Blue needs a Nerf

[bracer028]

i'm not spamming or anything, but blue really needs a nerf in legacy. its almost to the point that if you are not running blue, you are not playing competitively. of course you cannot ban cards like FOW because thats basically keeps combo in check.

blue just needs a simple ban to diversify the meta. something thats not overpowered but useful. wont destroy blue in any way, but would weaken it to match the other colors.

that card is brainstorm.

Capitalization is required on these boards. Please use it. Thanks. -zilla

[Whippoorwill]

blue just needs a simple ban to diversify the meta.

I thought the meta was already diverse.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Some day people are going to grow testicles and just put Mental Misstep in non-blue decks, and then everyone can be happy.

[Grollub]

Blue does not need a nerf. New decks just need to emerge rather than old decks adjusting their strategy and thus becoming inferior versions of themselves.

Seriously... Misstep have been legal how long?

[Fsk]

of course you cannot ban cards like FOW because thats basically keeps combo in check.


Actually FOW basically keeps the entire format in check, by making every non-blue deck suboptimal.

[tsabo_tavoc]

that card is brainstorm.

This is some real discussion. I think many more people will join the rank after High Tide will have won the GP.

[menace13]

They need to BAN anyone who even thinks of banning Brainstorm.

[Julian23]

Actually FOW basically keeps the entire format in check, by making every non-blue deck suboptimal.

You don't know what you're talking about. FOW actually enables non-blue strategies who would otherwise be totally overrun by a combo-heavy meta.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

For what it's worth I haven't played non-FOW combo in months.

[sporenfrosch1411]

This old discussion again?
Force of Will holds Combo Decks away from overtaking the Meta.
Force of Will provides card disadvantage and lifeloss.
Non-FoW/Blue Decks like Zoo, Dredge, GW Aggro and more are competitive.

And please don't call Mental Misstep "unfair". It is a situational card. It is good, but not over the top "omg needs to be banned"-like. I like it, i play it, but its far away from beeing imbalanced.
Anyone who says that decks are dead because of Mental Misstep or Force of Will has not played Magic long or good enough.

Just my 2 cents.

[Rizso]

Its way better to print new cards that actually nerf blue decks then ban card. Its not only in legacy blue needs nerf in. Its quite the same in standard where jace decks rules the world :P Mean when was the last time in scg open when there was less then 50% jace decks in the top 8...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Maybe they could print a card that's good against combo and gives a slice of blue's color pie away to anyone who wants it.

Maybe something like a free counter, only instead of owning an island or ditching a blue card you just pay life. Hey, that sounds pretty good in Zoo and Goblins.

I am actually enraged by the lack of gumption Legacy players exhibit. I mean blue has a lot of really good cards that you actually need blue to play, but they just printed a really good card you definitely don't need blue to play. I don't think MM is an auto-four-of in every deck, but the fact that people are bemoaning the dominance of blue and not even trying to stuff it into other decks is pathetic.

[Nicol Bolas]

The only deck with brainstorms that is widely played is Team America. It's not even pure blue. Merfolk is blue but doesn't play brainstorms. And Landstill is not popular in every meta. I don't understand where all this concern is coming from. Is it because the OP has lost too many games against Team America?

[bracer028]

Its way better to print new cards that actually nerf blue decks then ban card. Its not only in legacy blue needs nerf in. Its quite the same in standard where jace decks rules the world :P Mean when was the last time in scg open when there was less then 50% jace decks in the top 8...

i knew there would be lots of hate in this thread when i talked about blue being overpowered to any other colors.

i'm not talking about a whole ban on FOW or anything. I actually like FOW in the legacy scene. What im' really discussing is that they just need something to make blue somewhat of a less desired color to play.

It seems like its always a BLUE/splash of another color to be a competitive deck. Same discussion of how jace is dominating standard. almost no deck who wants to get a top 8 finish don't have jace.

[bracer028]

The only deck with brainstorms that is widely played is Team America. It's not even pure blue. Merfolk is blue but doesn't play brainstorms. And Landstill is not popular in every meta. I don't understand where all this concern is coming from. Is it because the OP has lost too many games against Team America?

thats irrelevant whether i have lost to team america. I cannot ask for a whole ban on things like FOW, Daze, spell snare, jace. I'm saying just one card to make blue less desired to play...that would be brainstorm.

It would not obliterate the color, but it would weaken it SLIGHTLY where you won't all together not play the color anymore.

[Rizso]

They could push for some really harsh red anti blue cards, Not just pyroblasts where blue decks splash red just to counter blue spells..

Something like this Burn spell

Die Jace die! 3R
Instant
If your opponent has played a blue spell this turn, you may remove a red card from your hand instead of paying die Jace Die! mana cost.
Cant Be countered by spells or abilties
Deals 5 damage to each opponents, then if alternative cost was payed you draw 2 cards.

I piss in your pool
Goblin 2/2 2R
Protection white and blue
When IPIUP enters battlefield, IPIYP deals 1 damage to each opponent for each permanent he or she controlls that can produce a blue or white mana.
At the beginning of each of your oppnents upkeep, IPIYP deals 1 damage to that player for each permanent he or she controlls that can produce a blue or white mana.

Name would ofc not be does :P

[rogue.nine]

They could push for some really harsh red anti blue cards, Not just pyroblasts where blue decks splash red just to counter blue spells..

Why do they have to red?

Well lots of color based hosers against blue exist:
Thrun, the last troll
Choke
Boil
REB/Pyroblast
spinal villain
seedtime
etc.

Of couse they're of varying quality...but if you want to be beat blue sideboard cards for that exist...if you don't mind them being a bit narrow.

That aside I would hate a ban on brainstorm it's probably my favorite spell and it makes people cry who use it in non force decks like TES/ANT. Although you are at least looking in the right direction when it comes to why blue is good: cheap draw filters for consistency and digging for answers.

[Rizso]

Why do they have to red?

Well lots of color based hosers against blue exist:
Thrun, the last troll
Choke
Boil
REB/Pyroblast
spinal villain
seedtime
etc.

Of couse they're of varying quality...but if you want to be beat blue sideboard cards for that exist...if you don't mind them being a bit narrow.

That aside I would hate a ban on brainstorm it's probably my favorite spell and it makes people cry who use it in non force decks like TES/ANT. Although you are at least looking in the right direction when it comes to why blue is good: cheap draw filters for consistency and digging for answers.

Thoes card arent really as harsh as they should when blue is dominating every format.

[Fsk]

You don't know what you're talking about. FOW actually enables non-blue strategies who would otherwise be totally overrun by a combo-heavy meta.

I may be wrong but i definitelly know what i am talking about. There are enough hate cards to keep combo in check but with FOW being so much more versatile there is no point playing them.
Sure you can play non-blue strategies and pray for good pairings but you could just play a blue-based deck instead and do well against anything.

If you dont want to have the best chance of winning in legacy, you have to play fow. Most people are ok with this, thinking that fow somehow prevent some hypothetical all-combo format but others think that the card is just too good and destroy the balance of the format.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Brainstorm, Jace, and Force are nice, but I'd much rather play a non-blue aggro or midrange deck against them than against TES. Force is a very fair card in a straight up slug-fest; look at the last match they're covering where AJ Sacher sided them out against Team Italia. That's the right move against some dude running Hymns and other attrition cards; you'd rather just have removal.

[I am the brainwasher]

I think one of the factors that is responsible for the monthly "Blue needs a BAN" magazine is that most players havent recognized that it is not just challenging to play against blue decks, but is also quite difficult to actually play all sort of blue decks.
Both positions are heavily underestimated and so the more unsatisfied complains, which is most of the times the non-blue-player.
It takes a rather high ammount of testing and getting to know opposing decks to pilot BOTH blue and non-blue. Many very good articles exist which describe that exact "problem" which is omnipresent in nearly each format and could simply be solved:
Know.Your.Deck.And.Play.It.Well.

It is incredibly skillful to turn a game into someones favour regardless which deck plays against eachother as long as both pilots mastered their deck (well, most of the time).
I would go that far that 7 out of 10 players actually dont know how to play THEIR OWN (aka copy_paste) deck correct. It is tempting to say that the color of blue involves a lot more thinking and is in terms of beeing a complicated deck far above than nearly all sort of Aggro-decks, but thats not really true. Just because your playing Zoo or Goblins you arent playing a dumb deck. Combat math, calculation, sideboard/mulligan-decisions and the ability to mindgame and turn games around due to unusual plays do exist and this is true for these decks as much as for every other deck (when not more important). Tapping dudes to the win is not easy when you reached the point as a player that you understood that it isnt about just tapping mana and curving out all the time. Beeing constantly successful with aggressive decks, playing blue or not, is hard work and if you arent willing to invest that much effort dont try to compensate your lack of skill with unreasonable longing for banning cards like Force of Will or Brainstorm.
Use your energy to advance your plays and understanding your deck as well as how you could grind out all sort of blue decks.

PS: Says the dude that is playing Dredge and Burn recently... .

[Offler]

Simply to say, if I play against group of kids who can build up only some boros agro decks its like this:

"Dont play stasis, its boring"
*Stasis removed*
"Dont play Teferi, its too strong"
*Teferi removed*

and when it was over it was like

"Dont play good blue cards, dont play blue at all, because we dont play blue and we dont like to play against blue".

[Koby]

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

[bracer028]

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

nah...rock based decks with strong discard has no problems with blue decks.

i was just looking at the top decks in the louisville GP and realized almost all decks had a variation of blue.

[Gheizen64]

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

Wow so good, a conditional lightning bolt that's dead against non-brainstorm non-jace decks.

No seriously, Runeflare sucks donkey balls. If i wanted to hate out blue i'd rather run carpet of flowers or smth of that level.

[troopatroop]

Wow so good, a conditional lightning bolt that's dead against non-brainstorm non-jace decks.

No seriously, Runeflare sucks donkey balls. If i wanted to hate out blue i'd rather run carpet of flowers or smth of that level.

You're wrong. Runeflare trap can deal 7 damage for R, which is devastating. Ad Nauseam decks cast Brainstorm sometimes.

[Koby]

We all can agree that any deck playing blue is attempting to use the strengths of Brainstorm, Force of Will, and Mental Misstep together. Merfolk is the outlyer because it's an aggro deck, but all the others will play those cards for sure.

Simple strategies that attack multiple resources, like hand, or lands, or together like Pox are good against these decks. Devastating Dreams in Aggro Loam, or a resolved Seismic Assault with an active Loam can demand control against these decks, but it needs to pack enough disruption.

Imagine a deck like Aggro Loam with Raven's Crime to beat the control decks, and Devastating dreams to beat the aggro decks.

The big 3 blue cards aren't going anywhere, nor will they banned any time soon. Stop complaining and build to beat that strategy. Goblins is not going to continue to perform if it never adapts.

[SlopeeJ]

I'm not saying anything needs to be banned, but have you guys played against these control decks? How can goblins "adapt" or anything adapt? They counter all your plays starting with turn 1, sitting back doing nothing but countering and dropping standstill.. even on an empty board with no factories. I play merfolk and if they counter your turn 1 vial, you lose the game. So I have no idea how any other deck that plays creatures can resolve anything. Every deck needs heavy discard? This doesn't even include the peace keepers, wraths, deeds etc (pick one card) that all they have to do is protect... Then drop Jace and its over.

I find this very interesting and look forward to see how/if the meta can adapt.

[Nidd]

How can goblins "adapt"
By playing Mental Misstep itself.

If you can't beat them, join them

[bracer028]

By playing Mental Misstep itself.

If you can't beat them, join them

that's just wrong in a goblin deck

[Nidd]

that's just wrong in a goblin deck
No, it's wrong to play bad lists.

[Flan R-E]

Nothing is "just wrong"

"just wrong" is ignorance

[dahcmai]

+dollars for me. Maverick with Thrun and Blurred Mongoose is definitely a blue players bad day. Play blue please, it makes it easier to get moolah. I'm so loving this landstill craze right now with players who aren't used to reacting to meta changes and just play straight up lists.

[Tammit67]

The Hatfields and David Price all make day 2. With Zoo.

A bunch of great players could have played misstep or batterskull today decided there isn't anything better to do in this meta than playing cat tribal.

[dontbiteitholmes]

You guys are being really short sighted. Mental Misstep doesn't change as much as people think it does. The main thing it did was make people THINK that blue was stronger and decks with lots of one drops were weaker which means more people playing blue and less people playing fast aggro decks. What people will soon find out though, is that adding 4x Mental Missteps to a deck that used to not be favorable to Zoo and Goblins does not make that deck favorable to Zoo and Goblins by default. Last year at this time the best decks were probably UG Madness and Ub Merfolk and only one person knew it for each deck, I think we will learn a lot again this year and I expect the top 16 to look different than any recent SCG top 16. Mental Misstep is a strong card indeed, but saying that now that it came out Blue beats Zoo and Gobs is a joke.

[Fsk]

Nobody said Zoo or Midrange aggro couldnt beat blue deck. I would say it is quite a fair fight depending on the builds. But those aggro decks are just underdog to combo. You can do well with Zoo if you got good pairings but you could do as well with blue-based deck without luck involved. The only reason to choose Zoo over Merfolk is because you expect a lot of Merfolk hate or no combo at all. But most of the time you should just pick blue-based deck because these are good against everything (and one of the reason is fow beeing too versatile/good).

[wcm8]

FoW actually tends to be sided out in a lot of matchups, so this is not really the overpowered blue card. What really makes blue seemingly unfair is all of the card draw and filtering, enabling a far more consistent strategy by not being at the mercy of the topdeck.

[DragoFireheart]

This topic needs more Thrun, the Last Troll. Seriously, why haven't more people tested him? He is controls worse nightmare.

[Solar Ice]

FoW actually tends to be sided out in a lot of matchups

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

[troopatroop]

This topic needs more Thrun, the Last Troll. Seriously, why haven't more people tested him? He is controls worse nightmare.

