerned before anything gets banned it needs to pass the "better than brainstorm" test, which TC fails miserably.

[gainsay]

I think cards shouldn't be printed if it's obvious that they won't be useful in eternal formats. Otherwise they will only be playable for a year or two

[FoolofaTook]

The problem with Treasure Cruise is that we're very early in its cycle at this point. People have had only 10 weeks to brew with it and the first list that it powered was the obvious one, a list that will likely be optimized as people further develop it.

The odds are very good that Treasure Cruise's penetration in the meta will increase as other lists that can make good use of it figure out how to incorporate it for the sheer power of draw 3 for :u: on turn 3 or later. It's not like there aren't a ton of lists that fill the bin fast and could optimize to fill it a little faster for that kind of power.

I'm guessing that by this time next year the blue shell is widely seen as Brainstorm, Force of Will, Ponder and either Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time depending on the velocity of the list in question.

[Barook]

Since the other thread was closed, I'm going to post here:

As far as format diversity is concerned, the "Big 3" suppressors of the format are:

- Delver
- Terminus
- Show & Tell

If you want a more diverse format, ban at least Brainstorm and Delver.

- Delver has already proven in other formats that it's viable on the basis of shitty cantrips (banning Brainstorm alone would do nothing) and its the starting point where blue truely went out of control. The only way to really make it go away would be a ban, forcing people to look at their Delver shells which they can't ride to victory on the back of 1 mana 3/2s anymore. "Blue shell + Delver + the most powerful in-color threats and removal spells of choice"-deck without its eponym would have to diversify its threats alot more.

- The absence of Brainstorm would weaken the "blue shell", but also hit Miracles (since they can't shuffle chaff away/set up naturally drawn miracles) and S&T (can't trade junk for gas anymore), being a nerf to said strategies without downright killing them.

TC ban is reasonable as well. Ponder and DTT are more debatable.

[Ellomdian]

- The absence of Brainstorm would weaken the "blue shell"

I hate this argument, not only because it incorrectly assumes there is some prototypical "shell" Blue decks are built around. If your definition of "shell" is Fetches and Brainstorms, you are playing the wrong game.

Making the format weaker across the board because it panders to niche strategies (which still put up regular, winning results!) is a flawed idea.

Unban something, ignore the people complaining about Cruise like we ignored the people complaining about TNN, and play some Magic.

[CabalTherapy]

Since the other thread was closed, I'm going to post here:

As far as format diversity is concerned, the "Big 3" suppressors of the format are:

- Delver
- Terminus
- Show & Tell

If you want a more diverse format, ban at least Brainstorm and Delver.

- Delver has already proven in other formats that it's viable on the basis of shitty cantrips (banning Brainstorm alone would do nothing) and its the starting point where blue truely went out of control. The only way to really make it go away would be a ban, forcing people to look at their Delver shells which they can't ride to victory on the back of 1 mana 3/2s anymore. "Blue shell + Delver + the most powerful in-color threats and removal spells of choice"-deck without its eponym would have to diversify its threats alot more.

- The absence of Brainstorm would weaken the "blue shell", but also hit Miracles (since they can't shuffle chaff away/set up naturally drawn miracles) and S&T (can't trade junk for gas anymore), being a nerf to said strategies without downright killing them.

TC ban is reasonable as well. Ponder and DTT are more debatable.

WTF did I just read. You know, we are talking about Legacy, mate.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

To elaborate on my previous post, lets say 75% of the field runs the classic 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, 4 Force, 8 Fetches, 4 Duals. Thats 24/60*3/4 or 30% according to my formula. Now, lets say 50% of the meta are running 4 Delver 4 Daze 4 Cruise and 4 wasteland in addition to that shell. Thats 40/60*1/2 or 33.3_%.

Not wholly accurate again, just an example of what im talking bout

From the now closed poll.

Basically, this is why Delver should be banned. Decks based around the flying bugman have a core that takes up most of the deck and since the deck takes up a good chunk of the metagame as evidenced by GP day 2 decks, that core itself has a higher penetration in the meta.

[Higgs]

Maybe archiving this one and opening up the other one would be more beneficial as demonstrated by the results that were coming out of the new poll. We've had enough of the same circular discussions around brainstorm. An updated poll would give a fresh spin on the discussion imo.

Edit: I voted for Delver on the other poll because of the shitloads of different variations of Delver decks all over the place. And as opposed to Brainstorm, which has a larger format saturation but promotes different strategies and entirely different archetypes, Delver decks are just different colors of the same shit. All of the Delver decks are playing the same game with tactical variations.

[TsumiBand]

I hate this argument, not only because it incorrectly assumes there is some prototypical "shell" Blue decks are built around. If your definition of "shell" is Fetches and Brainstorms, you are playing the wrong game.

Making the format weaker across the board because it panders to niche strategies (which still put up regular, winning results!) is a flawed idea.

Unban something, ignore the people complaining about Cruise like we ignored the people complaining about TNN, and play some Magic.

What would you unban that (a) powers up the format (b) doesn't go in a deck with BS/FoW/Ponder + fetches? I mean I miss SotF too but it isn't like it never got played with Tropicals.

I don't think there's anything incorrect about assuming there's a "Blue shell" - it is clear just looking at the decks putting up the most numbers and enjoying the most success right now that decks with Islands are carting around 12 - 20 of the same cards. Compare to other colors, where playing Plains does not guarantee the inclusion of D&T staples, or playing Green does not mandate an "Elf shell" of any kind - there are decks, and then there are Blue-based decks.

Look at how people are changing tactics. A few years ago people would have dismissed maindecking REBs as incredibly poor; however it's starting to become more and more common to see nonzero REB/Pyroblast in the main and more on the side. I'm not citing sources, we're all grown-ups, Google your own damn Legacy top 8 results over a period of time, there are dozens of websites for that. If a bulk of your matches are going to be X-color Delver, Terminus, S&T, Stoneblade, or any given Brainstorm-driven deck, then AFAIC that's a fine tactic; I've always looked at the Elemental Blasts as being only as limited as cards like Swords to Plowshares. They address a single type of card in a cheap and specific way, and their playability is entirely determined by the prevalence of the targeted card type/card color.

I mean at what point does such a narrow strategy's viability beg the question of where the real problems are in the format? Yeah, we all come here to play Big Kid Spells, I won't argue that, but are we really interested in having decks that are upwards of 50% alike in business spells that facilitate slightly-different win conditions? That sounds an awful lot like Vintage. "Fully powered" lists and all that shit; playing off-color Moxen > not playing all of them, full set of Power because who doesn't want that extra turn and 3 cards, then your actual matchup comes down to like 8 cards difference (oh look, Oath of Druids in the main, why this pile is COMPLETELY different from the last fully powered deck I played against, trololol)

[JanoschEausH]

What I don't get: If Brainstorm becomes banned, many people will abandon the Legacy format, because Legacy is a format of passion. People love their decks. They propably spent thousands of dollars on their beloved decks. If my deck (yea I have only 1 deck and I think this is the norm) would become unplayable because of Bannings, I would rather sell my cards and quit, then building another deck. Legacy lives because it gets medial attention through SCG and because people can play their beloved decks. Kill Brainstorm and you kill Legacy. Thats it.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Maybe archiving this one and opening up the other one would be more beneficial as demonstrated by the results that were coming out of the new poll. We've had enough of the same circular discussions around brainstorm. An updated poll would give a fresh spin on the discussion imo.

Edit: I voted for Delver on the other poll because of the shitloads of different variations of Delver decks all over the place. And as opposed to Brainstorm, which has a larger format saturation but promotes different strategies and entirely different archetypes, Delver decks are just different colors of the same shit. All of the Delver decks are playing the same game with tactical variations.

My point exactly: just trying to put some numbers behind it. While Brainstorm is very popular and rightly so, one must also look at the percentage of cores within the meta and how much space that core takes up within each deck. Then you aim for the card that is almost exclusive to that core (in this case, Delver) if the core itself has a high presence.

[Barook]

Legacy lives because it gets medial attention through SCG and because people can play their beloved decks. Kill Brainstorm and you kill Legacy. Thats it.
Well, good thing that SCG just killed the vast majority of their Legacy Opens, including coverage.

And I believe the number of people who would actually quit the format over Brainstorm is vastly exaggerated. Just because they say so on an internet forum doesn't mean they would actually do it, especially after thousands of dollars invested.

I could also claim that I'd dance naked in the streets when Brainstorm gets banned, but that doesn't mean I'd actually do it.

[iGrok]

God, I feel so vindicated by the other poll. Delver is the biggest issue with the format right now. Take it out, blue decks get slower, which lets the other colors compete. Blue still has card selection, but green/black have raw power. They just need time to get there, and delver is keeping them from having that time.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Well, good thing that SCG just killed the vast majority of their Legacy Opens, including coverage.

And I believe the number of people who would actually quit the format over Brainstorm is vastly exaggerated. Just because they say so on an internet forum doesn't mean they would actually do it, especially after thousands of dollars invested.

I could also claim that I'd dance naked in the streets when Brainstorm gets banned, but that doesn't mean I'd actually do it.

Might be good for a distraction: we could push Legacy while SCG amd WotC are laughing!

Regardless of bans or unbans, Ill still play this format because I love playing it.

[Sylphnir]

What I don't get: If Brainstorm becomes banned, many people will abandon the Legacy format, because Legacy is a format of passion. People love their decks. They propably spent thousands of dollars on their beloved decks. If my deck (yea I have only 1 deck and I think this is the norm) would become unplayable because of Bannings, I would rather sell my cards and quit, then building another deck. Legacy lives because it gets medial attention through SCG and because people can play their beloved decks. Kill Brainstorm and you kill Legacy. Thats it.
I don't think popularity should ever take precedence over balancing though.
Otherwise please unban the entire P9. Everyone loves them! And coincidently I already own half of them.
You can't afford the ensuing metagame? Go play modern. :laugh:
(attention: this is NOT a serious suggestion)

I must admit that I voted Delver in the closed poll/thread mostly because imo all double-faced cards are hideous atrocities that shouldn't exist to begin with.
Be it Delver of Secrets or Reckless Waif. I don't want to see any of them ever again.
Obviously this isn't the kind of input we should base a serious discussion on either. People vote on public polls for stupid reasons.

[Gheizen64]

I think that if I was in charge of the format, I'd ban fetchlands and wasteland.

I don't really think you can ban an iconic card like Brainstorm. It is the defining card of legacy. I think you want to weaken the blue decks, in general, overall. Banning fetchlands weakens Brainstorm greatly and balances the format in that way.

You also reduce the amount of shuffling. Shuffling is my least favorite thing in magic. Fetchlands just put minute long breaks at inopportune points in the game.

Banning fetchlands does make the mana worse. As a result I like banning Wasteland, since it feels less necessary to punish greedy manabases.

