All B/R update speculation. [Archive] - Page 48

eays

06-02-2015, 11:08 AM

Decks don't run all those cards, though. Omnitell does, because it's a two card combo and can afford to run twenty four card filters/draw spells. No other deck runs that many cantrips.

Also, none those cards aren't play-style defining. If all the decks with blue run (most of) those cards to accomplish different goasl; and if we continue to see roughly 30% blueless decks, I don't see how format diversity is in any danger.

I play Lands, and I assure you midtrange and tempo decks are not favoured in the long game. Against combo decks, midrange, tempo, and control are supposed to be favoued in a longer game! What matches are you referring to?

Decks DO run all of those cards though. as you've been told several times now. The flex spot being the preordain which get swapped for some other low cost blue spell that facilitates the decks win condition.

Lands is the ONE deck that can now keep up with dig decks in a grinder and that's if your lucky enough to not get your key spells forced early on or your gy nuked. Lands typically only loses when it gets tempo out early on. ..no deck can keep up with the raw card advantage if they can stall to the long game except miracles.

you seem to think these decks are all different but to me differing ways of winning with the same engine is extremely stale.

Jain_Mor

06-02-2015, 11:13 AM

When a grixis control deck and a mono blue combo deck are running the same 24 of ~40 nonland cards, something's gotta give right?

Stevestamopz

06-02-2015, 11:15 AM

Except that Terminus is far more than a 1 for 1. It's a sweeper. It generates card advantage and leads to blow-outs vs. aggro. That's kind of the point.

Absorbing a Swords to Plowshares or Abrupt Decay on a single dude is at most 1-for-1 trade that nets both players comletely even on card advantage. That's perfectly fair for the deck casting the Swords or the Decay. Aggro decks should be able to win in the face of 1-for-1 removal.

It's a 1 mana *sweeper* that can get rid of as many dudes as you have in play, that can be cast at instant speed, that is much harder for aggro to combat.

I don't even know how I'm supposed to continue this conversation, when "1 for 1, 1 for 1, pull ahead on cards + win" obviously described the game plan of other non-miracles decks, like Deathblade or Delver variants, aka things aggro also can't beat. I even said "different road, same destination."

As for the other things you wrote...

Terminus is 1 for X, where X's value is determined by how you play the game. Have you ever wondered how Death and Taxes beats Miracles?
Aggro decks in standard may be able to beat 1 for 1 removal, but this is legacy son.

Again, assuming Miracles ceases to exists, how is a pure Aggro deck still supposed to beat any creature-based Midrange Control deck? Merfolk is probably the closet "aggro" deck in in legacy. Even with access to TNN, islandwalk, FoW and the ability to make absolutely huge fatties, they still struggle against these decks, so how is a pure aggro deck supposed to win? You won't have the disruptive elements of Maverick or Death and Taxes, nor the things that define Merfolk, nor the insane card advantage and tutoring abilities of Goblins, nor the speed and uninteractivity of burn, so again I ask you, how is an aggro deck supposed to win in legacy anymore? These decks (with the exception of DnT) are all solidly Tier 2+, what deck are you proposing that is better than all of the above?

MGB

06-02-2015, 11:40 AM

I don't even know how I'm supposed to continue this conversation, when "1 for 1, 1 for 1, pull ahead on cards + win" obviously described the game plan of other non-miracles decks, like Deathblade or Delver variants, aka things aggro also can't beat. I even said "different road, same destination."

Except that Miracles pulls ahead by actually generating card advantage via Counterbalance and Terminus.

The "1 for 1, pull ahead on cards + win" plan actually only works when, you know, you're generating real card advantage.

Refresher course on card advantage: Counterbalance trigger counters a Goblin Lackey. Even on CA. Counterbalance trigger counters a Goblin Matron after that +1 CA for Miracles player.
Or: Terminus is cast and bottoms a Goblin Lackey, a Goblin Warchief, and a Goblin Piledriver. +2 CA for Miracles player And so on.

Abrupt Decay hitting a Goblin Lackey generates exactly ZERO card advantage. And where is the draw spell from the BUG Delver player to actually generate CA and "Get ahead"? They don't play it. Those Abrupt Decay decks are pure tempo decks that fight on the same axis as the aggro decks and thus are not as hard to face as a control deck creating real, hard card advantage.

As for the other things you wrote...

Terminus is 1 for X, where X's value is determined by how you play the game. Have you ever wondered how Death and Taxes beats Miracles?
Aggro decks in standard may be able to beat 1 for 1 removal, but this is legacy son.

Again, assuming Miracles ceases to exists, how is a pure Aggro deck still supposed to beat any creature-based Midrange Control deck? Merfolk is probably the closet "aggro" deck in in legacy. Even with access to TNN, islandwalk, FoW and the ability to make absolutely huge fatties, they still struggle against these decks, so how is a pure aggro deck supposed to win? You won't have the disruptive elements of Maverick or Death and Taxes, nor the things that define Merfolk, nor the insane card advantage and tutoring abilities of a deck like Goblins, nor the speed and uninteractivity of burn, so again I ask you, how is an aggro deck supposed to win in legacy anymore?

The way they always have - with undercosted beats, reach and/or disruption. Remove Terminus from the format and aggro is once again more viable. It's not 1-for-1 removal that aggro is struggling against, it's the presence of Miracles and its cheap methods of generating card advantage against every deck in the format.

Crimhead

06-02-2015, 03:11 PM

Right in your face! 10th Place at StarCityGames.com Premier IQ on 5/17/2015 (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=84956)
Howmuch digging did you do to find the exception?. Lists from Worcester (4th & 16th) run zero preordain. One list runs only three DTT, the other only runs a singleton Ponder. You should know this - you're the one who said we need to "watch this closely". The expression " in your face" is rude a bit arrogant.

Lemnear

06-02-2015, 04:44 PM

Howmuch digging did you do to find the exception?. Lists from Worcester (4th & 16th) run zero preordain. One list runs only three DTT, the other only runs a singleton Ponder. You should know this - you're the one who said we need to "watch this closely". The expression " in your face" is rude a bit arrogant.

There was no digging required as the list was discussed in the Grixis thread which made me aware of the similarities between running 4 Therapy + 4 Pyromancer in Grixis or 4 S&T + 4 Omniscience in OmniTell both surounded by the same 24-card-package. We need to watch this development to estimate if outside action is required for Legacy. Maybe 4 SFM, 1 Skull, 1 Jitte, 4 TNN is the next kill-package which gets paired with those 24 cards in question? It's a disturbing and linear development far worse than people already complained about in regards to 4 Ponder + 4 Brainstorm.

The douchy expression was picked due to you managing to be bold and clearly false three times within a page of postings. It needed only 1 link to prove it. You can now ponder about your sentence that "no other deck runs that many cantrips" if we already have two DtBs doing exactly this and more are likely to follow (see above)

Crimhead

06-02-2015, 05:00 PM

You can now ponder about your sentence that "no other deck runs that many cantrips" if we already have two DtBs doing exactly this and more are likely to follow (see above)No we don't. We have one DTB which runs those, and another which runs fewer except for one isolated incident (where it made tenth place).

Lemnear

06-02-2015, 05:07 PM

No we don't. We have one DTB which runs those, and another which runs fewer except for one isolated incident (where it made tenth place).

You don't think we potentially facing a trend here?

Crimhead

06-02-2015, 05:22 PM

You don't think we potentially facing a trend here?One instance does not a trend make. I think it's a bit alarmist to talk about the format steering towards a ~20 lands/24 blue card core on the basis a single deck plus one other deck that did it once; especially considering it had an unexceptional finish and successful lists since have not followed suit.

I think you are seeing problems that don't exist. Maybe you are looking too hard?

you seem to think these decks are all different but to me differing ways of winning with the same engine is extremely stale.If you think the only difference between Omnitell and Grixis is their win-cons, likely you are habitually misplaying against at least one of those decks!

Those "core" spells are not actually the heart of the deck. They are not business cards. Except for FOW (and the occasional BS interaction with discard), they have nothing to do with how your deck interacts with your opponent - aka how the deck actually plays. All those cards do is consistently allow you access to the cards which make your deck do what your deck actually does.

When a grixis control deck and a mono blue combo deck are running the same 24 of ~40 nonland cards, something's gotta give right?Why? I think all this shows is how negligibly an ubiquitous cantrip package damages format diversity.

LeoCop 90

06-02-2015, 06:21 PM

Quote Originally Posted by Jain_Mor View Post
When a grixis control deck and a mono blue combo deck are running the same 24 of ~40 nonland cards, something's gotta give right?
Why? I think all this shows is how negligibly an ubiquitous cantrip package damages format diversity.

I really cannot believe people are ok with the fact that every deck could play all the same 20 cards. I cannot believe even more that they would call this a diverse format. Aren't you getting tired of seeing your opponents and yourself cast brainstorm ponder force of will over and over everytime you walk into a tournament ? Probably i am crazy but i just can't conceive such a thing.

Crimhead

06-02-2015, 07:01 PM

Storm, D&T, Elves, and Lands don't run that package. If you don't like FOW and filters, try one of those maybe?

In Legacy I find the diversity to be strategic. I have to radically altered my approach to a game depending on what I am facing - even though many of those decks happen to run counter-magic and some cantrips to smooth out their draws.

Zombie

06-02-2015, 07:50 PM

Storm, D&T, Elves, and Lands don't run that package. If you don't like FOW and filters, try one of those maybe?

"If you don't like FoW and filters, actively sabotage yourself over the course of a long event maybe? (except if you chose Storm, which runs half the package)"

LOLWut

06-02-2015, 08:06 PM

"If you don't like FoW and filters, actively sabotage yourself over the course of a long event maybe? (except if you chose Storm, which runs half the package)"

Ahhhhh at the notion that Elves and Lands have less consistency tools over a long event compared to decks with blue filters.

Now, if you want to say that having more elite decks with consistency tools without blue filters would be a positive addition to a great format, I'm on board.

plowshares

06-02-2015, 09:15 PM

"If you don't like FoW and filters, actively sabotage yourself over the course of a long event maybe? (except if you chose Storm, which runs half the package)"
Elves and lands just got 2nd and 3rd at a 15 round, 500+ person event. I really doubt Jessup and Long registered their decklists expecting to be "sabotaged" by their choices. They chose these decks because they believed they gave them the highest chance of success.

Quasim0ff

06-03-2015, 02:18 AM

"If you don't like FoW and filters, actively sabotage yourself over the course of a long event maybe? (except if you chose Storm, which runs half the package)"
That's just nonsense. D&T and Elves are among the most consistent decks in the format.

Jain_Mor

06-03-2015, 03:05 AM

Storm, D&T, Elves, and Lands don't run that package. If you don't like FOW and filters, try one of those maybe?

In Legacy I find the diversity to be strategic.

So if I want to be competitive in legacy tournaments, my core deck construction choices are D&T, Elves, Lands or blue FoW+filters?

Wow, that's a wide open format for deck construction. so diverse, four whole distinct deck cores! And one of them even makes up 70% of the format! so it's actually more like:

D&T, Elves, Lands, blue FoW+filters, blue FoW+filters, blue FoW+filters, blue FoW+filters, blue FoW+filters, blue FoW+filters or blue FoW+filters for your deck core deck construction cards. :P

Do I cast this cantrip or THIS cantrip into my threat, FoW his DTT and then DTT to recover,? Now THATs strategic diversity! :)

Crimhead

06-03-2015, 03:09 AM

"If you don't like FoW and filters, actively sabotage yourself over the course of a long event maybe? (except if you chose Storm, which runs half the package)"

Storm has a post TC ban win-rate of 51%. Elves is the same, and D&T is very close at 50%. Lands rocks a 63% win-rate! But by all means keep yourself willfully ignorant!

I just don't get it. People want to see top decks without cantrips and FOW, yet they routinely shun such decks!

So if I want to be competitive in legacy tournaments, my core deck construction choices are D&T, Elves, Lands or blue FoW+filters?MUD has a solid win-rate too. Apparently CotV is good against cantrip decks. Deadguy is at 53% - tied with Miracles.Dredge has a better win-rate than Omnitell.

Do I cast this cantrip or THIS cantrip into my threat, FoW his DTT and then DTT to recover,? Now THATs strategic diversity! :)If you use the same strategies playing Infect, Miracles, Storm, Omnitell, etc, I don't think you understand this format very well. Keep playing and reading, and you'll discover no end of angles and subtleties which make this format rich.

LeoCop 90

06-03-2015, 06:14 AM

Men, no one is arguing that competitive non-blue decks don't exist, but they are extremely few. You don't need to point out that i can play lands elves or death and taxes if i don't like the blue shell .... i know it, i think everyone here knows it, but this doesn't change the fact that almost every deck is blue and runs a lot of the same cards, and anyway non-blue decks are overall worse than blue ones because they can fall victim to variance much more often.

If most of the legacy community is ok with it, so be it. I just think in the long run this will make people quit legacy because they want to play in a format where you can choose between more cards/decks. The last time i said this the answer was that attendance is very high right now so everything is ok.... well, i could also argue that right now, given the fact that also starcitygames almost stopped covering legacy, big legacy events are so few that attendance is obviously high. At least in my area, i am experiencing more and more people heading towards modern.

The best solution is just to ban brainstorm ponder dig through time and probe and make 40 cards legacy decks, so that everyone has access to extreme consistency without having to play the above cards. This is just a joke, but it should make people reflect, because effectively playing all the cantrips is like having a 40 cards deck, that in the end reduces variance to a minimum and makes magic look like chess.

maharis

06-03-2015, 10:24 AM

Storm has a post TC ban win-rate of 51%. Elves is the same, and D&T is very close at 50%. Lands rocks a 63% win-rate! But by all means keep yourself willfully ignorant!

I just don't get it. People want to see top decks without cantrips and FOW, yet they routinely shun such decks!

MUD has a solid win-rate too. Apparently CotV is good against cantrip decks. Deadguy is at 53% - tied with Miracles.Dredge has a better win-rate than Omnitell.

If you use the same strategies playing Infect, Miracles, Storm, Omnitell, etc, I don't think you understand this format very well. Keep playing and reading, and you'll discover no end of angles and subtleties which make this format rich.

I see you are using that Reddit data to back up your point. While the project is admirable, the data are far from scientific. If MUD truly had a 63% win rate against the field consistently it would be played more by the pure spikes in the format.

Deadguy at 53% -- well, that's pretty much just Wilkin, right? He is very good and definitely exceeds the average player's results with the deck.

Spam

06-03-2015, 12:24 PM

sjmcc13

06-03-2015, 01:12 PM

...If MUD truly had a 63% win rate against the field consistently it would be played more by the pure spikes in the format.
... All most people look at are top8#'s and if a deck wins most matches but sees very little play then it will account for a very small % of those numbers.
Plus most of the articles about the format are more propaganda pieces geared towards selling the pricy cards for the popular decks, which due to their popularity will win more and be played more.
As well If a deck does something people do not like (which any deck that can drop a T1 3sphere falls under) people will be less likely to be willing to play against it outside tournament matches, which can make these decks harder to test and learn as a result. The pure spikes play the deck they feel they have the best chance to top with, and that is normally the deck they know the matchups of the best, which will be one of the decks they are able to test the easiest.

The problem we have to realize with Legacy (and probably most constructed formats) is that the meta game is more defined by propaganda and popularity then by what decks are actually the best. The decks people like to play and the ones people see winning are the easier decks to learn as they have more discussion, examples, testing opportunities, etc. Decks that people do not like for some reason can lead to negative reputations in smaller meta-games which can lead to people not building or playing unpopular decks as there is actual pier pressure to not play them as many people will not play side games with the 1 guy playing a stasis deck.

The North American meta is dominated by SCG, and the attitude that you need Brainstorm to win, which in turn leads to more Brainstorm decks in top 8's because more people run the card. Serious players only test against the decks they expect to play against so those are the decks they become familiar with, and will be more likely to play.

Lord Seth

06-03-2015, 02:28 PM

If most of the legacy community is ok with it, so be it. I just think in the long run this will make people quit legacy because they want to play in a format where you can choose between more cards/decks. The last time i said this the answer was that attendance is very high right now so everything is ok.... well, i could also argue that right now, given the fact that also starcitygames almost stopped covering legacy, big legacy events are so few that attendance is obviously high. At least in my area, i am experiencing more and more people heading towards modern.In what way has Star City Games stopped covering Legacy? Just like before, they have a big Legacy event each week of the Open Series. It might technically be a Premier IQ now most of the time rather than an Open, but there's been no reduction in the number of Legacy events they have.

I guess if by "covering" you mean video coverage and the like, but again that's produced no reduction in the number of Legacy events they do.

The best solution is just to ban brainstorm ponder dig through time and probe and make 40 cards legacy decks, so that everyone has access to extreme consistency without having to play the above cards. This is just a joke, but it should make people reflect, because effectively playing all the cantrips is like having a 40 cards deck, that in the end reduces variance to a minimum and makes magic look like chess.I'm pretty sure that's not the best solution so much as one of the worst. That simultaneously manages to annoy everyone who likes Brainstorm in the format and almost everyone who wants it banned (as few of the supporters of banning Brainstorm want things to go that far). And then any of the Brainstorm ban supporters who would actually be interested in bans that extreme probably wouldn't like the sudden 40-card Legacy deck rule. That's not making Legacy better, that's essentially killing the format in one fell swoop by annoying everyone (well, except for maybe mill players) in the process.

Barook

06-03-2015, 02:38 PM

That's just nonsense. D&T and Elves are among the most consistent decks in the format.
You obviously don't play D&T. Because its players would probably sacrifice their firstborn to get better consistency tools.

While D&T has some cards that follow the same plan (Wasteland, Port, Thalia, Revoker in certain match-up against mana sources), it has zero library manipulation aside from SFM (and Imperial Recruiter if you run the red splash). D&T gets its performance more from raw power (against blue decks) than high consistency.

If your deck decides to give you lemons, you certainly aren't going to make lemonade with D&T.

The North American meta is dominated by SCG, and the attitude that you need Brainstorm to win, which in turn leads to more Brainstorm decks in top 8's because more people run the card. Serious players only test against the decks they expect to play against so those are the decks they become familiar with, and will be more likely to play.
Nobody tells people on MTGO what decks to play since there are plenty of players around the world who give a crap about the NA meta. Yet it's the most blue meta out of all of them. Budget certainly isn't the reason for that anymore.

Blastoderm

06-03-2015, 03:17 PM

After reading this thread for the past couple weeks, I think the solution is as follows:

Ban Dig Through Time. The next step is for wizards to print cards for different colors that interact with the stack but fit their color pie. "Stack interaction" can be interpreted loosely though... Thalia, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Trinisphere, Eidolon are examples. However, I think Spirit of the Labyrinth being black would have fit the color pie better. White currently has all the hate bears except for most recently Eidolon in red. I won't come up with suggestions for card design though, I'll save that for the Shitty Card Creation thread.

Edit: Cards providing consistency in different ways in other colors would also help. Green Sun's Zenith is a great example.

BTY

06-03-2015, 05:03 PM

Edit: Cards providing consistency in different ways in other colors would also help. Green Sun's Zenith is a great example.

Green Sun's Zenith is a great example but even then there are a lot of problems with it. Green Sun has a very specific deckbuilding cost of playing with a lot of Green Creatures. Green decks like Jund or Junk don't want the card a lot of the time simply because they either don't want to play that many creatures, or that many green ones. There is also the problem that no other color besides blue has anything comparable to GSZ, and it doesn't solve the problem of drawing too many lands, too many removal spells, etc. The cantrips are so good simply because they can go into any deck that is playing Blue, something you probably want to be doing regardless anyway, without any real cost.

Blastoderm

06-03-2015, 07:52 PM

Green Sun's Zenith is a great example but even then there are a lot of problems with it. Green Sun has a very specific deckbuilding cost of playing with a lot of Green Creatures. Green decks like Jund or Junk don't want the card a lot of the time simply because they either don't want to play that many creatures, or that many green ones. There is also the problem that no other color besides blue has anything comparable to GSZ, and it doesn't solve the problem of drawing too many lands, too many removal spells, etc. The cantrips are so good simply because they can go into any deck that is playing Blue, something you probably want to be doing regardless anyway, without any real cost.

I agree. However I was merely providing example and the main reason why GSZ is so strong is the ability to get Dryad Arbor turn 1. It's a start but it doesn't really measure up against bluecantrip.dec.

JPoJohnson

06-03-2015, 11:38 PM

Anyone think there is a strong chance DTT will be banned?

Dice_Box

06-03-2015, 11:55 PM

Anyone think there is a strong chance DTT will be banned?

I would be shocked if anything was banned in the next 2 years or so. We just had a banning, holding your breath on a new one is foolish. Also if WoTC was to ban something, I am not sure what they would pick since they have another reason to aim at SnT, they might take it.

I have been enjoying Collected Company in Modern of late and I was thinking, if it had cost 3 it would be pushing a new Legacy deck. Maybe that is what we need? I mean I have already tested a brew with it at a Legacy event and liked it, it just costs a touch too much mana.

Barook

06-04-2015, 12:15 AM

I would be shocked if anything was banned in the next 2 years or so. We just had a banning, holding your breath on a new one is foolish. Also if WoTC was to ban something, I am not sure what they would pick since they have another reason to aim at SnT, they might take it.
They only didn't ban DTT because it wasn't popular enough during the TC era. They should have banned it alongside TC as they did in Modern.

I would be shocked if DTT isn't banned asap in the next announcement. Not only does it promote cancerous gameplay, it also made the meta more blue than ever before (we're somewhere in the 80-83% range right now, tendency: rising).

Two years of this horseshit without any interesting printings would have a good chance to seriously damage the format.

Jain_Mor

06-04-2015, 02:32 AM

I have been enjoying Collected Company in Modern of late and I was thinking, if it had cost 3 it would be pushing a new Legacy deck. Maybe that is what we need? I mean I have already tested a brew with it at a Legacy event and liked it, it just costs a touch too much mana.

They should have printed it in one of the other sets as 6GG with delve. Blue got two dumb card draw spells and black some undercosted beatsticks and green gets giant giant growth and a smaller beat stick. #sosalty

Dice_Box

06-04-2015, 02:33 AM

Two years of this horseshit without any interesting printings would have a good chance to seriously damage the format.
I would agree, but it takes more than some people bitching to one another on some random site they don't read for them to give a fuck and take action. Something will have to push them, a circlejerk here will not be that something. As for something that is damaging to the format, that would depend on your definition. From my point of view the last objectively damaging card was MM. Everything after than you can argue for and against and people will willingly do that in here.

While I also add, I dislike what DTT is doing to the format, right now it's just another brick in a big ass wall. It is not within my power to dismantle that wall so at this point, I will just take it as it comes. I also do not think DTT is the worst card in the format and I would rather see other things go away before it does.

They should have printed it in one of the other sets as 6GG with delve. Blue got two dumb card draw spells and black some undercosted beatsticks and green gets giant giant growth and a smaller beat stick. #sosalty
No. It would not have worked. Because the deck you want it in is so chock full of Creatures, you're not really filling your grave. It is why the deck runs Voice in Modern over Goyf. I was playing it with Gofy and sometimes, 5 turns in he is still just a 2/3. Delve on this card would not have been the answer. Not unless you want to push it to be played in a cantrip shell.

Lemnear

06-04-2015, 02:43 AM

They should have printed it in one of the other sets as 6GG with delve. Blue got two dumb card draw spells and black some undercosted beatsticks and green gets giant giant growth and a smaller beat stick. #sosalty

It was a Clan mechanic, so why are you complaining about colors? You can complain about the gap between blue, green and black within the Clan mechanic. Growth, Tasigur and Angler are crap compared to TC & DTT. Don't act like the non-Sultai colors aka white and red got nothing out of Jeskai.