I'm sorry, Your comments are devolving at a steady pace. For the same cost, cast a Jace. Control hates that too. You think this is news?

[Nidd]

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?
Against Zoo, for example. You basically don't want it against MUs which end up being a slugfest because FoW costs you 2 cards most of the time.

[DarthVicious]

B/R
Instant
Split Second
Players can't draw cards this turn.

Or something like this

R/G R/G
Enchantment
Cannot be countered.
If a player controls any islands, that player can't play spells unless it's their turn.

[DragoFireheart]

I'm sorry, Your comments are devolving at a steady pace. For the same cost, cast a Jace. Control hates that too. You think this is news?

There was a time Jace was considered a bad card.

Then people tested it.

[overpowered]

Jace vs Thrun is an unfair comparison. Both of you shut up before this thread devolves furth... oh, we're talking about banning brainstorm and force of will. Never mind! Talk about whatever you'd like!

FoW is fine. Brainstorm is fine. YES these cards are powerful. So is a 3/3 for one green. So is a 4/4 for 2GG that can't be countered or targeted. So is Pernicious Deed, Hymn to Tourach and Swords to Plowshares. So is Elspeth. So is Moat.

Just talk about the format please, don't compare cards unjustly. This thread isn't about card comparison... it's about card suggestions, the format and someone's opinion regarding blue needing a nerf.

[dahcmai]

I had a chuckle at those comments. Thrun is maindeck in that GW aggro as I mentioned. He's a heck of a green sun's target. He's turned out fairly decent so far. It was also in the 4th place deck of Bazaar of Moxen in the main. He's no slouch. I actually tested Blurred Mongoose also and Thrun took his main spot. I'd say he's here to stay.

[Koby]

I also like Karakas/Vendilion Clique against said blue decks. It's also sick in response to Standstill from the control player, and beats the snot out of ground-locked SFM decks.

Can the blue decks deal with KotR backed with MM? Just a thought...

[the_ob3lisk]

They need to BAN anyone who even thinks of banning Brainstorm.:cool:

[lordofthepit]

B/R
Instant
Split Second
Players can't draw cards this turn.


Sounds like a lot of fun on Isochron Scepter. Exactly the type of game I'm sure WotC would like to promote.

[perm]

Force of Will is a losing proposition against most types of aggro decks. You basically turn one of their interchangeable beaters into a Hymn. People overrate FoW because angry nerds get redfaced when people stop their cards from resolving when they envisioned doing uber cool things with them

[Koby]

Force of Will is a losing proposition against most types of aggro decks. You basically turn one of their interchangeable beaters into a Hymn. People overrate FoW because angry nerds get redfaced when people stop their cards from resolving when they envisioned doing uber cool things with them

For every matchup where FOW eats another card to take out a beater, is a matchup where FOW protects you from losing the game right now against Glass Cannons and other combos. Which would you rather be left out in the cold against?

[OurSerratedDust]

I think that mental misstep has pushed blue over the edge. As the original poster pointed out, it makes legacy more of a "play blue to be successful" kind of deal. While legacy is fairly diverse right now, the meta was much more diverse before MM.

[Lemnear]

I think that mental misstep has pushed blue over the edge. As the original poster pointed out, it makes legacy more of a "play blue to be successful" kind of deal. While legacy is fairly diverse right now, the meta was much more diverse before MM.

Zoo/Tribal vs. ANT/TES was a very diverse meta in my previous area. Misstep is an excuse to switch to control en masse and so it seems that blue control beats everything but that's not the whole picture.

[Fsk]

People overrate FoW because angry nerds get redfaced when people stop their cards from resolving when they envisioned doing uber cool things with them

No. We overrate FOW because it won every legacy GP and most big tournaments. Also those have about 5 or 6 FOW deck in their top8.

This said, a non-FOW deck won GP providence. Basically with MM taking its spot and doing its job. But i'm not sure yet if that is good news or not :)

[Offler]

to perm and FSK:
You both are right. There are still blue "control" decks not only in legacy, but many other formats which can use only counterspells without any good lock.

When I tried to play Ertai, Wizard adept with Arcane laboratory, while most time of the game I have to wait for some mana and good offensive spell people accused me of slow play, leaving game before it had ended. They did not realized that my deck is working fine - exactly I planned to play.

Mental misstep just hits 2 kinds of decks:
Vintage-legacy 1st turn winners
Low mana based decks where 4 CMC is considered for too expensive card in mana.

The reason why its Mental Misstep rated so high, is it has huge influence on people who dont actually want play it and dont want to see it in play. Same for FOW.

The real rating of both cards is not caused by their actual power (quite high), but by decks which actually lose tempo due this form of non-mana disrupt.

[GGoober]

The format is fair at this point. It's seemingly deceiving that cards like Brainstorm/Jace should be banned because they seem 'overpowered'. The truth as pointed out by many people above, there are a lot of powerful cards in Legacy.

The big difference between cards in Legacy and cards in say Vintage is: You have Brainstorm/Jace/LED/Moat/NO that are so powerful, yet you don't see a ton of decks playing all these cards all the time. The only exception is Brainstorm and maybe Mental Misstep these days (BoM/SCG/GP Top 8s). The real culprit is: the blue color pie in eternal format is very very powerful. It's the combination of Brainstorm/Jace/FoW/Daze/Pierce etc that makes the color very powerful, compare that to a combination of other cards like Goyf/Nacatl/Hierarch/NO or Duress/Hymn/Tombstalker/Bob etc. You'll see why blue feels 'overpowered' at times. It's just historically that the combination of good powerful blue cards act much stronger than combination of cards from other colors.

[Skeggi]

The discussion of this thread is if Brainstorm should be banned. Granted, I think it's the best card in Legacy for quite some time now, but it makes me wonder why Chains of Mephistopheles isn't that populair. I guess it's because Choke is better. So thefe you are, run Choke. Or City of Solitude or Leyline of Vitality.

[dragonwisdom]

Blue does need a nerf. Anyone who disagrees frankly does not understand Legacy or magic.

The strongest colors in order. Blue and Black should be consensus 1 and 2. You can argue the rest. Though, sadly red is definitely last. (power creep has weakened lightning bolt)

1) Blue
2) Black
3) White
4) Green
5 ) Red

If the R&D team, was doing it's job, then all colors would be equal on average.

The solution as pointed out by previous posts is to print better cards for the other colors that are NOT narrow. See the arguments of Thrun, choke, Blue elemental Blast stopping blue are just wrong. Those cards Must be boarded in. Jace, Mental Misstep, FoW are main board cards and are good against, well almost everything. So the blue mage win's game 1 and then your stuck having to win 2 games.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Blue does need a nerf. Anyone who disagrees frankly does not understand Legacy or magic.

The strongest colors in order. Blue and Black should be consensus 1 and 2.

No? White has ownership or joint custody of about half of the top creatures (KotR, Stoneforge, Qasali Pridemage, Nacatl), and by far the best removal in the format. Green would be pulling up third. Hell, the best card in black requires green anyway.


If the R&D team, was doing it's job, then all colors would be equal on average.

Assuming this were possible, why do you say it's desirable?

[DragoFireheart]

If the R&D team, was doing it's job, then all colors would be equal on average.


Why should the color pie be equal? The equality of the color pie is not stopping players from choosing which colors they wish to utilize. Just because Blue is the most powerful piece of the color pie does not mean that some players are barred from blue while others can use blue.

The things that blue does naturally makes it a powerful color: drawing cards, countering spells, filter spells, etc. However, just because there is an imbalance also does not mean that the other colors are invalidated.

White has superior removal and has a piece of some of the most powerful creatures.
Green has the best beaters.
Black has powerful creatures and powerful draw effects. Also, it's the color of combo and discard.

Even Red, which many would consider the weakest color, gives reach and redundancy for decks that wish to use it. Between Burning Wish and mana accel for combo decks, goblins for goblin decks, and the flexibility of burn spells (like Lightning Bolt), red frequently complements decks which use it. It's in fact the best color for fighting blue decks:

Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon can be brutal to blue decks that get greedy with their mana bases (and can screw over other mana greedy decks).

Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast are excellent foils to destroy blue counters and blowing up fish.

Grim Lavamancer can easily hose fish.

If you feel that blue is too strong, start playing more red decks. Blue may be the strongest color, but it's strength is in fact weakness at times. Blue is only good because it also relies heavily on other colors at times.

[Gheizen64]

May i suggest this?

http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MAG4TH/black_vise.jpg

Problem is the best deck for this card is probably UR Vore lol. Sadly Vise isn't as good as it used to against control nowadays, it was broken when keeper was the best deck nowadays it's just annoying.

[dahcmai]

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn. That thing is horrible. I hope Black Vise never comes back again. It's not quite the powerhouse it used to be, but it's sure one mean card that I really wouldn't want to see in playsets again.

[Gheizen64]

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn. That thing is horrible. I hope Black Vise never comes back again. It's not quite the powerhouse it used to be, but it's sure one mean card that I really wouldn't want to see in playsets again.

It's funny, because i wanted to say the same. I've tested it and the card sucks, i had far better memories of it, but i guess those were the days before FoW. Dropping 3 is doable only via DR, and you have to realize that a single FoW on one of those absolutely wreak you since you wasted 5 cards to make 3 damage to your opponent. A MM isn't as bad but you'd take only 6, at most 8 and then the control deck would recover quickly seeing as you mindtwisted yourself, leaving easy game for control to answer your leftover threats. I'd prefer hymn off a ritual, it's more sinergistic with the eventual black deck you're hypotizing there and less vulnerable to MM.

The card is unplayable in burn as it is a worse lava spike. In prison it could work (actually, it would sucks as it is no real win condition and no real prison lock), but it has bad sinergy with CotV, and prison sucks in general. In aggro the card is an absolutely dead draw past t1 and you shouldn't run it unless you had a way to recycle artifacts (affinity mb?). The best deck for it is probably a prison/stasis blue deck with Arcane Denial, Howling mines, lot of counterspell and bounce. And that would scoop to so many things it isn't even fun.


If anything i've changed my mind and i don't want it unbanned because it would do nothing to the format, wouldn't hose control any more than cursed scroll do and would go only in Tier 3 annoying decks.

[Offler]

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn.

One of reasons why I like singleton formats.

[DarthVicious]

Sounds like a lot of fun on Isochron Scepter. Exactly the type of game I'm sure WotC would like to promote.

Agreed, my bad. That's too much. Maybe make it a sorcery with flash and split second?

Although none of it is really necessary. I agree with the 'play more red decks' opinion if you want to beat on blue.

[wcm8]

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

There are tons of matchups where your force and blue card is not worth their one card, particularly against most aggro and midrange type decks. Obviously it depends on what you are playing and what they are playing, but for example, playing Team America vs. Junk or Merfolk is a case where TA would side out Forces for more relevant sideboard cards.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

There are tons of matchups where your force and blue card is not worth their one card, particularly against most aggro and midrange type decks. Obviously it depends on what you are playing and what they are playing, but for example, playing Team America vs. Junk or Merfolk is a case where TA would side out Forces for more relevant sideboard cards.

Or as another example, against Zoo, pretty much any deck that uses Force of Will should side it out. This is because Zoo's gameplan doesn't revolve around trying to cast any "must-counter" spells. Just about all their non-land cards are in the deck to be under-costed and deal damage, so this level of redundancy makes it not worthwhile to go -2 cards, -1 life in order to counter one of their cards.

I remember I had a similar kneejerk "I can't side out FoW, that's crazy" type of reaction as this Solar Ice character, the first time someone mentioned this strategy to me. But as amazing as FoW is, occasionally it's just one of the worst cards in your deck in some particular matchups.

[lorddotm]

For every matchup where FOW eats another card to take out a beater, is a matchup where FOW protects you from losing the game right now against Glass Cannons and other combos. Which would you rather be left out in the cold against?

You are one of the people who overrates counters btw.

[AngryTroll]

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

Max McCall wrote a great article about this very topic over at Star City Games. (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21058_Ideas_Unbound_Boarding_out_Force_of_Will.html)

[Tacosnape]

All I see in this thread is "Hey, here's how to win through a counterwall."

There's not nearly enough of "How do you not lose through a counterwall?" Specifically, we're talking about blue combo, and how the shell for it is essentially now Force, Misstep, Brainstorm, Daze, Intuition, random 2-card combo, other stuff.

Seriously. Painter is strong. Reanimator is strong. Fucking Hive Mind is strong. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody top with an Illusions/Donate list, honestly. Because right now the beginning of Legacy combo starts with Force of Will, Mental Misstep, Intuition, and usually Daze. And quite frankly, the combo you stick in the shell really doesn't matter all that much. You're just playing roulette with the metagame hate.

Legacy's turning into a weird 4-way rock-paper scissors match between Blue Aggro-Control, Blue Control, Blue combo, and old archetypes with a ton of blue hate in sideboard (Which, for the record, is omnipresent in all Zoo placings recently. Thruns, Chokes, REBs, and Grips are all good against different forms of blue decks.)

So yes, blue needs an axe. There just isn't a great choice to ban. Axe Mental Misstep and we go back to the endless absurdity of trying to keep storm, dredge, etc. in check. Axe Force and the format gets out of control. Axe Brainstorm and you aren't really going to solve the problem. Ditto for Jace. Probably ditto for Intuition, though this is actually the card I'd pick to ban. But really, the problem isn't any one card. It's all of them put together.

[bracer028]

All I see in this thread is "Hey, here's how to win through a counterwall."

There's not nearly enough of "How do you not lose through a counterwall?" Specifically, we're talking about blue combo, and how the shell for it is essentially now Force, Misstep, Brainstorm, Daze, Intuition, random 2-card combo, other stuff.

Seriously. Painter is strong. Reanimator is strong. Fucking Hive Mind is strong. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody top with an Illusions/Donate list, honestly. Because right now the beginning of Legacy combo starts with Force of Will, Mental Misstep, Intuition, and usually Daze. And quite frankly, the combo you stick in the shell really doesn't matter all that much. You're just playing roulette with the metagame hate.