Because Wastes isn't iconic at all. #Pillaroftheformat #GoPlayModern #Justplayit #Stopwhine #SomethingnonsensicalaboutVintage

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I must admit that I voted Delver in the closed poll/thread mostly because imo all double-faced cards are hideous atrocities that shouldn't exist to begin with.
Be it Delver of Secrets or Reckless Waif. I don't want to see any of them ever again.
Obviously this isn't the kind of input we should base a serious discussion on either. People vote on public polls for stupid reasons.
Yep, even if Delver was 1/1 for three that transforms into 2/2 banding, I'd wanted it to never exist along with the other transfrom cards. They are woefully bad design choice and the last thing I'd ever imagine in non-Un MtG. Part of what makes a card a card game was lost when the easily-distinguished-by-different-backsides emerged.
Also, that thread is closed? Hurry up, lets make a new one... :)

I dislike the recuring joke of "go play Modern". In fact the more I think about it, the more reasonable idea it is.
Legacy is one of the most stale formats, if not the most stale one (I don't play Vintage, as I find it silly to own €50k in cards just to play one eight-men four-rounder per year; I simply don't believe that the fun with P9andStuff is worthy the price, but to each his own), ok, back on topic: as Legacy is the most stale/staticstationary format for quite obvious reasons (blue dominance, access to most powerful cards and thus a need to use the most powerful strategies, no rotations), it's really strange to expect that anything else than the best will be the best. (Tautology much?)

So anyone expecting that he'll experience a dynamic format there where is only the best and most efficient strategy allowed, is simply delusional. Really, the "go play Modern" is quite a solid advice. In fact it's not even enough, as "go play Limited" would be far more appropriate advice. That's where there's no staleness at all. An advantage: you don't even need to own any cards.

[iGrok]

Yep, even if Delver was 1/1 for three that transforms into 2/2 banding, I'd wanted it to never exist along with the other transfrom cards. They are woefully bad design choice and the last thing I'd ever imagine in non-Un MtG. Part of what makes a card a card game was lost when the easily-distinguished-by-different-backsides emerged.
Also, that thread is closed? Hurry up, lets make a new one... :)

I dislike the recuring joke of "go play Modern". In fact the more I think about it, the more reasonable idea it is.
Legacy is one of the most stale formats, if not the most stale one (I don't play Vintage, as I find it silly to own €50k in cards just to play one eight-men four-rounder per year; I simply don't believe that the fun with P9andStuff is worthy the price, but to each his own), ok, back on topic: as Legacy is the most stale/staticstationary format for quite obvious reasons (blue dominance, access to most powerful cards and thus a need to use the most powerful strategies, no rotations), it's really strange to expect that anything else than the best will be the best. (Tautology much?)

So anyone expecting that he'll experience a dynamic format there where is only the best and most efficient strategy allowed, is simply delusional. Really, the "go play Modern" is quite a solid advice. In fact it's not even enough, as "go play Limited" would be far more appropriate advice. That's where there's no staleness at all. An advantage: you don't even need to own any cards.

Not to defend Delver too much (since I want it axed), but the DFCs checklist cards is actually a pretty good solution. Especially since, if you're spending $3k on a UWR Delver list, you can afford to pay for altered checklist cards that actually look like Delvers.

Modern is a more stale format than Legacy, so I really wouldn't suggest that... but Limited is great, and if you don't like Legacy but have the cash, building a cube is a great option.

[nedleeds]

I don't really think you can ban an iconic card like Brainstorm. It is the defining card of legacy.

The 10 beta dual lands are the defining cards of Legacy.

[say no to scurvy]

I'd contend it's fetchlands, as what would brainstorm and duals be without all that shuffling.

[Teluin]

Duals would remain awesome.

[say no to scurvy]

My point is I'd be content with a shockland-only legacy, I doubt the meta would change significantly. Whereas fetches are what makes or breaks decks.

I'd just play U/R all day.

[HammerAndSickled]

Fetches are more powerful than duals, that much should be obvious. There's a reason no multicolor deck plays 0 fetch lands. Without fetches, you'd just have to play duals and shocks and Seachrome Coasts and shit.

[Megadeus]

And make wasteland and price ridiculous. Also a shockland only legacy would be horrid. Burn and UR would be ridiculous

[bakofried]

Part of legacy is a high power level, even signing up to play with design "mistakes." Banning duals or fetches would be asinine at best.

[FoolofaTook]

Part of legacy is a high power level, even signing up to play with design "mistakes." Banning duals or fetches would be asinine at best.

And banning duals and fetches would make it not Legacy, which was essentially envisioned as a pseudo-Vintage with no restricted cards but access to much of the power.

The wise thing to do would be to just take a serious look at which cards are head and heels above the power level of the format and ban those cards. Brainstorm fits the definition clearly. It's the best card in Legacy and almost nobody disputes that, which is another indicator that it's well above the power level of the format.

Are there any other cards that fuel broken strategies enough to see play in 70% of the winning lists at the end of long tournaments? I guess that depends on whether you think Force of Will would still be a 70% card also if Brainstorm was banned. If so then Force of Will should go also. I don't think any other blue card is going to rival those two in terms of penetration of the successful lists in the format.

It's possible that Treasure Cruise would in the absence of Brainstorm and Force of Will but probably unlikely. Same thing for Ponder.

Delver of Secrets is out of color, which in combination with the blue shell makes it very over-powered. It is not anything like a 70% card though and if you banned Brainstorm and possibly Force of Will Delver's penetration of the successful lists would definitely decline in the aftermath.

This isn't actually a hard thing to figure out at this point. All WotC needs to do is look at the successful lists over the last 3 years or so. What they'll see is what we all see on a regular basis: Brainstorm and Force of Will are in approximately 70% of the lists that sit at the top tables at the end of the day.

Think about it.

70% is 70%. It's kind of an indefensible number in a competition that has close to 30,000 cards available.

[Rizso]

Delver is in the correct color just undercosted.

[Gheizen64]

Delver is in the correct color just undercosted.

Well, had it been black and intimidate instead of flying, would've made a lot more sense as a "mad scientist" who sacrifice everything for power. But it had to be blue because reasons. Just like Snapcaster (which however is a lot more blue than red flavorfully but in game- terms should've totally been red because it use a red-slice of the pie, not blue.

[Rizso]

Well, had it been black and intimidate instead of flying, would've made a lot more sense as a "mad scientist" who sacrifice everything for power. But it had to be blue because reasons. Just like Snapcaster (which however is a lot more blue than red flavorfully but in game- terms should've totally been red because it use a red-slice of the pie, not blue.

Its about transformation, just like Polymorhp effects. Blue is also about science and experimenting, like all the blue zombies from innistrad are stiched togther corpses and animated not by magic really but with science.

[mikeshimoji]

I love it that we are all wanting to protect the duels and brainstorms, arguing to keep it, while very slowly the format is heading towards a cliff. After scg drops support, what would Legacy be? Yes, like Vintage, it will continue. Maybe even thrive a little. But, with the restrictions of reprints, it will always, only head towards "non-growth."

I would rather Legacy exist with drastic measures such as restricting duels or banning brainstorms or whatever it takes, bringing in new players, expanding the market, than to have it shrivel. Seriously, it is heading towards being just another nitch player base. Wouldn't you rather have wotc support it more?

But instead, we are all trying to protect the status quo.

Yes, I'm invested in Legacy staples. Yes, I'll lose money if they reprint, or drastically change the landscape.

I guess my point is, rather than arguing against one another, we should JOIN together for something to save Legacy, make it thrive, make it even more popular than Standard.
Let's start a poll, a pleading of our case to wotc. Or something.

Maybe, I'm just dreaming.

*stepping down from soap box*

[EpicLevelCommoner]

This isn't actually a hard thing to figure out at this point. All WotC needs to do is look at the successful lists over the last 3 years or so. What they'll see is what we all see on a regular basis: Brainstorm and Force of Will are in approximately 70% of the lists that sit at the top tables at the end of the day.

Think about it.

70% is 70%. It's kind of an indefensible number in a competition that has close to 30,000 cards available.

I've already thought about this, thank you very much, and it's easily defensible. Brainstorm and Force of Will are only 2 playsets (8 cards) out of 60 in each deck, which means in truth they as a shell comprise about 13.33_% of each deck, which means they take up about 9.33_% of the total meta even though they are present in 70% of the lists.

Now take the very base of the Delver of Secrets shell, which commonly includes Ponder, Daze and Wasteland in addition to Delver, Force, and Brainstorm. That's 6 playsets (24 cards) out of 60 in each deck, which means the Delver shell makes up about 40% of each deck, which means if (IF) Delver decks just make up 40% of the meta, the shell takes up about 16% of the total meta.

Just to so I can actually put numbers behind this, let's use The Council, shall we?

http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php?format=Legacy&mess=11&anio=2014

http://www.tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy&fecha=2014-11

Out of 231 decks of at least 60 cards each (13860 cards total), 1693 of those cards are Brainstorm, Ponder, and Force of Will. That's ~12.22% of the meta composed of the three most popular cards.

Then take the aforementioned Delver shell with Delver, Wasteland, and Daze in addition to those three cards. That's 2620 cards or ~18.90% of the meta with cards in the Delver shell.

And let's not get started on how a lot of those cards on the top 20 are present in UR Delver specifically.

The truth is there in the data provide: that despite Brainstorm having a high presence as a card, Delver-tempo has a high presence as an archetype. Just need to interpret the data correctly instead of taking it at face value.

[HammerAndSickled]

1. As asinine as the Reserve list is, Wizards will never break it because they don't care about Legacy. So the "reprints" argument isn't worth talking about, we just have to accept $2k manabases.
2. SCG won't listen to Legacy players, hundreds of comments on the new Open series article were expressing dislike and hatred for this change and SCG's official response was "should've spent more money on Legacy, go fuck yourself." They're not changing (despite it again being an asinine decision) because Standard is more profitable. So there's no point in arguing that.
3. Our format is going to die eventually due to the business decisions of Wizards and SCG combined. So the only thing left to talk about IS maintaining the status quo and making sure Legacy is still competitive, decently balanced, and fun to play. If Brainstorm is not breaking any of those rules then the point is moot. It's like doctors knowing someone is dying and using resources trying to make them comfortable so they can spend their last few days in peace or something. We want to remember the format as the best competitive format of Magic, not some broken mess.