Quasim0ff

06-04-2015, 03:01 AM

You obviously don't play D&T. Because its players would probably sacrifice their firstborn to get better consistency tools.

While D&T has some cards that follow the same plan (Wasteland, Port, Thalia, Revoker in certain match-up against mana sources), it has zero library manipulation aside from SFM (and Imperial Recruiter if you run the red splash). D&T gets its performance more from raw power (against blue decks) than high consistency.

You and I clearly have different understandings of "Consistent".

If you mean "Need the right card for a given situation", sure. Death and Taxes aren't as consistent.
If you mean "Have a pretty linear gameplan (No, D&T is not a linear deck!) and make that gameplan work often enough to be considered viable" then Death and Taxes is very consistent.

Jamaican Zombie Legend

06-04-2015, 03:07 AM

It was a Clan mechanic, so why are you complaining about colors? You can complain about the gap between blue, green and black within the Clan mechanic.

I think that was the gripe the post was about, how out of the BUG wedge, Blue got the best Delve cards by a long shot.

Green got Become Immense and Hooting Mandrills. Black got a bunch of Tombstalkers, a potentially cheaper Mind Rot, and a card roughly on par with Ghastly Demise. Blue got Delve versions of Recall, Time Walk, and Ancestral Memories. That seems fair...

Kinda silly when both Green and Black are far more traditionally associated with the graveyard. Where was the Delve Greater Good, Tutor, Zombify, Regrowth, or anything else interesting? The mechanic had so much interesting design space, but most of it went unused.

Darkenslight

06-04-2015, 04:26 AM

It was a Clan mechanic, so why are you complaining about colors? You can complain about the gap between blue, green and black within the Clan mechanic. Growth, Tasigur and Angler are crap compared to TC & DTT. Don't act like the non-Sultai colors aka white and red got nothing out of Jeskai.

Indeed, although I think you may be under-rating Tasigur a little; recurring a card each turn is still pretty strong in Modern and Standard, and with TC and DTT as Delve spells, that makes an incredibly potent midrange shell.

Lemnear

06-04-2015, 05:56 AM

Indeed, although I think you may be under-rating Tasigur a little; recurring a card each turn is still pretty strong in Modern and Standard, and with TC and DTT as Delve spells, that makes an incredibly potent midrange shell.

Well, I don't dare to judge the cards in Modern, where the 4-mana ability of Tasigur might is actually relevant and Treasure Cruise isn't necessarily hilariously broken due to Modern lacking the hyper-efficient Cantrips/Removal/Counter and being slower overall.

The point is that in Legacy Tasigur is just another take on Tombstalker in the face of Karakas and Plows while Treasure Cruise is a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall. It's valid (from my POV) that people complain about the lacking balance between colors here. How in the world are TC and Murderous Cut balanced in colors and rarity? Why does blue get Delver versions of Resticted List Legends and Black/Green missing any delve-variants of Tutors, Skeletal Scrying, Y.Will, Reanimation, Regrowth, Fastbond, GSZ, whatever?

Stevestamopz

06-04-2015, 06:27 AM

Well, I don't dare to judge the cards in Modern, where the 4-mana ability of Tasigur might is actually relevant and Treasure Cruise isn't necessarily hilariously broken due to Modern lacking the hyper-efficient Cantrips/Removal/Counter and being slower overall.

The point is that in Legacy Tasigur is just another take on Tombstalker in the face of Karakas and Plows while Treasure Cruise is a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall. It's valid (from my POV) that people complain about the lacking balance between colors here. How in the world are TC and Murderous Cut balanced in colors and rarity? Why does blue get Delver versions of Resticted List Legends and Black/Green missing any delve-variants of Tutors, Skeletal Scrying, Y.Will, Reanimation, Regrowth, Fastbond, GSZ, whatever?

Because the people that design magic cards are boring peasants.

Quasim0ff

06-04-2015, 06:42 AM

Well, I don't dare to judge the cards in Modern, where the 4-mana ability of Tasigur might is actually relevant and Treasure Cruise isn't necessarily hilariously broken due to Modern lacking the hyper-efficient Cantrips/Removal/Counter and being slower overall.

The point is that in Legacy Tasigur is just another take on Tombstalker in the face of Karakas and Plows while Treasure Cruise is a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall. It's valid (from my POV) that people complain about the lacking balance between colors here. How in the world are TC and Murderous Cut balanced in colors and rarity? Why does blue get Delver versions of Resticted List Legends and Black/Green missing any delve-variants of Tutors, Skeletal Scrying, Y.Will, Reanimation, Regrowth, Fastbond, GSZ, whatever?
Because they make cards for standard and modern play, not legacy and vintage.

Dice_Box

06-04-2015, 07:16 AM

Because they make cards for standard and modern play, not legacy and vintage.
They sometimes make things for us, throw us a bone. For example: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46894.msg653779#msg653779
(There is also an article on the mothership stating Decay was printed to help Legacy against Counterbalance.)

Barook

06-04-2015, 07:18 AM

I would agree, but it takes more than some people bitching to one another on some random site they don't read for them to give a fuck and take action. Something will have to push them, a circlejerk here will not be that something. As for something that is damaging to the format, that would depend on your definition. From my point of view the last objectively damaging card was MM. Everything after than you can argue for and against and people will willingly do that in here.

While I also add, I dislike what DTT is doing to the format, right now it's just another brick in a big ass wall. It is not within my power to dismantle that wall so at this point, I will just take it as it comes. I also do not think DTT is the worst card in the format and I would rather see other things go away before it does.
They'll have data from GP Kyoto and GP Lille (which is most likely going to be just as blue). They also have MTGO (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/legacy#online) data (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/legacy) which is even more loop-sided than during the TC era.

The better question is whether or not Erik Lauer sits another round on his ass doing nothing.

Blastoderm

06-04-2015, 08:49 AM

Well, I don't dare to judge the cards in Modern, where the 4-mana ability of Tasigur might is actually relevant and Treasure Cruise isn't necessarily hilariously broken due to Modern lacking the hyper-efficient Cantrips/Removal/Counter and being slower overall.

The point is that in Legacy Tasigur is just another take on Tombstalker in the face of Karakas and Plows while Treasure Cruise is a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall. It's valid (from my POV) that people complain about the lacking balance between colors here. How in the world are TC and Murderous Cut balanced in colors and rarity? Why does blue get Delver versions of Resticted List Legends and Black/Green missing any delve-variants of Tutors, Skeletal Scrying, Y.Will, Reanimation, Regrowth, Fastbond, GSZ, whatever?

Oh man a delve Skeletal Scrying would have been so awesome.

btm10

06-04-2015, 09:55 AM

maharis

06-04-2015, 10:29 AM

To be fair, Empty the Pits seems like it was a real attempt to be a Black Entreat, but the cost reducer doesn't make up for BBBB, and the fact that the Zombies are just Grizzly Bears and they can't be used as Flash blockers left it unplayable.

I agree, card was so close to being awesome and ended up being stupid. Probably because standard games go a lot longer than legacy games, and the average CMC is much higher, so letting someone dump a bunch of zombies EOT too early is arguably more dangerous than letting them draw 2-3 more 4-5 drops.

nedleeds

06-04-2015, 10:31 AM

If Empty the Pits was X it wouldn't be playable. BBBB.

btm10

06-04-2015, 11:38 AM

Keep up the Necro ban strategy and ban every surrounding shitty card while the format degenerates.

As much as I hate to admit it, the Necro analogy is pretty spot-on. I do think that Dig would still need to be banned even if Brainstorm goes, though.

Lemnear

06-04-2015, 12:52 PM

As much as I hate to admit it, the Necro analogy is pretty spot-on. I do think that Dig would still need to be banned even if Brainstorm goes, though.

The Necro analogy ignores the question of how playable Necro would have been without Ritual

sjmcc13

06-04-2015, 01:22 PM

The Necro analogy ignores the question of how playable Necro would have been without RitualIs this from back in the day when Ritual was a Mana Source and could not be countered (Mirage to 6th IIRC)?

btm10

06-04-2015, 01:52 PM

The Necro analogy ignores the question of how playable Necro would have been without Ritual

I didn't say that I was 100% sold on banning Brainstorm, but in the context of the major fruitful discussions in this thread right now (banning Top and/or Dig), it's quite appropriate. Whether Dig would also be safe without Brainstorm is up for debate. Top is almost assuredly fine if Brainstorm goes, though.

Lemnear

06-04-2015, 04:02 PM

I didn't say that I was 100% sold on banning Brainstorm, but in the context of the major fruitful discussions in this thread right now (banning Top and/or Dig), it's quite appropriate. Whether Dig would also be safe without Brainstorm is up for debate. Top is almost assuredly fine if Brainstorm goes, though.

Top is not fine if paired with Preordain in a post-Brainstorm, post-Ponder Legacy environment. I at least gave my 0.02$ on the matter before as you sure remember.

Kanti

06-04-2015, 05:11 PM

That's your opinion. It might still see oodles of play, and could possibly still be the best thing you can be doing with your mana, but if old extended (2007-2009) could handle CB-Top and not have it be 50%+ of the metagame then I'm sure 1.5 can handle it. And yes, this is my opinion. Damn you subjective thread.

Barook

06-04-2015, 05:22 PM

iamajellydonut

06-04-2015, 05:39 PM

But Top was banned in Extended in September 2008.

"For many readers, the biggest surprise to come out of the recent announcement was the decision to ban Sensei’s Divining Top in Extended. Making the decision to remove a card from an environment completely is never something taken lightly, and this time was no exception. Sensei's Divining Top caught the eye of Organized Play as being a potential problem during the Qualifier season for Pro Tour–Hollywood, but ultimately the decision was to monitor Top’s performance through the season and reconvene on the matter later in the year.

Ultimately Top 8s throughout the season were littered with the one-cost artifact either in conjunction with Counterbalance to lock opponents out of games, Trinket Mage to be found reliably, or (and usually in addition to) Onslaught’s sac-lands to allow players to shuffle away cards they didn’t wish to draw while peeking at a fresh set of three cards. Such a pervasive performance during a single season created a different problem as well: it made tournaments take too much time.

The constant activating of Divining Top bogs games down, which ultimately leads to an increase in the number of matches that go to time and beyond, which in turn leads to tournaments running much longer than they have historically. Furthermore, the Top encourages players to maximize the number of shuffle effects they play in a deck and the constant shuffling, cutting, presenting to an opponent to repeat the process, and then continuation of a turn exacerbated the situation. In the past the DCI has banned such cards on those grounds alone (Shahrazad is a good example of this, with Land Tax and Thawing Glaciers also having been banned for similar reasons) but in conjunction with the Top’s popularity during the last Extended PTQ season, the decision was to ban the card from the format it was harming."

Kanti

06-04-2015, 09:29 PM

Oh shit. Look what I did. Remember that now, and really hated that. It does bog a game down sometimes, but I don't think a card should be banned on that basis.

btm10

06-04-2015, 10:04 PM

Top is not fine if paired with Preordain in a post-Brainstorm, post-Ponder Legacy environment. I at least gave my 0.02$ on the matter before as you sure remember.

First, just for clarity, I never said anything about Ponder. I'm not nearly as concerned with the color makeup of the format as a lot of people in this thread are. I'm not - as I hope you know - in favor of banning Brainstorm yet. I do think that far fewer decks would be interested in playing Ponder + Preordain + Top (or Preordain + Top in the Ponder-banned case) in a Brainstorm and Dig-less world than you do though. Delver decks simply can't afford the tempo loss and Delver is a lot better with Dig banned. Shardless would rather use Sylvan Library because it's just a better card when you aren't trying to Miracle things and it's already tying up its mana almost every turn. Control decks (so in this discussion, UWx Blade) would certainly run it, but that's largely why I'd much rather see Dig gone than Top - I don't think that pure control can survive without CounterTop at this point. But I digress. Sean made a good point that right now, in the real world, if we're discussing banning Dig and Top to contain Omnitell and Miracles, we're making the same mistake with Brainstorm that was made with Necro Extended. I think the meta is pretty miserable to play in right now, but I'd rather see a cautious line from WotC of banning Dig and watching the meta closely for the next 3-6 months. If the meta adjusts and Miracles isn't dominant (and I think this will be the case), then all the reasonable people can go on with their lives and the diehards will still be calling for Brainstorm's head. If Miracles is the uncontested top deck in 3-6 months though, I think it's time to take a hard look at Brainstorm. If it comes to that, I'm honestly not sure what should be done anymore. Right now though, I think it's abundantly clear that Dig is broken and needs to go.

Lemnear

06-05-2015, 02:24 AM

First, just for clarity, I never said anything about Ponder. I'm not nearly as concerned with the color makeup of the format as a lot of people in this thread are. I'm not - as I hope you know - in favor of banning Brainstorm yet. I do think that far fewer decks would be interested in playing Ponder + Preordain + Top (or Preordain + Top in the Ponder-banned case) in a Brainstorm and Dig-less world than you do though. Delver decks simply can't afford the tempo loss and Delver is a lot better with Dig banned. Shardless would rather use Sylvan Library because it's just a better card when you aren't trying to Miracle things and it's already tying up its mana almost every turn. Control decks (so in this discussion, UWx Blade) would certainly run it, but that's largely why I'd much rather see Dig gone than Top - I don't think that pure control can survive without CounterTop at this point. But I digress. Sean made a good point that right now, in the real world, if we're discussing banning Dig and Top to contain Omnitell and Miracles, we're making the same mistake with Brainstorm that was made with Necro Extended. I think the meta is pretty miserable to play in right now, but I'd rather see a cautious line from WotC of banning Dig and watching the meta closely for the next 3-6 months. If the meta adjusts and Miracles isn't dominant (and I think this will be the case), then all the reasonable people can go on with their lives and the diehards will still be calling for Brainstorm's head. If Miracles is the uncontested top deck in 3-6 months though, I think it's time to take a hard look at Brainstorm. If it comes to that, I'm honestly not sure what should be done anymore. Right now though, I think it's abundantly clear that Dig is broken and needs to go.

I got you the right way, don't worry. The point is that the classic Tempo shell is also close to unplayable if Brainstorm is banned because it suffers the same Problem as Miracles would: Running conditional cards (Daze, Stifle, Wasteland, Terminus, etc.) without a chance to switch them out. If you ban Brainstorm alone or Ponder alongside, doesn't matter that much as the Problem would most likely steer the Ux decks away from conditional stuff over time and narrowing playable choices in Ux further down the road.

The point I dislike about the Necropotence analogy is that Sean (and he hates Brainstorm as we all know, thus I'm not surprised the outcome was so unreflected) never asks if Brainstorm is the Necropotence or the Dark Ritual in this story. Isn't Brainstorm/Dark Ritual/Vengevine the card that fuels S&T/Necropotence/Survival to being such powerhouse-gameenders? The point Sean presents is too one-sided. How good is Necro w/o Ritual? How good is S&T/Delver/SFM w/o Braistorm? How good is Survival w/o Vengevine? And if we ban one of the two options, how would that affect the metagame? That are the questions to ask!

Edit: All you can do at this point is chopping the Hydras head and hope you don't start a downward spiral, like chopping Brainstorm to get hold of Miracles/S&T, then ban Ponder/Top/Preordain because they steered the format into a Blade mirror after the era of conditional cards ended with Brainstorm, then chop down combo, because running blue is so unattractive without cantrips and you can't keep combo in check w/o bannings, then you chop the cards in Aggro decks everyone runs as the format just narrowed down like Modern did and are back to just chopping the Hydras head once more

Edit 2: Need coffee. Still sleepy

nevilshute

06-05-2015, 03:38 AM

I got you the right way, don't worry. The point is that the classic Tempo shell is also close to unplayable if Brainstorm is banned because it suffers the same Problem as Miracles would: Running conditional cards (Daze, Stifle, Wasteland, Terminus, etc.) without a chance to switch them out. If you ban Brainstorm alone or Ponder alongside, doesn't matter that much as the Problem would most likely steer the Ux decks away from conditional stuff over time and narrowing playable choices in Ux further down the road.

The point I dislike about the Necropotence analogy is that Sean (and he hates Brainstorm as we all know, thus I'm not surprised the outcome was so unreflected) never asks if Brainstorm is the Necropotence or the Dark Ritual in this story. Isn't Brainstorm/Dark Ritual/Vengevine the card that fuels S&T/Necropotence/Survival to being such powerhouse-gameenders? The point Sean presents is too one-sided. How good is Necro w/o Ritual? How good is S&T/Delver/SFM w/o Braistorm? How good is Survival w/o Vengevine? And if we ban one of the two options, how would that affect the metagame? That are the questions to ask!

Edit: All you can do at this point is chopping the Hydras head and hope you don't start a downward spiral, like chopping Brainstorm to get hold of Miracles/S&T, then ban Ponder/Top/Preordain because they steered the format into a Blade mirror after the era of conditional cards ended with Brainstorm, then chop down combo, because running blue is so unattractive without cantrips and you can't keep combo in check w/o bannings, then you chop the cards in Aggro decks everyone runs as the format just narrowed down like Modern did and are back to just chopping the Hydras head once more

Edit 2: Need coffee. Still sleepy

Very much agree with this Lemn. I also think that the Necropotence analogy is flawed from mr. O'Brien. He seems on a crusade to get Brainstorm banned (I don't think he would disagree with that), and as I was listening to him on the Everyday Eternal Podcast he made the point that Necropotence would be played in a wide variety of archetypes (necro-control, necro-combo... necro-aggro(?)) The point was made to somehow invalidate the point that proponents of Brainstorm make, which is, that Brainstorm is not an all-dominating archtype but rather that Brainstorm fuels a wide variety of archtypes. I think necro, if unbanned, would at some point down the line establish what shell it would be most effective in - a combo variant I'm guessing - and there would be little point in playing necro-tempo or something else like that. I'm willing to concede that this is all just speculation of course :smile:

Lemnear

06-05-2015, 05:24 AM

Very much agree with this Lemn. I also think that the Necropotence analogy is flawed from mr. O'Brien. He seems on a crusade to get Brainstorm banned (I don't think he would disagree with that), and as I was listening to him on the Everyday Eternal Podcast he made the point that Necropotence would be played in a wide variety of archetypes (necro-control, necro-combo... necro-aggro(?)) The point was made to somehow invalidate the point that proponents of Brainstorm make, which is, that Brainstorm is not an all-dominating archtype but rather that Brainstorm fuels a wide variety of archtypes. I think necro, if unbanned, would at some point down the line establish what shell it would be most effective in - a combo variant I'm guessing - and there would be little point in playing necro-tempo or something else like that. I'm willing to concede that this is all just speculation of course :smile:

There was also the talk about "splashing" Necro into control decks which is total nonsense to do so, if Dark Ritual and Tendrils are legal in the format for a much more natural fit for Necro and there is exactly the point where the analogy is flawed: Necro would not power control or aggro these days. There is too much of an opportunity cost to run a BBB-costed card like Necro in regards to deckbuilding compared to Brainstorm for a single blue mana, which has also to be adresses in any discussion regarding the two cards, but that doesn't fit the bold black/white-picture Sean is painting.

Crimhead

06-05-2015, 05:39 AM

I see you are using that Reddit data to back up your point. While the project is admirable, the data are far from scientific.Recording observations is not unscientific. What's unscientific is to assess a decks strength based entirely on it's success, while dismissing its failures at being not representative of the deck's position. That's exactly what you do if you look at top8s without consideration to representation. This is called cherry picking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_%28fallacy%29), and is the antithesis of science.

If MUD truly had a 63% win rate against the field consistently it would be played more by the pure spikes in the format.
Except they make the same mistake you do! (BTW, Lands is 63%, MUD is 58%).

People look at top 8s and at win-rates and feel the numbers don't jive. How can MUD win 58% of its matches and Omnitell win only 47% when Omnitell gets so many more top showings? "Clearly" one of these measures is wrong. MUD may look good on paper, but Omni is actually winning events. Surely these spikes who are getting results know what they are doing, and besides, you cant argue with prize money! Right?

Wrong! The big mistake is thinking the win-rates and top8s are inconsistent, when in fact they are not. I'll take the example of Omnitell. This deck was roughly 20% of the field on day two of GP Kyoto (I don't have data for day one). The deck saw three spots in the top sixteen - which is also just under 20% of that bracket. This makes perfect sense with a 47% win-rate!

I didn't really need the stats for day two, though. If a break-even deck comprises ~20% of any given upper bracket, it's a good bet that deck represented ~20% of the field. Also vice-versa. This is the only way the numbers balance. Give me any two of a decks win-rate, it's percent of the field, or it's representation in a top bracket, and I can predict the other. There is variance of course - a 50/50 deck could in theory have all it's entrants winning exactly 50% of it's matches (no top eights), but as sample size increases, normal distribution (http://stattrek.com/probability-distributions/normal.aspx) prevails.

This isn't rocket science, but you'd swear it was. Some people really can't understand the maths - they cannot reconcile win-rates, so they toss out that data. But I think most people don't try, and stay willfully ignorant! Anyone clamoring for a DTT or BS ban (or SDT) will never admit that the decks they hate are not at all OP, but are propped up by sheer force of numbers. And people who love playing blue cantrips are invested in the belief that that they are playing a top deck. They would not want to have to switch decks or admit/accept that they are playing a deck because they like it, not because it is strong.

Whatever the reason, most people don't even want to look at win-rates! Just read these boards - the decks that are considered strong are those that win the most top8s. Period. So you can keep yourself ignorant by analyzing a fraction of the data, or you can look at all the data and get the full picture. It's all the same to me. I'd just like to make sure that new and impressionable players ca read an alternative analysis, and decide for themselves which pov is more reasonable.

You and I clearly have different understandings of "Consistent".

If you mean "Need the right card for a given situation", sure. Death and Taxes aren't as consistent.
If you mean "Have a pretty linear gameplan (No, D&T is not a linear deck!) and make that gameplan work often enough to be considered viable" then Death and Taxes is very consistent.
This! Burn is the most consistent deck in Legacy, but it is not the best! Increased odds of drawing the card you want doesn't advance your record - winning matches does. Decks with higher win-rates consistently win matches more so than decks with lower win-rates.

Barook

06-05-2015, 07:00 AM

Except they make the same mistake you do! (BTW, Lands is 63%, MUD is 58%).

People look at top 8s and at win-rates and feel the numbers don't jive. How can MUD win 58% of its matches and Omnitell win only 47% when Omnitell gets so many more top showings? "Clearly" one of these measures is wrong. MUD may look good on paper, but Omni is actually winning events. Surely these spikes who are getting results know what they are doing, and besides, you cant argue with prize money! Right?

Wrong! The big mistake is thinking the win-rates and top8s are inconsistent, when in fact they are not. I'll take the example of Omnitell. This deck was roughly 20% of the field on day two of GP Kyoto (I don't have data for day one). The deck saw three spots in the top sixteen - which is also just under 20% of that bracket. This makes perfect sense with a 47% win-rate!

I didn't really need the stats for day two, though. If a break-even deck comprises ~20% of any given upper bracket, it's a good bet that deck represented ~20% of the field. Also vice-versa. This is the only way the numbers balance. Give me any two of a decks win-rate, it's percent f the filed, or it's representation in a top bracket, and I can predict the other. There is variance of course - a 50/50 deck could in theory have all it's entrants winning exactly 50% of it's matches (no top eights), but as sample size increases, normal distribution (http://stattrek.com/probability-distributions/normal.aspx) prevails.

This isn't rocket science, but you'd swear it was. Some people really can't understand the maths - they cannot reconcile win-rates, so they toss out that data. But I think most people don't try, and stay willfully ignorant! Anyone clamoring for a DTT or BS ban (or SDT) will never admit that the decks they hate are not at all OP, but are propped up by sheer force of numbers. And people who love playing blue cantrips are invested in the belief that that they are playing a top deck. They would not want to have to switch decks or admit/accept that they are playing a deck because they like it, not because it is strong.