Legacy's turning into a weird 4-way rock-paper scissors match between Blue Aggro-Control, Blue Control, Blue combo, and old archetypes with a ton of blue hate in sideboard (Which, for the record, is omnipresent in all Zoo placings recently. Thruns, Chokes, REBs, and Grips are all good against different forms of blue decks.)

So yes, blue needs an axe. There just isn't a great choice to ban. Axe Mental Misstep and we go back to the endless absurdity of trying to keep storm, dredge, etc. in check. Axe Force and the format gets out of control. Axe Brainstorm and you aren't really going to solve the problem. Ditto for Jace. Probably ditto for Intuition, though this is actually the card I'd pick to ban. But really, the problem isn't any one card. It's all of them put together.

i'm glad you say that brainstrom really isn't going to solve the problem. but the ban on brainstorm will definitely nerf blue a bit. Thats the only way i see it.

The competitive scene requires you to play blue to be competitive basically. I am glad that one zoo deck did go through. I guess combo got hated on early on so they probably all dropped, or combo didn't dare show his face with so many blue decks running rampant.

[dahcmai]

I really think Wizards needs to give it the hell up and stop ignoring the people who want old school hosers.

There hasn't been a good hoser like Choke, Perish, Light of Day, Chill, or some other monster like those in a really long time. Hell, we still are using those hosers since they refuse to print good ones again. Ok, ok, Submerge was a unique case, but it took fetches being universally used to make it decent.

I want a Leyline of making your counters cost 2 more or a Red Sinkhole Island/Plains. Cryoclasm, you still sucked, but that was on the right track. It just needed to hit two if you're going to pay that much.

We need something severely devastating again.

Mind Twist, I doubt that one would even hurt blue all that much anymore. It needs to be decent if you're going to be taking on the streamlined decks. Some really good burn that targets island players or my personal fav would be a white weenie monster that can blink for cheap. Blue would have hell with that.

It would be worth printing a few exceptionally nasty ones just so my foil Misdirections got some use again.

[bracer028]

I really think Wizards needs to give it the hell up and stop ignoring the people who want old school hosers.

There hasn't been a good hoser like Choke, Perish, Light of Day, Chill, or some other monster like those in a really long time. Hell, we still are using those hosers since they refuse to print good ones again. Ok, ok, Submerge was a unique case, but it took fetches being universally used to make it decent.

I want a Leyline of making your counters cost 2 more or a Red Sinkhole Island/Plains. Cryoclasm, you still sucked, but that was on the right track. It just needed to hit two if you're going to pay that much.

We need something severely devastating again.

Mind Twist, I doubt that one would even hurt blue all that much anymore. It needs to be decent if you're going to be taking on the streamlined decks. Some really good burn that targets island players or my personal fav would be a white weenie monster that can blink for cheap. Blue would have hell with that.

It would be worth printing a few exceptionally nasty ones just so my foil Misdirections got some use again.

the thing is blue has an answer to EVERYTHING. thats why its so devastating. creatures, it has the submerges and wipeouts, into the roil, and other bounces.

land destruction, it has counters.

blue also has its own set of fast cheap creatures ie. merfolk.

no other color has that kind of consistency, and if they want to, they need to splash. Even if you are playing black, i would not dare cast mind twist against blue because you are 1. tapping yoruself out. 2. misdirection.

[dragonwisdom]

They had to give blue the best plains walker too.

Great job R&D team.

Red, green or white deserved the best walker. Though elspeth is a close second to Jace.

To the players who believe that the color wheel should not be equal, I say this makes for boring magic. It's becoming less of a diverse metagame.

Look at the top 8 decks on the Grand prix. 1 out of 8 decks did not have blue.

blue - 7 decks
black- 1 deck
white - 3 decks
green - 4 decks
red - 3 decks

And with the exception of the BANT deck, most were piratically all blue decks with other colors to splash.

BTW black is the second best color,overall. Undergound Sea is slightly more expensive then Tundra which is slightly more expensive than tropical island. I hope that clears that up.

[bakofried]

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

[Fossil4182]

Why is the only proposed solution to de-power Blue? Alternatively, WotC could print other cards to empower the other colors. Though those cards will ultimately get paired with the awesome Blue cards in Legacy :-)

This discussion, general calls for banning, and actual bans that are done for the sake for "format diversity" all suffer from the same problem. Specifically, there really isn't a good idea of what quantifies as "format diversity".

The specific issue here is a call to de-power a color. Yes, Blue has a number of awesome cards that work well in many decks. However, there are a several viable tier one decks that do not use Blue. Off the top of my head:

BW (both the disruptive and aggro versions)
Junk
Zoo
Team Italia

And several that occupy tier 1.5:

Goblins
Enchantress
Dredge
Elves
MUD

I mean this is Legacy. In Enteral formats people always play the best color; its Survival of the Fittest sort to speak. So gaming out the proposal in which a number of steps are taken that de-powered Blue in the format, the next most powerful color then proliferates in a manner similar to Blue. Then we have a new thread in a year titled "[insert color] needs a Nerf". Its impossible to achieve a "balanced" or "diverse" format because there isn't an interpretation of what that means; attempts to "diversify" the format only lead to a new color becoming dominate and results in the same problems.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

This thread makes me remember an ooooold joke article in The Duelist, about how they were going to ban Islands. The fact of the matter is, blue being the best color has been an in-joke of Magic for almost as long as the game has existed. I'm not saying it's right or wrong (and personally I think the other colors should be 'brought up to equal level' a bit)... But I think it's gone so far that it's almost an ingrained tradition of MtG game design by now.

Anyways, on to practical matters. I think banning "blue card X" is probably the worst possible solution to the problem, unless there is one card that is allowing an archetype to unfairly dominate (ie Mystical Tutor or Survival of the Fittest.) Banning, for example, Brainstorm, would for one thing, probably not accomplish that much in the long run as far as balancing blue's power level. It would engender the ill will of many players (since it's seen as one of the flagship cards of the format, and people enjoy playing it), and blue mages would get by with Ponder, Predict, Preordain, etc when they needed a cantrip. All of these cards see play already anyways. Intuition is probably the most intelligent suggestion I've heard as far as a blue card to ban (as far as what would diminish blue's omnipresence the most without ruining the balance of the format (like banning FoW would, for instance)), and I still don't think it deserves the banhammer.

I think far better solution(s) would be to start printing brutal color-hosers again (with the nastiest ones only affecting blue decks, and ideally providing a symmetrical effect so blue decks can't sideboard them effectively, ie more like Choke less like Llawan), and most importantly WotC needs to find ways to print powerful spells in other colors. I truly believe that the problem right now is not that blue is broken or unfair; it's just the best color when considered from a wide perspective. This is because, for example, while blue gets effects like countering spells and drawing extra cards, white gets effects like preventing damage and gaining extra life. (The preceding sentence is a hyperbole, but you get my point.)

I think also, an important point to make is that there should be more powerful cards printed that are not so easily splashed into decks of another color. For example, if Tarmogoyf costed :g::g: instead of :1::g:, it would be much harder to just stick it in any deck where you need a dumb undercosted beater; if Dark Confidant was :b::b: then you wouldn't be able to just be like "well I have a low curve and I wouldn't hate drawing extra cards, guess I can justify a black splash with a couple sideboard cards." I don't think that they should stop printing powerful cards that only require one colored mana, but if there were more incentives to play cards that required two or three colored mana, I think we would have a format that looked a lot less like "Blue, splashing x and maybe y."

Also, we just need some good blue hosers. And they need to either have a symmetrical effect, or not be easily splashable (in addition to probably needing them to be counter-proof.)

EDIT: For the sake of full disclosure, all these statements are coming from someone who plays Merfolk.

[dragonwisdom]

Re: Blue needs a Nerf

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

I knew someone would point that out, so I mentioned the Underground Sea justification, which you can't argue with.

[dragonwisdom]

This thread makes me remember an ooooold joke article in The Duelist, about how they were going to ban Islands. The fact of the matter is, blue being the best color has been an in-joke of Magic for almost as long as the game has existed. I'm not saying it's right or wrong (and personally I think the other colors should be 'brought up to equal level' a bit)... But I think it's gone so far that it's almost an ingrained tradition of MtG game design by now.

Anyways, on to practical matters. I think banning "blue card X" is probably the worst possible solution to the problem, unless there is one card that is allowing an archetype to unfairly dominate (ie Mystical Tutor or Survival of the Fittest.) Banning, for example, Brainstorm, would for one thing, probably not accomplish that much in the long run as far as balancing blue's power level. It would engender the ill will of many players, and blue mages would get by with Ponder, Predict, Preordain, etc when they needed a cantrip. All of these cards see play already anyways. Intuition is probably the most intelligent suggestion I've heard as far as a blue card to ban (as far as what would diminish blue's omnipresence the most without ruining the balance of the format (like banning FoW would, for instance)), and I still don't think it deserves the banhammer.

I think far better solution(s) would be to start printing brutal color-hosers again (with the nastiest ones only affecting blue decks, and ideally providing a symmetrical effect so blue decks can't sideboard them effectively, ie more like Choke less like Llawan), and most importantly WotC needs to find ways to print powerful spells in other colors. I truly believe that the problem right now is not that blue is broken or unfair; it's just the best color when considered from a wide perspective. This is because, for example, while blue gets effects like countering spells and drawing extra cards, white gets effects like preventing damage and gaining extra life. (The preceding sentence is a hyperbole, but you get my point.)

I think also, an important point to make is that there should be more powerful cards printed that are not so easily splashed into decks of another color. For example, if Tarmogoyf costed :g::g: instead of :1::g:, it would be much harder to just stick it in any deck where you need a dumb undercosted beater; if Dark Confidant was :b::b: then you wouldn't be able to just be like "well I have a low curve and I wouldn't hate drawing extra cards, guess I can justify a black splash with a couple sideboard cards." I don't think that they should stop printing powerful cards that only require one colored mana, but if there were more incentives to play cards that required two or three colored mana, I think we would have a format that looked a lot less like "Blue, splashing x and maybe y."

Also, we just need some good blue hosers. And they need to either have a symmetrical effect, or not be easily splashable (in addition to probably needing them to be counter-proof.)

Agree with everything you said. Hope the R&D team is reading this thread

[TheDarkshineKnight]

Re: Blue needs a Nerf

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

I knew someone would point that out, so I mentioned the Underground Sea justification, which you can't argue with.

Black is the second most powerful color in VINTAGE and necessary for Tendrils decks in all Eternal formats, hence Undergroud Sea is the most expensive dual land.

[bakofried]

^^This. Underground Sea is the go-to land for Vintage; that's where a large part of the demand comes from. In Vintage, it gives you access to the most broken non-power spells: D. Tutor, V. Tutor, D. Consultation, Y. Will, Y. Bargain, Necro, I. Seal, etc - Not to mention Bob and Seize. Also, you can't forget EDH.

I don't think you can arbitrarily use price as a guideline for strength in Legacy. Willow Satyr is going for as much as Dark Confidant on Star City, but you don't see people claiming it to be the next great green dude.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

The price of dual lands really isn't very on-topic to the main discussion going on in this thread, imho.

[Gheizen64]

I mean this is Legacy. In Enteral formats people always play the best color; its Survival of the Fittest sort to speak. So gaming out the proposal in which a number of steps are taken that de-powered Blue in the format, the next most powerful color then proliferates in a manner similar to Blue. Then we have a new thread in a year titled "[insert color] needs a Nerf". Its impossible to achieve a "balanced" or "diverse" format because there isn't an interpretation of what that means; attempts to "diversify" the format only lead to a new color becoming dominate and results in the same problems.

I think the real reason people are annoyed is that WotC had years to fix this, instead they go and print ... Ponder, Jace, Preordain, Spell pierce, all the merfolks in Lorwyn , etc... (less recently, Gift, Desire)

Mental misstep is the latest offender. You know what was the red equivalent in the cicle? ONE damage to any target. The white or green ones? They both sucks. WotC always talk about how they have to "resize" blue, but in truth it's the color that has gotten the most bombs over the years even now, and the other colors follow. The planeswalkers are the latest demonstration of this. Aside from Elspeth, all the Walker that see play or have seen play in eternal are blue (Jace, Big Jace, Tezzeret, Corrupt Tezzeret).

Shit is gettin' old.

[Lemnear]

Selective Memory? Alara and Lorwyn set complete new standards for creatures and Legacy while giving Vintage a weaker brainstorm/ponder aka preordain, a "improved" Force Spike and a 1-2of jace to replace fact or fiction. White and Green got pushed since Lorwyn and broke Legacy with gw survival.

Seriously ... Mental misstep doesn't break Legacy right now or pushes Blue over the edge, neither can I understand that people want brainstorm banned while the most played decks (meerfolk, zoo) runs none?! You simply want to discuss for discussions sake or trolling aren't ya?

If your Decks too relying on vial or nacatl your should do your homework first before hulk-up in IMPS. (->signature)

[Tacosnape]

I think the real reason people are annoyed is that WotC had years to fix this, instead they go and print ... Ponder, Jace, Preordain, Spell pierce, all the merfolks in Lorwyn , etc... (less recently, Gift, Desire)

Mental misstep is the latest offender. You know what was the red equivalent in the cicle? ONE damage to any target. The white or green ones? They both sucks. WotC always talk about how they have to "resize" blue, but in truth it's the color that has gotten the most bombs over the years even now, and the other colors follow. The planeswalkers are the latest demonstration of this. Aside from Elspeth, all the Walker that see play or have seen play in eternal are blue (Jace, Big Jace, Tezzeret, Corrupt Tezzeret).

Shit is gettin' old.

I agree with this. Blue's getting the best or second best of every cycle, and Red's getting the worst. Red isn't even a color in Legacy right now. Red decks don't exist. Some decks splash Red, and most of them that do are actually still Blue.

Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

The answer to 1-5 are all Blue: Jace, Vendilion Clique, Intuition, Brainstorm, and a combination of Force/Daze/Mental Misstep/Pierce/Snare. The answer to 6 -should- be Dark Confidant and Stoneforge Mystic, but if you want to stick Knight of the Reliquary or Tarmogoyf in there, the point still remains that splashing these creatures into a Blue deck isn't all that hard.

[bakofried]

A shock from that cycle would at least have been nice. A bolt would be even better.

[Gheizen64]

Selective Memory? Alara and Lorwyn set complete new standards for creatures and Legacy while giving Vintage a weaker brainstorm/ponder aka preordain, a "improved" Force Spike and a 1-2of jace to replace fact or fiction. White and Green got pushed since Lorwyn and broke Legacy with gw survival.

Seriously ... Mental misstep doesn't break Legacy right now or pushes Blue over the edge, neither can I understand that people want brainstorm banned while the most played decks (meerfolk, zoo) runs none?! You simply want to discuss for discussions sake or trolling aren't ya?

If your Decks too relying on vial or nacatl your should do your homework first before hulk-up in IMPS. (->signature)

Yeah, selective memory. The only great aggro creature that was printed was Nacatl. Confidant is debatable as it's great more in grinding mid-range weenie decks (or control mirrors) than in real aggro (that's a reason it was never used in any sui-black variant and fell out of grace in zoo). The other two-three great creatures that have been printed in those years are KotR, Goyf, SFM and are all extremely defensive in nature (slow, can tutor for answers, big butts). Or are merfolks.

Power creep forgot red along the way. Red's best creature is from TORMENT (goblin are great only with heavy sinergy, taken alone are mediocre creatures, so i'm not counting any of those). February 2002, 9 years ago. That was when Psychatog was the best creature ever printed and green best creature was... wild mongrel?

Mind you, i'm not complaining about the format. I think it's great. And i'm not even complaining particularly about blue, i'd like to be able to play more red that's not goblin, sure, but nothing's ever perfect.
But to deny that blue was and still is the most loved color by WotC is just a biased opinion. "Selective memory" my ass, sorry.

[Nonex]

@ Tacosnape: Those questions seem a little arbitrary. The second one looks unnecessarily specfic, why 3cc? And how does the fourth one not get a blue card as an answer? Following that logic, you could ask for the best creature removal spell, the best artifact/enchantment removal spell, the best direct damage spell, or the best discard spell.

Anyway, I think all those free and 1-mana counterspells are what people actually see as the real offenders. Let them play against a deck with all the tutors, card draw and cute creatures they want, but no counterspells, and I'm sure they won't complain that much.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Yeah, seems like the traditional countermagic-related "blue is too good" whining is back the moment true control becomes a tier 1 archetype. Has to be the popularity of the format... This is eternal. The only place fast combo, countermagic and manadenial haven't been phased out by WotC because (half-)casual players hate playing against things that don't focus on turning creatures sideways or killing creatures. That's why Legacy is great - almost every reasonable strategy ever invented for the game is a viable choice.

Sure, blue is the best color in the format but that's because blue is the color of library manipulation which leads to you drawing your best cards more often. With dual-fetch manabases, playing blue has a comparatively low cost and you therefore need a good reason not to do so while using the manafixing to still get solid removal/wincons.
That being said, having all the colors be balanced power-levelwise is a pipe-dream anyway in a format this large (they don't even manage to do that in Standard, like ever) so one color will always be best. Blue happens to be that in Eternal (also due to the nature of Eternal-formats - powerful spells, etc - making countermagic the most versatile kind of answer across the board) but that doesn't mean its somehow unbeatable. Heck, you can probably even build a monocolor deck for everything but green (afaik) that's viable. Be aware blue is good and build your decks accordingly. If we ever end up with a) 2-3 blue decks being the only viable decks or b) everybody maindecking Choke, REB or other blue-hate, there might be a problem. Until that happens, adjust or bust.
At the moment the format is extremely diverse (if blue-heavy), fun and skill-testing. People also haven't figured out how to adapt to Misstep yet (remember when CB-Top was "too good" and Top "needed to be banned" because the format couldn't deal with it? Yeah, that's clearly what happened) and any cries about "blue is br0kenZ0rz" come far too early.
Some of the most proficient Legacy-players (the Hatfields - Jesse even managed to 9-0 day one) chose to run Zoo, of all things, for this GP. If they don't think blue is too good to pass up, maybe you should reconsider your own opinions? I'm 99% sure they have more experience and are better at this format than any two people complaining about blue right now put together.

As to banning Brainstorm, be careful what you wish for. Remember how they killed Vintage by doing that? Now, it won't necessarily have the same effect on Legacy but I think the hit in both entertainment value and player support would be much more significant than anything gains in colorbalance would provide.

@Taco:

1.) Duh. There are 21 different Planeswalkers. Jace is very good in Legacy - aka a Legacy-power level card - and in return broken in half in Standard. That's why he's by far the best Planeswalker, R&D screwed up (as they admitted). It was bound to happen at some point and might have happened in any color but it's just much harder for them to evaluate library-manipulation abilities than anything else, I suspect, as their impact on the game is comparatively subtle. So, sure, blue has the best Planeswalker. That's because they didn't screw up more than 5% of the time.

2.) Peacekeeper, Kira and Reejery probably give you a run for your money, so does Mirran Crusader. Clique just happens to be the best against control or in combo-ish decks like NO. The real answer over everything else is probably just GSZ, though.
Also, yeah, why are we discussing single-colored 3 cc creatures instead of, at least, general cc3 creatures? Or, even more reasonable, 1-, 2-, 3- and 4- drop creatures?

3.) I'd argue for Infernal Tutor all day long.

4.) Biased question. Blue is the color of library-manipulation. Sylvan Lirbrary and SDT give you quite solid options even outside of blue, though. If you ask this question, we also need best removal (for each cardtype) best burn spell (yes, that is as open-minded as asking for the best filter spell seeing as blue is, as just mentioned, the color of library manipulation) best discard-spell, etc.

5.) Another biased question. Obviously the answer is something in UB - the philosophies of Red and Green just don't swing that way, which means they don't get much of it. I agree that they could be doing more with Whites "rules-setting" part of the color-pie (though they've gotten better in the last years). As long as every color has its own identity, some of them will be worse at certain jobs than others, and in an Eternal format that means getting the shaft against the strategies that try to do something unfair if you don't happen to be a disruption-color. Sucks if you refuse to play one of them but there's always hate and preying on the interactive decks. In return I think the game is a million times better this way than it would be if every color could do everything.

6.) Clearly something non-blue but the effect of dual-fetch manabases makes a lot of them easy to abuse in decks that do in fact play blue, as you said. That can't really be helped without changing the basic structure of the format in ways I assume nobody really wants to see happen.

/edit: wow, I forgot Magus! Nice find.

Also, to collect the answers in easily readable form instead of arguing:

1.) Jace, obv.
2.) Magus might be right. Should probably be GSZ, though, and Crusader is much closer than most people think.
3.) Yep Infernal. /edit edit: Wow, I forgot ETutor exists. This is pretty close but I might have to change my answer. Definitely not Intuition over either, though.
4.) Brainstorm. Sorry Drago, BS is just miles better than anything that only manipulates the top of library instead of your whole hand.
5.) FoW, Misstep, Hymn most likely.
6.) Bob, than pretty close between Goyf and SFM. GSZ and NO make Goyf the winner, I guess.

[DragoFireheart]

I'll play along since Tacosnape is hell bent on making blue to be an evil color.



Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

Jace, the Mind Sculptor



2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

Magus of the Moon




3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

Infernal Tutor




4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

Sensi's Divining Top



5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

Force of Will, Mental Misstep, 3rd counter spell of your choice or discard (like Duress).



6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant




The answer to 1-5 are all Blue: Jace, Vendilion Clique, Intuition, Brainstorm, and a combination of Force/Daze/Mental Misstep/Pierce/Snare. The answer to 6 -should- be Dark Confidant and Stoneforge Mystic, but if you want to stick Knight of the Reliquary or Tarmogoyf in there, the point still remains that splashing these creatures into a Blue deck isn't all that hard.

Sorry, I didn't get your answers. Vendilion is cool but not nearly as powerful as Magus in this format. He warps it far more than the fairy.

[AngryTroll]

Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

1. Jace
2. Terravore and Goblin Warchief are fine answers here. I have no idea why you made this a single-colored card; otherwise, at 3cc, Knight of the Reliquary is probably the answer. Oh, and for 1cc and 2cc, blue doesn't even come close to green and white's creatures.
3. Infernal Tutor, Burning Wish, and Enlightened Tutor all see more play than Intuition.
4. Sensei's Divining Top, as DragoFireheart said.
5. Force of Will + Mental Misstep + Daze or Counterspell or Thoughtseize.
6. Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf

Question 5 is obviously going to be blue cards; disruption packages is what blue is all about.

[bowvamp]

One thing I really like about this thread is the abundance of thought and lack of overwhelmingly huge generalizations and hand waving that has to do with an abstract idea called the "color pie". /sarcasm

Seriously, stfu. Blue is a good color, yes, and it has a ton of viable threats and spells. But that does not mean it has to be played in every deck. We all play the cards that are most likely to win (or we are scrubs), and we play them in combination. I don't think that this scenario happens very often
Somebody#1: What's your deck?
Somebody#2: oh, you know... blue. I probably won't side out my FOWs.
Somebody#1: Darn. I'm playing a deck that has red in it. Time to lose.

How about some creative thought here? I've got a suggestion that would kill 2 birds with 1 stone (for all the people who are angry at the state of legacy right now). You've got the format figured out, you have x amount of money, and the meta can be summarized in one word for you (blue). The trick in this scenario is to NOT play the obvious. Try a psuedo X-card deck by running Street Wraith and Gitaxian Probe and see if you can abuse the size of your GY to your advantage. How about running MD Seedtime or Eyes of the Wisent.
Now your response to me is predictable. Even though I am hitting the majority of the meta with my suggestions, Zoo, Goblins, & Combo will overrun me when I get to them and you'd rather just play "roulette" with a blue deck. Well, here's where YOU come in. It's obvious that you can make a deck to beat blue, and you know that the rest of the format is EASILY trumped by what blue has to offer. So why not just try and replicate that trumping.

I'm still going to play pox with MM.

[FieryBalrog]

Let's just face it- many legacy players think a top 8 or top 16 with 75% blue decks is just "normal" and "diverse". FoW+MM showing up in droves all over the place is just how it's "supposed to be".

More power to you if you enjoy this type of environment, but for Chrissakes let's not put on a big show and dance about how this is "balanced". Call a pig a pig, don't put lipstick on it and pretend it's Angelina Jolie. Let's just admit that blue sees more play than nearly the other colors combined (across all sorts of decks), that it's ridiculously dominant and leave it at that.

Edit: Did someone just say Magus of the Moon was the best 3cmc monocolor creature? And that it warps the format more than Clique? Let's face it- neither warp the format, but at least Clique is relevant.

[Gui]

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

1. What difference does it make? All 21 are too slow. Jace Beleren is probably the best, since 3cc and answer to that other overrated blue PW.

2. This one is easy - Stinkweed Imp

3. Breakthrough, into 24chain card dredging.

4. Careful Study, the swiss army knife!

5. A full set of Cabal Therapies

6. Zombie Token and Golgari Grave Troll, obviously.

[Koby]

3. Breakthrough, into 24chain card dredging.

4. Careful study, obvious reasons


ban blue!!!11

[Skeggi]

Magus of the Moon

Sorry, I didn't get your answers. Vendilion is cool but not nearly as powerful as Magus in this format. He warps it far more than the fairy.

Interesting. I agree with Tacosnape, I think Clique is better than Magus, but only because he is blue. If moon-on-a-stick was blue, I think it'd be alot better and played more for sure.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Other options would be Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Garruk Wildspeaker, Karn Liberated, and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker.


2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

Eternal Witness or Gatekeeper of Malakir. Other options; Magus of the Moon, Vendilion clique, Merrow Reejerey, Elvish Archdruid, and Goblin Warchief. Oh, and Tombstalker.


3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

Goblin Matron. Or Stoneforge Mystic. Maybe Burning, Cunning, or Living Wish, or Green Sun's Zenith, or Enlightened Tutor actually. Trinket Mage isn't bad though.

eta: Actually, no, the best tutor is clearly Natural Order.


4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

Sylvan Library or Sensei's Divining Top. See also Brainstorm andJace, the Mind Sculptor, Life From the Loam and Magma Jet, as well as Golgari Grave-Troll and Stinkweed Imp. Of course, if this was just "card drawing", other options would be Glimpse of Nature, Thoughtcast, Goblin Ringleader, Standstill, Breakthrough, Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow.


5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

Hymn to Tourach + Pernicious Deed, or Qasali Pridemage and Path to Exile. Or Wasteland and Vindicate or Rishadan Port. Or Stifle and Daze. Or Swords to Plowshares and any of the above. Or Tangle Wire and Smokestack, or Maze of Ith and Chalice of the Void, or Devastating Dreams and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

It depends on what you want to disrupt, really.


6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf. Close contenders include Goblin Lackey, Goblin Welder, Goblin Lackey, Wild Nacatl, Grim Lavamancer, Dark Confidant, Priest of Titania, Lord of Atlantis, Bitterblossom, Student of Warfare, Figure of Destiny, Gigapede, Rhox War Monk, Sower of Temptation, Shriekmaw, Fauna Shaman, Noble Hierarch and a few dozen others in addition to ones listed previously.


The answer to 1-5 are all Blue: Jace, Vendilion Clique, Intuition, Brainstorm, and a combination of Force/Daze/Mental Misstep/Pierce/Snare. The answer to 6 -should- be Dark Confidant and Stoneforge Mystic, but if you want to stick Knight of the Reliquary or Tarmogoyf in there, the point still remains that splashing these creatures into a Blue deck isn't all that hard.