[FoolofaTook]

1. As asinine as the Reserve list is, Wizards will never break it because they don't care about Legacy. So the "reprints" argument isn't worth talking about, we just have to accept $2k manabases.
2. SCG won't listen to Legacy players, hundreds of comments on the new Open series article were expressing dislike and hatred for this change and SCG's official response was "should've spent more money on Legacy, go fuck yourself." They're not changing (despite it again being an asinine decision) because Standard is more profitable. So there's no point in arguing that.
3. Our format is going to die eventually due to the business decisions of Wizards and SCG combined. So the only thing left to talk about IS maintaining the status quo and making sure Legacy is still competitive, decently balanced, and fun to play. If Brainstorm is not breaking any of those rules then the point is moot. It's like doctors knowing someone is dying and using resources trying to make them comfortable so they can spend their last few days in peace or something. We want to remember the format as the best competitive format of Magic, not some broken mess.

Yes, but the odds are that without Brainstorm and Force of Will we'd have dozens of new playable cards in the format, not "new" new cards, old ones that are perfectly good and even compare quite well to the strength of the format, they just can't stand up to Brainstorm and Force of Will.

Why is Counterspell never played as a set in Legacy despite being too overpowered for Modern? Because having to wait until turn 2 (turn 2! gasp!!!) is just not acceptable in a format in which whatever the opponent is trying to do to you on turn 2 is going to be backed up by one of the two most commonly played cards in Legacy in Force of Will. Remove Force of Will from the format and Counterspell's value goes back up some. It was never bad in the first place it just couldn't compete with Force of Will as *the* hard counter in the format.

Force of Will invalidates Counterspell as a hard counter except in a slow control list. It invalidates Spell Blast and Power Sink and all the one mana situational spells. It's presence as a 4-of in most successful lists at the top of the meta and it's synergy with Brainstorm makes many successful lists 52 card lists with 8 no-brainer adds.

Why is Preordain almost never played in Legacy? Because Brainstorm (and Ponder) are better and Brainstorm is broken as hell so why would you ever play Preordain over it? Why is Impulse never played in Legacy despite being the deepest dig you can get in an instant for 2 mana without delve? Because Brainstorm is broken... Why is Diabolic Vision never played in Legacy despite being the deepest dig you can get for 2 mana overall? Because Brainstorm is broken...

Brainstorm invalidates about a dozen very playable useful cards all by itself. As an instant draw 3 with it's other utility it's just much better than anything else at what it does. You can't justify playing anything else over it in that type of slot and so the format becomes 56 for the vast majority of successful lists and 52 cards for most of those lists as well.

Tarmogoyf doesn't do this. People don't *have* to play green for Tarmogoyf, they have a choice in the matter. Deathrite Shaman doesn't do this. Stoneforge Mystic doesn't do this. Grim Lavamancer didn't do this when he was a hot creature. Dark Confidant didn't do this. All of them were eminently splashable power cards but none of them forced the choice the way Brainstorm and Force of Will do.

Swords to Plowshares doesn't do this. Lightning Bolt doesn't do this. Only two cards do this in the entire Legacy meta - Force of Will and Brainstorm. They're the herder that drives everything else into the sheep pen, year after year.

People have the wrong perspective on what would happen if Brainstorm and Force of Will were banned. Everybody says "combo will run rampant! The meta will be ruined!" I have a different perspective born of playing in a meta a long time ago when 4 channel and 4 fireball were sitting in a lot of lists waiting for black lotus and moxes and land to create turn 1 wins. That perspective is "it just doesn't happen like that most of the time." Yeah, you lose some early games to combo, maybe 10% of them (maybe, not a lot more than that). But the hate that Force of Will and Brainstorm suppress right now will also be there.

Storm combo hates Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere. It can't stand land destruction at all. Not many lands in those lists and when they lose one to a Sinkhole they fold like a wet noodle, particularly after the turn 1 Thoughtseize blew up their pretty hand. All the Stompy lists and the Dark Ritual lists are suppressed heavily by the blue shell. They can't set up their locks and blitzes reliably because all it takes is one forced spell to set them back and then what they're trying to do just isn't good enough against what the blue shell is trying to do.

If we lost Force of Will and Brainstorm the meta would go wide open again. The best lists in the end would still be blue-based, just like they were in the mid-90's but they wouldn't be the only choice anybody with half a brain made in a large competition. And they'd have lists they just hated out there that were just a bit less consistent than them, another factor making the meta choices more interesting again.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

The wise thing to do would be to just take a serious look at which cards are head and heels above the power level of the format and ban those cards. Brainstorm fits the definition clearly. It's the best card in Legacy and almost nobody disputes that, which is another indicator that it's well above the power level of the format.

Are there any other cards that fuel broken strategies enough to see play in 70% of the winning lists at the end of long tournaments? I guess that depends on whether you think Force of Will would still be a 70% card also if Brainstorm was banned. If so then Force of Will should go also.
Force of Will is incredibly bad card.
Look, it's a counterspell. For either five mana or another card. A counterspell. In blue. One that hymns the caster 95 % of time.
If DCI bans it, they may ban Chimney Imp just as well.



I love it that we are all wanting to protect the duels and brainstorms, arguing to keep it, while very slowly the format is heading towards a cliff. After scg drops support, what would Legacy be? Yes, like Vintage, it will continue. Maybe even thrive a little. But, with the restrictions of reprints, it will always, only head towards "non-growth."

I would rather Legacy exist with drastic measures such as restricting duels or banning brainstorms or whatever it takes, bringing in new players, expanding the market, than to have it shrivel. Seriously, it is heading towards being just another nitch player base. Wouldn't you rather have wotc support it more?
I don't care how many people worldwide play Legacy. Heck, I don't care how many people play Magic at all. I play my one deck I own, in a lgs I visit, with people that go there after their job is over so that we have fun during four rounds of swiss. No amount of people (not) playing our format changes anything about my experience. I simply don't give a smallest frog about a randoms playing in Buenos Aires. Neither SCG grinders. Nor anyone else.
What I care about, though, is the nature of my format. So turn it into a ble shitfest like the last three years, or vivisect it like you advice, and I'm out. Without much pathos - no "I'm out, selling my stuff, ppl look up my ebay!" -, but I simply stop caring like I stopped caring about Duck Tales back in 1992.
So pardon me, but I won't join you in an effort to turn Legacy into Format:Awkward.



Why is Counterspell never played as a set in Legacy despite being too overpowered for Modern? Because having to wait until turn 2 (turn 2! gasp!!!) is just not acceptable in a format in which whatever the opponent is trying to do to you on turn 2 is going to be backed up by one of the two most commonly played cards in Legacy in Force of Will. Remove Force of Will from the format and Counterspell's value goes back up some. It was never bad in the first place it just couldn't compete with Force of Will as *the* hard counter in the format.
Obvious Storm players are obvious.

[mikeshimoji]

1. As asinine as the Reserve list is, Wizards will never break it because they don't care about Legacy. So the "reprints" argument isn't worth talking about, we just have to accept $2k manabases.
2. SCG won't listen to Legacy players, hundreds of comments on the new Open series article were expressing dislike and hatred for this change and SCG's official response was "should've spent more money on Legacy, go fuck yourself." They're not changing (despite it again being an asinine decision) because Standard is more profitable. So there's no point in arguing that.
3. Our format is going to die eventually due to the business decisions of Wizards and SCG combined. So the only thing left to talk about IS maintaining the status quo and making sure Legacy is still competitive, decently balanced, and fun to play. If Brainstorm is not breaking any of those rules then the point is moot. It's like doctors knowing someone is dying and using resources trying to make them comfortable so they can spend their last few days in peace or something. We want to remember the format as the best competitive format of Magic, not some broken mess.

If They don't listen to us, why are we arguing on a thread?

[FoolofaTook]

Force of Will is incredibly bad card.
Look, it's a counterspell. For either five mana or another card. A counterspell. In blue. One that hymns the caster 95 % of time.
If DCI bans it, they may ban Chimney Imp just as well.

Force of Will eliminates entire archetypes by itself. It creates an incremental meta in which players are afraid to make big investments early because a multi-card investment that is forced at the end is game over.



Obvious Storm players are obvious.

Not when they're on the draw and I ritual out a Trinisphere they're not. Not when I Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach or Sinkhole they're not. Heavily black lists are suppressed dramatically by the blue shell. Turn 1 Thoughtseize that hits nothing of value due to Brainstorm is a deflater. Watching the blue shell recover position quickly via cantrips is another deflater. Watching the mix of power cards that the blue shell incorporates and finds with great celerity even in the face of disruption out-value the cards available in a disruption heavy scheme is another deflater. This is why mono-black is not a thing in Legacy, whereas mono-red, mono-white and mono-blue all have a place at the table. Even mono-green gets there in the form of elves.

Ditch Brainstorm and Force of Will and mono-black will have a place at the table again. Black with small splashes will also show up. Combo can't stand lists in that general archetype.

[Gheizen64]

Force of Will eliminates entire archetypes by itself. It creates an incremental meta in which players are afraid to make big investments early because a multi-card investment that is forced at the end is game over.




Not when they're on the draw and I ritual out a Trinisphere they're not. Not when I Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach or Sinkhole they're not. Heavily black lists are suppressed dramatically by the blue shell. Turn 1 Thoughtseize that hits nothing of value due to Brainstorm is a deflater. Watching the blue shell recover position quickly via cantrips is another deflater. Watching the mix of power cards that the blue shell incorporates and finds with great celerity even in the face of disruption out-value the cards available in a disruption heavy scheme is another deflater. This is why mono-black is not a thing in Legacy, whereas mono-red, mono-white and mono-blue all have a place at the table. Even mono-green gets there in the form of elves.

Ditch Brainstorm and Force of Will and mono-black will have a place at the table again. Black with small splashes will also show up. Combo can't stand lists in that general archetype.

FoW only suppress back decks which can't recover from blue mages hymning themselves because they're all in on a single card.

[Megadeus]

Iremember when I thought force of will was a broken card. Yeah.. I had never played a game of legacy before. Then I played a month or so and realized that often I didn't care about the card

[Darkenslight]

I've already thought about this, thank you very much, and it's easily defensible. Brainstorm and Force of Will are only 2 playsets (8 cards) out of 60 in each deck, which means in truth they as a shell comprise about 13.33_% of each deck, which means they take up about 9.33_% of the total meta even though they are present in 70% of the lists.

Now take the very base of the Delver of Secrets shell, which commonly includes Ponder, Daze and Wasteland in addition to Delver, Force, and Brainstorm. That's 6 playsets (24 cards) out of 60 in each deck, which means the Delver shell makes up about 40% of each deck, which means if (IF) Delver decks just make up 40% of the meta, the shell takes up about 16% of the total meta.

Just to so I can actually put numbers behind this, let's use The Council, shall we?

http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php?format=Legacy&mess=11&anio=2014

http://www.tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy&fecha=2014-11

Out of 231 decks of at least 60 cards each (13860 cards total), 1693 of those cards are Brainstorm, Ponder, and Force of Will. That's ~12.22% of the meta composed of the three most popular cards.