Whatever the reason, most people don't even want to look at win-rates! Just read these boards - the decks that are considered strong are those that win the most top8s. Period. So you can keep yourself ignorant by analyzing a fraction of the data, or you can look at all the data and get the full picture. It's all the same to me. I'd just like to make sure that new and impressionable players ca read an alternative analysis, and decide for themselves which pov is more reasonable.
http://modernnexus.com/ (site is currently down) recently had an interesting article regarding the best deck of Modern. But instead of just giving out the win percentages, they also calculated the standard variation of said decks. Turns out that Bloom Titan has a win percentage of ~60% with an impressive standard derivation (0.006(%?) or something like that IIRC, I'll link the article later once the site is up again).

If win percentages stay high even after standard derivation, then yes, they're the best decks of the format. But before that, I'm not really impressed.

Crimhead

06-05-2015, 07:27 AM

http://modernnexus.com/
If win percentages stay high even after standard derivation, then yes, they're the best decks of the format. But before that, I'm not really impressed.
But a high standard deviation is what you want! Click the link I posted above on normal distributions. With a higher SD, you get more very good (aka, top 8) results and very bad results, while getting fewer average results.

SD doesn't alter an average (in this case, a win percentage) - the two are completely independent. SD measures the likelihood of any specific instance hitting the average, and the extent to which it deviates. In roulette, eg, betting on black or red has a lower SD than betting on a single inside number.

In an MTG tournament, if you deck has an averages win rate against the field of 50% or 60% (or whatever), you don't really want to win exactly that amount in any given tournament. You would rather have droughts and floods - a high SD! This matters less if you are choosing a feck for a smaller event, but still applies.

The problem is people don't understand math - even top players. That's why win-rates are not given the consideration they deserve, while top8 data is given blind faith despite being grossly stacked.

Lemnear

06-05-2015, 08:16 AM

Barook

06-05-2015, 09:13 AM

You would rather have droughts and floods - a high SD!

The problem is people don't understand math - even top players.
I'm kinda rusty in statistics after almost 10 years not having anything to do with it anymore.

Doesn't a high standard deviation only mean that the sample size was too small, thus resulting in a wider range of values where the true value lies within?

E.g. if Tom Ross has a win ratio 80% and Player B has a win ration of 40% with Infect, it averages out at 60%, but has a standard deviation of 60% (+/- 20%). Now if we had Player C with 55% and Player D had 65%, we would still have 60% win percentage on average, but standard deviation would be smaller - 60% (+/-14.6%). Tom Ross still took down the tournament and the win percentage stayed the same, but due to a bigger sample size, we're closer to the true value of the average win percentage.

The true average win percentage doesn't show us the individual win percentages of the players, though. A deck could very well be over- or underperforming based on sample size. Thing is, the higher the true average win percentage of a deck, the higher the chance of said deck placing (a deck with 50% wins average is less likely to place than a deck with 60% wins, for example).

While I agree that the 50% deck is going to place with more players by sheer numbers in the end due to normal distribution, I can't agree with just looking at win percentages and call it a day when we aren't sure what the true win percentage (and that is what we're looking for) actually is, especially if the sample size could be flawed. If the true average win percentage is higher, then it's the better performing deck. Maybe Lands does have a win percentage of 63% - maybe it has 58%, maybe 65%, but we can't say for sure until we know how accurate the value is.

That's why I'm calling for a deeper statistical analysis before making hasty conclusions.

Ogh!

06-05-2015, 09:16 AM

But a high standard deviation is what you want! Click the link I posted above on normal distributions. With a higher SD, you get more very good (aka, top 8) results and very bad results, while getting fewer average results.

SD doesn't alter an average (in this case, a win percentage) - the two are completely independent. SD measures the likelihood of any specific instance hitting the average, and the extent to which it deviates. In roulette, eg, betting on black or red has a lower SD than betting on a single inside number.

In an MTG tournament, if you deck has an averages win rate against the field of 50% or 60% (or whatever), you don't really want to win exactly that amount in any given tournament. You would rather have droughts and floods - a high SD! This matters less if you are choosing a feck for a smaller event, but still applies.

The problem is people don't understand math - even top players. That's why win-rates are not given the consideration they deserve, while top8 data is given blind faith despite being grossly stacked.

As I did a PhD in econometrics I feel it's necessary to comment on your opinion here. In conventional probability theory we would model the relevant* win rate as a binary random variable X that can take the values of 0 (loss) and 1 (win). Let's neglect the fact that there are draws; their existence just complicates the math but doesn't change the result. Thus, the expected win rate is:

E(X) = P(X=1)

The expected variance of the win rate is:

Var(X) = E[X^2] - E(X)^2
= E(X) - E(X)^2 (--> this holds true because the win rate is a binary random variable)
= P(X=1)(1 - P(X=1))

Thus, the variance of the win rate is only dependent on its expected value. While this statement seems to support your argument at first it exposes it as rubbish at a closer look. Particularly, we can learn from the last equation above that the deck with the highest variance (0.25) will have a 50% win rate. The deck with a win rate of either 100% or 0% will have a variance of 0. The deck with a 75% win rate will have a variance of 0.21.

As a result, a "low variance win rate" is equal to either a high probability to win or a high probability to lose.

TL;DR: Only win rates count, variance or standard deviation are only dependent on win rates and can be completely disregarded if your approach to calculating your relevant win rate is correct.*

*All of the above holds true if you calculate the individual win rates against every possible deck in the field and weight these individual win rates by the expected probabilities of encountering each deck in the next tournament to arrive at the relevant win rate. This is the only correct approach to calculating the relevant win rate of an unknown match. For a "tournament win rate" you will have to start "Bernoulliing" using the calculated individual win rates and make assumptions about the decks you will face (can be extended to calculate a "top 8 rate").

Barook

06-05-2015, 09:53 AM

I admire your attempt to make a point with actual numbers in a comprehendable way, but you miss that you have no audience here, which really wants to understand what's behind those numbers. I once tried to link performance data and representation with actual numbers in this thread and set those into relation (basically what you tried to do with your last posts), which way called humbug because "only T8 results count". The next time you point at a diverse T8 with 3 non-blue deck, the same crowd yells "only T16 data count", and if you present a mixed T16, they look up the average percentage of Brainstorm for the month at mtgtop8.com and call Brainstorm overperforming (which I can proof wrong via the same set of data they picked) just to see the circle start all over. You can't ever win an argument here with math deeper than the front page numbers on mtgtop8.com and the like. You waste your time, therefore I have given up and moved straight to middlefinger waving in the face of ignorance for numbers
Except you use such stray results to justify the "health" of the format while completely ignoring regular results with 7-8/8 or 14-16/16 blue decks with Brainstorm placing, especially in big events like the GPs which have been a blue circlejerk in the past two years after Strasbourg (which had 4 non-Brainstorm decks placing).
When other people point out the numbers, you choose to ignore them while you call the format "diverse", how the high blue count is fine for Vintage (something we've already surpassed with Legacy by a good chunk by now - 67-71% vs 78-83%, depending on the sources you want to look at), how half of the format would die without Brainstorm and that everybody and their mother would quit without Brainstorm.

Don't try to argue with numbers when you're cherry-picking results to your liking and then try to call out people on their data.

Crimhead

06-05-2015, 10:19 AM

TL;DR: Only win rates count, variance or standard deviation are only dependent on win rates and can be completely disregarded if your approach to calculating your relevant win rate is correct.You're right! I know this, just jad a brain fart this morning. It shows how easy it is to get this stuff wrong (and I'm someone with a background in math), and how counter-intuitive mathematical concepts can be, especially probability.

You do support my main argument; that a decks win-rate (if calculated properly) predicts it's chance of top 8ing.

Ogh!

06-05-2015, 10:26 AM

You do support my main argument; that a decks win-rate (if calculated properly) predicts it's chance of top 8ing.

With all my heart. However, the truth of this statement is kind of obvious, isn't it? :)

Lemnear

06-05-2015, 09:09 PM

Except you use such stray results to justify the "health" of the format while completely ignoring regular results with 7-8/8 or 14-16/16 blue decks with Brainstorm placing, especially in big events like the GPs which have been a blue circlejerk in the past two years after Strasbourg (which had 4 non-Brainstorm decks placing).
When other people point out the numbers, you choose to ignore them while you call the format "diverse", how the high blue count is fine for Vintage (something we've already surpassed with Legacy by a good chunk by now - 67-71% vs 78-83%, depending on the sources you want to look at), how half of the format would die without Brainstorm and that everybody and their mother would quit without Brainstorm.

Don't try to argue with numbers when you're cherry-picking results to your liking and then try to call out people on their data.

I would never use such a vague term like "health" to describe a format. I soley talk about strategic diversity and leave the "colors matter" bullshit to others or the pointing at Brainstorm which is, for me, not different from running Fetchlands in every deck. I never said people would ragequit. I really hate if people put words in my mouth or if I have to point out obvious stuff like Miracles being unplayable as an archetype w/o Brainstorm, while certain users ignore the point I made about the conditional cards just for the sake of black/white picture painting

Dice_Box

06-05-2015, 09:37 PM

This thread is unhealthy at the best of times. (something I have been involved in causing, not of late I am thankful to say though.) But now we have people coming from offside to post exclusively in this one thread. I think it's not really helpful anymore, not that it really was in the first place.

And while I understand the argument that you leave the thread open to contain the bullshit, I feel like now the bullshit exists thanks to the thread. So this threads function has changed from containment to creation of shity conversation and manufactured issues. Putting a temp lock on this thread was the best thing that happened in recent history and I think it's time to put this shit to rest.

Lock this down, let's move on.

Lemnear

06-05-2015, 10:09 PM

Dice_Box

06-05-2015, 11:24 PM

I agree that what you are explaining was the idea behind keeping this place open, what I disagree with is the idea that it is having a positive effect. We have people joining the site now just to post in this fucking place, the only reason they are here. we have the same old shit going round and round offering no positive effect (or any real effect) at all. We have the same people, making the same fucking arguments over and over again. This is not some toilet bowl collecting the shit, this is the bowels making it. People do not come here to the site to vent, if they did the thread I started and vented in in the off topic section would see more use.

This place, its just shity and getting worse. It is not offering a place to let out rage, it perpetuates it. It grants a place for people to feed not release. Also if you face a bad match, you talk about that in the thread in question. I am happy to vent in the Land thread about how I feel a match is bad, I am also happy to say I then get positive feedback on what I should do in the future. If I came here and tried that I would be attacked by something spouting shit about how I do not understand the "Health" of the format or some other bullshit response that means they do not have to actually think about what the hell they are saying.

I mean, lets examine the main shitty subject here, Brainstorm. Who here, among the name calling, shit slinging and otherwise bullshitiry has honestly had their views changed from what they have seen here? The point of a good debate is not to change the opinions of those you debate with, but of the audience whom is watching. The point in this thread is to stand on the mountain and piss down on everyone who does not agree with you, not to benefit anyone and change views. Its a circle jerk and cum is raining down all over the site and not for the better.

When I see comments made off site about The Source now, it is not about this is the place to come and talk about Legacy, it is about how there is a 500 page talk about Brainstorm. Not kidding. I have seen people state others should stay away because nothing productive happens here. This site is starting to be see as a home for this thread. This thing is gaining a life of its own and that is not a benefit for anyone. It needs to go, for the betterment of this place. Then if shit comes up later, you whack it on the head and whack the person who did it. I do not want to see the site become the brunt of jokes based only on the few morons in this thread that can not agree to disagree.

So you can say we have that audience, they have been watching, all they have seen is what the people who pop up now and again to say "How do I hide this thread" see and that ain't good. Time to get rid of this shit. If it aint going to be gotten rid of, it is time to at least make it viewable by Members only who have at least 10 posts or some shit and an opt out by the rest of us so we do not have to see it any more.

Crimhead

06-05-2015, 11:37 PM

Maybe we should have a separate thread for complaining about this thread?

Ace/Homebrew

06-05-2015, 11:38 PM

Valid points DB.

But what Lemnear said is true.
When I get to the point you are currently at, I take a break from this thread. When I'm feeling masochistic I check it again.

Take a break. Things will be exactly the same when you return. :frown:

Crimhead

06-06-2015, 12:10 AM

I don't think so. The point of playing aggro was never to beat combo, that should be well understood. The point of playing it was to beat up on blue decks that were geared more towards beating combo and/or each other. The problems with the format have a lot to do with blue decks getting to the point where they could beat aggro AS WELL AS combo. Thus, the part of blue predator is now filled primarily by fringe prison decks like Lands and MUD (and of course DnT, which is widely considered a control deck despite its high creature count).

While I don't think we can equate all blue decks in the context of having the same predators, I also don't think aggro decks are inherently healthier than prison decks; they are in many ways less interactive. Lands would be less fringy if Tabernacle had been printed in Chronicles, 4th, and 5th. But it would help to have more decks for this. I think unbanning Earthcraft would be a step in the right direction, giving Enchantress a chance to possibly breathe again.

As for aggro, 2011 saw the printings of Delver and Baterskull, and I think this is when pure aggro began to really decline. They just couldn't keep up with the delver/tempo decks or midrange/stoneblade decks. Since then, those aggro control decks have only gotten more goodies, while Merfolk and Zoo have gotten almost nothing. Goblins is a moot point, because it became a midrange deck. That leaves Burn and Affinity.

Burn will likely never make a huge splash. Good players rarely want to play it, so it would require exceptional results to attract such players. A deck that is more interesting (personally I love Burn) only needs to show promising results to attract good players. Once it has good players, it gets better results, more good players, etc. Think Infect. Burn get stalled at the promising results phase, and never gets past. Too many more good players won't bother till it really proves itself, which it won't ever do without attracting more good players. Just a theory. Maybe a 4 damage Lava Spike would help? I don't think Burn can be fixed by the banned list.

Affinity needs Black Vise IMO, and that's all there is to it! I'm not sure it would be enough - its terribly inconsistent - but it could give the deck a shot (a more burny version with Atog, Fling, Shrapnel, etc).

Barook

06-06-2015, 06:29 AM

While I don't think we can equate all blue decks in the context of having the same predators, I also don't think aggro decks are inherently healthier than prison decks; they are in many ways less interactive. Lands would be less fringy if Tabernacle had been printed in Chronicles, 4th, and 5th. But it would help to have more decks for this. I think unbanning Earthcraft would be a step in the right direction, giving Enchantress a chance to possibly breathe again.

As for aggro, 2011 saw the printings of Delver and Baterskull, and I think this is when pure aggro began to really decline. They just couldn't keep up with the delver/tempo decks or midrange/stoneblade decks. Since then, those aggro control decks have only gotten more goodies, while Merfolk and Zoo have gotten almost nothing. Goblins is a moot point, because it became a midrange deck. That leaves Burn and Affinity.

Burn will likely never make a huge splash. Good players rarely want to play it, so it would require exceptional results to attract such players. A deck that is more interesting (personally I love Burn) only needs to show promising results to attract good players. Once it has good players, it gets better results, more good players, etc. Think Infect. Burn get stalled at the promising results phase, and never gets past. Too many more good players won't bother till it really proves itself, which it won't ever do without attracting more good players. Just a theory. Maybe a 4 damage Lava Spike would help? I don't think Burn can be fixed by the banned list.

Affinity needs Black Vise IMO, and that's all there is to it! I'm not sure it would be enough - its terribly inconsistent - but it could give the deck a shot (a more burny version with Atog, Fling, Shrapnel, etc).
I don't get why people always relate Batterskull to the death of aggro. Kill the SFM before it gets active, job done.

Delver is the one that did the real damage, while Avacyn Restored was the nail in the coffin with Terminus and Griselbrand.

Crimhead

06-06-2015, 06:42 AM

I don't get why people always relate Batterskull to the death of aggro. Kill the SFM before it gets active, job done.

Delver is the one that did the real damage, while Avacyn Restored was the nail in the coffin with Terminus and Griselbrand.Against aggro (especially Burn) pulling a Jitte is a better plan usually. Its not Batterskull itself that's good vs the aggro decks. Rather the card was catalystic in the development of a set of decks (Stoneblade variants) which outclass aggro by other means. This is my understanding.

Tempo decks got a big boost around the same time (Delver). But I think the Blade decks were overall not good for aggro either.

sjmcc13

06-06-2015, 09:35 AM

I don't get why people always relate Batterskull to the death of aggro. Kill the SFM before it gets active, job done. You have 1 turn to kill the SFM, These deck are meant to protect SFM so they will be playing cards in their deck to protect it (FoW, Daze, etc), and most creature aggro strategies are light on removal. So you can not always kill it first. There is a good chance they will have more answers then the aggro deck has removal.
I do think Jitte is probably better in most cases against Aggro, and it is more a case that Batterskull allowed the deck to exist in the first place, then Batterskull itself stops aggro.

MGB

06-06-2015, 01:48 PM

You have 1 turn to kill the SFM, These deck are meant to protect SFM so they will be playing cards in their deck to protect it (FoW, Daze, etc), and most creature aggro strategies are light on removal. So you can not always kill it first. There is a good chance they will have more answers then the aggro deck has removal.
I do think Jitte is probably better in most cases against Aggro, and it is more a case that Batterskull allowed the deck to exist in the first place, then Batterskull itself stops aggro.

It's not like Batterskull by itself is insurmountable to Aggro decks. It's still only a 4/4 lifelink... you can get bigger than it / go around it, and/or you can simply remove it with artifact destruction. And if you have bigger blockers, the Batterskull can't attack so it's just a stalemate at that point. There are options for Aggro decks when Batterskull hits the table. It's not an auto-loss by any means.

Getting Terminus'd for one white mana, however, is very hard to come back from unless you have some kind of card draw in your deck, which alot of aggro decks don't have.

Star|Scream

06-06-2015, 05:46 PM

Maybe we should have a separate thread for complaining about this thread?

lol Ban the thread!

Crimhead

06-06-2015, 06:14 PM

Getting Terminus'd for one white mana, however, is very hard to come back from unless you have some kind of card draw in your deck, which alot of aggro decks don't have.
Linear aggro had a foot in the grave before Terminus was ever printed. Banning Terminus will not restore the glory of pure aggro! Regardless, Miracles is the only thing in the format even resembling the old draw/go style control deck. It's unique, and not dominating the field by a stretch. Killing one play style to prop up another (even though it won't) is either arbitrary or biased; neither of these being good principles for a banned list.

sjmcc13

06-06-2015, 07:37 PM

Getting Terminus'd for one white mana, however, is very hard to come back from unless you have some kind of card draw in your deck, which alot of aggro decks don't have.
If Terminus is killing aggro decks, then they do not know how to play around sweepers, and need to learn how to tell when they are over extending. You have to adapt your game plan to the deck type you are facing. In general you go all out against a combo deck as you are need to race them, against a sweeper using control deck you need to play just enough to force them to use their sweeper, which is not everything and the proper amount of pressure to place can vary from game to game, then drop more threats to finish the job.

Aggro decks have Cavern of Souls (from the same set as Terminus) as well as Aether Vial to give Counterbalance and FoW the finger, Miracles (really any counter backed control strategy) does not have enough control cards left without a strong sweeper and Terminus is the only one that is strong and fast enough for Legacy. They try making others, and they all suck. The next best one is what Toxic Deluge, and the life loss severely weakens it as you can not top deck it and stabalize the turn before you are killed like you can with a real sweeper.

Also can people stop lying about Terminus being a 1 mana sweeper, It is not, reliably activating it effect requires an investment of multiple mana and cards, it only looks like a 1 mana card if you ignore EVERY bit of set up that goes into casting it for its miracle cost. the best case scenario for Terminus if before turn BS and put it on top, draw for turn and miracle, which requires 2 cards, 2 mana and 2 turns, and instant speed activation will almost always require an investment of 3+ mana to set up and cast as you need something to put it on top, something to draw it and 1 for the terminus itself. Best case tehre is SDT, Spin SDT, put it on top and use SDT to draw a card, cast Terminus, which requires 3 mana and 2 cards, though the investment can be spread out over multiple turns. The only point Miracles costs 1 mana is if you draw it of a shuffled and 100% randomized deck with a plains in play and at the point you want to cast it, which is blind luck, and completely unreliable. If you want to discuss casting Terminus with ANY amount of intellectual honesty you need to include the all the hoops the player has to jump through as 1 mana WoG sounds bad, untill you look at what the player actually needs to do in order to pull that off.

Kanti

06-06-2015, 08:20 PM

If Terminus is killing aggro decks, then they do not know how to play around sweepers, and need to learn how to tell when they are over extending. You have to adapt your game plan to the deck type you are facing.

Just when I thought I read it all. Somebody trying to explain to us that Terminus isn't really that bad, and we are just overextending into the Wrath. Duh! I'm such an idiot, all this time I've been emptying my hand hoping my opponent would 1-for-1 with me with Bolts and STPs the whole game.

Poor Miracle players, having to jump through all these hoops to cast his Termninus. It's not like SDT or Brainstorm, two 4s-of in the deck, and to a lesses extent Ponder does the work for you. 3 mana, but it can be spread throughout the turns. And unlike old aggro decks where you could win the die roll and have lethal on t4 unless your opponent was interacting with you, never letting him cast his Wrath, I just get wrecked now on t3+ at instant speed. Sending my creatures to the graveyard so I can recur them, use them to delve something out, or cast something silly like Second Sunrise to get em' back? Oh, bottom of library... but I thought only that weird 5cc Wrath... what's it called Hallowe- oh whatever, I'm putting my creatures on the bottom.

Stoneforge into Batterskull would be annoying, but lets be real here. Merfolk have Islandwalk, Goblins run a Tuk-Tuk or TSH main-deck and 4 Goblin Matrons, and Zoo has been using a 3-4of Qasali Pridemage for the last couple of years. This isn't even counting killing the Stoneforge with a Bolt, STP, or Tarfire, all cards these aggro decks in question run, or bouncing the germ with a Vapor Snag or Echoing Truth if you're Merfolk.

So remember guys, if you're having a tough time against Terminus as aggro, well it's easy... just LEARN TO PLAY. Stop forgetting to adapt your gameplan to the deck you're facing.

I don't think you would be capable of reading anything intellectual, honestly. How's that for your intellectual honesty?

Barook

06-06-2015, 09:23 PM

Linear aggro had a foot in the grave before Terminus was ever printed. Banning Terminus will not restore the glory of pure aggro! Regardless, Miracles is the only thing in the format even resembling the old draw/go style control deck. It's unique, and not dominating the field by a stretch. Killing one play style to prop up another (even though it won't) is either arbitrary or biased; neither of these being good principles for a banned list.
Zoo and Merfolk were both still very alive and kicking during the Mental Misstep era. The 1-2-3 punch of Delver, Terminus and S&T as a viable strategy thanks to Griselbrand certainly did its job to give aggro a hard time.

If Terminus is killing aggro decks, then they do not know how to play around sweepers, and need to learn how to tell when they are over extending. You have to adapt your game plan to the deck type you are facing. In general you go all out against a combo deck as you are need to race them, against a sweeper using control deck you need to play just enough to force them to use their sweeper, which is not everything and the proper amount of pressure to place can vary from game to game, then drop more threats to finish the job.

Aggro decks have Cavern of Souls (from the same set as Terminus) as well as Aether Vial to give Counterbalance and FoW the finger, Miracles (really any counter backed control strategy) does not have enough control cards left without a strong sweeper and Terminus is the only one that is strong and fast enough for Legacy. They try making others, and they all suck. The next best one is what Toxic Deluge, and the life loss severely weakens it as you can not top deck it and stabalize the turn before you are killed like you can with a real sweeper.