[Citation Needed]

[DragoFireheart]

Oh, and Tombstalker.




So if I play Countertop, I can reveal a Firespout to counter your Tombstalker?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

So if I play Countertop, I can reveal a Firespout to counter your Tombstalker?

No, you can't, that's part of why it's such a good three drop. It also dodges Deed and Smother!

[android]

There hasn't been a good hoser like Choke, Perish, Light of Day, Chill, or some other monster like those in a really long time. Hell, we still are using those hosers since they refuse to print good ones again. Ok, ok, Submerge was a unique case, but it took fetches being universally used to make it decent.

I want a Leyline of making your counters cost 2 more or a Red Sinkhole Island/Plains. Cryoclasm, you still sucked, but that was on the right track. It just needed to hit two if you're going to pay that much.

You know I was thinking about this too. The cards to print are:

Red Sinkhole
RR1
Split Second
Destroy two target Islands

or

New Choke
GG1
Split Second
Tap two target Islands, they do not untap during their controllers untap phase (I'm sure the wording is wrong here)

Not saying this would fix all the problems but it would certainly force blue to fight for the game. Blue is pretty good at biding it's time so I'm not even sure that this boost in tempo would allow the R/G decks to monopolize.

[DragoFireheart]

No, you can't, that's part of why it's such a good three drop. It also dodges Deed and Smother!

Um, dude, Tombstalker is a two drop.

[Skeggi]

Um, dude, Tombstalker is a two drop.
Damnit, you beat me to it. Geez, IBA is such a nubcake ^^. Anyhoo, why has this thread transformed into an answer-taco's-list-and-flex-your-epeen-thread? And yes, that's a retorical question: please, do NOT answer.

[Mr. Safety]

I agree with this. Blue's getting the best or second best of every cycle, and Red's getting the worst. Red isn't even a color in Legacy right now. Red decks don't exist. Some decks splash Red, and most of them that do are actually still Blue.

Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

Jace, The Mind-Sculptor of course.


2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

I know you said Vendilion Clique...but I would challenge that with Green Sun's Zenith into Tarmogoyf, lol. In all seriousness, Clique isn't better than Terravore IMHO.


3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

Burning Wish IMHO...it allows for broken early wins from TES. I know some will say Intuition, but I think Burning Wish is at least 2nd place or tied for 1st.


4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

Some may disagree with me, but it depends on what you want: Sensei's Divining Top is reusable, but Brainstorm is an instant. If you say best card filtration CARD, I say SDT. If you say SPELL, I say Brainstorm.


5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

I would challenge that Thoughtsieze/Inquisition of Kozilek/Hymn to Tourach are just as powerful as Force of Will/Daze/Mental Misstep...only in a proactive way rather than reactive. Some may disagree, but I would put counterspells in the 'control' category...not the disruption category.


6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

Knight of the Reliquary and Dark Confidant...both have relivant abilities other than just a big ass like Goyf/Stalker. Knight of the Reliquary is impressively good, fetching hate and utility lands, feeding Steppe Lynx, all the while making herself bigger. Bob is bob...awesome with tops, great for card advantage, and supports great strategies like Team America, The Gate, Eva-Green, and Deadguy Ale.

That's my take on it...I actually really like legacy right now...seems pretty well in check (I won't repeat the whole priniciple of Force holding combo in check but aggro decks holding Force decks in check.)

[menace13]

As of today?

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?
Jace is clearly putting up the best results of any.

2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?
Right now I would say Merrow Reejery and Clique are close.

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?
Good call, IBA. Natural Order search is the best one currently and I think GSZ is 2nd.

4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?
Brainstorm. It puts back cards.

5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?
Misstep/FoW

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?
I can't really say since there are so many, but the list would have Goyf, Stoneforge,Bob and Lord of Atlantis on top.

[Star|Scream]

Interesting. I agree with Tacosnape, I think Clique is better than Magus, but only because he is blue. If moon-on-a-stick was blue, I think it'd be alot better and played more for sure.

You mean 2U All non-basic lands are islands?

oh dear lord.

[Star|Scream]

Interesting. I agree with Tacosnape, I think Clique is better than Magus, but only because he is blue. If moon-on-a-stick was blue, I think it'd be alot better and played more for sure.

You mean 2U All non-basic lands are islands?

oh dear lord.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You mean 2U All non-basic lands are islands?

oh dear lord.

That actually sounds pretty weak, since many opponents can cast a lot of their spells off of Islands. The good thing about Magus of the Moon is that most opponents don't have a lot of red spells.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You mean 2U All non-basic lands are islands?

oh dear lord.

That actually sounds pretty weak, since many opponents can cast a lot of their spells off of Islands. The good thing about Magus of the Moon is that most opponents don't have a lot of red spells.

[Star|Scream]

That actually sounds pretty weak, since many opponents can cast a lot of their spells off of Islands. The good thing about Magus of the Moon is that most opponents don't have a lot of red spells.

We're talking about how busted blue is, and you say this made-up card wouldn't continue the trend because people can use islands to play their spells? You know who can't use islands to play their spells? EVERY COLOR EXCEPT BLUE

Not only would this hose any multicolored non-blue strategy (goyf, rock, etc.) but the blue player would have multiple counters to deal with the stp's that the magus usually eats.

Also, the only spells that can win the game that can be played solely off islands are jace and clique. Everything else requires a blue dual or needs to be fetched by a fetchland, both of which are now islands.

[frolll]

You guys know about Standard ? Top8s in that format are often composed of 5+ of the same decks, and in this moment, it can be 8 copies of Caw Blade, meaning all BLUE dominant decks, with 4 Jaces... And all control decks.
Do you see Standard players shouting for bans, asking that blue is a problem ? That control is unfair ?

Well, not me.

Blue is fine, leave it alone. I don't really want to live in a format of Dredge, Belcher, Combo Elves, Spanish Inquisition, ANT and TES. Blue's what keeps this format a real format, or just alive, actually.

[MDB]

Man, I love this thread.



Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?
2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?
3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?
4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?
5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?
6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?


1. Jace
2. Master of Etherium (maybe not yet, but he'll get there)
3. Blue Fetchlands!
4. Brainstorm
5. FOW + MM
6. Splashable

Lol, guess whose side I'm on...

[GGoober]

I agree with this. Blue's getting the best or second best of every cycle, and Red's getting the worst. Red isn't even a color in Legacy right now. Red decks don't exist. Some decks splash Red, and most of them that do are actually still Blue.

Ask yourself this:

1. What's the best Planeswalker in Legacy/any Format?

2. What's the best single-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

4. What's the best card filtration spell in Legacy?

5. What's the best disruption package in Legacy?

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

The answer to 1-5 are all Blue: Jace, Vendilion Clique, Intuition, Brainstorm, and a combination of Force/Daze/Mental Misstep/Pierce/Snare. The answer to 6 -should- be Dark Confidant and Stoneforge Mystic, but if you want to stick Knight of the Reliquary or Tarmogoyf in there, the point still remains that splashing these creatures into a Blue deck isn't all that hard.

I'll answer your questions, but you need to answer mine later ok tacotaco?

1. Jace

2. Tombstalker delving 5 (this answers your question without being a smart-alec)

3. Enlightened Tutor, easy (just not played enough).

4. Brainstorm

5. Some say FoW + 21 blue cards, other say Turn 1 Chalice/Trinisphere, not sure what a disruption package is.

6. Bob and his Mom.


My questions for you now:
1. What's the best Sorcery in Legacy/Format?

2. What's the best tri-colored 2-CMC creature in Legacy? Ok that was a joke you can't name a tri-colored 2-CMC creature unless you're into hybrid mana. What about What's the best 2-colored 3-CMC creature in Legacy?

3. What's the best tutor in Legacy?

4. What's the best card discard spell in Legacy?

5. What's the best creature package in Legacy?

6. What are the two best creatures in Legacy?

[FieryBalrog]

Taco's questions were just begging for people to go "nuh-uh" and name some pet cards as being format-dominant. But the real problem is most of those questions don't really matter. Who cares what the best 3 cmc monocolor creature is? It's not like that is a metric that matters.

Frankly, all you have to do is go through the last few SCG opens and look at each deck in the top 16. SCG does this real helpful thing where they show the deck as a pie chart by color.

I'm going to guess most of you know what's tearing up those pie charts.

[FieryBalrog]

Why should the color pie be equal?

Because it's good game design. Surprising as it may be, there are people out there who would like to compete with different playstyles. While not everything can be competitive, that's not an excuse for failing this badly at balancing the pie.

And here's a more practical reason. So that people don't have to all own 4x FoW + 4x Jace + sets of blue duals to be truly competitive instead of piloting some tier 2 decks and praying. The card pool is small enough as it is.

Frankly you could own all the non-blue duals, all non-blue format staples and you will still be stuck piloting a second-class citizen of a deck. Real good for the health of the format, right- and that's just from a card availability perspective. It sure would be bad for the format if you could build more of the best decks with all the other colors, eh?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Taco's questions were just begging for people to go "nuh-uh" and name some pet cards as being format-dominant. But the real problem is most of those questions don't really matter. Who cares what the best 3 cmc monocolor creature is? It's not like that is a metric that matters.

Frankly, all you have to do is go through the last few SCG opens and look at each deck in the top 16. SCG does this real helpful thing where they show the deck as a pie chart by color.

I'm going to guess most of you know what's tearing up those pie charts.

In what given month? I mean we started off the year with people complaining that Goblins was too good.

Let's look at SCG Opens.

In the past year, there have been 13 SCG Opens, with 104 top 8s.

37 of those decks ran absolutely no blue, at least filtering out for blue duals, Brainstorm, Force, Seat of the Synod and Dredge.

That's more than 60%, which sounds like a lot, except that Legacy is mostly 3 colors and 50% of the 3 color combinations will have any given color in it. For blue to be best is one thing, but 60% penetration doesn't necessarily suggest dominance.

For contrast;

51 decks contained no green

52 decks contained no black

60 decks contained no white

77 (!!) contained no red

So we see first of all that more than half the format is, on average, running blue, green, and black, and white isn't very far behind.

On the other hand, actually winning lists run;

1 white (!?!)
4 black
5 green
5 red
11 blue

Which is a much more compelling argument.

[Gheizen64]

Because it's good game design. Surprising as it may be, there are people out there who would like to compete with different playstyles. While not everything can be competitive, that's not an excuse for failing this badly at balancing the pie.

And here's a more practical reason. So that people don't have to all own 4x FoW + 4x Jace + sets of blue duals to be truly competitive instead of piloting some tier 2 decks and praying. The card pool is small enough as it is.

Frankly you could own all the non-blue duals, all non-blue format staples and you will still be stuck piloting a second-class citizen of a deck. Real good for the health of the format, right- and that's just from a card availability perspective. It sure would be bad for the format if you could build more of the best decks with all the other colors, eh?

Well said. I didn't think about the economical implications of this, but they're pretty important too.

[Amon Amarth]

I really like Blue. I really do. It's important for the health of the format, since Blue is the color that tends to keep all the unfair things in check. I don't want Brainstorm to be banned or any other Blue spell. I would like Red to be brought up to par with the other colors.

Let me put it a different way, have you ever drafted the core sets? How often do you play Red as your main color?

...

Yeah... that's what I thought. The color is so low on playables that is almost always relegated to splashing. This isn't proof that Red is mega terrible but I do think it is a symptom of a larger problem. Red's creatures are almost always worse than the other 4 colors, its non-burn spells are mostly unplayable. Red has shallow, boring mechanics. The problem is only compounded when you get to Constructed because stuff like Canyon Minotaur and Fireball are not respectable in 60 card decks.

[Tacosnape]

Wow. I somehow hijacked this thread with one post and turned it into opinionfest.

I'll concede two things from my original post. One is that Natural Order might be as good as Intuition, though more narrow. Two is that Sensei's Divining Top might be on par with Brainstorm. I'd still personally take Brainstorm just for being amazing against Hymn and less of a mana soaker, though, and I'd argue Intuition's more versatile and shows up in way more decks. Intuition gets -anything-. Natural Order gets usually one of two different guys (Who, I'll admit, are very often more than enough to solve whatever problems are at hand.)

Secondly, fine, let's edit out the "single color" part of the best 3cmc creature. Now your order goes Knight of the Reliquary, who is a once in a lifetime creature, and then Vendilion Clique. Clique is absurd. If I had to rank the creatures of magic, I'd rank it fourth right now, several spots above Tarmogoyf. In a godlike metagame, Magus of the Moon might outshine them, but in a vacuum, it doesn't. I'd put it battling for third with Eternal Witness and Mirran Crusader.

Of the best objections to my post, FieryBalrog probably has the best one. Some of those questions may not matter in and of themselves. But the questions were just there to illustrate a point. Which was simply that, in the last few years, Blue has gotten a better slice of the pie for Legacy than any other color, and Red's gotten the shaft. I stand by this point.

Blue is immeasurably the strongest color in Legacy right now. It's stronger in Legacy right now than any color has been at any point in the history of the format, Flash era included. It can do everything there is to do in Legacy either better than every other color or at the worst, pretty well.

The problem is, and this is the first time I've probably ever said this, is that I don't know what the best fix is. I don't know that you can ban a card from blue's arsenal without making the format equally bad. I don't know that blue has one specific card that's put it out of control. What can you hit? Force? The format would be frightening. It might still actually function well with Mental Misstep in existence, but I just can't believe no Force is a good idea. Misstep? Then we get the year of combo all over again. Daze? Maybe. This makes Blue less stupid when they go first. But I don't see it doing enough. Jace? Doesn't solve the protection engine itself. Brainstorm? Something else?

(Also, to IBA: Since I think you were the only person who posted who thinks Jace isn't Legacy's best planeswalker and I know you better than to think I'll change your mind, my counterargument is simply this: Your choice still requires blue.)

[Jonathan Alexander]

I really like Blue. I really do. It's important for the health of the format, since Blue is the color that tends to keep all the unfair things in check. I don't want Brainstorm to be banned or any other Blue spell. I would like Red to be brought up to par with the other colors.