Then take the aforementioned Delver shell with Delver, Wasteland, and Daze in addition to those three cards. That's 2620 cards or ~18.90% of the meta with cards in the Delver shell.

And let's not get started on how a lot of those cards on the top 20 are present in UR Delver specifically.

The truth is there in the data provide: that despite Brainstorm having a high presence as a card, Delver-tempo has a high presence as an archetype. Just need to interpret the data correctly instead of taking it at face value.

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..

[Barook]

Then take the aforementioned Delver shell with Delver, Wasteland, and Daze in addition to those three cards. That's 2620 cards or ~18.90% of the meta with cards in the Delver shell.
I still have no idea what you're getting at with those numbers.

UR Delver might run less Dazes and Wastelands, but according to the data you provided, there are 31.6% Delver decks (292/(4*231)) (since pretty much any Delver shell runs 4 Delvers).

[iGrok]

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..
One thing that I think might be getting lost in the focus on penetration is that, because blue can filter through it's cards so well, decks which look similar can be vastly different. So even if brainstorm is in 95% of blue decks, all it does is find the card that you actually want. Whether a deck plays delver and pyromancer, or stoneforge and TNN and snapcaster, or counter-top, or Adnausem... The decks all share 4 brainstorm 4 ponder, but they all play very differently. The "blue shell" (though I dislike that term) really only makes whatever you're trying to do more consistent.

Every deck in legacy has to find a balance between consistency and raw power. Burn takes consistency to the max, and notably isn't blue, nor is Elves!, another very redundant deck. Jund is on the opposite end of the spectrum - every card is a great play. Every card actively disrupts your opponent (thoughtsieze, hymn, wasteland, decay), provides a clock (goyf, Bob, bbe) or both (PFire, DRS, Scooze). The problem is having efficiency that is made more efficient by being more consistent. Cards like Delver and Young Pyromancer do this. The slmost dangerous synergy in legacy is that Delver and YP are each made more efficient by the same thing. Compare to Counterbalance, Top, and Miracle cards - certainly one of the most consistent combinations in legacy. But Countertop isn't efficient, which is why there are so many jokes about Miracles mirrors in the draw bracket.

As a different example, look at the difference between ANT, SI, TES, and High Tide. Each of these decks is a storm deck. Each deck has a different spot on the consistency-efficiency gradient. SI is really fast, but lacks the consistency of ANT or TES. High Tide, meanwhile, is the most consistent - given enough time, it will win - but it can't go off before turn 3, and often waits for turn 4 or more.

But what I'm really getting at is that Delver makes all the controls in your deck say, "In addition to pondering, deal 1 damage to target player", since each catnip you play increases delver flip chance, and 3 power plus evasion is better than a 200% increase in card power.

[Barook]

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..
We have data, but it's alot of work. Take this post as a grain of salt:


Here are the last 10 scg opens while mental misstep was legal.

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/3015#38988
11 Sep 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 6/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2603#32546
21 Aug 2011
MM: 25/32
Brainstorm: 28/32
Blue decks: 7/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2534#31291
14 Aug 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 5/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2288#27559
31 Jul 2011
MM: 16/32
Brainstorm: 12/32
Blue decks: 4/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2174#26038
24 Jul 2011
MM: 27/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 6/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2059#24356
18 Jul 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 3/8 (that Zoo deck on #1 isn't really blue, but ran Misstep, so 4 MM decks)

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1694#19182
26 Jun 2011
MM: 20/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 5/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1482#16366
12 Jun 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 8/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1358#15016
5 Jun 2011
MM: 28/32
Brainstorm: 26/32
Blue decks: 8/8


http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1149#12925
22 May 2011
MM: 24/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 6/8

[EpicLevelCommoner]

I still have no idea what you're getting at with those numbers.

UR Delver might run less Dazes and Wastelands, but according to the data you provided, there are 31.6% Delver decks (292/(4*231)) (since pretty much any Delver shell runs 4 Delvers).

I'm on your side: I agree that a Delver ban would be the best way to go about banning or unbanning anything.

Also, it would be 60*231 actually: 60 cards (at least) per list times 231 decks that placed giving me the 13860 total cards ran. Granted, I could be misinterpreting the data.


Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..

There probably is, just have to hope they didn't archive it (which tcdecks.net seems to have done) . . . gonna see if they relay the data, preferably in a public forum such as this.

---


... manners what are those.

I admit, I was in the wrong for responding in such a way. However, in my (admittedly pitiful) defense, debating with someone begins to become frustrating when they begin to make baseless claims such as how the format would be better without Force of Will (which may or not also suggest that mono-U is not only in High Tide and OmniTell, that mono-B is not present in the form of Traditional Pox, that Swamp -> Dark Ritual -> Trinisphere on the play happens often enough to be an issue for Storm decks, that MUD hasn't been using a similar strategy in the form of Ancient Tomb -> Grim Monolith -> Trinisphere, and that while hate does exist for various combo decks, it is often too slow and/or too narrow to combat all varieties like Force of Will does).

[Barook]

Also, it would be 60*231 actually: 60 cards (at least) per list times 231 decks that placed giving me the 13860 total cards ran. Granted, I could be misinterpreting the data.
For what purpose? You can't run more than 4 Delvers and each Delver list runs the maximum of 4 copies.

mtgGoldfish (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/legacy) has the same "dominance" stuff, but I fail to see the reason behind that.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Force of Will eliminates entire archetypes by itself. It creates an incremental meta in which players are afraid to make big investments early because a multi-card investment that is forced at the end is game over.




Not when they're on the draw and I ritual out a Trinisphere they're not. Not when I Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach or Sinkhole they're not. Heavily black lists are suppressed dramatically by the blue shell. Turn 1 Thoughtseize that hits nothing of value due to Brainstorm is a deflater. Watching the blue shell recover position quickly via cantrips is another deflater. Watching the mix of power cards that the blue shell incorporates and finds with great celerity even in the face of disruption out-value the cards available in a disruption heavy scheme is another deflater. This is why mono-black is not a thing in Legacy, whereas mono-red, mono-white and mono-blue all have a place at the table. Even mono-green gets there in the form of elves.

Ditch Brainstorm and Force of Will and mono-black will have a place at the table again. Black with small splashes will also show up. Combo can't stand lists in that general archetype.

All I took out of this is you use dark ritual to cast trinisphere

[EpicLevelCommoner]

For what purpose? You can't run more than 4 Delvers and each Delver list runs the maximum of 4 copies.

mtgGoldfish (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/legacy) has the same "dominance" stuff, but I fail to see the reason behind that.

Because you don't just play with a single playset, you play with any number of different cards that total up to at least 60 per deck. Also, the fact that the more cards that two lists have in common the more similar they'll play (to the point where if it's the same 60 cards, they'll play very much the same), hence why I'm not focusing on just Delver or Brainstorm in my arguments, but also the cards that are used in conjunction with those.

Like I said, a single card cannot be oppressive unless A) it has a high penetration and B) the shell it demands composes a considerable portion of the decks it is ran in.

---


You think that's frustrating? Try being around on this forum for 8 years and see so many discussion shitted by 10-post kids that think they're cool calling other peoples names. Or having people repeatedly call you retarded and then bail when you call them out on it. The Black Vise discussion was literally a stream of insults toward me, accusations i was "evidently" skewing my results because "it wasn't possible i had to be this stupid and bad" and the mods did nothing back then, only a couple posters, and in the end i was interested only in proofs so i didn't care as much but that shit was so seriously annoying. Similar patterns were observed on the Survival topic where everyone was good at talking shit but no one actually wrote a single list to prove their point, and obviously no one ever bothered testing anything because conjectures obviously best kind of proofs.

So yeah, unless they're going personal at you, just don't go there. Or use the ignore list, it can make the forum so much more readable.

Fair enough: though I can't say I'll use the ignore list (doesn't actually help a discussion if you just ignore everyone that makes a bad argument), I will refrain from lashing out in the future.

@ FoolafaTook: I'm sorry for being an asshat.

[FoolofaTook]

All I took out of this is you use dark ritual to cast trinisphere

It would be a common play in a post-Force of Will meta. You can discard other rituals to things like Liliana and Smallpox after you've set up your lock.

A lot of things are counter-intuitive until you see them in play.

[Dice_Box]

The issue with taking Force from the format though is that you in effect cut the Police funding. The reason we don't have cards like Beltcher and Glimpse on the ban list is because Force stops them from taking over. I just don't feel like anyone has to this point made a reasonable argument to the effect that the format would be better without Force and from my point of view, not liking it is not a reasonable argument. If is was, SnT would have vanished long ago and Bridge along with it.

[btm10]

It would be a common play in a post-Force of Will meta. You can discard other rituals to things like Liliana and Smallpox after you've set up your lock.


I highly doubt this, as it's a pretty awful line in the abstract, even without getting 1-for-1'ed by Force (or 2-for-1'ed by any other counter or artifact removal spell). Decks like Pox aren't weak because Force ruins them - Force frequently plays into their discard heavy game plan - but they're weak because eventually their opponents will draw out of being resource strapped and the Pox decks are even lighter on threats than Delver decks. Blue decks are certainly the best at reassembling because of Ponder and Brainstorm, but Jund (to chose just one example) is also good because of Bob and Sylvan Library or even just DRS and Punishing Fire. When your goal is to start a topdeck war it's important to be able to win it, and Pox just can't do that consistently.

Also, Force doesn't stop most blue decks from running classic UU Counterspell, but Daze and Spell Pierce do. Daze forces answers to be either extremely cheap (StP, Bolt) or uncounterable (Abrupt Decay), and Pierce is cheaper, so it's better as defense against Bolt and StP once Daze is dead and at winning a counterwar over haymakers like Jace, Cruise, or Dig. Counterspell is superior in control/midrange matchups, but as long as Delver is the threat of choice from the aggro decks, Counterspell is going to be too slow except as a 1-2 of in midrange/control strategies.

[FoolofaTook]

I highly doubt this, as it's a pretty awful line in the abstract, even without getting 1-for-1'ed by Force (or 2-for-1'ed by any other counter or artifact removal spell). Decks like Pox aren't weak because Force ruins them - Force frequently plays into their discard heavy game plan - but they're weak because eventually their opponents will draw out of being resource strapped and the Pox decks are even lighter on threats than Delver decks.

It's not just Pox lists, it's Black Suicide, BW Suicide, BG Suicide, etc. The blue shell recovers too well to be disrupted and defeated as a strategy. The only lists that actually manage to defeat blue by doing this are other blue shells, like RUG Tempo and extremely focused taxing strategies with lots of redundant threats like D&T. When the blue shell is 60% of the overall meta as it is now black basically rolls over and dies.