Also can people stop lying about Terminus being a 1 mana sweeper, It is not, reliably activating it effect requires an investment of multiple mana and cards, it only looks like a 1 mana card if you ignore EVERY bit of set up that goes into casting it for its miracle cost. the best case scenario for Terminus if before turn BS and put it on top, draw for turn and miracle, which requires 2 cards, 2 mana and 2 turns, and instant speed activation will almost always require an investment of 3+ mana to set up and cast as you need something to put it on top, something to draw it and 1 for the terminus itself. Best case tehre is SDT, Spin SDT, put it on top and use SDT to draw a card, cast Terminus, which requires 3 mana and 2 cards, though the investment can be spread out over multiple turns. The only point Miracles costs 1 mana is if you draw it of a shuffled and 100% randomized deck with a plains in play and at the point you want to cast it, which is blind luck, and completely unreliable. If you want to discuss casting Terminus with ANY amount of intellectual honesty you need to include the all the hoops the player has to jump through as 1 mana WoG sounds bad, untill you look at what the player actually needs to do in order to pull that off.
The key part is here that you can spread it the mana investment over several turns, and you aren't just setting up Terminus, but other cards as well in the process. No matter how you look at it, Terminus is way too effective because it's way too cheap. Wrath-type effects, unlike other, more conditional sweepers, cost a minimum of 4 mana for good reason and Terminus completely shat on that, including counterplay with Indestructible.

Crimhead

06-07-2015, 07:54 AM

The key part is here that you can spread it the mana investment over several turns, and you aren't just setting up Terminus, but other cards as well in the process.
People complain about control decks as though they always have all the resources they need to shut down the opponent however they need to. Yes, Miracles has the deck manipulation to make Terminus playable. That doesn't mean that setting up terminus doesn't tie up the Miracles player's resources, or that it's 100% reliable and has no opportunity cost.

No matter how you look at it, Terminus is way too effective because it's way too cheap. Wrath-type effects, unlike other, more conditional sweepers, cost a minimum of 4 mana for good reason and Terminus completely shat on that, including counterplay with Indestructible.Note that none of those wraths are playable in Legacy. You think wrath effects should be costed so high they are unplayable? You just don't think we should have playable wraths, I guess.

And I'd like to express a contrary POV as to Terminus being "way too effective". Miracles is not dominating Legacy! MTG top8 lists it as 11% of the meta for the past two months (much less than Jund, in its heyday). Reddit lists Miracles with an average 53% win-rate, calculating all matches at SCG events since the TC ban. The only "evidence" for Miracles being oppressive is the absence of two decks which were tier two already before Miracles became an established deck. WotC doesn't ban cards because decks have bad matches or get pushed out of the meta. They ban cards when individual archetypes become too strong vs the rest of the field.

Zoo and Merfolk were both still very alive and kicking during the Mental Misstep era. The 1-2-3 punch of Delver, Terminus and S&T as a viable strategy thanks to Griselbrand certainly did its job to give aggro a hard time.
Your going all the way back t the MM era to show me when aggro was still tier one? I don't recall Zoo weathering MM well, but that's not the point.

Regardless, since Delver and the innovation of Stoneblade decks, aggro has had less a niche. Aggro-control decks are just as good vs control but better vs combo. In order to chose pure aggro instead, you would need a very strong match against aggro-control hybrids themselves to compensate, and aggro decks don't normally have that. Burn flirts with the top tier from time to time, but that's about it.

Barook

06-07-2015, 08:38 AM

Note that none of those wraths are playable in Legacy. You think wrath effects should be costed so high they are unplayable? You just don't think we should have playable wraths, I guess.
Supreme Verdict sees Legacy play.

Crimhead

06-07-2015, 09:05 AM

Supreme Verdict sees Legacy play.I forgot that one. To be fair it is only barely playable.

I sympathise with you, and would also welcome linear aggro (mostly Merfolk, Burn, or Affinity, Zoonis dull and was looking more and more like Maverick in the later days). But I cannot advocate burning down Miracles just to restore a couple decks to their former tier-two glory. Before Miracles, most of us felt that both pure aggro and pure control were all but dead. At least we have one of those styles thriving now.

Unbanning Black Vise is the way to go for aggro.

Quasim0ff

06-07-2015, 09:13 AM

I forgot that one. To be fair it is only barely playable.

I sympathise with you, and would also welcome linear aggro (mostly Merfolk, Burn, or Affinity, Zoonis dull and was looking more and more like Maverick in the later days). But I cannot advocate burning down Miracles just to restore a couple decks to their former tier-two glory. Before Miracles, most of us felt that both pure aggro and pure control were all but dead. At least we have one of those styles thriving now.

Unbanning Black Vise is the way to go for aggro.

No, Supreme Verdict isn't "barely playable". It's a pretty standard card, that actually sees a fair amount of play (in Miracles).

Crimhead

06-07-2015, 09:25 AM

No, Supreme Verdict isn't "barely playable". It's a pretty standard card, that actually sees a fair amount of play (in Miracles).Let me be specific then. It sees occasional (but not frequent) play as a 1-of in the side board of a deck that needs 4x Terminus to be competitive in the first place. :rolleyes:

This corner case does not show that 4cc is the right cost for wraths in this format! Saying that wrath effects should cost 4cc is basically saying we don't want them in today's fast-paced Legacy.

Quasim0ff

06-07-2015, 09:35 AM

Let me be specific then. It sees occasional (but not frequent) play as a 1-of in the side board of a deck that needs 4x Terminus to be competitive in the first place. :rolleyes:

Saying that wrath effects should cost 4cc is basically saying we don't want them in today's fast-paced Legacy.

No, Supreme Verdict sees play in a fair amount of Miracles lists, in the maindeck, as a substitute for the 4th terminus in a meta where Delver and Stoneblade is dominant.

Crimhead

06-07-2015, 09:54 AM

No, Supreme Verdict sees play in a fair amount of Miracles lists, in the maindeck, as a substitute for the 4th terminus in a meta where Delver and Stoneblade is dominant.I dont see much evidence of main-deck play in successful lists.

2015-05-23 Worcester:

8th place - 1 copy (side board)
10th place - none
12th place - none
05/16 Dallas 5K Premier IQ:

5th place - none
7th place - 1 copy (main)
8th place - none
11th place - none
12th place - none
05/02 Portland 5K Premier IQ:

1st place - none
2nd place - none
04/25 Cleveland 5K Premier IQ:

2nd place - none
3rd place - none
4th place - none
9th place - none
14th place - 1 copy (side board)
Ovino Spring 2015 Milan:

2nd place - none
5th/8th place (rogue u/w control) - 1 copy (side board)
Grand Prix Kyoto 2015:

1st place - none

Looks pretty fringy to me! I didn't ever say the card is completely unplayable! I said it is barely playable; and evidence supports that it barely sees competitive play. Three copies spread over seventeen successful Miracles lists hardly constitutes a "fair amount of play". Did I miss a copy somewhere?

Again, Miracles is a deck that wouldn't exist without Terminus! Your argument in no way supports that wraths would see Legacy play if they all cost 4cc or more! Let's not lose context.

Admiral_Arzar

06-07-2015, 12:38 PM

nedleeds

06-07-2015, 12:45 PM

Your going all the way back t the MM era to show me when aggro was still tier one? I don't recall Zoo weathering MM well, but that's not the point.

At GP Mental Misstep (referenced below) a zoo deck and a merfolk deck (2 non brainstorm aggro decks) made top 8. ~ May 30th 2011. You could dig around and see if zoo was doing well in SCGs and euro-events. Looking back I find it hard to believe that zoo deck got through a field with 80% + Misstep usage, but he had a little more 2CC+ burn to punish people interested in Shocking themselves early.

Let's look at the inception of split legacy, by Brainstorm deck I actually mean a deck with 4 Brainstorms here.

GP Philly 2005 (38%)

3 Brainstorm decks, Brainstorm makes a 12 card appearance.

GP Lille 2006 (50%)

4 Brainstorm decks, 16 card appearance.

GP Columbus 2007 (63%)

5 Brainstorm fueled decks (including 3 flash combo decks, 3 was enough to get Flash banned) 20 appearances.

GP Chicago 2009 (50%)

4 Brainstorm decks, 16 out of 32.

GP Madrid 2010 (63%)

5 Brainstorm decks, Entomb is legal as well, 20 appearances.

GP Columbus 2010 (63%)

5 Brainstorm decks, now we're getting warm.

GP Providence 2011 (75%) heating up!

6 Brainstorm decks at GP Mental Misstep

follow this trend and it's 28/32 at Paris, 32/32 Kyoto and so on.

... also of note 7 of 8 on Mental Misstep was sufficient to get that POS banned ... and then it's all downhill, there's a double DNT / Merfolk top 8 but it's pretty much been a fucking Brainstorm orgy since.

Julian23

06-07-2015, 03:00 PM

Crimhead, this isn't MTG Salvation. My team's research has brought to my attention that you served 9 years there. You did your time and you seem like an overall nice dude, but ever since you started posting here, the general pattern I see a lot with you is: "Make a claim that is objectively wrong" - "People point it out" - "You renounce/change your claim".

Props to you for pretty much every time you were wrong admitting to it; seriously, we really need more of that attitude. That's why I think your a really nice dude. It's just that everywhere I look, there's a high probability of your claims being poorly researched. I'm not a mod, so you're free to just take this as a "whatever, dude" comment. Just wanted to point this out, because you seem really interested in actually discussing things, which I appreciate a lot.

Crimhead

06-08-2015, 12:22 AM

Supreme Verdict sees more play in Stoneblade variants than it does in Miracles, the reasons for that should be obvious. To say it is "unplayable" is demonstrably incorrect. To say it's usually only a one-of in Miracles is fine, but misses larger context.You're right, it sees occasional one-of play in two decks! I had to dig back to March (Richmond) to find an (11th places) u/w Blade deck with more than one copy. There haven't been a lot off Blade decks lately. Deathblade doesn't run SV, while Patriot runs zero or one.

Instead of nit-picking, let's get a little context! My wrath comments are in response to this:
Wrath-type effects, unlike other, more conditional sweepers, cost a minimum of 4 mana for good reason...My point is that those 4cc sweepers are generally too cost intensive for this format - certainly too much to prop up a stack-style control deck. Showing me a deck or two that sometimes (but not always or usually) run a singleton doesn't really refute my point. It's nit-picking.

For a wrath to see substantial play, it needs to be cheap enough for a deck to rely on it. 4cc wraths don't qualify. The 4cc standard excludes wrath effects as a strategy in this format. Judging Legacy-staple card costs based on other formats is silly and not grounds for banning consideration. Stifle can be 1cc LD in this format. Doesn't make it broken.

At GP Mental Misstep (referenced below) a zoo deck and a merfolk deck (2 non brainstorm aggro decks) made top 8. ~ May 30th 2011. You could dig around and see if zoo was doing well in SCGs and euro-events. Looking back I find it hard to believe that zoo deck got through a field with 80% + Misstep usage, but he had a little more 2CC+ burn to punish people interested in Shocking themselves early.May 30th 2011, MM has been legal for what, two weeks? Usually it takes time for a meta to shift, no? I wasn't following stats at the time, but my impression was that aggro (along with most decks in the format) became marginalised in that meta.

As I said, whether or not aggro thrived during MM isn't the point. The point is that by AR aggro was already tier two (meaning we cannot blame Miracles for a lack of aggro).

Crimhead, this isn't MTG Salvation. My team's research has brought to my attention that you served 9 years there.This is a little creepy - why do you want to research my background? But I am aware what site I'm on, thanks.

but ever since you started posting here, the general pattern I see a lot with you is: "Make a claim that is objectively wrong" - "People point it out" - "You renounce/change your claim".Exactly how a healthy debate should look!
For the record, my flub regrading probability theory was technically correct - just irrelevant! The fellow I was arguing against was "objectively wrong". Most anything else I've been called on has been either an overlooked (and irrelevant) exception, or simply a matter of semantics.

Props to you for pretty much every time you were wrong admitting to it; seriously, we really need more of that attitude. Why do we debate if we don't want to learn? Your right we could use more of this attitude - case and point you won't admit when I've been right!

That's why I think your a really nice dude. It's just that everywhere I look, there's a high probability of your claims being poorly researched.I can't tell if you are being passive aggressive - I'm a nice guy but I'm full of shit? Go ahead and check my sources. If you can't be bothered feel free to ignore my posts .

Ace/Homebrew

06-08-2015, 08:42 AM

This is a little creepy - why do you want to research my background?
I'm not sure how much 'research' was required...
I (just now) typed 'Crimhead' into Google. The 3rd entry was "crimhead's Profile - Members - MTG Salvation". Clicking there tells you "Member for 9 years, 10 months, and 5 days."

Looks like 30 out of 37 of your posts are in this thread, which is basically a thread where the same X people argue in circles over shit they cannot control and have no influence over. A new face with a high post-per-day ratio is going to get noticed.

Julian appears to be using humor where Dice_Box fell victim to exasperation.

We have people joining the site now just to post in this fucking place, the only reason they are here. we have the same old shit going round and round offering no positive effect (or any real effect) at all. This is not some toilet bowl collecting the shit, this is the bowels making it.
I assume he's talking about you? :eyebrow:

MGB

06-08-2015, 08:54 AM

So.... anyway...

Here's something to ponder:

What if Dig Through Time is having the same effect on Legacy right now that Treasure Cruise used to have? Is there maybe some impetus to ban DTT at this point?

The #1 Control deck is playing 2-4 Digs. The #1 Combo deck is playing 4 Digs. The #1 Aggro-Control deck now (Grixis Delver) is playing usually 4 Digs.

The most recent SCG PIQ (http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?event_ID=45&t[T3]=3&start_date=2015-06-07&end_date=2015-06-07&state=OH&city=Columbus&order_1=finish&limit=8&t_num=1&action=Show+Decks) featured 2 Digs at #1, 4 Digs at #2, 3 Digs at #4, 1 Dig at #5, 4 Digs at #6, and 2 Digs at #8.

Treasure Cruise was strong, but Dig is starting to become even more prevalent than Treasure Cruise ever was.

iamajellydonut

06-08-2015, 09:41 AM

Treasure Cruise was strong, but Dig is starting to become even more prevalent than Treasure Cruise ever was.

"More prevalent", regardless of whether it's true or not, is utterly irrelevant. Dig Through Time, to the best of my knowledge, has not pushed anything out of the format. That is the important part. It is simply a good and popular card. No deck has been deemed or made unplayable by the introduction of Dig Through Time. In fact, as you pointed out, it has actually introduced two and a half new decks to the format.

A point can be made that it hasn't visibly affected the format because the dominant portion of Legacy is blue anyway, but the truth is that non-blue decks don't really care much about Dig Through Time either.

Bobmans

06-08-2015, 10:20 AM

A point can be made that it hasn't visibly affected the format because the dominant portion of Legacy is blue anyway, but the truth is that non-blue decks don't really care much about Dig Through Time either.

Disagree, everytime i have been on a grind against any blue deck, i have lost simply because DTT resolved and grabbed just what it needed to get out of the situation Where not having DTT winning or losing was equally balanced. For the last 2 weeks i have played 5 tournaments. And DTT was THAT card that made the difference. Basicly it outgrinds any list not playing it, simply because the combination of card quality and cardadvantage with this card is unmatched.
For me this has led me to the point where i stop playing non-blue lists and start to play a list that, well, obviously runs DTT.

Megadeus

06-08-2015, 10:33 AM

Disagree, everytime i have been on a grind against any blue deck, i have lost simply because DTT resolved and grabbed just what it needed to get out of the situation Where not having DTT winning or losing was equally balanced. For the last 2 weeks i have played 5 tournaments. And DTT was THAT card that made the difference. Basicly it outgrinds any list not playing it, simply because the combination of card quality and cardadvantage with this card is unmatched.
For me this has led me to the point where i stop playing non-blue lists and start to play a list that, well, obviously runs DTT.

This. I played painter last week and got absolutely crushed by some 4 color shit box because he was simply able to easily find all of the answers. 7 red blast main didn't even help

Crimhead

06-08-2015, 11:05 AM

"More prevalent", regardless of whether it's true or not, is utterly irrelevant. Dig Through Time, to the best of my knowledge, has not pushed anything out of the format. That is the important part. Decks leave all the time. I thought the criteria was pushing one (or a small set of) decks to the point of dominance?

What if Dig Through Time is having the same effect on Legacy right now that Treasure Cruise used to have? Is there maybe some impetus to ban DTT at this point?The official reason given for the TC ban was that U/R Delver was too strong. This is a point of contention, as in the two months preceding the ban U/R delver was a mere ~11% of major top8s, roughly the same as Patriot.

I distrust WotC to begin with. People bitch about this game a lot - I think their PR machine is more interested in damage control than in informing players about the inner workings of R&D (sometimes the two overlap and sometimes they do not).

Disagree, everytime i have been on a grind against any blue deck, i have lost simply because DTT resolved and grabbed just what it needed to get out of the situation Where not having DTT winning or losing was equally balanced. For the last 2 weeks i have played 5 tournaments. And DTT was THAT card that made the difference. Basicly it outgrinds any list not playing it, simply because the combination of card quality and card advantage with this card is unmatched.
For me this has led me to the point where i stop playing non-blue lists and start to play a list that, well, obviously runs DTT.If you are saying that DTT has rendered blueless decks unplayable, I think data doesn't support this. As for DTT being an all-star in grindy matches, this is hardly a reason to ban the card!

I'm not sure how much 'research' was required...
I (just now) typed 'Crimhead' into Google. The 3rd entry was "crimhead's Profile - Members - MTG Salvation". Clicking there tells you "Member for 9 years, 10 months, and 5 days."

Looks like 30 out of 37 of your posts are in this thread, which is basically a thread where the same X people argue in circles over shit they cannot control and have no influence over. A new face with a high post-per-day ratio is going to get noticed.Posting on a public forum I expect to be noticed, but not googled! No biggie, I was trying to use humour too. :)

Julian appears to be using humor where Dice_Box fell victim to exasperation.

I assume he's talking about you? :eyebrow:
We have people joining the site now just to post in this fucking place, the only reason they are here.
If he is it's pretty funny! I've known about this site for a while, but my recent interest and increased lurking was inspired by the Elves primer (Dicebag's recommendation on Salvation), and the R/G Lands primer - his own work! Getting sucked into format discussion (on a high volume thread) was an inevitable side effect.

Dice seems very clever and is a solid contributor. In my opinion/experience he looses his cool over banned list and format health disagreements though. I guess he doesn't think I'm worthy of posting in this thread?

Edit - not really fair to assume Dice was bitching about specifically me. He used the plural 'people', and for all I know it was other new users who caused his ire.

Varal

06-08-2015, 11:40 AM

Anyone got news about the banless Legacy event at GP Chiba?

Bobmans

06-08-2015, 12:46 PM

If you are saying that DTT has rendered blueless decks unplayable, I think data doesn't support this. As for DTT being an all-star in grindy matches, this is hardly a reason to ban the card!

That is not what i meant. For me it has just made the edge blue decks have just a bit sharper. And i am talking about how i am experiencing it. Data may say whatever it says, but i am influenct by its impact. Also i am not advocating to ban anything other then stating what i felt.

Crimhead

06-09-2015, 03:07 AM

You don't think we potentially facing a trend here?
6th place at Columbus was Grixis Control with all 24 of the spells you don't like - maybe it was more than a freak occurrence. On the other hand, 12th place Grixis Control ran no Preordains.

I'd say running that whole package is still not the norm for the deck, but it's a fairly young brew I guess. Maybe this will shape up to be the standard configuration, maybe not. Maybe there will always be a little flexibility.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=85811
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=85800

Barook

06-09-2015, 04:08 AM

If you are saying that DTT has rendered blueless decks unplayable, I think data doesn't support this. As for DTT being an all-star in grindy matches, this is hardly a reason to ban the card!
At what point would you consider the data relevant then? Paper is almost at 80% Brainstorm decks now, MTGO floats around 83-85%. That's higher than ever, even more than during the Mental Misstep or TC era, and a higher blue count than fucking Vintage. You can never reach 100% blue decks various reasons - card availability, cost reasons, obstinacy, having a shred of dignity left, etc.

As for Grixis Delver being a thing, we should not forget Fate Reforged introduced two black quality threats in Angler and Banana Man.

Dice_Box

06-09-2015, 04:25 AM

I do not think it is fair to compare Legacy to the format where Workshop is legal. Your argument will not hold up, because the landscape is not even remotely comparable.

Also, shops is job a safe unban, just before anyone thinks that's what I am saying.

Zombie

06-09-2015, 04:46 AM

Also, shops is job a safe unban, just before anyone thinks that's what I am saying.

That autocorrect tech.

Darkenslight

06-09-2015, 06:24 AM

At what point would you consider the data relevant then? Paper is almost at 80% Brainstorm decks now, MTGO floats around 83-85%. That's higher than ever, even more than during the Mental Misstep or TC era, and a higher blue count than fucking Vintage. You can never reach 100% blue decks various reasons - card availability, cost reasons, obstinacy, having a shred of dignity left, etc.

As for Grixis Delver being a thing, we should not forget Fate Reforged introduced two black quality threats in Angler and Banana Man.

Bananaman is nucking futs. I'm honestly surprised we don't see more of Murderous Cut in Legacy.

HSCK

06-09-2015, 07:25 AM

At what point would you consider the data relevant then? Paper is almost at 80% Brainstorm decks now, MTGO floats around 83-85%. That's higher than ever, even more than during the Mental Misstep or TC era, and a higher blue count than fucking Vintage. You can never reach 100% blue decks various reasons - card availability, cost reasons, obstinacy, having a shred of dignity left, etc.

As for Grixis Delver being a thing, we should not forget Fate Reforged introduced two black quality threats in Angler and Banana Man.

When a single deck is 15% of the meta like in Modern which we are pretty far away from on paper.

Barook

06-09-2015, 07:49 AM

Bananaman is bananas. I'm honestly surprised we don't see more of Murderous Cut in Legacy.
FTFY

I'm not too suprised that Murderous Cut doesn't see more Legacy play as it eats into DTT food - or Bananaman, for the matter.

When a single deck is 15% of the meta like in Modern which we are pretty far away from on paper.
Miracles is currently at 13% in Paper (http://mtgtop8.com/format?f=LE&meta=72) - pretty far away from is a bit of an overstatement.

On MTGO, it's currently 16%, but that's a different beast.

Dice_Box

06-09-2015, 09:48 AM

That autocorrect tech.

I live my phone. :)

nedleeds

06-09-2015, 11:22 AM

You can never reach 100% blue decks various reasons - card availability, cost reasons, obstinacy, having a shred of dignity left, etc..

Hahahhahah ... fully half of the people in this thread don't even acknowledge the purpose of the banned list and don't care if every deck that top 8's a 7+ round legacy event from here on out has 4 x Ponder, 4 x Brainstorm, 4 x Force.

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

Crimhead

06-09-2015, 04:08 PM

Hahahhahah ... fully half of the people in this thread don't even acknowledge the purpose of the banned list... They sure don't! Here is the opening paragraph on WotC's official banned and restricted lists page (http://magic.wizards.com/en/gameinfo/gameplay/formats/bannedrestricted):

One key to the continued health of Magic is diversity. It is vitally important to ensure that there are multiple competitive decks for the tournament player to choose from. Why? If there were only a single viable deck to play, tournaments would quickly stagnate as players were forced to either play that deck or a deck built specifically to beat it. In addition, different players enjoy playing different types of decks. If there are plenty of viable options to play, there will be more players at more tournaments.That's the purpose of the banned list - to enure multiple competitive decks of varying types.