Let me put it a different way, have you ever drafted the core sets? How often do you play Red as your main color?

...

Yeah... that's what I thought. The color is so low on playables that is almost always relegated to splashing. This isn't proof that Red is mega terrible but I do think it is a symptom of a larger problem. Red's creatures are almost always worse than the other 4 colors, its non-burn spells are mostly unplayable. Red has shallow, boring mechanics. The problem is only compounded when you get to Constructed because stuff like Canyon Minotaur and Fireball are not respectable in 60 card decks.


Now this is something I can get behind. I also mostly play blue and I have most of the cards you need to build any of blue's decks in Legacy, from heavy control to stuff like Bant Aggro and from Team America to TES and ANT. The red cards I play are Grim Lavamancer, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Fire // Ice, Burning Wish, Empty The Warrens and blasts. Even if you include Zoo which I play form time to time as well this only adds Fireblast and Price Of Progress.
This is about as many cards as the countermagic I can choose from (and actually use) when playing blue. And then there's all the other awesome stuff blue can do.

[Fsk]

That's my take on it...I actually really like legacy right now...seems pretty well in check (I won't repeat the whole priniciple of Force holding combo in check but aggro decks holding Force decks in check.)

The problem with this statement is that blue/force deck can easily beat aggro whereas combo is impos for aggro and blue deck are impos for combo. Except if combo run force.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Agreed on the problem with red, and it's not limited to Legacy. The color is just far too one-dimensional as it is. Other than Goblins and splashable utility cards (REB, Lavamancer, burn) the color has nothing going for it but pure aggression and even then Green and White cheap creatures outclass it. Red needs some additional flexible abilities added to its part of the color pie. Red Planeswalkers even illustrate this - their abilities all resemble each others and the only good one (outside of Legacy) is another hyperaggressive card. Not sure what that could be, hopefully WotC comes up with something. Adapting red creatures to the powercreep seen in every other color in ways different from Goblin Guide (ridiculously aggressive but sucks after turn 2) would probably be a good start (and make Zoo quite insane). At that point you get into trouble infringing on green's part of the colorpie, I guess.
Green and White had this problem before but it was slightly fixed by making it green the "Disenchant" color and awesome quasi-modal spells like Fauna Shaman, Beast Within and GSZ move it in the right direction while white got a ton of flexible threats/answers (SFM, ORing, Squawk, hatebears, etc). Also, the combination of the two is getting sweeter all the time (KotR, Pridemage, Teeg).
Red needs a similar treatment. In this context, Bloodbraid Elf was probably a step in the right direction just not cheap enough to be Legacy-relevant.

As for blue being the best at everything, not true. It only appears that way because the dual-fetch manabases make splashing so devilishly easy.

[Gheizen64]

I really like Blue. I really do. It's important for the health of the format, since Blue is the color that tends to keep all the unfair things in check. I don't want Brainstorm to be banned or any other Blue spell. I would like Red to be brought up to par with the other colors.

Let me put it a different way, have you ever drafted the core sets? How often do you play Red as your main color?

...

Yeah... that's what I thought. The color is so low on playables that is almost always relegated to splashing. This isn't proof that Red is mega terrible but I do think it is a symptom of a larger problem. Red's creatures are almost always worse than the other 4 colors, its non-burn spells are mostly unplayable. Red has shallow, boring mechanics. The problem is only compounded when you get to Constructed because stuff like Canyon Minotaur and Fireball are not respectable in 60 card decks.

Part of the reason for this situation was also WotC saying: "Land destruction is not liked by players so we printed a 5 mana stone rain in place of it". No wait, it's worse, since it let your opponet choose the land. Red doesn't have a lot, land destruction and especially nonbasic hate was a big part of it that has been removed from his pie for "unfun" reasons. Red has amazing artifact hate, and amazing artifact hate has been printed lately (smash to smithereen for example) but Legacy don't have that many artifact to justify artifact hate beside some Shattering Spree in sideboards.

So what's left for red? Burn. Rituals. Tutors. Rituals are largely unplayable beside storm combo, and WotC can't print another really good ritual without storm being buffed big time (unless they're smart about it... like discard random card as added cost). Tutors have a similar story, they won't print an abusable tutors and they shouldn't. Also tutors don't really feel red. New burn won't top bolt (they reprinted shock in M12...), and even with 20+ effective lightning bolt burn is a T1.5 deck at best and it's hated extremely easily. Red creatures is where they could push, but they haven't in ages if the best creature is still Lavamancer. Red hosers are also another place they could push, but the hoser red got in M11 was this:

http://www.mtgmintcard.com/images/products/145/MAGIC-THE-GATHERING-COMBUSTION-M11U035.jpg

Yeah, it's funny.

[Fsk]

I would challenge that Thoughtsieze/Inquisition of Kozilek/Hymn to Tourach are just as powerful as Force of Will/Daze/Mental Misstep


I dont agree with this. With the format being tempo oriented the mana advantage provided by MM make it a lot better than thoughtseize.

Imagine this card :

Thoughtseize Mistep 1
Sorcery
Pay 2 life.
Choose and discard a nonland card from your opponent hand.
Add 2 to your mana pool.

You will tell me it is overpowered. But somehow it is on par with MM. (Yes MM only hit 1cc but it is avaible on the draw)

[Richard Cheese]

I just want Black Vise back.

[MDB]

Ban Brainstorm, Unban Black Vise

/thread ...iou dci...

[Koby]

red getting shafted

On the same token, they said that discard, land destruction, and counterspells were "unfun". So what does WotC do? Print 1 mana Inquisition, Print 1 mana Mental Misstep, and Print 4 mana Demolish variant #18. :(

At least Combust is better than the M10 red hoser, compare:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/m10/141.jpg vs. http://magiccards.info/scans/en/m10/53.jpg

*shrug*

EDIT:

Black Vise isn't even that good now. You're welcome to try to design a good deck with Vise. You'll get decks that win against standstill decks and do mediocrily against anything more midrange like bant or TA. There's a topic about it in this page, if you want you can take part in it :p

You're not thinking creatively enough. Prosperity still exists, as does Temple Bell and Howling Mine. then again, the former is a blue card, and self-defeating for this discussion of blue needs a nerf.*

*In reality we need a powerful blue hoser. Something along the lines of Warmth but that punishes blue spells, or activated abilitys *Coughcough*Jace*cough*

PPS:
We should write Mike Turian a community note. He has this to say:


What is your favorite card? Wasteland. I love all non-blue Magic cards but I have a special place in my heart for Wasteland!

[Gheizen64]

I just want Black Vise back.

Black Vise isn't even that good now. You're welcome to try to design a good deck with Vise. You'll get decks that win against standstill decks and do mediocrily against anything more midrange like bant or TA. There's a topic about it in this page, if you want you can take part in it :p

[dahcmai]

I think it's time for Necro. Blue won't dominate after that.

lol all kidding aside, it is getting tiring seeing only blue anymore. Personally, I play either combo or control so I like blue a lot, but there's nothing but combo, ten million decks with KOTR and friends in it, ten million variants of blue based control, and that's really about it. Painter is a nice change of pace, but they don't seem to want to reprint Imperials so you're not going to see it much. Same goes for Aluren.

Discard just isn't as good as it used to be with all the efficient draw we have now. Hymn hurts the most, but they won't even think about making another card close to that power level. "It's not fun, whah.."

It still kills me with all the whining about "I hate getting my spells countered" they would go and print one of the best counters ever that control players have wanted for ages. Answer first turn crap on the draw? Everyone who loves control was like "Holy Shit, sign me up!" They didn't think that one through real well obviously.

They really should just give white a singular amazing card for beating control. White has an extremely versatile card pool to choose from to counter any meta changes with ease. It's got great stuff, it just has no serious bomb ala goyf/confidant. White has Swords...crickets...chirp chirp... Make it double white so it just doesn't go and get splashed into everything and call it good. That color needs something anyway. Super banding, who cares.

Would be nice to have a mono-color deck back in the running. Death and Taxes is fun as hell, but it's no super power.

Survival would be nice. I still don't know why people had such a hard time against that.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think the problem with blue, if you feel that it's problematic (and the argument is there) is just Brainstorm. Force really isn't that great a card; I mean it's very good, but it's not particularly unfair.

Brainstorm is unfair. And by an order of magnitude more than most unfair cards. I mean most overpowered cards are underpriced by one mana essentially. Those that are underpriced by more are generally on the higher end of the mana curve anyway.

Tarmogoyf would not get a lot of play at 3cc, Knight wouldn't at 4. Bob at 3 is worse than Phyrexian Arena. Hymn at 3 is verging on trash. StP at 2 is "meh", jockeying with Journey to Nowhere and Temporal Isolation. Deed at 4 is a bad Disk; Vindicate at 4 is barely better than Befoul. Incinerate is lucky to show up once a year in a burn deck but Bolt is still heavily played;

I'm pretty sure Brainstorm would still see significant amounts of play at two mana. It's not really a card like Ponder or Preordain or Impulse that just lets you dig for one particular card; it's most of a free mulligan sans the card disadvantage. No other spell in the game, as far as I'm aware, does this for less than three. Compulsive Research, Thirst For Knowledge, and even Probe all saw tournament play. Brainstorm is about on par with that. I can't think of any other card in Legacy that's a borderline or Standard-playable 3cc sorcery printed as a 1cc instant. For Brainstorm to be fair, it'd need to be part of this cycle;

Gainstorm
G
Instant
Search your library for up to two basic land cards. Put one of those cards onto the battlefield tapped and the other into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

Banestorm
R
Instant
Destroy target land.

Wanestorm
B
Instant
Target player discards a card, then discards another card at random.

Danestorm
XW
Instant
Put X 2/2 white Scandinavian tokens onto the battlefield.
Did you know white has really bad instants and sorceries for this exercise? You could also imagine a 2cc instant Wrath of God here I guess.

[Tacosnape]

The problem with printing spells that stop Blue or unbanning cards that stop Blue or suggesting cards that beat blue is that they'll just be run ALONGSIDE BLUE.

Survival's the perfect example. What was one of the top decks in Legacy when it was legal? U/G Vengevine Survival. Sure, there were some G/W lists, and a G/B here or there, maybe a mono-green, but there was also a ton of blue. And that was then. This is now, in the Mental Misstep era. I've played against a few Intuition/Vengevine/Madness decks since then, and like every other deck it can just win off the back of being able to tap out every turn and have 12 cards in the deck that disrupt your shit.

Stoneforge Mystic's another example. It's a great white card. It's pretty good against blue, especially now that Batterskull exists. What does Owen Turtenwald do? Stick it in a blue control shell and top 8 a Grand Prix.

Aether Vial supposedly beats blue if you resolve it, right? Except that the primary deck that runs it is also mono blue. Seems good.

You get my point, right? There's very little you can unban, print, etc. that can't just be splashed into blue and be better. Most cards that beat your opponents' blue don't also kill your own.

[NecroYawgmoth]

Oo... I want a playset Banestorms then =D

[Tacosnape]

...And all of those ridiculous brainstorm rhyme cards would splash quite well into blue. Just saying.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

You get my point, right? There's very little you can unban, print, etc. that can't just be splashed into blue and be better. Most cards that beat your opponents' blue don't also kill your own.

I feel like Taco's assessment of the situation is pretty similar to my own, and I wanted to repost part of my previous post, because it got subsequently buried in people's top-5 lists and all that whatnot. Here's what i was sayin':


I think [the best] solution(s) would be to start printing brutal color-hosers again (with the nastiest ones only affecting blue decks, and ideally providing a symmetrical effect so blue decks can't sideboard them effectively, ie more like Choke less like Llawan), and most importantly WotC needs to find ways to print powerful spells in other colors. I truly believe that the problem right now is not that blue is broken or unfair; it's just the best color when considered from a wide perspective. This is because, for example, while blue gets effects like countering spells and drawing extra cards, white gets effects like preventing damage and gaining extra life. (The preceding sentence is a hyperbole, but you get my point.)

I think also, an important point to make is that there should be more powerful cards printed that are not so easily splashed into decks of another color. For example, if Tarmogoyf costed instead of , it would be much harder to just stick it in any deck where you need a dumb undercosted beater; if Dark Confidant was then you wouldn't be able to just be like "well I have a low curve and I wouldn't hate drawing extra cards, guess I can justify a black splash with a couple sideboard cards." I don't think that they should stop printing powerful cards that only require one colored mana, but if there were more incentives to play cards that required two or three colored mana, I think we would have a format that looked a lot less like "Blue, splashing x and maybe y."

Also, we just need some good blue hosers. And they need to either have a symmetrical effect, or not be easily splashable (in addition to probably needing them to be counter-proof.)

[Hanni]

Blue's the best color in magic, get over it. Blue isn't unbeatable, and if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It's not like there is only 1 competitive blue deck in the format. In fact, there's so many different variations of blue that it's not even funny. Take your pick, or go build a deck that beats up on blue... and yes, you do have options. Zoo and The Rock are both pretty good anti-blue decks the last time I checked...

[dahcmai]

That's why I mentioned making a card that's WW for a cost. Splash that and you deserve it. Moat and Humility are still problematic to splash into blue (though it's done), you still have a heck of time getting the mana under duress. (lol cute pun)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

...And all of those ridiculous brainstorm rhyme cards would splash quite well into blue. Just saying.

So? I'm pretty sure it would be correct to play 4-5 colors in most decks at that point. I mean StP is probably the closest to undercostedness/versatility compared to Brainstorm, and that gets splashed for all over the place. Goyf as a third. Manabases can be pretty flexible when there's ridiculously undercosted stuff.

I mean I think there's a legitimate argument for banning Brainstorm, although I don't think the case is remotely clinched yet.

[FieryBalrog]

There are two reasons why at any given time, Blue is probably the best color in the format. (I mean when Blue sucks in Standard for a month, it is BIG NEWS. When no one plays green in Standard for 2 years, no one gives a crap).