The day 1 undefeateds at GP NJ played exactly 600 spells among 16 lists. There were 26.5 black spells among the 600 (counting DRS and Abrupt Decay as half a black spell for consistency. There were 275 blue spells among the 16 lists. That's something like a 10-1 ratio of blue over black and it is precisely because blue invalidates most of what black tries to do. There were 70 artifact spells among the 600. There were only 255 non-blue colored spells represented.

In the top 8 there were 21 black spells, all in the ANT list which also had 15 blue spells. There were 163 blue spells in that top 8, only 8 to 1 this time.

And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.



Also, Force doesn't stop most blue decks from running classic UU Counterspell, but Daze and Spell Pierce do. Daze forces answers to be either extremely cheap (StP, Bolt) or uncounterable (Abrupt Decay), and Pierce is cheaper, so it's better as defense against Bolt and StP once Daze is dead and at winning a counterwar over haymakers like Jace, Cruise, or Dig. Counterspell is superior in control/midrange matchups, but as long as Delver is the threat of choice from the aggro decks, Counterspell is going to be too slow except as a 1-2 of in midrange/control strategies.

In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?

[Dice_Box]

There really isn't one. Foil is the worst free counter I can think of, next best thing is Counterspell.

Not that I would have much invested in a post Force format. I would not be sticking around. I would just move to Vintage full time. I really don't see how banning it could be healthy.

[FoolofaTook]

There really isn't one. Foil is the worst free counter I can think of, next best thing is Counterspell.

Not that I would have much invested in a post Force format. I would not be sticking around. I would just move to Vintage full time. I really don't see how banning it could be healthy.

When you saw that meta in play you'd stick around to play in it.

Even if the best Storm combo list has a 30% chance to have a T1 kill in hand, they're only on the play half the time. Some times games come down to who goes first. Not a lot of the time but it happens. It's not a Chess match. It's a game of chance.

[Dice_Box]

I would not stay, because if you ban Force you have to start banning all the degenerate combo cards too. Beltcher, ETW, Glimpse, Tendrils and Dread Return have to go right away. From there, you only move up an ever increasing list as the format becomes a race to the fastest kills. If all I have to worry about is Daze, you can bet the format would become something nasty.

Why do you want to see Force banned? Do you honestly think that the format would be better without it? If so, how do you think the format improves with the removal of this card?

[FoolofaTook]

I would not stay, because if you ban Force you have to start banning all the degenerate combo cards too. Beltcher, ETW, Glimpse, Tendrils and Dread Return have to go right away. From there, you only move up an ever increasing list as the format becomes a race to the fastest kills. If all I have to worry about is Daze, you can bet the format would become something nasty.

Why do you want to see Force banned? Do you honestly think that the format would be better without it? If so, how do you think the format improves with the removal of this card?

I think the format improves with a move away from the blue shell as the dominant organizing structure that dictates what works and what doesn't.

Combo and aggro don't organize the way the blue shell does. There are many different ways to disrupt early game strategies but all of them are inferior to having or bluffing a free counter. Add in the ability of the blue shell to sort out the variables in it's own strategy and it becomes just too good to ignore, which is why most competitive players play it.

In the absence of the fully functional blue shell people would find other answers to common problems, like turn 1 combo and heavy aggro. The meta would become a wider play field that featured more diversity in strategy and solutions. In the presence of the blue shell that's just not possible because the blue shell is the best way to approach the meta right now. The problem is that it is cannibalizing diversity in the process as more and more people make the correct decision that fighting the blue shell is worse than playing the blue shell.

[Dice_Box]

Well, that's your opinion and your welcome to it, just don't hope your going to get to many people agreeing with you here. I mean, people want to see Blue cut down a notch or two, but I think your on your own about Force.

[trollking21]

While force may have a very high penetration in the meta, there is at least a valid reason most people want it. Keeping degenerate combo in check is a valid enough reason. Cutting brainstorm would lower the prevalence of force somewhat and while the player base might bitch and moan I think the format would survive. Banning force I feel could have some negative side effects

[btm10]

It's not just Pox lists, it's Black Suicide, BW Suicide, BG Suicide, etc. The blue shell recovers too well to be disrupted and defeated as a strategy. The only lists that actually manage to defeat blue by doing this are other blue shells, like RUG Tempo and extremely focused taxing strategies with lots of redundant threats like D&T. When the blue shell is 60% of the overall meta as it is now black basically rolls over and dies.

The day 1 undefeateds at GP NJ played exactly 600 spells among 16 lists. There were 26.5 black spells among the 600 (counting DRS and Abrupt Decay as half a black spell for consistency. There were 275 blue spells among the 16 lists. That's something like a 10-1 ratio of blue over black and it is precisely because blue invalidates most of what black tries to do. There were 70 artifact spells among the 600. There were only 255 non-blue colored spells represented.

In the top 8 there were 21 black spells, all in the ANT list which also had 15 blue spells. There were 163 blue spells in that top 8, only 8 to 1 this time.


Even ignoring the fact that counting Decay and DRS as half a spell each is absurd (they don't half-trigger Quirion Dryad or get half-targeted by Lifeforce), what does this prove other than blue being better than the other colors? We already knew that, and it's part of playing Eternal formats. When you play Legacy and/or Vintage, should expect blue to be the best color.



And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.


The issue isn't that Ritual into a permanent is intrinsically bad, it's that Ritual into Trinisphere is a poor line for any deck that might conceptually want it - either you don't want Ritual (MUD with a black splash), or you get little mileage out of Trinisphere (Pox) before it gets destroyed. Congratulations, you've successfully 2-for-1'ed yourself and gotten a slight tempo edge out of it. I hope you drew your manland or could discard Nether Spirit to hand size before your opponent cast a spell, because if you didn't you probably still lose.




In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?

It's hard to tell, since it would require the banning of, at a minimum, about ten other cards. In the brief hypothetical period where Force is banned and fast mana artifacts, Show and Tell, and Reanimate/Exhume aren't banned, I imagine it would be Disrupting Shoal so some people could not play combo while having a chance to not get blown out.


When you saw that meta in play you'd stick around to play in it.

Even if the best Storm combo list has a 30% chance to have a T1 kill in hand, they're only on the play half the time. Some times games come down to who goes first. Not a lot of the time but it happens. It's not a Chess match. It's a game of chance.

Without Force you realize most combo decks would just trade a big chunk of their preboard disruption for gas, right?

[FoolofaTook]

Without Force you realize most combo decks would just trade a big chunk of their preboard disruption for gas, right?

How much more gas is actually available? Particularly with Brainstorm banned. Storm and most combo depend on being able to sort out their cards in a hurry. A few lists, like Fetchland Tendrils go a bit more controlling but are also slower in the process.

It's not like Storm combo isn't already playing LED, 7 or 8 rituals, Lotus Petals and even the odd Chrome Mox here and there. They can't add much more gas than they already have and with Brainstorm gone they'll be looking for additional ways to sort anyway.

[Dark Ritual]

There's a deck with tons of gas. It's called belcher. Ban force of will and see where belcher goes with that. Ban force and this format's banlist is like modern's where you actually have to ban a ton more cards in addition. Banning force is never going to happen if it does congratulations WotC just successfully killed legacy.

[FoolofaTook]

There's a deck with tons of gas. It's called belcher. Ban force of will and see where belcher goes with that. Ban force and this format's banlist is like modern's where you actually have to ban a ton more cards in addition. Banning force is never going to happen if it does congratulations WotC just successfully killed legacy.

Belcher is a truly terrible list in the current meta. It fizzles on it's own and it loses to Force of Will and to Wasteland if the draw doesn't let them go off right away. Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou and sayonara.

So if your point is that Belcher might be a bit scary in a format without Force of Will, well a lot of lists are scary in a format *with* Force of Will and most of them play... Force of Will.

BTW, there's a simple solution to the blue shell. Ban Brainstorm and announce that Force of Will is on the watch list. See what happens. If Force of Will is still in a high percentage of winning lists it gets the axe next time around.

[Meekrab]

Annnd a deck with 12 Plains just went 12-0 and hardly dropped a game all day.

[Megadeus]

I guess 24 Brainstorm in the top 8 is evidence that blue is on the down swing.

[iGrok]

Belcher is a truly terrible list in the current meta. It fizzles on it's own and it loses to Force of Will and to Wasteland if the draw doesn't let them go off right away. Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou and sayonara.

Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou

Belcher

Dark Ritual ... Bayou

I'm sorry... what?

Have... Have you ever seen a belcher deck?

[Megadeus]

I mean... SI is a thing. It's not a good thing... But I guess it's a thing that exists in the realm of magic the gathering

[sjmcc13]

I'm sorry... what?

Have... Have you ever seen a belcher deck?

Some builds of Spanish Inquisition runs belcher and bayou, But that deck is not Belcher.

Belcher normally runs just taiga, 0 Dark Rituals, and does not really care about Wasteland.
Hereiis a link to a recent belcher list for reference : http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=8143&d=246907&f=LE

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So, the idea is to ban Force so that there are more turn1 DRit->Trinisphere.
Dat format.

[Lemnear]

T1 Dark Ritual into Trinisphere is just stupid if you can drop a Sol Land and play Thorn of Amethyst/Chalice of the Void/Sphere of Resistance instead to harass storm.

I can't believe we are even talking about FoW here. Imo it's pretty clear that Disrupting Shoal would be the best card to prevent T1 combos on the draw, as you still have plenty of 1cc spells to Pitch within the cantrip-shell like BS/Ponder/Delver, Daze/SCM/Counterspell/Shoal for 2cc, TNN/Clique for 3cc just as an example

[menace13]

I guess 24 Brainstorm in the top 8 is evidence that blue is on the down swing.
It's all good as long as one or two non blue decks can top.

[testing32]

It's all good as long as one or two non blue decks can top.

So, everything is fine until it's 16/16 BS?

If this was a little league game they would have stopped the beating already and discontinue the printing of all non-island basics.

[FoolofaTook]

Sorry, haven't actually played against Belcher since 2010 and the 2-land variant was the one I was seeing in tourney's at that point. They'd Land Grant for Bayou as the black source to power the rituals when that was the direction they went. Force on a ritual and waste on a Bayou was game over for them. That's one of the reasons the list stopped getting played.

The list without black does seem more consistent but it has no turn 1 disruption. The 2 land lists always played Duress as a playset.

[FoolofaTook]

So, everything is fine until it's 16/16 BS?

If this was a little league game they would have stopped the beating already and discontinue the printing of all non-island basics.

Yeah, that's the point. If you have a meta where 60% of the lists are blue shell and 40% are everything else and then the blue shell is consistently taking 6 to 8 top 8 slots, well that's no meta at all. That's just 40% of the crowd confused about what they should be playing at the start.