...and don't care if every deck that top 8's a 7+ round legacy event from here on out has 4 x Ponder, 4 x Brainstorm, 4 x Force.I seriously doubt this, and I'd like to suggest a revision:
Some people don't care if every midrange & aggro-control goodstuffs deck that top 8's a 7+ round legacy event from here on out has 4 x Ponder, 4 x Brainstorm, 4 x Force. Because combo decks and control decks without these cards top8 regularly in such events. But that's not good enough for some of us I guess.

At what point would you consider the data relevant then?
It's not a question if the data being relevant or not. The question is whether or not the deck supports the existence of competitively viable decks without the colour blue; and whether or not such decks are strictly less competitive than the top decks with blue.

You can never reach 100% blue decks various reasons - card availability, cost reasons, obstinacy, having a shred of dignity left, etc.And I do mean competitively viable decks! Decks which are shown to have a favourable average win-rate against the meta and/or place in top brackets (of major events) in high proportions relative to their frequency in said events. If you are saying people play R/G Lands because they are poor and/or stubborn I'll ask you to please back that up.

Barook

06-09-2015, 05:27 PM

1) They sure don't! Here is the opening paragraph on WotC's official banned and restricted lists page (http://magic.wizards.com/en/gameinfo/gameplay/formats/bannedrestricted):

One key to the continued health of Magic is diversity. It is vitally important to ensure that there are multiple competitive decks for the tournament player to choose from. Why? If there were only a single viable deck to play, tournaments would quickly stagnate as players were forced to either play that deck or a deck built specifically to beat it. In addition, different players enjoy playing different types of decks. If there are plenty of viable options to play, there will be more players at more tournaments.
That's the purpose of the banned list - to enure multiple competitive decks of varying types.

2) It's not a question if the data being relevant or not. The question is whether or not the deck supports the existence of competitively viable decks without the colour blue; and whether or not such decks are strictly less competitive than the top decks with blue.

3) And I do mean competitively viable decks! Decks which are shown to have a favourable average win-rate against the meta and/or place in top brackets (of major events) in high proportions relative to their frequency in said events. If you are saying people play R/G Lands because they are poor and/or stubborn I'll ask you to please back that up.
1) We are already in such a meta - it's play Brainstorm (every cantrip shell), play anti-Brainstorm (e.g. D&T, MUD, Lands once they bring in the Chalices/Spheres/whatever) or ignore them (e.g. Elves, Lands when they go for the combo win). The meta has become pretty stagnant.

2) I have no idea what you're trying to say until you clarify it.

3) Maybe etc. includes enjoying a particular deck? :wink: It's just sad to see people pick up decks they hate/don't enjoy based on their performance alone, like Julian23 picking up Miracles and Omnitell and hear him complaining on stream how much Omnitell bores him, yet he keeps playing it because it wins.

twndomn

06-09-2015, 05:44 PM

Julian23

06-09-2015, 05:51 PM

[QUOTE=Barook;886540]If it's possible to ignore such problematic card by playing Elves or Dredge, then why is the card ban worthy in the first place?

I don't care very much about Brainstorm, but playing Elves in the current meta is pretty loose. You're not beating OmniTell or Miracles. Grixis DTT is beatable but still an uphill battle. Outside of DTT, there's too little value in playing a non-blue midrange deck; unfortunately, these are the kind of decks Elves likes to devour. No we're starving :(

Crimhead

06-09-2015, 06:08 PM

Barook

06-09-2015, 06:42 PM

[QUOTE=Barook;886540]Here's the funny thing, you provide the Ignore route. If it's possible to ignore such problematic card by playing Elves or Dredge, then why is the card ban worthy in the first place?
Just because it's the strategy the deck has chosen doesn't mean the strategy is good in said metagame.

Considering how fast the metagame transformed into the most blue metagame ever with ~80% blue decks since people started picking up DTT after the TC ban, it should be pretty telling there is something wrong with the current development, especially with a few decks starting to amass meta percentages and they all run DTT plus its partners in crime.

Chalice is not an anti-brainstorm card! Its good against a huge portion of the meta, and decks like MUD and Lands run it to fight combo, not to fight Brainstorm! Sure, we'll bring 'em in against various cantrip decks (not normally Blade decks, I think), but that's all gravy.

Lands isn't successful because it counters BS. Its successful because it has card advantage and consistency tools strong enough in their own right to compete.

Compare this to MM. MM was being brought into decks specifically to counter opposing mental missteps. An entire archetype - Manaless Dredge - was developed solely for the purpose of dodging MM. To some extent this may have been happening with TC - folks were bringing MD RIPs to stymie it. But nothing like this is happening in the current meta with Brainstorm, DTT, nor any other card.
But cantrip-based decks are the main portion of the metagame now.

Lands can finish well because people don't really metagame for it right now. If people bring more Blood Moons and RiPs, it gets worse.

As for Manaless Dredge, Sylvan Plug was developed for the sole purpose of ruining blue decks in an overly blue metagame, by running Chalice, Trinisphere and MD Chokes. You need a very good reason not to run Brainstorm nowadays.

eays

06-09-2015, 07:33 PM

I'm in full alignment with Barook on this.

The combination of "Dig + Cantrips + Countermagic + Wincon of Choice" is simply THE BEST thing you can do in legacy, and nothing feels close. Counterspells get you to the mid/late game, Dig finds your answers/win con and buries opponent in card advantage, and all the while your cantrips fuel your card advantage and ensure that you have optimal draws/find your hate pieces.

I understand that Crimhead and others will be satisfied with a Meta as long as they can distinguish a viable tier 1 option for combo, control, and aggro conrol, but to me the Meta feels more closed off, suffocated, and stale than ever. Maybe it's because I play online more than paper, where it's easier to switch to the best decks, but the MTGO metagame is an absolute cluster bang of Miracles, Omnitell, Grixis, and Blade decks playing the same dig+cantrip+countermagic+wincon suite, and it's gotten so stale that I've drastically cut back my time playing.

I'm sure to take heat for these views, but before these busted Khans delve spells I was having a great deal more fun with Legacy. There were still the top decks, yes, but the gap between tier 1 and tier 2-3 seemed more surmountable, and the format was more "open", which is one of the things that really attracted me to legacy in the first place. I think I'll probably just play more cube/limited while monitoring future releases and the B/R updates for something that will break up the monotony.

Crimhead

06-10-2015, 03:20 AM

Lands can finish well because people don't really metagame for it right now. If people bring more Blood Moons and RiPs, it gets worse.
Lands would have to be ridiculous before these cards were main decked. Not every deck runs these colours (in my experience decks rarely splash a colour for a side board card), and some decks with red might not welcome Moon themselves. And those cards can be played through.

I think if Lands ever got big enough to meta aginast, the effect would be more and faster combo decks. That would be a meta shift, which seems to be what people want.

Regardless, we are talking about the current meta - not a hypothetical future meta! In today's actual meta, Lands is a beast. It's almost unfair. Due to the scarce and expensive cards with little applicability outside off Lands, the deck is likely to remain just under the radar. People are unlikely to meta against a deck they have a good chance to dodge.

The combination of "Dig + Cantrips + Countermagic + Wincon of Choice" is simply THE BEST thing you can do in legacy, and nothing feels close.If I believed this, I wouldn't be happy.

I understand that Crimhead and others will be satisfied with a Meta as long as they can distinguish a viable tier 1 option for combo, control, and aggro conrol, but to me the Meta feels more closed off, suffocated, and stale than ever.
I might not be happy with only three tier one decks. Part of why I'm so happy is because I do not equate top8s with tier one decks without scrutiny. I recognise that a mediocre deck, played in high enough numbers, will make lots of top8s. The top8 parade is a good indication of what you should emta for, but to measure a decks strength/positioning, I want to see win rates, or top eights in proportion to representation in the filed. This data tells a very different (and more thorough) story.

I'm sure to take heat for these views, but before these busted Khans delve spells I was having a great deal more fun with Legacy. I am sorry to hear. Have you tried playing Lands? It's great fun, unique, and beats the snot out of most fair decks (DTT, cantrips, and all). :)

Stevestamopz

06-10-2015, 04:01 AM

Before these busted Khans delve spells I was having a great deal more fun with Legacy. There were still the top decks, yes, but the gap between tier 1 and tier 2-3 seemed more surmountable, and the format was more "open", which is one of the things that really attracted me to legacy in the first place.

+1

Zombie

06-19-2015, 05:01 AM

That's exactly the Problem: it has become totally irrelevant if you run S&T+Omniscience, Pyromancer+CabalTherapy or SFM+TNN ... The shell of 4Fow/4Ponder/4Brainstorm/4Probes/4DTT became absolutely omnipresent and oppressive. Only the kill mechanism varies atm

Never thought I'd see this day. Did someone kidnap him and is now posting in his stead?

testing32

06-19-2015, 06:38 AM

Never thought I'd see this day. Did someone kidnap him and is now posting in his stead?

What happened was TES isn't playable anymore. Now he wants things banned.

Lemnear

06-19-2015, 07:03 AM

Never thought I'd see this day. Did someone kidnap him and is now posting in his stead?

No, this is just someone who drew a line between "lets play 8 cantrips to fuel different strategies and deckbuilds of combo/control/aggro" and "lets all play the same 30+ cards (counting Fetchlands) and just pick up the colorsplash + killoption of the month!"

testing32

06-19-2015, 07:19 AM

No, this is just someone who drew a line between "lets play 8 cantrips to fuel different strategies and deckbuilds of combo/control/aggro" and "lets all play the same 30+ cards (counting Fetchlands) and just pick up the colorsplash + killoption of the month!"

It's been like that for 7 months now. I think I should just use the same lines you spewed for the last 7 months.

"Don't cry just b/c you can't play your pet deck"

"The blue shell is fine, play death and taxes"

"Brainstorm is skill intensive"

"A 48 card format is just fine if you can play combo/aggro/control"

Edit: Good that you are finally on board but it took way too long and it had to get really bad before you did.

Gheizen64

06-19-2015, 07:24 AM

I stand by my position. Unban Survival , Earthcraft, Vise, Twist, Recruiter. If the blue cantrip shell is always gonna be a pillar, at least create new pillars alongside it, since apparently banning the best blue spell isn't an option and wotc rather ban everything before it (TC, MM, and now prob DTT).

Lemnear

06-19-2015, 08:56 AM

It's been like that for 7 months now. I think I should just use the same lines you spewed for the last 7 months.

"Don't cry just b/c you can't play your pet deck"

"The blue shell is fine, play death and taxes"

"Brainstorm is skill intensive"

"A 48 card format is just fine if you can play combo/aggro/control"

Edit: Good that you are finally on board but it took way too long and it had to get really bad before you did.

Another try to put words in my mouth? Fuck off and go reading what I wrote exactly, not what you wish I did. Using quotation marks for stuff I never said is pretty cocky. I'm not "on board" with your previous stated nonsense in this thread, just saying

maharis

06-19-2015, 10:07 AM

Admiral_Arzar

06-19-2015, 10:53 AM

So what you're saying is there is a line that can be crossed before "strategic diversity" doesn't trump all arguments. I'm glad we agree on that.

I feel like pretty much everyone has a point where they look at the format and say "wow, enough is enough." IMO that point is long past in Legacy but there are plenty who disagree with me I'm sure. I usually play fringe decks, but I finally played a deck using the full blue shell being discussed (UR Omnitell) the other day and was shocked at the power level of the deck. I mulliganned continually and made plenty of mistakes due to inexperience and still crushed multiple control opponents. I have never played something that powerful in this format, it makes the nearest equivalent deck (High Tide) look like a Modern deck by comparison. My only loss came to a legitimately awful matchup (Grixis Delver) boarding 10 cards against me.

Lemnear

06-19-2015, 05:29 PM

So what you're saying is there is a line that can be crossed before "strategic diversity" doesn't trump all arguments. I'm glad we agree on that.

We do not agree. Strategic diversity is still my most important aspect, but this shell is killing all "strategic diversity" in fact. There is no "diversity" in deckbuilding if you simply switch out your killconditions, but the Rest of the deck is more or less the same. Huge difference, dood

porcupinetreeman

06-19-2015, 05:38 PM

These three cards should be banned. Just makes sense.

Ban:

Brainstorm
Dig Through Time
Show and Tell

iamajellydonut

06-19-2015, 05:47 PM

These three cards should be banned. Just makes sense.

No, it doesn't.

maharis

06-19-2015, 05:51 PM

We do not agree. Strategic diversity is still my most important aspect, but this shell is killing all "strategic diversity" in fact. There is no "diversity" in deckbuilding if you simply switch out your killconditions, but the Rest of the deck is more or less the same. Huge difference, dood

Oh, so now show and tell, Stoneforge, and pyromancer aren't different enough for you? Plus Miracles/lands/BUG/storm/D&T that have all been placing?

Something you like to do must be having trouble. I'm going to guess.... Elves.

Sorry bro, learn to innovate better. The rest of us all want consistency uber alles

Lemnear

06-19-2015, 08:33 PM

What happened was TES isn't playable anymore. Now he wants things banned.

Lol ... Storm is pretty good against OmniTell and the field is really soft to storm as no one is playing Tempo at all, but opts to durdle into DTT which is usually too slow for storm anyways. Results of storm are fine, but that's not an argument for me at all and should for neither user.

Your metagame knowledge sucks even more then your quoting skills

Edit: It's amazing that one user is linking my arguments to storm and the other to Elves which perform totally different in the current metagame. It's really hilarious. It looks like you guys are unable to take arguments for what they are.

Sloshthedark

06-20-2015, 03:23 AM

1) We are already in such a meta - it's play Brainstorm (every cantrip shell), play anti-Brainstorm (e.g. D&T, MUD, Lands once they bring in the Chalices/Spheres/whatever) or ignore them (e.g. Elves, Lands when they go for the combo win). The meta has become pretty stagnant.

are you into politcs? that's simplistic delutional thinking

I'm sure to take heat for these views, but before these busted Khans delve spells I was having a great deal more fun with Legacy. There were still the top decks, yes, but the gap between tier 1 and tier 2-3 seemed more surmountable, and the format was more "open", which is one of the things that really attracted me to legacy in the first place. I think I'll probably just play more cube/limited while monitoring future releases and the B/R updates for something that will break up the monotony.

I'm not sure where you were/I'm but it was/is +/- the same in paper a year ago - speaking from weekly lgs and large EU tournaments experience... either you're all playing zillion times of more than me, play in retarded areas (including Modo) or are some kind of no-life people ... please do

I feel like pretty much everyone has a point where they look at the format and say "wow, enough is enough." IMO that point is long past in Legacy but there are plenty who disagree with me I'm sure. I usually play fringe decks, but I finally played a deck using the full blue shell being discussed (UR Omnitell) the other day and was shocked at the power level of the deck. I mulliganned continually and made plenty of mistakes due to inexperience and still crushed multiple control opponents. I have never played something that powerful in this format, it makes the nearest equivalent deck (High Tide) look like a Modern deck by comparison. My only loss came to a legitimately awful matchup (Grixis Delver) boarding 10 cards against me.

If you compare things to High tide beating a control deck might be shocking... Do you also know how shockingly miserable is losing with Omnitell? I wish I could show you some games from last weekend...

No, this is just someone who drew a line between "lets play 8 cantrips to fuel different strategies and deckbuilds of combo/control/aggro" and "lets all play the same 30+ cards (counting Fetchlands) and just pick up the colorsplash + killoption of the month!"

still fine and don't have to play it

Oh, so now show and tell, Stoneforge, and pyromancer aren't different enough for you? Plus Miracles/lands/BUG/storm/D&T that have all been placing?

Something you like to do must be having trouble. I'm going to guess.... Elves.

Sorry bro, learn to innovate better. The rest of us all want consistency uber alles

true :laugh:

Bobmans

06-20-2015, 04:00 AM

Wish the B&R update was before GP Lille...

Raystar

06-20-2015, 06:46 AM

Oh, so now show and tell, Stoneforge, and pyromancer aren't different enough for you? Plus Miracles/lands/BUG/storm/D&T that have all been placing?

Something you like to do must be having trouble. I'm going to guess.... Elves.

Sorry bro, learn to innovate better. The rest of us all want consistency uber alles

I suggest you take a look at the DtB section before talking about the openness of the meta. I'm personally extremely tired to have to face the same "blue fetch, pass" or "blue land ponder" play every single T1 of every game I play...

I know it is a matter of preference and as such my preference is as worthy as yours, but I believe that the variety that Legacy exposed in the past (I play it since 2004) is strongly reduced. Having to play a set of around 30 fixed cards to be competitive is becoming boring.

Please note that I am one of the lucky people that can play pretty much every deck that have been described in this forum (the only cards I don't own are a playset of Imperial Recruiter) and I played a ton of control during the years, but I refuse to play the cookie cutters that are in the DtB, they are monotonous and bland.

The consistency altar at which you are sacrificing the format is only a way to maintain the status quo for fear of having to change and adapt. The format have been dominated by the same pool of cards for so long that the idea that those cards could be gone has become unthinkable for the majority of players, but if you like this game and this format I urge you to think out of the box and start looking at how much fun and diversity is being lost at the moment.

Crimhead

06-20-2015, 07:35 AM

I'm sure to take heat for these views, but before these busted Khans delve spells I was having a great deal more fun with Legacy. There were still the top decks, yes, but the gap between tier 1 and tier 2-3 seemed more surmountable, and the format was more "open", which is one of the things that really attracted me to legacy in the first place.How do you measure this? I agree that the presence of tier 2 (or 1.5) decks has a huge and wonderful contribution to the diversity of Legacy. I took a quick scan at MTGtop8 and Goldfish. Both give different numbers, but it looks like those decks which individually are each less than 5% of the meta collectively make up ~30%-40% of all top eight placings. To me this is good.

That's exactly the Problem: it has become totally irrelevant if you run S&T+Omniscience, Pyromancer+CabalTherapy or SFM+TNN ... The shell of 4Fow/4Ponder/4Brainstorm/4Probes/4DTT became absolutely omnipresent and oppressive. Only the kill mechanism varies atm
We do not agree. Strategic diversity is still my most important aspect, but this shell is killing all "strategic diversity" in fact. There is no "diversity" in deckbuilding if you simply switch out your killconditions, but the Rest of the deck is more or less the same. This is a (probably intentional) oversimplification lacking a shred of sophistication.

Omnitell works like this. It has specific kill conditions - resolve S&T with an Omniscience in hand. It uses those cantrips to dig for those cards, plus maybe protection.

The other decks don't have win conditions per-se. Their goal is generally to wear the opponent down with 1-1 trades, picking up card advantage when they can and eventually dominate the battlefield/combat-step. They are not usually digging for a card to close the game out (a win condition). They are digging for an answer or threat to improve the current board state.

There is a reason those decks have their own primers! Maybe you think we could merge those into a single thread titled Cantrips.dec? :rolleyes: The decks have different:

Basic strategies
MU analyses
Opening hand evaluations
Side-board plans
But go ahead and write that Omnibus Primer! You'll save this site a lot of clutter and unnecessary details, and be a new champion for Legacy theory.

So what you're saying is there is a line that can be crossed before "strategic diversity" doesn't trump all arguments. I'm glad we agree on that.I'm sure everyone has a line. For me I need strategic diversity as a must, and I do like to see some top decks (defined by their win-rates, or top8s vs representation) which aren't running blue (specifically cantrips and counters - Dredge or RUG Lands aren't typical blue shells). I also like to see lots of tier 1.5 and tier 2 decks which collectively hold a huge share of the top eight spots, and for not all those decks to run blue. Another big part of diversity (to me) is synergy decks. Adding more good-stuff in different colours doesn't do much for me.

For a lot of people, it's not enough that you can run combo or prison decks outside of the blue shell. Some people need Jund, Maveric, Goblins, or some sort of non-blue midrange deck before they'll ever concede the format is diverse and healthy - regardless what else is going on. Other people aren't happy unless they can play a very specific pet deck - and in some cases with no bad matches! But everyone has a different take.

I'm personally extremely tired to have to face the same "blue fetch, pass" or "blue land ponder" play every single T1 of every game I play...
Hahahhahah ... fully half of the people in this thread...
...don't care if every deck that top 8's a 7+ round legacy event from here on out has 4 x Ponder, 4 x Brainstorm, 4 x Force.Personally, I don't care about those cards. They don't define the texture of the game/match, as I'm rarely playing against those cards! Sure, occasionally you might see a BS to protect from discard, or force a shuffle after a BS resolves. But for the most part I just watch as they draw and filter. Then they procure a threat, answer, or resource, and that is the card I have to worry about/interact with. How they got the card doesn't really matter after the fact.

FieryBalrog

06-21-2015, 12:01 PM

Personally, I don't care about those cards. They don't define the texture of the game/match, as I'm rarely playing against those cards! Sure, occasionally you might see a BS to protect from discard, or force a shuffle after a BS resolves. But for the most part I just watch as they draw and filter. Then they procure a threat, answer, or resource, and that is the card I have to worry about/interact with. How they got the card doesn't really matter after the fact.

They absolutely do define the texture of the game/match, which is why playing against a non-blue deck is a completely different experience than playing against Brainstorm/Force/Ponder.dec

I mean duh, this is why the cards get run in the first place, they have effects which other cards don't have.

Crimhead

06-23-2015, 03:47 PM

They absolutely do define the texture of the game/match, which is why playing against a non-blue deck is a completely different experience than playing against Brainstorm/Force/Ponder.dec
That's not an archetype! I find BUG control, Shardless, and Team America a more similar experience to playing against Jund than against S&T, Storm, or Miracles. Most would agree.

When my opponent plays Abrupt Decay, Goyf, Pyromancer, a counter-spell, or drops a utility land, this effects me directly. The board state changes, and, so does my tactical situation. This defines the texture of the game.

When my opponent casts a cantrip or DTT, I wait and see what they do next with the card(s) the found. Playuing the cantrip/draw spell itself doesn't change the board state or require my attention. I don;t interact with the cantrips, and they don't interact with me. They do not define the texture of the game.

I mean duh, this is why the cards get run in the first place, they have effects which other cards don't have.They are run to have more consistently access to the most needed business cards which do define the texture of the game. Also they are run to fuel FOW. Most of the business cards cannot do this.

twndomn

06-23-2015, 04:18 PM

Wish the B&R update was before GP Lille...

I disagree. People had fun with Cruise at GP NJ before the banning. Gotta let people have fun with Dig at both Kyoto and Lille.

Worst case scenario, Dig becomes a Legacy staple after Origin, so every blue deck runs: FoW + Brainstorm + Ponder + Dig.

Zulabnar

06-24-2015, 11:02 AM

Worst case scenario, Dig becomes a Legacy staple after Origin, so every blue deck runs: FoW + Brainstorm + Ponder + Dig.

We already are in this scenario my friend.

60 cards

Blue deck if you want tier 1

16 card fix (brain+fow+ponder+ dtt)

18 land fix

55% card are the same in 50% deck of the field.

LOLWut

06-24-2015, 02:37 PM

We already are in this scenario my friend.

60 cards

Blue deck if you want tier 1

16 card fix (brain+fow+ponder+ dtt)

18 land fix

55% card are the same in 50% deck of the field.

Pulled straight out of the ass.

MGB

06-24-2015, 06:40 PM

Pulled straight out of the ass.

Something definitely smells fishy here about those numbers, that's for sure.

Crimhead

06-24-2015, 06:48 PM

TL;DR: Only win rates count, variance or standard deviation are only dependent on win rates and can be completely disregarded if your approach to calculating your relevant win rate is correct.*
I was mortified with embarrassment my this "error" I made. Not that I get much respect here anyway! But I've remembered what i was thinking when I posted that. It's been almost 20 years since I studied combinatorics, so please correct me if I am wrong.