One is RG gave Blue the best slice of the color pie pretty dramatically. The boons are the obvious demonstration of this since they are supposed to represent the essence of each color.

On top of raw card draw which has been de-emphasized since then, counterspells are the best answer card in the game because they can you gain tempo while dealing with any other card type, especially sorceries (which the other colors have absolute shit to answer, except discard, which is way worse as an answer). Card filtering is a powerful ability that WotC continually underrated. Even bounce was underrated forever because the concept of tempo wasn't well understood. Also, the synergy between the blue mechanics was tremendous in a way that entirely escaped, for example, White for the longest time.

The second is that WotC has an institutional love for pushing the color. It's their baby. The best example of this is Jace, because his brokenness has nothing to do with the color pie distribution. It's the fact that they deliberately pumped him full of steroids because they wanted a marquee Spike card, and Spike loves blue (if you wanted to compete, you either learnt to love Blue or quit the game). And this isn't a random bias. The developers at Wizards are mostly pro-tour types who grew up playing High Tide and Tinker. It's just a self-perpetuating phenomenon.

P.S. I agree Red is by far the weakest and most one-dimensional color across basically all formats right now. OK fine it beats out White in Vintage because white is a cripple in that format. Isn't it great that Valakut decks in Extended- a card that only works with mass Mountains- refused to run more than a couple of red cards.

[Hitman82]

In a format as wide open as Legacy, you have to be able to add a level of consistency to what you're trying to do. There's two parts to winning a game: 1) Advancing to your own endgame and 2) Stopping your opponent from reaching his. Brainstorm is the best card in the format at achieving 1 and Force of Will is the best card in the format at achieving 2. Decks with those two cards in them will always be stronger than decks without because possessing those two qualities reduces the variance you experience in both your deck and the format.

All you'll do if you get Brainstorm banned is make the format less enjoyable since it becomes more luck-based. Seeing more cards and stopping your opponent from killing you are desirable qualities in Magic. You can't balance the colors since white, green and red got the shaft from the start. Nobody cares about gaining life, pumping creatures for a turn or burn. Wizards isn't going to reinvent the color pie. The flavor's are going to stay the same and blue will always be the best. Sorry to break the news to you. If you get Brainstorm banned, blue decks will still be the best decks. The format will just be a little less fun and little more frustrating since you're increasing the variance.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think we also need to see how this metagame settles down though, because I think right now it's a little retarded. First of all people are obviously way over-rating how good Batterskull is, and still drastically underestimate Mental Misstep.

I mean what's going on with Mental Misstep right now is just insane to me. It's basically like Wizards printed this card;

http://i.imgur.com/k7qQ0.jpg

And all anyone could say was, "Gee, blue wins again lol", "Wow what a great blue card", "I really wish I was playing blue so this would boost my Vedalken Shackles."

You don't need blue to play it. Really. Just, you know, go ahead and play it in your aggro deck. It'll be fine. Really.

Just play fucking Mental Misstep in your aggro decks. It's okay, you can pay two life. It's pretty much worth free counterspells. Just do it. Grow a pair. Come the fuck on.

[Forbiddian]

Sounds like a lot of fun on Isochron Scepter. Exactly the type of game I'm sure WotC would like to promote.

Wow, you sure take hypothetical card suggestions seriously!

@Topic: Blue has always been the best color in Magic, I don't know why people are suddenly realizing that it has more than 1/5th of the color pie.

[dragonwisdom]

enchantment costs double red (so you can't splash easily)

Blazestorm can't be countered.

During each player's upkeep, reveal his or her hand.

Blazestorm does damage equal to the number of blue cards in hand.

or instead of an enchantment you can make this a 2/2 goblin creature that gets plus 1/0 if any land could produce a black or green mana (so you don't have to run dual lands, for new players.)

They could try adding serious land destruction to red instead of the junk they have now. Perhaps a red sinkhole that can't be countered.

anyway some ideas

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Wow, you sure take hypothetical card suggestions seriously!

@Topic: Blue has always been the best color in Magic, I don't know why people are suddenly realizing that it has more than 1/5th of the color pie.

There's probably a line between "best color" and "ruining the format".

[bracer028]

what they need to hose blue is a card like

phyrexian mana 2 colorless.

enchantment

when a blue spell is played, put a 1/1 flying creature into play under your control

this enchantment cannot be the target of blue spells and cannot be countered

[FieryBalrog]

LSV telling it like it is (not that anyone with their eyes open didn't know this)


Non-blue decks may not be playing Misstep, but that doesn’t mean the card isn’t as good as predicted; it just means non-blue decks suck. Despite the fact that you can play anything you want, if you really want to win the tournament I don’t see how you can start your decklist with anything other than 4 Force of Will 4 Mental Misstep. I mean, I’ll always play Brainstorm and Jace too, but as long as you have Forces and Missteps I’ll allow it.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Uhhhh.

I mean he may not be able to see it, but as the winning deck did start without 4 Force of Will this seems like an admission of shortcoming.

I mean he can say that that was just a bad decision that lucked out and the winning list should have run Force, definitely. But then that applies the other way; maybe people like playing blue in this new format more than it actually deserves.

I mean Brainstorm is definitely the best card in the format, and it's nice that it counters Brainstorm and that playing it means that you can also hardcast Misstep sometimes, I guess.

But if no one's actually playing Misstep-Zoo or Misstep-Goblins, it's hard to say that those decks are bad.

[FieryBalrog]

No one's playing Misstep-Zoo for a reason. Just because a card can be cast in a deck doesn't mean it belongs. Zoo is a deck with a pretty clear laser like focus, so let's drop some of that focus to run a set of situational counters but with no critical mass of them? This is even more obvious with Goblins, come on- this is a deck that tried really hard and failed to fit Tarmogoyf in it. Throwing Misstep into Goblins sounds like trying to keep a pet deck alive. Does that really sound like a deck someone would choose if they were aiming for the best?

It's pretty obvious that pairing Misstep with Force vastly increases its power. Or at the least, pair it with some other counters like Daze. Like most of the good blue cards, it synergizes with other blue cards.

Also, the deck that happened to win doesn't tell us that Force+Misstep isn't the best place to start. Sometimes decks just win, Magic is about more than just who took the trophy itself.

[Fsk]

Brainstorm is just like survival, getting better with new cards printed. Except brainstorm doesnt "combo" with creatures but with every cards. Nowadays most of the decks play only goods cards and brainstorming 2 lands away for 3 OP cards is just ridiculous.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

No one's playing Misstep-Zoo for a reason.

But people are playing Zoo, which you also just said was bad. So do people know what they're doing or not? You seem to be arbitrarily making bullshit up to justify your initial assumptions.


Just because a card can be cast in a deck doesn't mean it belongs. Zoo is a deck with a pretty clear laser like focus, so let's drop some of that focus to run a set of situational counters but with no critical mass of them? This is even more obvious with Goblins, come on- this is a deck that tried really hard and failed to fit Tarmogoyf in it. Throwing Misstep into Goblins sounds like trying to keep a pet deck alive. Does that really sound like a deck someone would choose if they were aiming for the best?

This is a meaningless paragraph so I don't even really know how to address it.

Yes, clearly I do think Goblins with Mental Misstep is something someone can play to try to win, since that's what I just fucking said.


It's pretty obvious that pairing Misstep with Force vastly increases its power. Or at the least, pair it with some other counters like Daze. Like most of the good blue cards, it synergizes with other blue cards.

Unless you're just splashing blue for Brainstorm and Clique and then I guess it's nice to be able to hardcast it once in a while, and, you know, win a Legacy GP.


Also, the deck that happened to win doesn't tell us that Force+Misstep isn't the best place to start. Sometimes decks just win, Magic is about more than just who took the trophy itself.

Unless the results support your conclusion and then obvi duh obviously people aren't playing Misstep Zoo QED it sucks.

Obv obv obv.

[Iare]

I think we also need to see how this metagame settles down though, because I think right now it's a little retarded. First of all people are obviously way over-rating how good Batterskull is, and still drastically underestimate Mental Misstep.

I mean what's going on with Mental Misstep right now is just insane to me. It's basically like Wizards printed this card;

http://i.imgur.com/k7qQ0.jpg

And all anyone could say was, "Gee, blue wins again lol", "Wow what a great blue card", "I really wish I was playing blue so this would boost my Vedalken Shackles."

You don't need blue to play it. Really. Just, you know, go ahead and play it in your aggro deck. It'll be fine. Really.

Just play fucking Mental Misstep in your aggro decks. It's okay, you can pay two life. It's pretty much worth free counterspells. Just do it. Grow a pair. Come the fuck on.

It isn't as simple as this though. Aggro decks, especially sligh need a high threat density which includes a enough burn to end the game. This is because we need to win the game before Jace/moat/Elspeth/whatever bomb said blue deck is going to slap on the table. Mental misstep is a horrible topdeck, not usefull all the time and unlike blue aggro decks don't have access to good card selection to get rid of un-needed crap in our hands.

Non-blue decks have to live and die by the cards they have and whatever they can rip off the top (Black has not as good but at least something for card draw).

I replaced rift bolt with mental misstep in my boros sligh and honestly, if its not in my opening hand or the first two cards I draw then I really hope I never see it. Otherwise its fantastic, seeing at its a free counterspell. Having more free counterspells would make it even more powerful but since I can't run any other ones its pretty iffy at times. I am fairly sure its still better than the rift bolts that were in there but still I would replace it with this:

Theoritic better than rift bolt burn spell (R)

Instant

Theoretic better than rift bolt burn spell can't be countered by spells or abilities

TBTRBBS does three damage to target creature or player.


Its only the fact that there isn't a burn spell that I find more useful than a rift bolt that I find room for mental misstep. Red hasn't got a good spell maindeck worthy spell printed in years (Volcanic fallout is potentially good enough, but only because merfolk is everywhere). Hell if things keep going the way they are Boil will be maindeck worthy :P

I do find it sad that R&D will print good counterspells but won't print other "unfun" cards in other colors. Where is our playable land destruction, burn spells, card advantage generating discard, any playable white cards (Yea there is about 1 playable white card printed a year), playable free spells in any color other than blue, none easily splashable creatures and you know cards that aren't blue but are good enough for legacy in general. What I really think needs to happen for the health of the format is the printing of really good land destruction and none basic land hate. It would make it harder for blue to splash 2-4 colors so easily for their bombs and make aggro control in other colors more feasible. The best land hate right now is blue FFS :(

[Kich867]

what they need to hose blue is a card like

phyrexian mana 2 colorless.

enchantment

when a blue spell is played, put a 1/1 flying creature into play under your control

this enchantment cannot be the target of blue spells and cannot be countered

Something like Eyes of the Wisent or Seedtime? Eyes basically reads: If someone EOT brainstorms, FOF's, or counters any of your shit, you get a free 4/4. With the prevalence of blue in the format I wonder like, absolutely--there may not be a place for cards like this, but Seedtime is literally an instant speed not that hard to conditionally meet time walk. Aside from the fact that Legacy is a fast-ish environment (people genuinely overextend this concept), Seedtiming means you need to both have it in your hand and play something that got countered or something, which is probably hard, but I do find it odd that it is rarely if ever brought up when looking at decks that run green. I'm under the impression that cards like Seedtime were dismissed long ago because conditional free turns are bad.

I mean, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to try it, and I'm a total newbie here I've only been visiting this site for a few months at most, maybe those cards are in some kind of dark age--but Eyes of the Wisent looks like a brick-shittingly solid card to sideboard in against a deck that plays blue, maybe even run them mainboard if you anticipate (rightfully so) a heavy blue meta. The number of decks that run Blue relative to those that don't are kind of overwhelming.

I just find it somewhat entertaining that -- outside of the card having some pseudo trollshroud and being uncounterable (which would quite frankly just be broken) -- the card you're asking for exists. And I'm sure those are only two of the many that people overlook. I mean, in general your card suggestion is grossly overpowered--it would only strengthen the already prominent blue decks (2 phyrexian colorless? Ok so, I'm solidarity, whenever I or my opponent plays a blue spell, I get a creature. I go first, pay 4 life, whatever. It's uncounterable and they can't remove it for at -least- 3 turns after I win game 1 because they obviously won't have K-Grips mainboarded. I do my whole "Deck you thing" it somehow fails I'm left with ~42 1/1's and now it's my turn. Swing with 42 1/1 fliers, game).

A better choice of wording would be: "Whenever an opponent plays a blue spell that targets a spell you control, put a 1/1 whatever flying thing into play." and it should certainly not be able to be free-casted turn 1. At the earliest...it should be...say, 2 mana? And being uncounterable would be a tad bit broken you want to be able to legitimately fight against it. Kind of see where that goes?

[Offler]

I play blue and blue only. I am a casual player of EDH and Highlander which both are strong connected with legacy, however cards in singleton have completely different power level. First I would like to write about some cards:

1. Best Planeswalker:
Jace do all what blue cantrips do + one killer effect, however I believe that this card is bit overrated. Surely has decent power level.

3 Best tutor:
My vote is for Gifts Ungiven in blue (combo potential for reanimation)

4. Best filtering
Besides colorless, hated totally splashable and allmighty Sensei's Divining top there is blue Brainstorm. Brainstorm is powerful indeed (some calculations shows its more powerful than Ancestrall Recall), but repeatabality by the SDT is also very useful.


What about anti-control like Vexing Shusher? its all in one response against plain counterspelling. Well known card, high rating at gatherer. did someone mention it here?

I believe that the blue is not strongest color at all... I just think that people who decided to play blue have to build up decks with deeper idea - not only plain calculation how many turns do I need to deal 20 dmg to player.

Local meta shows me players with goblins, zoo and so on. Really fast decks able to kill in 4th turn. But they all look the same. Creatures, creatures, creatures... nothing else. and common response is Counterspell of course. Usual response is "ok, my creature is dead, but you spent mana and card and did no damage to me". Same for cantriping with Brainstorm.