Everybody complains about the price of getting into Legacy with good lists. Those prices are as high as they are because so few cards are playable in competitive lists. $250 blue duals and $60 Savannahs is part of the problem. The fact that all the rare blue staples are very expensive compared to the other color counterparts is part of that. The fact that Legends rare lands are very expensive due to the way they interact with the few lists able to compete with the blue shell is part of that.

Anybody can build a bad cheap Legacy list but there's no incentive to do that.

If there were 200 Legacy staples that saw wide play prices on those staples would go up some but prices on the few that see play now would drop dramatically.

This is where WotC has the vision problem. They see Legacy as some kind of victory lap that doesn't produce a lot of sales for them but that testifies to Magic's staying power over time. If they instead saw Legacy as a format to feed cards to regularly in each set they'd be in a much better position than they are now.

Why do the blue dual lands cost so much? Because they power the broken cards lists. Because they're scarce.

If WotC was regularly feeding cards into the Legacy pool that didn't play well with the duals they'd make more sales off of stores opening boxes to find those cards to sell as singles. They'd get many more people interested in legacy. They'd grow the player base significantly as the barrier to entry to effective Legacy play became much lower.

They're going to have to knock the blue shell off it's pedestal to make that work. It's ok to have it as a player in the meta but not as the only player that really matters. That's what WotC needs to do.

If they think Standard and Draft are enough to keep Magic growing they're nuts. People play in one or two standards in high school and college and then they move on for the most part because the other formats are just too expensive to consider. Maybe they draft now and then to feed their casual card collection but mostly they move on. WotC needs to find a way to smooth the path into eternal for people who get tired of Standard and want to play a bigger game.

[ShiftyKapree]

Sorry, haven't actually played against Belcher since 2010 and the 2-land variant was the one I was seeing in tourney's at that point. They'd Land Grant for Bayou as the black source to power the rituals when that was the direction they went. Force on a ritual and waste on a Bayou was game over for them. That's one of the reasons the list stopped getting played.

The list without black does seem more consistent but it has no turn 1 disruption. The 2 land lists always played Duress as a playset.

You clearly don't play enough legacy, the deck is rather consistent with ETW and Belcher in the deck. As far as the format goes I think with Treasure Cruise being printed we're seeing more decks we haven't seen in awhile rise up again such as omni show, maverick, and storm decks return to the meta in a more prevalent force. Which I am glad to see these return.

[Dice_Box]

The removal of such things increase speed. The deck is faster than the one you are describing because everything is either gas or ways to get gas. The deck has no disruption because it plays the numbers. It's a gamble every time you sleeve it.

Without Force, that would be the best deck in the format. Because all you would need to play around would be soft counters and while Spell Piece can hurt, it's not the end of the world for a skilled pilot of Beltcher.

I am thinking you did not quite understand what we all meant when we told you Force does a service for the format. Yes, it's a pain, but it's a part of life and while I hate to play against it, I rather lose a spell here and there over playing a round that consists of playing 3 turns total 3 times in a row.

Edit:
Price is not a reason to kill cards in the format. While I sympathise with you, I can not agree that the issue is all about the cost of Blue Duals. After all, non Blue decks like DnT and Elves have seen quite the rise in costs and now match UR Delver in cost.

[Meekrab]

If they think Standard and Draft are enough to keep Magic growing they're nuts. People play in one or two standards in high school and college and then they move on for the most part because the other formats are just too expensive to consider. Maybe they draft now and then to feed their casual card collection but mostly they move on. WotC needs to find a way to smooth the path into eternal for people who get tired of Standard and want to play a bigger game.
They have, it's called Modern. WotC has stated before that they do not and have no plans to design cards for Legacy/Vintage.

If you're sick of FoW and Brainstorm, there's a format for you already.

[gainsay]

saying "if you don't like it go to modern" is a bad argument. I disagree with FoW/Brainstorm bans as well, but the idea that bans can't improve a format and if you want to see improving formats you should go to modern is silly.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Funny thing how FoW somehow became a problem. In fact I see it quite the opposite, I playit to stop problems. Like, you know... that turn1 Trinisphere that stops and wins the game right here. Or Belcher. Or anything else.
Banning FoW is like "don't play Swords (or Bolt or Terror or Pillage), it's unjust as it kills my Sengir (or Birds or Erhnam or Outpost)" mantra I heard back in the days. Yeah, it sucks to spend mana or other resources to have your dude/land/spell killed or countered, but that's the game. And Force is pretty ineffective in countering spells, look, it needs another card to properly function. (Counterspells as a whole suck, there are what, three-four of them used in the whole Eternal?) So if the people really wish just to look at their collectible pictures or cuddle with their decks, fine, but once they wish to actually play the game, they should expect at least some interaction and some opponent's attempts to stop the gameplan/wincons. Which is where FoW excels. Thus it's played. Easy as that.

[btm10]

saying "if you don't like it go to modern" is a bad argument. I disagree with FoW/Brainstorm bans as well, but the idea that bans can't improve a format and if you want to see improving formats you should go to modern is silly.

I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy. People who want Modern-like features should play Modern, because Legacy clearly isn't something they enjoy at this point.

[gainsay]

I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy.

I agree with you here. My point is that bans sometimes make sense in legacy to make the format of legacy better. Playing modern isn't an argument in the sphere of making legacy better.

[Michael Keller]

They have, it's called Modern. WotC has stated before that they do not and have no plans to design cards for Legacy/Vintage.

If you're sick of FoW and Brainstorm, there's a format for you already.


They don't have to design cards for Legacy and Vintage because they're already legal for both formats when released anyhow. Obviously Wizards isn't going to design something for Legacy and Vintage specifically because the legal card pool never rotates; it's always the same until a new set is released. Most of the time cards just happen to be good in Legacy or Vintage inadvertently, which is fine. We already have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from.

[Dice_Box]

They don't have to design cards for Legacy and Vintage because they're already legal for both formats when released anyhow. Obviously Wizards isn't going to design something for Legacy and Vintage specifically because the legal card pool never rotates; it's always the same until a new set is released. Most of the time cards just happen to be good in Legacy or Vintage inadvertently, which is fine. We already have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from.

Abrupt Decay.

[btm10]

I agree with you here. My point is that bans sometimes make sense in legacy to make the format of legacy better. Playing modern isn't an argument in the sphere of making legacy better.

They absolutely do, no disagreement there. But the bar for requiring a ban in Legacy or restriction in Vintage is much, much higher than the bar for banning in Modern, and there isn't an obvious hard and fast rule for any format aside from the "earliest consistent kill by a tier 1 deck" rule, which isn't relevant for this discussion.

Because there isn't a hard and fast rule, we're all left defending our gut feelings and (hopefully) checking that against some insight as to what's best for the format as a whole. For instance, I really don't like Delver of Secrets. At all. I play with it because it wins me games, not because I enjoy doing it. On top of that, I really don't like what Delver does to the metagame. That being said, I don't think that it should be banned. My vision for the meta is one dominated by a slow, plodding control deck and a resilient combo deck so that most of the interaction takes place on the stack and in people's hands. I recognize that most people don't enjoy that, and Delver decks have weaknesses that all of the format's other decks can attack, so Delver shouldn't be banned just because it makes tempo decks a thing. If your gut feelings lean toward a more aggressive B/R policy than we have in Legacy and Vintage, then perhaps these formats aren't for you.

[Michael Keller]

Abrupt Decay.

No one can say for sure Abrupt Decay was printed for Legacy and Vintage unless Wizards specifically stated as such, no matter how good it may be in the format or how much of a fit it may seem.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I think they stated abrupt decay was printed with legacy/counterbalance in mind, I could not locate the article if you asked me though :/

[iamajellydonut]

I think they stated abrupt decay was printed with legacy/counterbalance in mind, I could not locate the article if you asked me though :/

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/twtw/222

[Bed Decks Palyer]

For instance, I really don't like Delver of Secrets. At all. I play with it because it wins me games, not because I enjoy doing it. On top of that, I really don't like what Delver does to the metagame.
I'd sign this.


That being said, I don't think that it should be banned. My vision for the meta is one dominated by a slow, plodding control deck and a resilient combo deck so that most of the interaction takes place on the stack and in people's hands. I recognize that most people don't enjoy that, and Delver decks have weaknesses that all of the format's other decks can attack, so Delver shouldn't be banned just because it makes tempo decks a thing. If your gut feelings lean toward a more aggressive B/R policy than we have in Legacy and Vintage, then perhaps these formats aren't for you.
Delver's ban would severely hurt the only "real" deck I own, although this might be mitigated in the long run by the metagame shift and some revival of blue tempo. However a meta of control vs. combo seems lacking something. I believe aggro should be present, even if it's a proxy aggro like Ux Tempo. Moreover I like tempo decks - I think it's pretty interesting strategy and it's as close to "fully-powered" experience as one may get without using the true thing -, so for these reasons I'd hate the loss of competitive tempo deck.
But the blue shell, or however you wish to (not) call it, is so omnipresent, and (although tactically/strategically diverse) it plays quite the same, that the gaming experience is painful. For that matter I'd... well, maybe not exactly welcome, but at least tolerate a new powerful decks/shells/archetypes that would turn Legacy into a different state than what we got now when half of the games start with fetchUSeaPondergo

[menace13]

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/twtw/222
This was one of the things I learned from speaking to Tom L on mtgo. He and Eric would routinely come in to the practice rooms to play legacy decks like intuition control lists with loam locks. This was like 4 years ago. Fun guys to play against and shoot the shit with. After a while I would ask them questions about the format composition. First trollish ones asking for unbans of my favorite cards ;p. Tom being more social than Lauer, told me he regretted letting SFM slip through design and that he wanted Misstep to help battle Brainstorm and slow down the format. After that I began to see why some design decisions were made. Like Eldrazi shuffle clause.

Miss those days. Made the game feel like an open community where the devs interacted with the player base. Now it's just a shittier client milked by Worth. But to not be off topic, they do design cards for Legacy in mind. They do not consider that a reason to NOT print something and allow it to infringe on the design process.

[mikeshimoji]

This was one of the things I learned from speaking to Tom L on mtgo. He and Eric would routinely come in to the practice rooms to play legacy decks like intuition control lists with loam locks. This was like 4 years ago. Fun guys to play against and shoot the shit with. After a while I would ask them questions about the format composition. First trollish ones asking for unbans of my favorite cards ;p. Tom being more social than Lauer, told me he regretted letting SFM slip through design and that he wanted Misstep to help battle Brainstorm and slow down the format. After that I began to see why some design decisions were made. Like Eldrazi shuffle clause.

Miss those days. Made the game feel like an open community where the devs interacted with the player base. Now it's just a shittier client milked by Worth. But to not be off topic, they do design cards for Legacy in mind. They do not consider that a reason to NOT print something and allow it to infringe on the design process.