Generally when we look at statistical win-rates, we ignore draws and compare only the ratio of wins to loses.
Assuming 25% < a decks win-rate < 75% (true of most decks), a tendency to draw decreases standard deviation. Given that some decks are more prone to drawing (generally the slower, grindy decks or Worldgorger combo), a decks standard deviation is not defined strictly by its win-rate. And since no deck has such a high win-rate to top eight on merely average results, a low SD is not to be desired.

Ogh!

06-25-2015, 08:06 AM

I was mortified with embarrassment my this "error" I made. Not that I get much respect here anyway! But I've remembered what i was thinking when I posted that. It's been almost 20 years since I studied combinatorics, so please correct me if I am wrong.

Don't be embarrassed, many people (including me) have made much more embarrassing mistakes.

Assuming 25% < a decks win-rate < 75% (true of most decks), a tendency to draw decreases standard deviation.

Would you elaborate on the model/notion/idea that led you to this conclusion? More specifically: Why does a tendency to draw decrease standard deviation? How would that standard deviation be defined in a world with three outcomes (win, loss, draw)?

I'm asking because I'm not sure how you would mathematically represent the possibility of drawing in our neat (binomial)l model. I see just two reasonable approaches. Neither one is compatible with your statement. That is not to say that your approach is not correct, it may be superior to the two approaches I came up with.

Crimhead

06-28-2015, 08:47 AM

Would you elaborate on the model/notion/idea that led you to this conclusion? More specifically: Why does a tendency to draw decrease standard deviation?It's a bit weird in MTG that a draw is worth 1/3 of a win. Even so, intuitively, a draw (counted as a third of a win) is usually closer to the average result than either a straight win or loss. In other words, a draw is an outcome with deviates less from the mean. The higher that possibility, the greater the average deviation

How would that standard deviation be defined in a world with three outcomes (win, loss, draw)?Average square distance form the mean? I studied mostly combinatorial probability, and barely touched stats, so I've never understood the significance of squaring the deviation - but I'm told there are some interesting properties if we work with that definition. I assume we use absolute values to quantify the differences?

Example:
Deck A has a 55% chance to win, and a 45% chance to lose, the EV of a match is 1.65 points.
Deck B has a 50% chance to win, a 35% chance to lose, and a 15% chance to draw. Ev is also 1.65 points.

SD for deck A = (0.55 * 1.35^2) + (0.45 * 1.65^2) = 2.2275
SD for deck B = (0.50 * 1.35^2) + (0.35 * 1.65^2) + (0.15 * 0.65^2) = 1.654125

I could write a general algebraic formula to prove this, but I think it's obvious that as long as the EV is closer to 1 than it is to 0 or 3, those single-point results will bring the SD down.

I'm asking because I'm not sure how you would mathematically represent the possibility of drawing in our neat (binomial)l model. I would think the possibility of draws limits the usefulness of binomial expansion. We can calculate the possibility (based on a win percentage p) of a deck getting exactly r wins in an n round event, but to get the full picture we want to also add the chances of getting 3r points by way of some combination of draws and wins.

For large values of r there will be relatively few combinations of wins and draws to total 3r points, and we can calculate each scenario by brute force. Calculate odds of exactly (r - i) wins and 3i draws for all 0 </= i </= r. (There will be a lot of 0s for larger values of i). Unless I'm rustier than I thought, tis is our formula:

nC(r-i) nC3i [(r-i)P(w) * 3iP(draw) * (n-3i-r+1)P(loss)]

Similar principle to the binomial theorem. I think there should be a short-cut for this, but I've drawn a blank. It has been many years for me!

Finn

06-28-2015, 09:46 AM

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 12:35 AM

A tie worth 1 makes perfect sense. The 3 for a win is what is scaled. This is probably done so to inhibit collusion. At any rate, MTG did not invent any of this scoring. It is part of the Swiss structure that existed before Magic and has been in similar competitive environments for ages.
It's the ratio of points which I find strange, not the specific numbers. I'll take you at your word about other tournaments, I've just never encountered it myself. Chess and hockey (before the shoot-outs) always gave 2 points for a win and 1 for a draw. I always thought that was standard.

It's weird when we consider win-rates. If MU stats for two decks are 40%/40%/20%, its natural to think of these decks as being 50/50 because neither side has an advantage. But a similar MU which is 45%/45%/10% is also "50/50", but offers a higher EV for both sides! To me this is a bit awkward.

ubernostrum

06-29-2015, 12:38 AM

Here's a thought: create an analogue of the reserved list, except containing cards WotC promises will never be banned in Legacy. Put Brainstorm on it and this thread to bed :)

Dice_Box

06-29-2015, 02:39 AM

Here's a thought: create an analogue of the reserved list, except containing cards WotC promises will never be banned in Legacy. Put Brainstorm on it and this thread to bed :)

Like Vintages Pillars? I guess. Can not say I really would be happy about that but hell, would solve almost as many issues as it would create.

lavafrogg

06-29-2015, 03:18 AM

I really wish they just printed more non-blue cards.

Thalia was a great start as she hates on the blue cantrip shell.

More cards that push the limit and cannot be played with islands.

They did really well with the BG shell that they released a few sets ago, DRS and Abrupt Decay they let Jund/Junk be a real decks in the format for a hot second(I know BUG and Shardless are decks). The same happened when they released Green Sun's Zenith with Maverick being the top deck.

The problem is that blue keeps getting all of the trump cards to popular strategies. DTT invalidates discard, terminus doesn't care about your creatures, TNN eats abrupt decay for lunch and none of it has a downside.

Nost non-blue engines or real weapons have a dependency to the graveyard that makes them easily hate-able by said blue decks. KotR and life from the loam are great non-blue cards that get eaten alive by rest in peace.

We do not have Green/Red/Black/White cards that go over the top of what a blue deck can do(without fitting in the blue shell) which is my problem with Legacy at this moment.

In my opinion the decks we have right now are:

Aggro Blue(Delver)

Midrange Blue(Stoneforge Mystic)

Control Blue(Miracles)

Combo Blue(Omnitell)

Port Aggro(Death and Taxes)

Port Control(Lands)

Gaea's Cradle is Broken.dec(Elves)

Everything Else(Literally every other deck)

Which means the cards that are playable in todays world are either: Brainstorm/Ponder Based, Port/Wasteland Based or Gaea's Cradle Based/GSZ Based.

To bring this to the B/R forum I am of the firm belief that Blue Decks circa 2015 would crush Survival decks, with or without Vengevine, with Terminus and Rest in peace or with removal and stoneforge mystic. I think that the best versions of Survival would not run blue(even though some did) and would give legacy another real avenue to play.

The other option would be Earthcraft giving viability to the Enchantress engine(also GSZ fueled making 2 GSZ combo decks)

Zombie

06-29-2015, 03:58 AM

Elves is more like Half the Banned List Is Broken (Surprise!) .dec

Admiral_Arzar

06-29-2015, 10:08 AM

Elves is more like Half the Banned List Is Broken (Surprise!) .dec

And what's sad is that it takes approximate equivalents of Tolarian Academy, Tinker, and Ancestral Recall for a non-blue deck to compete nowadays :(.

lavafrogg

06-29-2015, 01:56 PM

And what's sad is that it takes approximate equivalents of Tolarian Academy, Tinker, and Ancestral Recall for a non-blue deck to compete nowadays :(.

This is so true. Never thought of it this way.

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 02:05 PM

And what's sad is that it takes approximate equivalents of Tolarian Academy, Tinker, and Ancestral Recall for a non-blue deck to compete nowadays :(.Why is this sad - the cards are there to support those decks. How many different colour-combinations of good-stuff midrange do we need before the format is considered healthy?

Also, how does this principle apply to D&T? It seems like a pretty "fair" deck to me with no such equivalents.

Dice_Box

06-29-2015, 02:10 PM

Calling DnT fair is amusing in its inaccuracy.

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 02:18 PM

Calling DnT fair is amusing in its inaccuracy.
I don't think there is consensus on the term "fair deck". Some people say no Legacy deck is fair!

I use the term basically to mean any non-combo deck. Given the context - a suggestion that competitive non-blue decks need cards of similar power and function to Tolarian Academy, Tinker, and Recall, I think it's a good use of the term!

D&T factually doesn't need anything like that to compete. Let's stay on topic rather than nit-pic semantics please.

Edit:

Seriously, Dice. the idea that any blue-less deck needs crazy shit like that to compete is just wrong. I cite D&T as the counter-example to this obviously false assertion, and your contribution is to bicker over the term "fair deck"? Get a little perspective on what's actually being discussed!

You've got no problem with Admiral_Arzar's false statement, no critique of my refutation of that statement, but you draw the line at "fair deck" being applied to aggro/prison? You want to debate the meaning of "fair deck'? PM me or start a new thread.

Or did you just want to get a dig in?

Dice_Box

06-29-2015, 02:53 PM

I agree with him. The amount of broken shit you need to be doing to match up with the Blue Shell (ie, not be playing Blue) is quite high. I think it is sad that a deck needs Tinker, Academy and Recall to be even seen as competitive against a sea of decks that have so much control. DnT needs to play so much disruption or it doesn't work. Burn is the poster child of consistency and Lands ain't playing fair either.

I am not here to take a cheep shot at you, I just don't agree with you. His point is fair. A little hyperbolic but no less sound. The hoops you need to jump though when your not playing Brainstorm, Ponder, Probe and Force to be competitive are just crazy.

I would be interested to know what non Blue deck is not doing something crazy to keep up. I am not seeing one.

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 03:30 PM

I would be interested to know what non Blue deck is not doing something crazy to keep up. I am not seeing one.
Cradle, Glimpse, and NO are the "crazy shit" which has been likened to restricted Vintage staples. Even Lands runs Loam, which can be a pseudo Recall in that deck.

But D&T doesn't need any crazy powered cards like that. It runs normal stuff like Wasteland, Port, Vial, and creatures. It doesn't run anything over the top - just mana denial, threats, and removal. How is this jumping through hoops? How is this doing something crazy on the level of Cradle or NO?

I would agree that blue-less midrange is not well positioned. But being not midrange does not entail jumping through hoops or doing anything crazy.

Dice_Box

06-29-2015, 04:12 PM

What's DnT doing that's not crazy? As a pool of cards you have:
Your shit costs more
Your lands don't exist
Your lands are not available to you
You can't draw more than one card a turn (And you would not think at first glance this was an issue)
Your Legendary shit can't stay nailed down
They have an artifact that gives them a massive mana advantage
They can fuck you at instant speed with said artifact
They can protect their creatures near on ad nauseam

So yea. That's DnT. Fair. Nice. Not at all doing anything crazy. It's not planing to lock you out of the game or anything. It's sure as hell not a massive ball that's easily called "The sum of its parts".

You want to look at a card and say "That's the broken card in the deck" then I think your overlooking the importance of what these things do and what they are forced to do to be competitive. As a whole DnT is mostly made up of cards that are either really old mistakes or post MM banning lock pieces that have been printed when Wizards changed their direction on printing hate cards.

Each other of the non Blues are like this. Jund lives and dies on 2 for 1 game play, MUD dies to itself but if it was not so inconsistent... well check Vintage for that example, Nic Fit hopes not to die early so it can exploit the Mana advantage it can create. I mean, these are as close to "Non crazy" decks as you can get and of them, only one I would argue is even kind of competitive.

Admiral_Arzar

06-29-2015, 04:43 PM

Finn

06-29-2015, 04:46 PM

Cradle, Glimpse, and NO are the "crazy shit" which has been likened to restricted Vintage staples. Even Lands runs Loam, which can be a pseudo Recall in that deck.

But D&T doesn't need any crazy powered cards like that. It runs normal stuff like Wasteland, Port, Vial, and creatures. It doesn't run anything over the top - just mana denial, threats, and removal. How is this jumping through hoops? How is this doing something crazy on the level of Cradle or NO?

Fellas, as much as I like to see a good disagreement, this topic has a history that may quell both of you:

Death and Taxes looks on paper like a pile of jank. This is what kept pros from even looking at it for literally years. In fact, even after Thalia got printed, it was a year and a half of the forum denizens basically gushing about how many decks fold to it before the Dutch boys showed the rest of the world what the deck was.

Before that, the few pros who gave it a run could not understand how to pilot it. I could tell because they would take out Flickerwisp in favor of beef. Then they would be too willing to trade their Revokers just because there was not a Pernicious Deed or a Jace on the table - psst... Flickerwisp use number 172: reset the Revoker. You have to manage resources differently than other decks. And you have to know that you are inhibiting the opponent even though you can't see it. Your decisions are based upon this. "Can't see it" is so important. Even Cedric, Mathias, and whomever at SCG continued to demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the deck as recently as last summer. They could not see how it "bends" its opponents even though they were watching and discussing it while it was happening. Consequently, they were always caught by surprise when it succeeded. (Btw, Adrian Sullivan seems to have gotten it right away.)

So a fellow can be forgiven for not being able to describe what it is doing in a field of far more broken lines of play.

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 04:47 PM

You want to look at a card and say "That's the broken card in the deck" then I think your overlooking the importance of what these things do and what they are forced to do to be competitive. As a whole DnT is mostly made up of cards that are either really old mistakes or post MM banning lock pieces that have been printed when Wizards changed their direction on printing hate cards.Sure, but isn't this a far cry from leaning on the approximate equivalents of the likes of Recall and Tol-Ac?

By your definition what competitive decks aren't doing something crazy? Delver decks and Deathblade? It sounds like you are saying anything besides aggro-control (tempo and midrange) is unfair, or doing something crazy.

]The hoops you need to jump through when your not playing Brainstorm, Ponder, Probe and Force to be competitive are just crazy.So, anything besides tempo or midrange is crazy and jumping through hoops? I'm sure this can't be what you mean, but I can't think of any other way to interpret your position.

Admiral_Arzar

06-29-2015, 04:49 PM

By your definition what competitive decks aren't doing something crazy? Delver decks and Deathblade? It sounds like you are saying anything besides aggro-control (tempo and midrange) is unfair, or doing something crazy.

I would say that playing the "blue shell" of a bunch of cantrips, DTT, and free countermagic IS doing something crazy. The shell is broken by default, which is why so few engines can compete with it.

wcm8

06-29-2015, 04:56 PM

http://i.imgur.com/Wv5uOBR.jpg?1

The first step to recovery is admitting that we are powerless over Brainstorm -- that our decks have become unmanageable.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. Yet we are all really just building 56 card decks. What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment by playing Blue is really some kind of fear of really being a planeswalker, since to really be a planeswalker is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic without being able to draw 3 cards at instant speed for one Blue mana. It is chaos.

You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail (by not playing Blue). This is hard. How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

Crimhead

06-29-2015, 05:35 PM

I would say that playing the "blue shell" of a bunch of cantrips, DTT, and free countermagic IS doing something crazy. The shell is broken by default, which is why so few engines can compete with it.
Then I guess every deck is doing something crazy. That's just what I was told to expect getting into Legacy!

I do see you've softened your claim somewhat to allow for "exceptions" like Lands, D&T, and MUD.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that those decks are anti-blue! All those decks were developed at a time when blue was less dominant. Lands hates on blue-less fair decks a lot harder than it hates on blue combo decks. The fact that competitive fair decks are pretty much all blue is a coincidence as far as Lands in concerned. D&T is pretty weak to Storm.

Really, I don't think any deck actually hates on everything blue! There are just too many decks and too many different strategies which use blue for any one deck to hate them all. I would replace your statement with: either play blue, play combo, or play a deck which hates on fair decks. In other words, play blue, or play combo or play prison.

I'm not sure that is such a bad thing - especially seeing as D&T is quite aggressive for a prison deck; not really a hard control list. At the times when Jund was big (and Maverick before that) there were no viable prison decks in Legacy. Enchantress and Pox has fallen our of favour, while Lands had yet to come into its own. Personally I think having a whole unique style (prison) adds far more variety than having more midrange decks viable in more different colours. And I think this is a good case.

Darkenslight

06-30-2015, 04:57 AM

Then I guess every deck is doing something crazy. That's just what I was told to expect getting into Legacy!

I do see you've softened your claim somewhat to allow for "exceptions" like Lands, D&T, and MUD.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that those decks are anti-blue! All those decks were developed at a time when blue was less dominant. Lands hates on blue-less fair decks a lot harder than it hates on blue combo decks. The fact that competitive fair decks are pretty much all blue is a coincidence as far as Lands in concerned. D&T is pretty weak to Storm.

Really, I don't think any deck actually hates on everything blue! There are just too many decks and too many different strategies which use blue for any one deck to hate them all. I would replace your statement with: either play blue, play combo, or play a deck which hates on fair decks. In other words, play blue, or play combo or play prison.

I'm not sure that is such a bad thing - especially seeing as D&T is quite aggressive for a prison deck; not really a hard control list. At the times when Jund was big (and Maverick before that) there were no viable prison decks in Legacy. Enchantress and Pox has fallen our of favour, while Lands had yet to come into its own. Personally I think having a whole unique style (prison) adds far more variety than having more midrange decks viable in more different colours. And I think this is a good case.

I think the thing that people are missing is that Lands, D&T and MUD are still doing crazy things; it's just on a different axis to the majority of the metagame. For example, ANT, Tinfins and Belcher all attempt to do crazy things before hte opponent can successfully interact. Delver decks do crazy things by stalling so that their threats get the job done. D&T works on a similar axis to Delver, but it's a much more strangle-based deck, like MUD. Lands and Dredge work by attacking from a position that most decks are struggling to interact with, at leats game 1.

Norm

06-30-2015, 05:30 AM

Zombie

06-30-2015, 07:15 AM

I enjoy legacy because it's full of powerful cards and strategies, do you?

Oh you do, too? Awesome! Let's be best frie...ok maybe that's a bit too far. To the point then:

Instead of complaining about cards or "shells" that are too powerful in your mind, why not contribute to the game by discussing potential cards for other colors that compete with what blue has? There are powerful cards in every color, the others just need a little more love and that's a much more realistic way of fixing this "problem" than trying to ban everything that's popular.

Promote a more diverse legacy format by channeling your efforts into creative discussion, instead of illogical banter that repeats itself every few pages.

Discussing potential cards they could print is less fruitful - they couldn't take suggestions from forums even if they wanted to because of legal issues.

If you mean brewing new decks, the consistency is the problem, and the cantrip cartel is just the best engine for the job for most cases. There's a small handful where more specialized green or green-black shells can provide enough consistency, but they tend to be much more narrow and far easier to hate out.

There are powerful cards in every color, the others just need a little more love and that's a much more realistic way of fixing this "problem" than trying to ban everything that's popular.

You know basically no one is advocating banning "everything that's popular". A small handful of broken cards that do their job way better than any other alternatives in the format, sure, but "everything" is just sad hyperbole.

Gheizen64

06-30-2015, 08:18 AM

I enjoy legacy because it's full of powerful cards and strategies, do you?

Oh you do, too? Awesome! Let's be best frie...ok maybe that's a bit too far. To the point then:

Instead of complaining about cards or "shells" that are too powerful in your mind, why not contribute to the game by discussing potential cards for other colors that compete with what blue has? There are powerful cards in every color, the others just need a little more love and that's a much more realistic way of fixing this "problem" than trying to ban everything that's popular.

Promote a more diverse legacy format by channeling your efforts into creative discussion, instead of illogical banter that repeats itself every few pages.

Discussing potential card contribute exactly 0 since we can't decide what card get to be printed.

Alternative decks already exist, but the cantrip cartel representation border 80%, worse than any other period in the history of this format. MM pushed blue around 70%, and got banned on the basis that "it made the format too blue".

Ban everything that's popular? I was against SotF and MM ban, but i'm pro BS ban. I'm also pro Earthcraft, SotF, Twist, Vise, Jar unbanning, so sure, "ban everything". If it were for me, the banned list would be considerably shorter.

Crimhead

06-30-2015, 04:35 PM

I really wish they just printed more non-blue cards.

They print lots of playable non-blue cards, but that's not what (some) people need to be happy with the format. Cards like Pyromancer, GSZ, DRS, AD etc are "good-stuff". When your deck design is basically stuffing a bunch of good cards into a deck, you can easily accommodate three colours, and there is little reason not to include blue for FOW and consistency tools.

They can print consistency tools in other colours, but when GSZ, Ponder, and Preordain are considered too good for Modern, there is not much hope. They could put some in specialty products, but I imagine we would need quite the arsenal before three colour "good-stuff" decks would forgo blue. I think we have to accept that blue will be a staple colour in good-stuff decks for a long time to come. (D&T is the closest we have to a tier one blue-less "good stuff" deck - it can run SFM, Miran Crusader, Mum, and other cards which are good on their own merit).

I think there are two ways to enable competitive decks which don't thrive on cantrips:
Print cards which have unique applications (not good-stuff). Examples would be Reclamation Sage and Molten Vortex.
Print cards which are anti-synergistic with cantrips. Examples are Thalia and Spirit of the Labyrinth.
Of course it's not necessary that these cards be printed. Unbanned is just as good! There are a few cards on the banned list which are likely safe and are likely to help specific unique decks but not so much good-stuff decks:

Earthcraft - potential boost to Enchantress
Mnid Twist - potential boost to Tezzerator
Black Vise - potential boost to Affinity
I realise the last two decks do run blue, but Affinity runs very little, and neither deck runs the cantrip package that so many players are sick of seeing. I would unban all these cards if it were up to me.

Discussing potential card contribute exactly 0 since we can't decide what card get to be printed.On the other hand, we also have zero say as to what gets banned or unbanned! But I agree this thread is not the best place for home-brewed cards.

MM pushed blue around 70%, and got banned on the basis that "it made the format too blue".A common assumption, but never explicitly stated! Who exactly are you quoting, btw? Not WotC, I think!

MM was statedly printed to make the format less blue, which failed. But they never say that is why it was banned! The official explanation for the ban was in "hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep". And that's a genuine quote! WotC has never defined a diverse meta game on the basis of colour (http://magic.wizards.com/en/gameinfo/gameplay/formats/bannedrestricted):
One key to the continued health of Magic is diversity. It is vitally important to ensure that there are multiple competitive decks for the tournament player to choose from.

I think the thing that people are missing is that Lands, D&T and MUD are still doing crazy things; it's just on a different axis to the majority of the metagame. For example, ANT, Tinfins and Belcher all attempt to do crazy things before hte opponent can successfully interact. Delver decks do crazy things by stalling so that their threats get the job done. D&T works on a similar axis to Delver, but it's a much more strangle-based deck, like MUD. Lands and Dredge work by attacking from a position that most decks are struggling to interact with, at least game 1.So far you've identified Tempo, Prison, combo, and control. It sounds like you consider every deck except mid-range to be "doing crazy things"! It seems there is a sub-culture in MTG which considers midrange to be the base play-style, and everything else to be exceptional. I can understand this from Modern or Standard players (or even limited players), but from players of a format as wide open and strategically diverse as Legacy, it baffles me.

Gheizen64

06-30-2015, 05:20 PM

A common assumption, but never explicitly stated! Who exactly are you quoting, btw? Not WotC, I think!

MM was statedly printed to make the format less blue, which failed. But they never say that is why it was banned! The official explanation for the ban was in "hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep". And that's a genuine quote! WotC has never defined a diverse meta game on the basis of colour (http://magic.wizards.com/en/gameinfo/gameplay/formats/bannedrestricted):.

You're just pushing an agenda here. Anyone reading this:

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

Can see that "a more diverse metagame" is directly referring to the previous sentence. They wanted a less blue meta by giving non blue ways to stop combo and counter Brainstorm, but instead the format slowed down and blue got more dominant.

Sigh, i feel like discussing with climate deniers, it's just useless. Facts are useless, quotes are useless, precedents are useless.

Crimhead

06-30-2015, 05:42 PM

Sigh, i feel like discussing with climate deniers, it's just useless. Facts are useless, quotes are useless, precedents are useless.
While at least we have something in common! Not a dig at you, just in general. Your post is very well reasoned, even if I challenge some of your assumptions.

Regarding the WotC quote, it is not at all clear that the reason for printing the card (and the admission of that failure) is equivalent to it's reason for it being banned. For one, WotC have actually qualified meta-game diversity on their banned list page. I even provided a link - facts and quotes! For two, it was pretty obvious to most Legacy players that MM obliterated archetype diversity, so there is no surprise they didn't need to say that.

That whole explanation looks to me like they are justifying the printing of the card rather than justifying the banning of the card. They hardly needed to justify the ban! You can disagree, but likening my position to climate denial is a bit much.

If your interpretation of that caption is correct, why has the format become even more blue (for a long time now) with no bans? I see three possibilities:

WotC were full of shit about that being the reason for the ban.
WotC have since changed their minds about a 70+% blue format being cause for a ban.
You are misinterpreting the WotC.
Take your pick - they all lead us to the same conclusion.

Edit - for the record I am a firm believer in climate change!

Sansian

06-30-2015, 05:50 PM

Sigh, i feel like discussing with climate deniers, it's just useless. Facts are useless, quotes are useless, precedents are useless.
I know I'm picking at a simile and that they rarely bear close inspection, but the difference between these situations is that global warming is potentially an unavoidable extinction level event, and the prevalence of blue is more a matter of some people not liking a color and feeling bad about it.

Barook

06-30-2015, 06:11 PM

While at least we have something in common! Not a dig at you, just in general. Your post is very well reasoned, even if I challenge some of your assumptions.

Regarding the WotC quote, it is not at all clear that the reason for printing the card (and the admission of that failure) is equivalent to it's reason for it being banned. for one, WotC have actually qualified meta-game diversity on their banned list page (I even provided a link - facts and quotes). For two, it was pretty obvious to most Legacy players that MM obliterated archetype diversity, so there is no surprise they didn't need to say that.

That whole explanation looks to me like they are justifying the printing of the card rather than justifying the banning of the card. They hardly needed to justify the ban! You can disagree, but likening my position to climate denial is a bit much.

If your interpretation of that caption is correct, why has the format become even more blue (for a long time now) with no bans? I see three possibilities:

WotC were full of shit about that being the reason for the ban.
WotC have since changed their minds about a 70+% blue format being cause for a ban.
You are misinterpreting the WotC.
Take your pick - they all lead us to the same conclusion.

Edit - for the record I am a firm believer in climate change!
You forgot one possibility:

4. Erik Lauer is a lazy PoS that doesn't manage the Legacy B&R list as he should.

Inaction doesn't necessarily mean that they're actively trying to manage the format, like some people interpret it.

We have multiple cards on the B&R list that could be unbanned without causing major trouble, yet nothing happens. It took years to get Land Tax off the list, for example.

Just look how much Erik Lauer cares (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19)

Modern got in-detail explanations for the bans.

Legacy? 2.5 lines about that basically read: Too much UR Delver - TC banned.

Crimhead

06-30-2015, 07:43 PM

You forgot one possibility:

4. Erik Lauer is a lazy PoS that doesn't manage the Legacy B&R list as he should.

Inaction doesn't necessarily mean that they're actively trying to manage the format, like some people interpret it. What inaction? We've had a ban recently, so clearly they are watching and taking action when they think they should. Just not when you think they should.

We have multiple cards on the B&R list that could be unbanned without causing major trouble, yet nothing happens.Unbaning safe cards is not at all necessary like banning problem cards is. Quite the opposite, as should they misjudge the safety of the card it would be a train-wreck. Seems they unban a card with every new ban lately. One could speculate that they are saving the unbans to lessen the blow of any cads they may have to ban in the future.

Either way, you can't equate choosing to not unban cards which are probably not problematic with a lack of effort to ban cards which are.

Modern got in-detail explanations for the bans.

Legacy? 2.5 lines about that basically read: Too much UR Delver - TC banned.Probably because that was a lie. R/U Delver was taking down all of ~11% of top eights at the time (two months leading up to the ban) - not even the top preforming deck, and not nearly what Jund was doing in its heyday. I'd love to know the real reason for banning TC.

nedleeds

07-01-2015, 11:56 AM

Earthcraft - potential boost to Enchantress
Mnid Twist - potential boost to Tezzerator
Black Vise - potential boost to Affinity
I realise the last two decks do run blue, but Affinity runs very little, and neither deck runs the cantrip package that so many players are sick of seeing. I would unban all these cards if it were up to me.

This sums up your myopic view point, you can't think about individual card power level. If a card isn't in "a deck" you can't seem to even analyze the card, its usage rate, its power level. The first thing you do when an unban is suggested is head over to the decks section and figure out what deck "it goes in". This is where the colossal gap is between sides of this argument. Some people think in terms of cards, others just stare at deck lists and wonder what goes in and out as the BNR changes and new sets are printed.

Macky984

07-01-2015, 12:20 PM

All I ask is that they leave my Dig Through Time alone!

rufus

07-01-2015, 12:41 PM

sjmcc13

07-01-2015, 02:33 PM

When Flash was unbanned, it didn't really fit into any of the active deck lists well. Flash was never unbanned.
It had a power level errata removed, which caused to to work with ETB and LTB triggers, and was banned after 1 major tournament.

Crimhead

07-01-2015, 03:28 PM

This sums up your myopic view point, you can't think about individual card power level. If a card isn't in "a deck" you can't seem to even analyze the card, its usage rate, its power level. The first thing you do when an unban is suggested is head over to the decks section and figure out what deck "it goes in". This is where the colossal gap is between sides of this argument. Some people think in terms of cards, others just stare at deck lists and wonder what goes in and out as the BNR changes and new sets are printed.I never in anyway said nor implied that those cards do not have the potential to spawn new decks, so don't put words in my mouth please. Contrary to the popular adage, when you assume you really only make an ass of yourself. "Sums up my myopic view"? Real classy; I see you're a gentleman and a scholar both (not really).

All I am saying is that those cards could, at the minimum, potentially boost the decks I cited. In the grander context, I was saying that this type of card (cards with narrow applications) is what the game needs if we want to see more decks not running all those cantrip spells. Obvious some narrow spells can go in cantrip decks too. The point is that cards which are simply good will generally find a home in a three colour good-stuff deck, which means blue cantrips. If we want decks without cantrips, we need cards that support unique strategies.

Edit - Those cards actually are very poor by themselves. Twist needs ramp to be any useful, and it's not good ebough to build around. Basically it needs a non-combo deck which runs ramp anyway. Tezzerator or Mud are potentials for this. Earthcraft needs Squirrel's Nest. Enchantress is a natural shell to test this in, and a way to win quickly may be just what the deck needs (like Lands needed Marit Lage). Vise needs a deck that is aggressive enough to to appreciate the damage, but also a deck which card find some use for the card all those times it will be a dead draw.

I'm not saying new brews can't emerge - I'm just saying that these cards could encourage these unique decks and possibly add diversity to the meta.

Also, what do you mean by "usage rate" of a card which isn't played in decks? Wouldn't it have a usage rate of zero?

Dice_Box

07-03-2015, 04:00 AM

Real classy; I see you're a gentleman and a scholar both (not really).
You always an ass or is this a new development?

I wonder what the difference is between large events and small stores. I remember when Clamp got banned Wizards apologised to those at card shops just enjoying themselves fairly with the card. I mean history shows it had to go. Apologies or no. But these days, you have kind of a full reverse happening. Legacy is more of a grass roots thing. I wonder if the apologies go the other way. "Big events can become streamlined and stale, we will not change things though because we think the smaller, store based metas are not withholdent to the large events."

Crimhead

07-03-2015, 05:13 AM

You always an ass or is this a new development? Pretty new - I've never felt the need to be that abrassive like this on public forums (not that I can remember), but when a user makes a groundless assumption about my thought process and insults me based on that assumption, I want to call them out. You should have seen what I almost posted!

Note that you are treating me no better that I am treating him, the only difference is I didn't prompt you by insulting you. If I'm an ass, what does that make you?

wonder what the difference is between large events and small stores. I remember when Clamp got banned Wizards apologised to those at card shops just enjoying themselves fairly with the card. I mean history shows it had to go. Apologies or no. But these days, you have kind of a full reverse happening. Legacy is more of a grass roots thing. I wonder if the apologies go the other way. "Big events can become streamlined and stale, we will not change things though because we think the smaller, store based metas are not withholdent to the large events."
Not that I doubt you, but I remember that sort of apology when they banned the artifact lands. The sypmathised with all the players who would lose their cool and creative decks which used but didn't abuse artifact lands. But the made the analogy of a casual player using Black Lotus to speed out Wooly Malmoths, and stated the competitive sceene had to determine the banned list. I don't recall specific details about the banned announcement for Skull Clamp.

Are you suggesting that WotC now don't consider tournaments scenes when making Legacy ban decisions? This seems a bit far fetched because gathering data on the hundreds of LGSs across the world would be impossible. When they banned TC do you think this was based on a notion that TC was hurting diversity at the LGS level? How would they know?

Dice_Box

07-03-2015, 05:45 AM

Me? I am a royal prick but fuck, I am totally honest about it.

I am suggesting that a lot of the data that Wizards has is ignored in their banning decisions yes. I feel like they leave events to be their own little world and leave them be. Since there is no chance that Legacy will ever be a Pro Tour format again they dispose of all real responsibly and let it Coast. I mean, if a card, single card had 60% penetration in Modern who would really think it would stick around?

To people who will say though that Modern and Legacy cannot be compared, think about when Wizards tried to remove Modern from the Pro Tour. I have listened to podcasts (I think Masters of Modern) on this topic where they had someone from Wizards saying they wanted to be hands off, that's why the pulled the format.

Legacy I think is the same. They pulled the format, hands off now. So it matters not a great deal how things fly. On stores, people will play what they have. Not everyone can build anything and everything. Some people are still playing Goblins on a Friday night. Some RUG. Providing proof if that is not hard, go to a store and see what is being played.

As for TC. I think it did. No small amount of people here (A small sample size I know but hell, I can only talk about what I have seen) made the switch. Also since the deck only needed 3 Duals (I know 4 was optimal) a ton of people from outside of Legacy started to build it. Legacy had a pure "Best deck" that was cheep enough that anyone with a decent collection could trade into it and it really was causing issues.

Now I will admit, this is just musings on my end, but I do wonder if that has some play in the overall equation on what is and is not banned.

Crimhead

07-03-2015, 05:59 AM

I really wish WotC has been more forthcoming with the TC ban. U/R Delver had been quite modest compared to other decks at times which didn't prompt bans. I'm sure there was more to it than that. But its hard to believe they were looking at tyhe LGS level for data!

If we better understood the TC decision, we'd be in a better position to predict the future or DTT. Personally I would benefit greatly from the ban (I think). I don't run it myself, and decks like Miracles would be a softer match for me without it. Even more significant, if tempo decks become more favourable again those are much better matches for Lands than I can anticipate in the current meta.

But if they do ban TC I hope it comes with a more detailed statement about banning motivations.

Me? I am a royal prick but fuck, I am totally honest about it. On the other hand, you claimed you're not here to take cheap shots at me, but you can't seem to pass on an opportunity! I Will concede that you are partially honest, and it's appreciated for what it is.

Dice_Box

07-03-2015, 06:31 AM

If they give us more that a paragraph on a card when they ban it I will honestly be writing them an email asking of the Ban committee is feeling ok. Don't hold your breath, you will die.

I do think they do look at other factors when they do ban things. SCG can not be the only thing they look at.

As for being partially honest. Mate, if you want more respect around here branch out. Your posting almost exclusively in the one thread the site cares about lest, pushing on arguments many would rather see die. Your going to find far more acceptance if you move to posting more often elsewhere and stop using this site just as somewhere to stand on your own personal soap box. No insult, just the way your seen here diminishes your standing to Basicly "That ban list guy".

On the bright side, you have more respect than IBA does so take that for what it's worth.

Crimhead

07-03-2015, 08:55 AM

Mate, if you want more respect around here branch out.I'm sure I will in time. It doesn't help that people flood this section with arguments so very wrong and disingenuous that I feel compelled to chime in. Just because somebody is venting, I don't think that should mean they can ignore facts and logic without being called out. I'm sure after the next B&R announcement things will calm down.

Really I'm not looking for lots of respect, just the bare-bones. What I want is quality discourse. It would be nice if folks reacting to my posts could do so based solely on their content, and not what they otherwise think of my posting practices. C'est la vie.

Edit - Thanks for this, though. I've always respected your contributions to the community even if we don't see eye-to-eye on issues of format health. :)

I have bee trying to stay away from this topic lately. But when I see hyperbole to the extent of calling Grisix Control and Omnitell strategically indistinct; and such tripe being met with acceptance rather than critique, it's hard to it on my hands. I guess I should just let it go, people see what they want to see.

Finn

07-03-2015, 01:24 PM

Alrighty then. Hi fellas.

Crimhead, I am among those who would lump Grixis and Omni together. There are a few things to consider when evaluating this argument.

1. They are not strategically similar, but they are tactically almost identical. That is - the method the two decks employ to make it all come together is the same. Cantrips are the premiere method in Legacy. Other options include having several different cards that all perform a similar function, such as virtually all near-zero disruption aggro, the Life decks of old Extended, and Dredge. You could also rely upon tutor effects like Survival of the Fittest, Enlightened Tutor, Zenith, Intuition, Goblin Matron, etc. You could have your deck capable of several different lines of attack such as the Ironworks decks of Mirrodin block. The list goes on. Nobody thinks the two decks are employing the same strategy. But they both implement the same enabling tactic, the "cantrip cartel", because they are simply so much better at what they do than any other method. It is an important distinction.

2. This point of view is held by a lot of D&T pilots (and others, apparently) for good reason. Death and Taxes elbows its way into top tables by turning the cantrip engine into a liability. Since being a hammer tends to make every problem look like a nail, it makes sense that these players become attuned to the flow of blue decks from an outsider perspective that makes it clear that those deck all fit into the same pants even if they don't attend the same parties.

ironclad8690

07-03-2015, 02:10 PM

$5 says a Grixis Pyromancer deck that has a transformative Omnitell sideboard or vice-versa makes top 16 of GP Lille.

Hrothgar

07-04-2015, 10:08 PM

Here the gp lille trial winners.
Very various deck:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/trial-winners-grand-prix-lille-2015-2015-07-04

Imho this is very balanced format:

elves, pox, infect, death and taxes, merfolks, goblin, lands, storm, show and tell, delve.deck (canadian, team america), miracle, junk, grixis, MUD, reanimator, dredge, cascade.

Dice_Box

07-05-2015, 12:57 AM

Everytime I see a post of "This format looks so varied" I see it framed in the form of an apologist or child trying to prove a point he knows he is losing. If the format was in fact so varied we would not be pointing out the situations where it looks that way to try and overlook the many shitty times it does if the format is so varied, why are the same decks consistently at the top tables? Why does the DTB section rarely change much? Why is it that decks running the same core set of cards do objectively better?

Honestly, how varied is this format really? One data point does not a trend make. If you want to look for trends, there is a thread stickied in the DTB section that has the information your looking for. It's not painting such a rosey, blinders on picture as this single data point you wish to pin your views on.

Blastoderm

07-05-2015, 01:47 AM

Jamaican Zombie Legend

07-05-2015, 02:01 AM

Imho this is very balanced format:

elves, pox, infect, death and taxes, merfolks, goblin, lands, storm, show and tell, delve.deck (canadian, team america), miracle, junk, grixis, MUD, reanimator, dredge, cascade.

Let's tally out the winners. Decks using Brainstorm are in bold type because, hey, that's what this thread is all about, right?

U/x/y Delver: xxxxxx
S&T: xxxx
Miracles: xxx
D&T: xxx
Elves: xxx
BUG (non-Delver): xxx
Junk: xx
Reanimator: xx
Pox: x
Storm: x
Goblins: x
Merfolk: x
Lands: x
Infect: x
MUD: x
Dredge: x
Stoneblade: x

Besides Junk and Reanimator, no non-DTB made more than one showing, with DTBs being the most represented. Brainstorm-using decks were 21/35 of the winners (drunkposting, so there may be counting and/or taxonomic errors)...a real improvement at only 60% penetration.

This "meta", as presented by the GPT winners, doesn't look terrible (not great; way too much Blue and fast combo), but I have my doubts as to how much these results reflect the overall Legacy metagame. For one thing, 5 round GPTs with single-elimination are very different from typical tournaments that run more rounds of Swiss; different decks might be better poised in this environment, yet have zero chance in a 12+ round GP. Years ago, I used to Dredge a bit, and as anyone who has played the deck can tell you, it's a lot easier to put up 5 great rounds in a row than to put up an X-1-0 record at a large, long event.

Not to mention, the competition level of these events may be suspect. While it might be fair to assume that missing sideboards in some decklists are due to clerical errors or misreporting, it's also possible that a lot of players might have just been winging it in these events. Who knows how many effective byes a player might have had, with folks coming in with stuff like The Cure or Nourishing Lich for yuks.

Bottom line, I think thinks like Day 2 showings, win rates, and more data to come out of the GP will probably provide a clearer picture. Let's hope some sweet, new tech bursts onto the scene, but if not, I would hope the culprits of metagame stagnation are clearly represented in the Top 32 so the banhammer can strike them down.

CutthroatCasual

07-05-2015, 02:14 AM

Not to mention, the competition level of these events may be suspect. While it might be fair to assume that missing sideboards in some decklists are due to clerical errors or misreporting, it's also possible that a lot of players might have just been winging it in these events. Who knows how many effective byes a player might have had, with folks coming in with stuff like The Cure or Nourishing Lich for yuks.

You don't know how correct this statement is. Just today on stream, I watched a 6-1 Miracles player make three incorrect plays in one game.

Gheizen64

07-05-2015, 04:59 AM

I found this quote pretty enlightening from the official WotC coverage:

First up, there are two cards that have a massive influence on Legacy: Force of Will and Brainstorm.

My own personal opinion is that Force of Will is powerful and ubiquitous enough that under normal circumstances it would be banned ... if it wasn't the safety valve of the format. ...

Brainstorm is more subtle. It says draw three cards, but you have to put two of those back. What that does do is provide enormous consistency to draws. Draw too many or too little lands? Brainstorm will smooth that out. It becomes even more powerful combined with an ability to shuffle the unneeded cards away from the top of the library such as any fetch land.

Note how he say that Force is in his opinion so powerful and ubiquitous that it should be banned (but it isn't because it's a safety valve for the format), but then he completely gloss over the fact that brainstormm is even more powerful and ubiquitous. BS isn't going anywhere.

Barook

07-05-2015, 05:23 AM

Just like the dude who wrote for WotC's site in the last GP who didn't even mention Brainstorm in the Top 5 MVP cards because he didn't want Brainstorm banned:

That's not funny at all (https://twitter.com/Barook1985/status/589837013702017025)

Gheizen64

07-05-2015, 05:49 AM

Gheizen64

07-05-2015, 08:48 AM

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/grand-prix-lille-day-2-metagame-2015-07-05

For those who care, 77.3% of day 2 is blue decks which runs the cantrip cartel (not including merfolk).

testing32

07-05-2015, 10:53 AM

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/grand-prix-lille-day-2-metagame-2015-07-05

For those who care, 77.3% of day 2 is blue decks which runs the cantrip cartel (not including merfolk).

It's fine, this format is skill testing. Everyone plays the same cards and they reduce variance. It's like chess with pictures and words you don't have to read.

Fatal

07-05-2015, 12:14 PM

@Gheizen64
Agreed, it isn't balanced, each of this deck running same core.

Name, number of decks, % of day 2 meta
Miracles 28 17.2
Omni-Tell 16 9.8
Grixis Delver 12 7.4
Sultai Delver 11 6.7
Grixis No-Delver 10 6.1
Storm 9 5.5
Infect 8 4.9
Temur Delver 7 4.3
Elves 6 3.7
Shardless Sultai 5 3.1
4-Color Delver 5 3.1
Lands 5 3.1
Reanimator 5 3.1
Stoneblade 4 2.5
Death and Taxes 4 2.5
Jund 4 2.5
Maverick 4 2.5
Aggro Loam 3 1.8
Burn 3 1.8
Merfolk 3 1.8
U/R Delver 3 1.8
Sneak and Show 2 1.2
MUD 2 1.2
Cloudpost 1 0.6 -dunno if it's mono Green it's not running only 0,6% so not too much as mistake.
Dredge 1 0.6
Esper Mentor 1 0.6
Goblins 1 0.6
Total: 163 100.0

Dice_Box

07-05-2015, 01:12 PM

Total: 127 of 163: 77.914%

If someone tells me this is balanced I really, truly want a better reason then "But they are not the same deck". The issue is the inbreeding, not that the kids have different hair colours.

MGB

07-05-2015, 01:57 PM

http://i62.tinypic.com/2cf2n94.png

supremePINEAPPLE

07-05-2015, 02:08 PM

Haha if "professional" players start tweeting about it wotc might actually take action. This is the only chance something happens, which is pathetic.

rufus

07-05-2015, 02:26 PM

It seems like Counterbalance is much more of a problem card than SDT in terms of power level.

Barook

07-05-2015, 02:27 PM

I'd welcome a SDT ban. Miracles makes nonblue aggro a joke and doesn't exactly encourage diversity among control decks, too.

That doesn't mean that DTT shouldn't go, too.

MGB

07-05-2015, 02:30 PM

It seems like Counterbalance is much more of a problem card than SDT in terms of power level.

Counterbalance is only a thing because of SDT. You ban SDT, Counterbalance is barely fringe playable.

This is exactly like Survival of the Fittest. Survival was busted by Vengevine, but Surivval would always be playable (just like SDT would always be playable even if you removed Miracles and/or Counterbalance), and eventually future printings would make it broken again. So Wizards did the right thing and just axed the engine - Survival.

In this case the "engine" is Sensei's Divining Top. Without the Top, Miracles and Counterbalance are much less predictable and much less broken. The correct thing to do here is to ban the Top, and watch Miracles fall to Tier 2 status and open up vacancies for a whole crop of different decks.

To iterate a list of negatives and positives that a Sensei's Divining Top ban would bring:

You ban Top, the negatives are:

- Miracles players no longer get to play the best deck in the format and crush the competition.

The positives are:

- Less slow play in tournaments by default because 90%+ of players are not super fast experts, and never will be
- Less sketchy play because constant library manipulation opens things up for this
- Less "JUDGE!" for slow play watching, which means more judges are available to help other players rather than waste time watching a Miracles player
- A different variety of blue control decks becomes viable and opens the format up to more experimentation, because right now, there is no reason to play any blue control that isn't Miracles
- A different variety of aggro decks that just got demolished by Terminus becomes a little bit more viable. Maybe they show up in tournaments, maybe not, but no Terminus gives them a better chance than now
- Tournament rounds are shorter because of the absence of Miracles players dragging things out

Adryan

07-05-2015, 02:49 PM

Given the fact that Wotc has been pretty consistent with their bannings throughout the past, I think anyone who has big hopes for a SDT ban will be disappointed.

The card has been around for ages in Legacy, and the slow play problems are not something new. So unless Legacy becomes a PT format (never....), SDT won't get banned, because it is not too powerful.
From a money perspective it does not make any sense to ban SDT. A lot of people play Miracles and would be really pissed if their expensive deck gets completely destroyed. That would turn into a lot of butthurts, players quiting Magic or simply reduce the number of packs bought. And what do they get if they ban SDT? Will people be happier and buy more packs? I don't think so.

The only realistic ban would be Dig Through Time, which can happen or not happen.

Also Ponder and Brainstorm would for sure get banned if this format was a PT format, but it is not. It is just a casual format, that has a big fan base and Wotc does not want to piss of the Legacy fan base. I think there are more people who enjoy playing with the cantrip cartel than people who want a casual format with color diversity.