I second this. I'm pretty sure there was an article on designing cards for Legacy when they introduced commander sets. I think the article mentioned toxic deluge and unexpectedly absent. That article specifically talked about those cards being designed for Legacy. Don't know the link though.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/twtw/222

That's it

[Zombie]

Funny thing how FoW somehow became a problem. In fact I see it quite the opposite, I playit to stop problems. Like, you know... that turn1 Trinisphere that stops and wins the game right here. Or Belcher. Or anything else.
Banning FoW is like "don't play Swords (or Bolt or Terror or Pillage), it's unjust as it kills my Sengir (or Birds or Erhnam or Outpost)" mantra I heard back in the days. Yeah, it sucks to spend mana or other resources to have your dude/land/spell killed or countered, but that's the game. And Force is pretty ineffective in countering spells, look, it needs another card to properly function. (Counterspells as a whole suck, there are what, three-four of them used in the whole Eternal?) So if the people really wish just to look at their collectible pictures or cuddle with their decks, fine, but once they wish to actually play the game, they should expect at least some interaction and some opponent's attempts to stop the gameplan/wincons. Which is where FoW excels. Thus it's played. Easy as that.

<3

I hate many blue cards. I hate TNN, S&T (or rather S&T to the big dumb fucks like Omni, Griseltard and spaghetti monsters. Showing/Reanimating big domineering but not instawin things is a thing that should be IMO. Make that stuff situational, basically), don't think the Delve draw spells are all that good of an idea and dislike Brainstorm being head and shoulders above basically any other card selection spell out there (after BStorm I'd say the competition starts being pretty even) and how it negates discard and frees blue decks to play clunks with relative impunity compared to other colors. But Force is an actively beneficial card for the format. It's not a card you should always play - it's actively bad in many matchups but acts as a failsafe against stupid all-in stuff where the broken decks have to find ways to not die to force. Which slows them down and allows black and white disruption to see play.

To make an analogy to fighting games, all the best games (IMO) involve strong characters doing crazy things, but have the important quality that the system itself contains failsafe "fuck it, I'm outta here" buttons that keep the worst excesses in check while still allowing that crazy freeform gameplay. Force is one of those failsafes for Legacy (Decay and GY hate 1 drops being the other big ones). It's a drag that it's blue only, but it's absolutely a thing that should be.


I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy. People who want Modern-like features should play Modern, because Legacy clearly isn't something they enjoy at this point.

Because clearly people want to play a format where good card selection is banned? Disliking the strength of Brainstorm doesn't mean I want to see Ponder, Preordain, GSZ, Library, Glimpse, Visionary+Symbiote, SDT, Ringleader, Matron, Ancestral Vision etc. gone. I love playing (primarily nonblue, creature-based) engine decks. But one look at placing Pod lists, for example, an archetype I should love to bits? It has four cards total that find anything. Four. I'd basically have to play Scapeshift to be able to play a deck that can see cards worth a damn. At which point, why fucking bother when I could just sleeve up Storm or some fair blue deck in Legacy?

I stopped playing German Highlander exactly because they banned most of the tutor suite that made my deck a deck, allowed it to have a plan instead of just being a pile of good cards. wtf persist in playing Nantuko Husks when the cards that find them or their friends when needed get banned for being good in goodstuff piles? Piles that just replaced the tutors with more good-by-itself stuff?

[FoolofaTook]

There's nothing wrong with tutors and cantrips that have some form of disadvantage built in. Ponder is really strong but it's a Sorcery and all it does is search 4 cards deep and act as a reshuffle mechanism when you need that. Preordain searches 3 cards deep and lets you bury unwanted cards on the bottom of your library but that's all it does.

Brainstorm is just much too powerful with it's ability to let you draw 3 at instant speed and then keep as many of them as you have dead cards in hand when you cast it. It has other very important applications also but it's main power level is due to the raw power of draw 3 at instant speed. It's just too good for Legacy players not to go out of their way to play it and to include it in any list that can reasonable play it. There are some blue lists that don't play Ponder despite it being an excellent cantrip. That's because it's not so good that you must play it if you're playing blue.

Brainstorm has no disadvantages other than getting shut down a bit more often as a 1cc spell due to Counterbalance and Chalice of the Void. All of the other cantrips that are currently played share the same disadvantage.

[Lord Seth]

But one look at placing Pod lists, for example, an archetype I should love to bits? It has four cards total that find anything. Four.What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

[iGrok]

What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

And all of them would play GSZ if it weren't banned. There's also the fact that Pod is a tutor-on-a-stick that also makes your creatures uncounterable.

[Zombie]

What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

Chord is clunky. If people are playing stuff like Delver decks, Jetski combo, Affinity etc. I'd infinitely prefer Decays. Otherwise the stuff I do is just too slow. Shit on field, Overseer GG != fun.


And all of them would play GSZ if it weren't banned. There's also the fact that Pod is a tutor-on-a-stick that also makes your creatures uncounterable.

Pod being strong is irrelevant. It's still just 4 cards that let me see/tutor cards all the same. Basically there's games where I can control where I'm going and games where I can't and get to play Jund. Yay.

[iGrok]

Ok, so many people are calling for weird bans that I actually went and did some math.

I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

So then I decided to see what the results look like if we remove the delver decks.

http://i.imgur.com/nqwb69N.png

That looks a lot better, though still skewed a bit. Miracles and Stoneblade are now 17.5% of the meta, Dredge and Storm are 12%each, Elves is 9%, Death and taxes, Lands, and Sneak and Show make up 6% each. Blue falls to 59%, with Red basically tied, but now White is close, with Black and Green still underrepresented. But if there aren't any delver decks, perhaps Black and Green decks could fill in the missing slots.

Anyways, here's some numbers to chew on. To me, this screams "Delver is the issue!", but I can understand why some people would disagree - even I didn't realize how skewed it was towards Delver before I threw this together.

[Grillo]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

I'm pretty sure a group of decks that share 24 or so nonland cards, all pursue the same strategy (tempo) and have a standardized set-up for the remaining unshared cards (4-8 removal, 6-8 other threats, 4-8 assorted disruption depending on color) are quite easily categorized as an archetype. Call it "Uxx tempo" if you so desire, but you'll notice that every "Uxx tempo" deck shares a playset of one particular creature in addition to the classic "blue tempo shell" of FOW, Daze, and a bunch of cantrips. The only "blue-based archetype" that has Delver in it is tempo. Therefore, calling Uxx tempo "Delver" for short is perfectly reasonable, in the same way that calling a bunch of different decks that have similar cores but all win with cards that have a particular mechanic "Storm" is.

[iGrok]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

Delver is blue-based tempo. Whatever colors it splashes, it's still a blue-based tempo deck, usually with red. Esper delver and esper stoneblade were the one more control-y list, and they pretty much died.

I'm not sure why you think the second table is wrong? The "penetration" percentages are different from the top table.

EDIT: Admiral_Arzar said it best: Its Uxx Tempo, which just happens to always include 4-of Delver.

[Grillo]

Esper delver and esper stoneblade were the one more control-y list, and they pretty much died.

I was thinking about those types of Delver decks precisely. Also older UR Delver lists were much more aggro decks than tempo decks.. But I agree that Delver decks have standardized into tempo mostly.



I'm not sure why you think the second table is wrong? The "penetration" percentages are different from the top table.

EDIT: Admiral_Arzar said it best: Its Uxx Tempo, which just happens to always include 4-of Delver.

I mean, if you ban tempo delver decks, other decks like Combo (for example) would be much more abundant in top16s.

[iGrok]

I mean, if you ban tempo delver decks, other decks like Combo (for example) would be much more abundant in top16s.
Possibly more combo, but my hypothesis is that the decks delver pushed out (Jund, deadguy) come back in a big way. No way to know for certain though

[btm10]

Possibly more combo, but my hypothesis is that the decks delver pushed out (Jund, deadguy) come back in a big way. No way to know for certain though

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

[Nuke is Good]

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

This. That and when burn became really popular due to Mr. Pyrostatic Pillar on a stick was released shoved Jund out of the equation. Jund is showing up a response to people bringing Maverick/DnT to counter the TC packing decks at my local meta.

[iGrok]

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

I should clarify: I don't think Jund is necessarily bad against delver, but I think delver shifted the metagame in a way that was detrimental to Jund. Discard isn't great vs delver, which leads you to play less of it (because delver is popular enough that you need to change your maindeck a bit for it), and less discard makes you worse against combo. Reanimator is definitely a tough matchup though.

[FoolofaTook]

I think Jund got pushed out because of the rise of BUG (including Delver). BUG tries to do a lot of the same things Jund tries to do but it has the blue shell incorporated for consistency. I think both Jund and BUG have gotten damaged by the latest twists and turns in the meta but Jund was already in trouble before Treasure Cruise was printed.

[aluisiocsantos]

Im pretty sure matches such as delver and bug were cases in which Jund shined through and through. I play the deck since the beginning of last year, when Jund was the balls. The deck suffered a first strike with TNN, but in this epoch every single deck and their mother felt the dimensional shift it caused, and it stayed more or less still great post adjustment (golgari charms, toxic deluges, or more sac effects).

BURN however was always a mess for jund, because it auto loses to POP. Minor releases made life harder, but still not as much as TNN did: Young Pyromancer made subpar decks such as UR Delver before this time actually pretty great, giving extra threats for Punishing Fire.. plus still getting killed by burn spells. Mono red burn itself got the before mentioned, walking Pyrostactic Pillar, which certainly made more people play the deck.

Treasure Cruise however is again that dimensional shifter: Every blue deck made space for the card. MONO R Burn decks made space for the card. Suddenly great matchups for Jund such as Delver decks aren't as great because as someone mentioned, discard started getting less effective - hym nto tourach empowers Delve ability - so the strenght of card advantage Jund relies on is fading and fading away.

UR DELVER, the format offender, a deck which generates insane value and resilient to disruption: one color finishers (delver), value making with pyromancer, or rather, wasting junds firepower of p.fire. and to top it off, our discards will just result in a quicker Tom Cruise.

The result? The jund player in the NJersey GP ran chains of mephistopheles mainboard, along with just 2 bobs. In the brazil tourney of last weekend, the jund player won the finals vs UR Delver by packing 4 maindeck pyroblasts. Or take the 4color loam who won BOM9 with 4 chalices and no 1cmc spells.

Actually the result is the same as before, when TNN came out. You have three choices:
-Play a deck with TNN (now Treasure Cruise)
-Play a deck that fights against it (mainboard Chains/Pyroblasts/Chalice)
-Play a deck that doesn't care for it, aka, combo.

[cogitoergosum]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.

[eays]

I find it absolutely comical every time some person totes brainstorm as the pinnacle of all things skill in legacy. This is a self-agrandizing mentality held by those who love and play the card in legacy, and a common fallacy held by those who don't have much experience with the format other than watching SCG coverage.