It is also impossible to get color diversity in both Eternal formats, because of Wotc design decision of the color wheel. Non blue colors suck if you want to be good against a wide open field. If you play non blue, you just have to hope that you don't run into any combo decks, which are both horrible and quite uninteractive matchups.

Edit: I think there are quite a few other very good Control archetypes possible with Legacy's card pool. They don't get discovered, because Legacy is not a PT format, so there is very little incentive to build and test them for professionals.

btm10

07-05-2015, 02:55 PM

Given the fact that Wotc has been pretty consistent with their bannings throughout the past, I think anyone who has big hopes for a SDT ban will be disappointed.

The card has been around for ages in Legacy, and the slow play problems are not something new. So unless Legacy becomes a PT format (never....), SDT won't get banned, because it is not too powerful.
From a money perspective it does not make any sense to ban SDT. A lot of people play Miracles and would be really pissed if their expensive deck gets completely destroyed. That would turn into a lot of butthurts, players quiting Magic or simply reduce the number of packs bought. And what do they get if they ban SDT? Will people be happier and buy more packs? I don't think so.

The only realistic ban would be Dig Through Time, which can happen or not happen.

Also Ponder and Brainstorm would for sure get banned if this format was a PT format, but it is not. It is just a casual format, that has a big fan base and Wotc does not want to piss of the Legacy fan base. I think there are more people who enjoy playing with the cantrip cartel than people who want a casual format with color diversity.

It is also impossible to get color diversity in both Eternal formats, because of Wotc design decision of the color wheel. Non blue colors suck if you want to be good against a wide open field. If you play non blue, you just have to hope that you don't run into any combo decks, which are both horrible and quite uninteractive matchups.

I think you're basically right on everything except the amount of butthurt that would result from a Top ban. Miracles ports pretty readily into UWr Blade once you have Tundras, Forces, Jaces, and Volcs so it's not like they're saddled with a bunch of unplayable chaff that they have to sell at a large loss - they'd just have to switch decks. Some folks would be upset, but I do think most would keep playing Legacy and we wouldn't hear too much about it.

LOLWut

07-05-2015, 02:55 PM

http://i62.tinypic.com/2cf2n94.png

Haha if "professional" players start tweeting about it wotc might actually take action. This is the only chance something happens, which is pathetic.

I think we can all agree that if someone high profile should be listened to, it should be Legacy experts, and not these Standard and Limited careerists. It makes me think of what American TV used to do during the World Cup, bringing in some baseball or football guy who watches soccer for a week a year who'd be like, "Have they thought of making the goals bigger so there'll be more goals??"

Bobmans

07-05-2015, 02:55 PM

Sensei's Divining Top getting banned, after a couple of thousand playmats are gave to the players and Michael Sutfin signed like at least x thousand, would be pretty hilarious.

btm10

07-05-2015, 02:58 PM

I think we can all agree that if someone high profile should be listened to, it should be Legacy experts, and not these Standard and Limited careerists. It makes me think of what American TV used to do during the World Cup, bringing in some baseball or football guy who watches soccer for a week a year who'd be like, "Have they thought of making the goals bigger so there'll be more goals??"
.
There aren't a whole lot of high profile "Legacy experts". I'd take the Magic intuition of Pros over the opinion of randoms on The Source 100% of the time if I were the DCI, so the public statements of LSV and Edel are probably the most influential statements regarding Top that have been made this B&R cycle.

nedleeds

07-05-2015, 02:59 PM

miracles is only a thing because of brainstorm. You ban brainstorm, miracles are barely fringe playable.

ftfy.

Adryan

07-05-2015, 03:04 PM

I would really enjoy a format, where a lot of the blue shell is banned and people bring their Goblins, Zoos and Nic Fit decks to a Legacy Grand Prix to give quite consistent byes to combo players. I mean for reference, just look at the very first Modern Pro Tour. The combo decks were very good, fast and consistent, even without Brainstorm etc.

Dark Ritual. dec with Serum Visions vs Goblins is still not a fair fight.

I always kind of enjoy my play experience whenever I play a combo deck vs a fair non blue deck. Feels like playing a Vintage control deck vs a Standard Control deck. They play sweet 5 mana dragons and you just kill them with Time Vault.

Barook

07-05-2015, 03:04 PM

Sensei's Divining Top getting banned, after a couple of thousand playmats are gave to the players and Michael Sutfin signed like at least x thousand, would be pretty hilarious.
Like the Survival Judge Promo?

@nedleeds Miracles would probably die off with either banned.

LOLWut

07-05-2015, 03:23 PM

Non blue colors suck if you want to be good against a wide open field. If you play non blue, you just have to hope that you don't run into any combo decks, which are both horrible and quite uninteractive matchups.

Blue's comparative strength against non-glass cannon combo is overstated. If I'm on Storm or Omni, I'll take on most decks with blue over MUD any day. Same with Sneak & Show but with Death & Taxes. Plenty of combo decks fear discard more than counter spells. Hell, Burn probably scares stuff like Storm and Painter more than a lot of decks with blue. Merfolk and U/B Tezz are no slouches if we're including blue decks without Brainstorm. Obviously blue is awesome, but the way you said that, ehhhh.

.
There aren't a whole lot of high profile "Legacy experts". I'd take the Magic intuition of Pros over the opinion of randoms on The Source 100% of the time if I were the DCI, so the public statements of LSV and Edel are probably the most influential statements regarding Top that have been made this B&R cycle.

False choice, really. We don't have to listen to randoms on the Source posting in their boxers, or listen to fly-by "professionals". People like Bob Huang, Philipp Schönegger, Phillip Braverman, Carsten Kotter, and Julian Knab (as well as pros who are also Legacy aficionados) are well-known and knowledgeable, assuming WotC can be bothered to do more research than checking tweets of pros they know.

JDK

07-05-2015, 03:51 PM

Yeah, Wizards should totally listen to people who have been playing 1-2 decks over several years for their objective thinking about banning cards. /sarcasm

dsck

07-05-2015, 04:16 PM

Slow players can take their time just as well with preordain/ponder/brainstorm/sylvan library/jace. WOTC just needs to be way more strict about slow-play and give judges more power to punish for it.

JDK

07-05-2015, 04:17 PM

How often do you use resolve a Brainstorm and how often do you use a resolved SDT? SDT goes the extramile. At least one activation per turn. At least...

When you have a deck like Omni or Miracles though, things get out of hand.

CutthroatCasual

07-05-2015, 04:19 PM

How often do you use resolve a Brainstorm and how often do you use a resolved SDT?

Well most of the time you Brainstorm with Jace so...

MGB

07-05-2015, 04:30 PM

Slow players can take their time just as well with preordain/ponder/brainstorm/sylvan library/jace. WOTC just needs to be way more strict about slow-play and give judges more power to punish for it.

Look, you can play slowly with any deck in any format. But SDT decks are slow by their very nature. Any time you have repeated activations and repeated Brainstorm effects for one mana means that you increase alot more thinking and decision-making and thus TIME into the game.

If you ban Top, a huge majority of these time-consuming processes are just ABSENT from the format. The entire Legacy format speeds up, tournaments finish on time, and people have more fun (except the few people who liked to play Miracles, and even these guys will likely move on to some other Ux control deck and not even care in a few months time).

Barook

07-05-2015, 04:32 PM

What was the meta penetration of Vengevine Survival before it got banned?

nedleeds

07-05-2015, 04:49 PM

What was the meta penetration of Vengevine Survival before it got banned?

You mean the one with Brainstorm to shuffle away extra SotFs?

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35558

or G/w Maverick

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35503

or Madness Aggro

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35427

or Combo

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35557

Look ... mid range, aggro, combo decks! They're all different guys! Survival is just the fabric of the deck, pillar of the format, skill intensive, background noise.

Top 8 was 4 decks on Survival, 5 on Brainstorm. This was pre-Green Sun's Zenith, Delver, Revoker, Abrupt Decay.

Look at the sideboards ... they are a joke. 1 Faerie Macabre. Survival would be sweet but wouldn't touch Brainstorms level of 80-100% penetration.

Fatal

07-05-2015, 04:52 PM

I was thinking about Sensei's Divning Top vs Brainstorm, which ban would open meta.

Let's see which decks runs both cards:

SDT:
Miracles
Nic Fit
Imperial Painter
Doomsday
(some builds of Jund)
12Post

Brainstorm:
All blue decks except Fishes (Merfolks), I'm probably too lazy to write them down - important all DTB except D&T runs it.

I'm not a huge fun of staling with SDT. SDT stalling for 10 years, I think I get used to it, specially after U/w Control became Miracles instead Moat/Humility control.
SDT isn't blue - it's colorless every deck can run it, there are non-blue decks which need them - like Nic Fit or Painter. Brainstorm is blue, sure it's running in Legacy since it's called Legacy and before (1.5) and even on old Extended, but now blue has also much more to offer then card selecting and permission - flying Nacatl, CA with DTT, S&T has much stronger targets etc..

After those thoughts I think hammering brainstorm would give a spin much better then SDT, Miracles should exist, but not so strong as now, banning SDT would just kill it, banning brainstorm would change all decks so same changes for all of them, and miracles still can compete, but you just can't reshuffle Terminus/EtA from opening without Jace, which would give a way for aggro to have a window before SDT stack the pipe.

CutthroatCasual

07-05-2015, 04:54 PM

(except the few people who liked to play Miracles, and even these guys will likely move on to some other Ux control deck and not even care in a few months time).

I'm pretty sure it's more than just a "few."

CutthroatCasual

07-05-2015, 04:55 PM

MGB

07-05-2015, 05:02 PM

I was thinking about Sensei's Divning Top vs Brainstorm, which ban would open meta.

Let's see which decks runs both cards:

SDT:
Miracles
Nic Fit
Imperial Painter
Doomsday
(some builds of Jund)
12Post

Imperial Painter, Doomsday, Jund, Nic Fit and 12Post all run SDT as a tertiary tool and no more than a 1-of or 2-of except in the rarest of circumstances.

All of those decks are fringe Tier 2 strategies, and all of those decks could still play at peak efficiency or near peak efficiency even without Top.

Brainstorm:
All blue decks except Fishes (Merfolks), I'm probably too lazy to write them down - important all DTB except D&T runs it.

I'm not a huge fun of staling with SDT. SDT stalling for 10 years, I think I get used to it, specially after U/w Control became Miracles instead Moat/Humility control.
SDT isn't blue - it's colorless every deck can run it, there are non-blue decks which need them - like Nic Fit or Painter. Brainstorm is blue, sure it's running in Legacy since it's called Legacy and before (1.5) and even on old Extended, but now blue has also much more to offer then card selecting and permission - flying Nacatl, CA with DTT, S&T has much stronger targets etc..

After those thoughts I think hammering brainstorm would give a spin much better then SDT, Miracles should exist, but not so strong as now, banning SDT would just kill it, banning brainstorm would change all decks so same changes for all of them, and miracles still can compete, but you just can't reshuffle Terminus/EtA from opening without Jace, which would give a way for aggro to have a window before SDT stack the pipe.

The difference between Brainstorm and Top is that the effects of banning Brainstorm would have wide, and far-ranging implications that aren't entirely predictable, whereas the effects of banning SDT are very simple to predict: No More Tier 1 Miracles deck, but very little else is affected heavily.

Lemnear

07-05-2015, 05:06 PM

Hammering Brainstorm would give a spin much better then SDT, Miracles should exist, but not so strong as now, banning SDT would just kill it, banning brainstorm would change all decks so same changes for all of them, and miracles still can compete, but you just can't reshuffle Terminus/EtA from opening without Jace.

I'm so sick of this bullshit popping up every ~3 pages again and again and again. The idiocy in this thread is just amazing.

JDK

07-05-2015, 05:12 PM

Well most of the time you Brainstorm with Jace so...

Woot?

LOLWut

07-05-2015, 05:48 PM

Yeah, Wizards should totally listen to people who have been playing 1-2 decks over several years for their objective thinking about banning cards. /sarcasm

Better to get input from people who have been playing a format for several weeks, with 1-2 decks, than people who have been playing a format for several years, with 1-2 decks, I guess. Certain ignorance trumps possible bias.

Adryan

07-05-2015, 05:58 PM

Very delicious stuff in here. I would love to know the jobs of the majority of people in this thread.

Lemnear

07-05-2015, 05:58 PM

Certain ignorance trumps possible bias.

Well put, sir. Remembers me about Brad Nelson claiming Survival + Vengevine kills turn 3 which was quoted several times at Testament that the card is too strong as one of the Main arguments.

I still have never heared of someone dying to Vengevines turn 3.

Adryan

07-05-2015, 05:59 PM

Well put, sir. Remembers me about Brad Nelson claiming Survival + Vengevine kills turn 3 which was quoted several times at Testament that the card is too strong as one of the Main arguments.

I still have never heared of someone dying to Vengevines turn 3.

I guess he meant the very popular Lotus Petal version of this deck ;-)

Lemnear

07-05-2015, 06:02 PM

Very delicious stuff in here. I would love to know the jobs of the majority of people in this thread.

You mean Jobs in which you never have to link "cause" to "results"? ;)

Lemnear

07-05-2015, 06:03 PM

I guess he meant the very popular Lotus Petal version of this deck ;-)

No, the Version with 5 Vengevines as 4 Vines are still just 16 damage only

Piceli89

07-05-2015, 06:10 PM

No Brainstorm ban is going to happen, probably ever. Card has just become too iconc for the format throughout the years and also Wizards of the Coast does not have enough insight/interest in attempting to re-model the format. All the talk that is being made on the topic is just wasted time, so is any attempt to provide rationales for its banning. As much as those can make sense (and they usually do), it is not about the power-level of the card, otherwise it would have been axed since a long time; it is about keeping intact the facade of a format that still generates revenues through (not-so-frequent-anymore) GPs. Also, keeping a good chunk of their customers happy is as important, and we can agree that despites the controversy, the majority of Legacy players does love Brainstorm.

Legacy is bound to be dominated by blue decks probably until the end of its existence. It is pretty unfair but it is just the way things are. The glorious day of fair decks with a low power-ceiling and very complex games played off small edges are long gone. If you strive for those again I would suggest moving to either Standard or Limited. The latter also rewards deckbuilding skills, both creative and thoughtful. Modern has at times this kind of element in it but unfortunately unfair, shortcut games are also there (see Splinter Twin). I know that Legacy has its particular charm as both an Eternal format and probably the one with the greatest amount of layers in decisions (ironically also thanks to Brainstorm) so moving on is pretty hard. Still, those formats can be as satisfying if you leave the stigma behind.

As for Dig, three non-blue decks in this last GP top8ing means nothing is going to change. It is somewhat funny to follow the coverage and hear the commentators (or better, one of them, Lybaert) complaining several times about the brokenness of the card (for which he is absolutely right) for nothing.

Adryan

07-05-2015, 06:15 PM

No Brainstorm ban is going to happen, probably ever. Card has just become too iconc for the format throughout the years and also Wizards of the Coast does not have enough insight/interest in attempting to re-model the format. All the talk that is being made on the topic is just wasted time, so is any attempt to provide rationales for its banning. As much as those can make sense (and they usually do), it is not about the power-level of the card, otherwise it would have been axed since a long time; it is about keeping intact the facade of a format that still generates revenues through (not-so-frequent-anymore) GPs. Also, keeping a good chunk of their customers happy is as important, and we can agree that despites the controversy, the majority of Legacy players does love Brainstorm.

Legacy is bound to be dominated by blue decks probably until the end of its existence. It is pretty unfair but it is just the way things are. The glorious day of fair decks with a low power-ceiling and very complex games played off small edges are long gone. If you strive for those again I would suggest moving to either Standard or Limited. The latter also rewards deckbuilding skills, both creative and thoughtful. Modern has at times this kind of element in it but unfortunately unfair, shortcut games are also there (see Splinter Twin).

As for Dig, three non-blue decks in this last GP top8ing means nothing is going to change. It is somewhat funny to follow the coverage and hear the commentators (or better, one of them, Lybaert) complaining several times about the brokenness of the card (for which he is absolutely right) for nothing.

Very well writen, that should be the first post of this thread.
---------

If Wotc wants to decrease the number of blue decks in the format, they should start banning fast mana (City of Traitors, Lotus Petal etc. ; so about 30 cards). Then people can bring their fair non blue decks and compete. Aggro Loam for example does very well against all the fair blue decks, but the problem people might have with this deck and other non blue decks (at least I have) is that you have to hope for good pairings (dodge Combo). Playing with a fair non blue deck against Combo is anything but fun, and even if you have your SB full of hate cards, you are still not a favorite to win, due to the nature of combo decks and card games.

JDK

07-05-2015, 06:20 PM

Better to get input from people who have been playing a format for several weeks, with 1-2 decks, than people who have been playing a format for several years, with 1-2 decks, I guess. Certain ignorance trumps possible bias.

Well, LSV is not new to Legacy.

Valtrix

07-05-2015, 07:12 PM

btm10

07-05-2015, 07:13 PM

Very well writen, that should be the first post of this thread.
---------

If Wotc wants to decrease the number of blue decks in the format, they should start banning fast mana (City of Traitors, Lotus Petal etc. ; so about 30 cards). Then people can bring their fair non blue decks and compete. Aggro Loam for example does very well against all the fair blue decks, but the problem people might have with this deck and other non blue decks (at least I have) is that you have to hope for good pairings (dodge Combo). Playing with a fair non blue deck against Combo is anything but fun, and even if you have your SB full of hate cards, you are still not a favorite to win, due to the nature of combo decks and card games.

Agreed.

Another option for making "fair" nonblue decks more competitive might be to ban Ponder; it avoids the more contentious issue of Brainstorm while making combo less consistent so (for example) the Omni-Tell/Aggro Loam matchup ends up ~60/40 for Omni rather than 70/30. I'm not sure that this is a good plan, but if the goal is to improve the standing of these decks, it's something that has the benefit of actually being palatable to a broad swath of the community while not doing nothing.

As for Dig Through Time, I don't think I've ever been more disappointed that a problematic card was poorly represented in a major Top 8.

Barook

07-05-2015, 07:23 PM

Agreed.

Another option for making "fair" nonblue decks more competitive might be to ban Ponder; it avoids the more contentious issue of Brainstorm while making combo less consistent so (for example) the Omni-Tell/Aggro Loam matchup ends up ~60/40 for Omni rather than 70/30. I'm not sure that this is a good plan, but if the goal is to improve the standing of these decks, it's something that has the benefit of actually being palatable to a broad swath of the community while not doing nothing.

As for Dig Through Time, I don't think I've ever been more disappointed that a problematic card was poorly represented in a major Top 8.
Brainstorm is the main culprit of the cantrip shell. Replacing Ponder with Preordain is going to achieve jackshit as the quality sorcery cantrips are pretty much interchangable with little power drops in-between.

DTT placed 5 deck running it in the Top 8, so there's still hope for a ban.

JDK

07-05-2015, 07:36 PM

@valtrix
The faster turns before the combo make up for it most of the time. Anyway, it's a fringe deck and at least I have less draws with it than I have against Miracles. I also cannot remember seeing many draws in its few feature matches.

Modo's chess clock is actually something good for the game.

@barook
We get it, you despise Brainstorm to the fullest. :tongue:

Teluin

07-05-2015, 07:49 PM

Very well writen, that should be the first post of this thread.
---------

If Wotc wants to decrease the number of blue decks in the format, they should start banning fast mana (City of Traitors, Lotus Petal etc. ; so about 30 cards).

This is beyond stupid. You realize it would eliminate a lot of non-blue decks that rely on them more, right? I think this thread has become people choosing the decks they hate to play against and crying 'ban'.

Megadeus

07-05-2015, 07:53 PM

This is beyond stupid. You realize it would eliminate a lot of non-blue decks that rely on them more, right? I think this thread has become people choosing the decks they hate to play against and crying 'ban'.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that was pretty stupid. Why would we ban cards like city of traitors and lotus petal? Those aren't problem cards at all. Like for fucks sake. If that's your proposition to nerfing combo,you apparently have no fucking clue or you just refuse to accept that brainstorm is a real problem because you play the card

Adryan

07-05-2015, 08:09 PM

Glad I'm not the only one who thought that was pretty stupid. Why would we ban cards like city of traitors and lotus petal? Those aren't problem cards at all. Like for fucks sake. If that's your proposition to nerfing combo,you apparently have no fucking clue or you just refuse to accept that brainstorm is a real problem because you play the card

I really hope that Brainstorm gets banned.

I like playing combo against non blue decks. And only copying my first sentence is really dumb. Blue is so heavily played, because there is not a lot incentive to play non blue decks. Yeah well you play Aggro Loam and try to punish the blue cantrip shell and have a 60/40 MU or even better. But then you play against MUD, Storm, Show and Tell etc. and have a nightmare matchup. Better play a deck that is more versatile and does not have any horrible matchups.

If Wotc wants more non blue decks, they should slow down combo.

Stevestamopz

07-05-2015, 08:51 PM

Admiral_Arzar

07-05-2015, 08:58 PM

This is pretty lulzy

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/day-2-exemplar-decklists-2015-07-05

"Hey guys, look at all these non-cantrip-cartel decks that that did sort of ok! Look, there's even Goblins, come on guys, the format's healthy!"

/s

Yeah that article was a joke. "Hey guyz, let's list all these cool and/or fun decks that didn't make it anywhere near the top eight, that'll convince those blue haters!"

JDK

07-05-2015, 09:20 PM

"anywhere near the top eight"

You do realize, that those places are often only tiebreakers or 1-3 points away from top8, right? :eyebrow:

Dice_Box

07-05-2015, 09:36 PM

Yes, I agree. Goblins in 152th place was fucked on breakers. Elves at 55 had the same issue. Oh and Fish on 112th. Those fucking breakers.

LOLWut

07-05-2015, 10:54 PM

Well, LSV is not new to Legacy.

He may be a fan, but he doesn't play it on a regular basis, which is crucial to true understanding of format state.

HSCK

07-05-2015, 10:55 PM

He may be a fan, but he doesn't play it on a regular basis, which is crucial.

Does he need to to validate his opinion or something? He's one of the best players ever and I'd trust his analysis over most anyone on anything Magic related.

MGB

07-05-2015, 11:15 PM

I'm not convinced banning SDT is actually going to decrease tournament time. Hell, I tuned into the GP at the end of day 2 and saw an Omni-tell player have an unintentional draw against a RUG delver player. Draws are still going to happen, especially at larger size tournaments. Unless you are able to somehow remove all unintentional draws, nothing is actually accomplished in terms of saving time, for the most part. Sure maybe a couple top 8s clip around a bit faster, but making top 8s go faster does not seem to be in line with any kind of banning policy. I play a fair amount of Modern too, and those tournaments also go to time as well, and the format should be significantly easier to play. Unintentional draws are just things that happen. That said, the real problems are combo decks which take forever to finish on their combo turn. For example, think of high tide decks--these can potentially drag a tournament on a lot longer due to their final turns taking so long. However, these types of decks are not widespread enough to warrant any change.

Not all drivers of cars with tinted windows are shady. Heck, I have a friend who is nice as can be and he has a car with tinted windows.

Similarly, not all shady people drive with tinted windows. I know a habitual burglar who drives a brand new Prius with perfectly clear windows!

See, by coming up with anecdotal evidence like this, I can come to faulty conclusions too!

The fact of the matter is that 80%+ of draws in tournaments is the result of Miracles. Not all draws are a result of Miracles-players, and not all Miracles-players draw in any given tournament, but banning SDT an decreasing the number of Miracles players in Legacy tournaments would have a greater impact on tournament length and slow play in general than anything else we can do with the banlist.