In reality, for all but the most novice legacy players, the correct play with brainstorm is almost always obvious, and the flexibility of the card makes it pretty much good no matter what situation you find yourself in.

There are plenty of decks that don't use brainstorm that require just as much format knowledge and are just as difficult to pilot correctly as the most challenging brainstorm decks, and that are far more skill instensive to play than the most basic and prevalent brainstorm decks.

The format would be just as skill testing with or without the card. I'm not necessarily advocating for it's banning but I just want people to understand that "makes format require more l33t skillZ" is not a valid arguement in brainstorm's favor.

[trolliver]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.


Would you mind post that article?

My first post btw... :D

[Dice_Box]

Would you mind post that article?

My first post btw... :D

It's behind SCG's pay wall, so no.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Maybe we should just ban blue. Just all blue gone.

[FoolofaTook]

Maybe we should just ban blue. Just all blue gone.

So, WotC will not do this by any means because it is not in their nature and it would outrage a significant portion of the player base but...

4x Preordain
4x Portent
4x Impulse

4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
1x Counterspell

Is still better than what 90% of the fair lists in Legacy can field as their shell. You can still create a pretty wicked best cards list in a bunch of different directions from that basis, and you can replace 4 of the cantrips or 4 of the counters with 4x Stifle as another option.

We just don't realize how completely overpowered the blue shell is because we're used to it. So many people play it or a close relative of it that when non-blue fair lists see play the question generally is "why did you bring that knife to a gun fight?"

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm pretty sure a group of decks that share 24 or so nonland cards, all pursue the same strategy (tempo) and have a standardized set-up for the remaining unshared cards (4-8 removal, 6-8 other threats, 4-8 assorted disruption depending on color) are quite easily categorized as an archetype. Call it "Uxx tempo" if you so desire, but you'll notice that every "Uxx tempo" deck shares a playset of one particular creature in addition to the classic "blue tempo shell" of FOW, Daze, and a bunch of cantrips. The only "blue-based archetype" that has Delver in it is tempo. Therefore, calling Uxx tempo "Delver" for short is perfectly reasonable, in the same way that calling a bunch of different decks that have similar cores but all win with cards that have a particular mechanic "Storm" is.
This is pretty correct.



I find it absolutely comical every time some person totes brainstorm as the pinnacle of all things skill in legacy. This is a self-agrandizing mentality held by those who love and play the card in legacy, and a common fallacy held by those who don't have much experience with the format other than watching SCG coverage.

In reality, for all but the most novice legacy players, the correct play with brainstorm is almost always obvious, and the flexibility of the card makes it pretty much good no matter what situation you find yourself in.

There are plenty of decks that don't use brainstorm that require just as much format knowledge and are just as difficult to pilot correctly as the most challenging brainstorm decks, and that are far more skill instensive to play than the most basic and prevalent brainstorm decks.

The format would be just as skill testing with or without the card. I'm not necessarily advocating for it's banning but I just want people to understand that "makes format require more l33t skillZ" is not a valid arguement in brainstorm's favor.
And this one is also true.

[Fatal]

4x Preordain
4x Portent
4x Impulse

4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
1x Counterspell

Its false diffrence is that most counter posted here are conditional which is Huge difference, without brainstorm you can't shuffle them back to deck when you don't need them.

Brainstorm + FoW + TC - aren't conditional, enable reshuffle unwanted conditional counters, and doesn't loses tempo and refill card disadvantage from FoW by TC simple.

[FoolofaTook]

Its false diffrence is that most counter posted here are conditional which is Huge difference, without brainstorm you can't shuffle them back to deck when you don't need them.

Brainstorm + FoW + TC - aren't conditional, enable reshuffle unwanted conditional counters, and doesn't loses tempo and refill card disadvantage from FoW by TC simple.

The point though is that the 8 to 12 cantrips listed would still be more consistent than anything out of blue is capable of except in a mono-colored list in which almost all the cards do similar things. Even then the blue cantrips would be better at fixing the bad initial draws in lists that run 18-23 lands which is about 90% of the meta.

1 land hands with great basic functionality are a feature of blue and occasionally something like Burn or Elves. They're a disaster for everybody else and even at 23 lands you have a 23%+ chance of getting an unusable hand just from the land composition (0,1,5,6,7 lands in the initial 7).

[Meekrab]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.
Twist and Vise are barely even Legacy playables, imo.

Mind Twist is fairly symmetrical early in the game (You're using Dark Rituals to Mind Twist me instead of win the game? Sweet!) and would only be played as a late game bomb in... nothing? Maybe UBx Delver that really wants to beat Miracles? But Miracles plays off Divining Top as much as off their hand, so that doesn't even really help.

Black Vise is basically two Lightning Bolts if its in your opening hand and nothing after that, so big deal Burn gets a little better and Gitaxian Probe a little worse, maybe. Most likely scenario is almost nobody plays it.

If those cards were printed tomorrow they wouldn't be banned.

[Lord Seth]

Twist and Vise are barely even Legacy playables, imo.

Mind Twist is fairly symmetrical early in the game (You're using Dark Rituals to Mind Twist me instead of win the game? Sweet!) and would only be played as a late game bomb in... nothing? Maybe UBx Delver that really wants to beat Miracles? But Miracles plays off Divining Top as much as off their hand, so that doesn't even really help.Mind Twist might be good in Elves or Metalworker. Likely not gamebreaking, though.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

If I'm generating substantial mana to play Mind Twist for epic value in elves, why isn't mind twist literally anything else?

[Megadeus]

If I'm generating substantial mana to play Mind Twist for epic value in elves, why isn't mind twist literally anything else?

Like natural order or green sun for hoof

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Or banefire

[apple713]

Mind Twist might be good in Elves or Metalworker. Likely not gamebreaking, though.

idk, T2 Mind twist for 3, when you are still on t1 is pretty good...

i could use it in a deck I'm working on now. t1 bayou, gsz -> dryad arbor. t2 ancient tomb -> mind twist / Natural order / GSZ

[FoolofaTook]

idk, T2 Mind twist for 3, when you are still on t1 is pretty good...

i could use it in a deck I'm working on now. t1 bayou, gsz -> dryad arbor. t2 ancient tomb -> mind twist / Natural order / GSZ

Mind Twist will go into the blue control shell and be much better there than it is anywhere else. It's just another device that will empower blue.

The way it got used in the old meta was in what we now call Esper and it sat there as a 1-of alongside Demonic Tutor as a 1-of and the blue player just waited until the mid-game and then *created* the inflection point instead of waiting for the natural progression of events. That's what would happen here. The difference is that the Esper shell would use the cantrips to go find Mind Twist by the mid-game instead of having to waste a turn tutoring for it, a tutor that almost always told the opposing player in advance that the game was going over for him next turn.

[death]

Mind Twist is mana intensive for a control deck, I would always prefer pinpoint discard. However UB(x) tempo with mana denial could find Mind Twist very useful.

[MGB]

Mind twist would be insane if they also unbanned Mana Drain at the same time.

[Dice_Box]

Mind Twist is mana intensive for a control deck, I would always prefer pinpoint discard. However UB(x) tempo with mana denial could find Mind Twist very useful.

At the point you can make use of a twist in a deck like that, you could realistically cast just about anything else and just win. Also, twist is shit in an opening 7.

[rufus]

Mind twist would be insane if they also unbanned Mana Drain at the same time.
The same is true of any number of current legacy staples.


...However UB(x) tempo with mana denial could find Mind Twist very useful.
Is it really that much better than Mind Shatter in that context? Also, win more scenario is win more.

[FoolofaTook]

Mind Twist is not about win more and it never was. It's not about fast mana and twist your opponent for 3 or 4 on the opening turn although it was played that way. What it's about is knowing that you can create an inflection point in which your opponent is prostrate for several turns and win off of that point.

It really isn't that hard to create that inflection point. The only people it will be hard against are the people who dump their hand right away who will lose against the blue shell predictably if their 4 turns don't do the job and against another list trying to do the same thing.

Even Miracles playing off the top of the library is not exempt from being twisted into dire straights in the mid-game. Yes, they can play hellbent off the top of the library and sometimes do that successfully, but when you manage to twist their hand with counters still in yours you are well ahead of the game. That's what people used Mind Twist for back in the day: get the opponent flat while you still have cards/threats and win off of that.

[Michael Keller]

At the point you can make use of a twist in a deck like that, you could realistically cast just about anything else and just win. Also, twist is shit in an opening 7.

That all depends on what deck you're running it in. Clearly, any deck that is advantageous with mana wants to get maximum value out of it, so doing something like...

Ancient Tomb
Grim Monolith
Voltaic Key
Mox Opal/Diamond
Mind Twist [x=4]

...is fairly devastating. Even Swamp, double Ritual into Twist for four is devastating. You just know budget players would eat that line of play alive, and it can actually be legitimately crushing.

[Jander78]

Mind Twist will go into the blue control shell and be much better there than it is anywhere else. It's just another device that will empower blue.

The way it got used in the old meta was in what we now call Esper and it sat there as a 1-of alongside Demonic Tutor as a 1-of and the blue player just waited until the mid-game and then *created* the inflection point instead of waiting for the natural progression of events. That's what would happen here. The difference is that the Esper shell would use the cantrips to go find Mind Twist by the mid-game instead of having to waste a turn tutoring for it, a tutor that almost always told the opposing player in advance that the game was going over for him next turn.
This only worked well mostly due to Mana Drain. It's crap in that shell without the boost Drain provides at some point in the game. If you're going to spend resources tutoring / cantriping for a bomb, it should win you the game in today's environment.

That said, I can see Mind Twist being played in Legacy. The Elves and Artifact rampping scenarios provided previously are good examples. I think it's at a good power for a decent Legacy card, not overpowered at all, but useful.

[aluisiocsantos]

Turn one > Swamp, Thoughtseize
Turn two > Ancient Tomb, Dark Ritual, Mind Twist for four.

Goodbye hand

[death]

At the point you can make use of a twist in a deck like that, you could realistically cast just about anything else and just win. Also, twist is shit in an opening 7.

True, like lay down a bunch of goyfs, bobs, delvers, a tombstalker etc.. but Mind Twist is that single card that can just seal the win.

I would think Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition, Therapy and Gitaxian Probe or even Hymn to Tourach are the better shit in an opening 7 because you can immediately use them.

Mind Twist is a mana sink, ritual-based decks would rather use pinpoint discard and use ritual mana for storm count. MUD would rather use its mana source to actually play win conditions and drop threats, and race you.

The Mind Twist effect is crushing but not every deck can afford to play it and it will dilute those archetypes further of threats. My guess is that UB(x) shells would get the most benefit if they unban the card and we would see anti-Brainstorm advocates come here in droves. MBC (mono black control) resurgence is expected but again it's really hard to pass up on blue dig spells.