People here are wrong about counterspelling and cantrips, but this leads them towards creature decks which are fast enough to survive against common control strategy here. There is but one exceptional player (not me) who uses Mishra's Helix to lock down the game via land controlling. I believe he had found control which works both against aggro and control decks here...

[dontbiteitholmes]

I don't buy this blue needs a nerf business at least if it means banning stuff.

First off, sure blue is putting up great results, but probably 50% or more of the format right now is playing blue and more entries = more top 8's. If 80% of the best players are playing blue it's pretty much a given it's going to get lots of strong finishes. I mean if you took the top 8 of the GP and told them you can't play blue and replayed the event tomorrow I'd guess at least 1 or 2 of them would have still made top 16 as there are no weak players in that group.

Second, if Force of Will is so broken why did a deck without them win a GP? If Brainstorm needs to be banned then what about Top? Any color can run Top which is in many cases better than Brainstorm, Green has Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile, Black has Dark Confidant, every color has Mental Misstep, I don't see the problem here...

Is it Blue's fault for winning, or is it our faults for not playing decks that hose blue?

We've been here before. Ban Lackey, ban Goyf, ban CounterTop, ban Lion's Eye Diamond... Fact of the matter though only Flash and Survival have put up broken results for a sustained period. Gobs was a tier deck for years and now everyone acts like it's unplayable same with CounterBalance... I say give the format time to settle and let other colors keep getting stronger as they have over the past several blocks and we'll end up back where we started with the any deck can win format we're used to.

[Gheizen64]

Something like Eyes of the Wisent or Seedtime? Eyes basically reads: If someone EOT brainstorms, FOF's, or counters any of your shit, you get a free 4/4. With the prevalence of blue in the format I wonder like, absolutely--there may not be a place for cards like this, but Seedtime is literally an instant speed not that hard to conditionally meet time walk. Aside from the fact that Legacy is a fast-ish environment (people genuinely overextend this concept), Seedtiming means you need to both have it in your hand and play something that got countered or something, which is probably hard, but I do find it odd that it is rarely if ever brought up when looking at decks that run green. I'm under the impression that cards like Seedtime were dismissed long ago because conditional free turns are bad.

I mean, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to try it, and I'm a total newbie here I've only been visiting this site for a few months at most, maybe those cards are in some kind of dark age--but Eyes of the Wisent looks like a brick-shittingly solid card to sideboard in against a deck that plays blue, maybe even run them mainboard if you anticipate (rightfully so) a heavy blue meta. The number of decks that run Blue relative to those that don't are kind of overwhelming.

I just find it somewhat entertaining that -- outside of the card having some pseudo trollshroud and being uncounterable (which would quite frankly just be broken) -- the card you're asking for exists. And I'm sure those are only two of the many that people overlook. I mean, in general your card suggestion is grossly overpowered--it would only strengthen the already prominent blue decks (2 phyrexian colorless? Ok so, I'm solidarity, whenever I or my opponent plays a blue spell, I get a creature. I go first, pay 4 life, whatever. It's uncounterable and they can't remove it for at -least- 3 turns after I win game 1 because they obviously won't have K-Grips mainboarded. I do my whole "Deck you thing" it somehow fails I'm left with ~42 1/1's and now it's my turn. Swing with 42 1/1 fliers, game).

A better choice of wording would be: "Whenever an opponent plays a blue spell that targets a spell you control, put a 1/1 whatever flying thing into play." and it should certainly not be able to be free-casted turn 1. At the earliest...it should be...say, 2 mana? And being uncounterable would be a tad bit broken you want to be able to legitimately fight against it. Kind of see where that goes?

Seedtime is EXTREMELY conditional... Aggro decks don't want to leave 2 open at EoT. The only time they do that is because they didn't play threat that turn. Or they play only instant-speed threat, aka burn. In fact, Seedtime could be a decent card in burn, but since you have no creatures in burn, timewalk is just a draw 1. Seedtime was believed to be new come of jesus when it came out, people playtested it and found it bad. Something like carpet of flower is way, way stronger, giving you a one-sided vineyard. Eyes of the Wisent seems good but you can play around it. Again, not a thing you want from an hate card. You want a card that have to be answered or lose, not a conditional 4/4 for 2. Something like Chill. A 2 mana spell that effectively end the game against red decks. Or Karma, a 4 mana spell that end the game in 2-3 turn if unanswered against black decks. Or something like that.

[bruizar]

are we really going to ruin legacy like this? The blue restrictions (and proxies) ruined Vintage. Go whine somewhere else before your whining destroys the format

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

I don't buy this blue needs a nerf business at least if it means banning stuff.

First off, sure blue is putting up great results, but probably 50% or more of the format right now is playing blue and more entries = more top 8's. If 80% of the best players are playing blue it's pretty much a given it's going to get lots of strong finishes. I mean if you took the top 8 of the GP and told them you can't play blue and replayed the event tomorrow I'd guess at least 1 or 2 of them would have still made top 16 as there are no weak players in that group.

Second, if Force of Will is so broken why did a deck without them win a GP? If Brainstorm needs to be banned then what about Top? Any color can run Top which is in many cases better than Brainstorm, Green has Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile, Black has Dark Confidant, every color has Mental Misstep, I don't see the problem here...

Is it Blue's fault for winning, or is it our faults for not playing decks that hose blue?

We've been here before. Ban Lackey, ban Goyf, ban CounterTop, ban Lion's Eye Diamond... Fact of the matter though only Flash and Survival have put up broken results for a sustained period. Gobs was a tier deck for years and now everyone acts like it's unplayable same with CounterBalance... I say give the format time to settle and let other colors keep getting stronger as they have over the past several blocks and we'll end up back where we started with the any deck can win format we're used to.

I totally agree with this, especially the point about the "ban something" whining. It has happened before and it happens every time some new and powerful card shakes up the metagame. People just hate to change their decks and adapt. Before continuing this kind of discussion, at least wait a few months to give the format at least a semblance of a chance to adapt. MM is the new "IT-kid", almost everybody wants to play with it and there are definite benefits to being able to hardcast it. That's where all the blue comes from.

I said it before but I think people don't realize how important it is: the Hatfields, two of the absolute best Legacy players in the world, decided to play Zoo at the GP. No blue, nothing. I would take pretty high odds that either of the Hatfields is much much better than anybody complaining about blue's powerlevel, so in all likelihood they knew what they were doing much better than anybody whining and are probably months ahead of the format's general public as far as adapting to a Mental Misstep metagame is concerned.

It isn't like they failed. One of them managed to 9:0 day one. A different Zoo-player made Top8. Goblins also went 9:0 day one. These results mean something: Mental Misstep is NOT unbeatable. Actually, as the format gets slowed down, Goblins becomes better. I generally use Goblins as one of the first decks I test against because it has so many angles of attack, so I have some testing experience with the new blue decks against it. Goblins still has a favorable matchup against the Misstep decks people play. If you know what you're doing, winning against a slightly updated Goblins list (4 Instigators) is extremely difficult for all of the Standstill decks in my experience.

Honestly people, stop this "oh no, I have to adjust to a changed metagame - ban something!" attitude. It's the same crap that happened when combo had its two weeks in the sun a month ago. A strategy can't be beaten by playing a bigger creature or killing one the opponent has and the whining begins.

When I started playing Legacy regularly, most of what I saw was Goblins, Zoo and other aggro-decks that just crushed every control-deck I was trying out. I hate playing aggro, I just don't enjoy dropping creatures and turning them sideways, so I wasn't happy with a format that seemed so hostile to it. Did I start crying about how aggro was so so unfair, how they needed to ban Vial/Lackey/Nacatl/...? No, I tried to build something that dealt with them and after trying long enough and hard enough I managed.

This is an eternal format, not Limited/Kitchen Table Magic. If you don't interact with your opponent other than by being able to kill their creatures, it's your own fault you're in trouble (and less so than I'd expect, after all Zoo has been doing pretty well at the GP imo). There is more to Magic than creature combat and that is a good thing! Just do the same thing you should have been doing already, try to interact with your opponents on levels other than putting a clock on them and hoping you get there before they do something powerful. Newsflash: this is Eternal, powerful plays will be made. Ignoring this fact is failing at Legacy.
The big difference now is that this time it isn't combo, we're talking about control being powerful. This makes it even easier to adapt. You don't need dedicated stack/handdisruption to compete and you don't need it turn one or two. These decks give you the time to claw back into the game if you have the tools at your disposal even if those tools are expensive or more general in application. So play more Sylvan Libraries and Divining Tops (in non-blue decks), try decks that have Armageddon, Cataclysm (this one is ridiculous against almost any blue deck from my experience), Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds in them. Try a Pox-deck. Use Sinkhole, Bitterblossom, Phyrexian Arena (maybe), Genesis, Weathered Wayfarer and Cabal Therapy (now new and improved with a free Peek for any color). Play some actual bombs you can use when they've exhausted their countermagic on your lesser threats. You know how Deedstill beats a resolved Ajani Vengeant? It doesn't. Heck, Pithing Needle on Deed is a huge beating against the deck. Do what Durward did and play Chrome Mox in your aggressive non-blue decks and rely more on two-drops. Innovate for god's sake! In general, play more disruption. Play cards that actually do something other than turn sideways to deal damage.

On a different note, the "I want to play blue" phenomenon is also exacerbated by the fact that many good players (and especially pro-players that don't know Legacy all that well) generally love ways to reduce variance (because without variance, they'll win more, being good players and all) and will flock to decks that have library manipulation as a result.

/edit: Yeah, learn from what happened to Vintage. It has been said a lot of times but it needs repeating until you actually look at history. Don't whine to make Legacy go the way of Vintage. One ruined format is more than enough.

[DragoFireheart]

/edit: Yeah, learn from what happened to Vintage. It has been said a lot of times but it needs repeating until you actually look at history. Don't whine to make Legacy go the way of Vintage. One ruined format is more than enough.


What happened to Vintage for it to be "ruined"?

[DrJones]

are we really going to ruin legacy like this? The blue restrictions (and proxies) ruined Vintage. Go whine somewhere else before your whining destroys the formatNo, what ruined Vintage was the WotC purposely broke the format in half to force people into Legacy. It's likely WotC will try to break legacy the same way to force people into Modern.

Force of Will is strip mine. People defend it as a way to defend against imaginary Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale decks, but the hard fact is that it has always been used to prevent the opponent from playing cards that would otherwise interact with your strategy. Actually, the people defending it have an agenda because they enjoy its ability to steal games at random regardless of playskill, and that there's no answer to it.

Mental Misstep is wasteland.

The format is unplayable right now because it allows some decks to run 4 strip mines and 4 wastelands. And you can't play around that strategy unless you play a deck with too many (or no) lands. You can't "adapt" to it because you are not really playing in the same league.

[DragoFireheart]

No, what ruined Vintage was the WotC purposely broke the format in half to force people into Legacy. It's likely WotC will try to break legacy the same way to force people into Modern.

Force of Will is strip mine. People defend it as a way to defend against imaginary Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale decks, but the hard fact is that it has always been used to prevent the opponent from playing cards that would otherwise interact with your strategy. Actually, the people defending it have an agenda because they enjoy its ability to steal games at random regardless of playskill, and that there's no answer to it.

Mental Misstep is wasteland.

The format is unplayable right now because it allows some decks to run 4 strip mines and 4 wastelands. And you can't play around that strategy unless you play a deck with too many (or no) lands. You can't "adapt" to it because you are not really playing in the same league.



Yeah, because you can't get into the top 8 without Force of Will. Hell, there's no way in hell someone can win the grand pix without Force of Will!

[majikal]

No, what ruined Vintage was the WotC purposely broke the format in half to force people into Legacy. It's likely WotC will try to break legacy the same way to force people into Modern.

Force of Will is strip mine. People defend it as a way to defend against imaginary Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale decks, but the hard fact is that it has always been used to prevent the opponent from playing cards that would otherwise interact with your strategy. Actually, the people defending it have an agenda because they enjoy its ability to steal games at random regardless of playskill, and that there's no answer to it.

Mental Misstep is wasteland.

The format is unplayable right now because it allows some decks to run 4 strip mines and 4 wastelands. And you can't play around that strategy unless you play a deck with too many (or no) lands. You can't "adapt" to it because you are not really playing in the same league.
I completely agree. I was sickened when yet another Force of Will deck won the Grand Pr... oh, wait.

Also, is it just me or is this thread some kind of time warp into the 1990s? Every time blue gets a good card, everyone's like, "OMG BLUE IS TOO GOOD! LET'S BAN ISLAND!"

But then when blue actually gets nerfed, people go, "STOP PICKING ON BLUE, YOU'RE RUINING IT!"

Here's the deal - blue's slice of the pie, the things it does, are the best abilities in magic. It will either be the best color, or it won't be worth playing at all. That's just how it has to be. It's a flaw in the game's design, and there is absolutely no way to fix it.

Banning Brainstorm won't help anything. It will just make control suck again (I mean seriously, Landstill is a good deck again. Let it have its moment in the sun) while also randomly hosing some combo decks that aren't winning anyway. The most popular blue deck, Merfolk, will lose absolutely nothing, and people will still bitch, since it is now harder for other blue decks to find enough removal to ever win that match.

Banning Force of Will won't help anything, because it's not like that card is keeping aggro down. It usually gets sided out against those decks as well as stuff with lots of discard (ie, a huge chunk of the format). It will just bolster some of the more degenerate combo decks, which will then play Mental Misstep to take out the opponent's now-shittier countermagic.

Banning Mental Misstep might do something. Free things without a drawback (and let's face it, loss of life is not a drawback) are usually nuts busted, and WotC have admitted this time and time again, so it's probably true that this is, in fact, an unhealthy card to have around.

Or we could do nothing, wait a few months, and actually let the meta adjust for once.

[DrJones]

I completely agree. I was sickened when yet another Force of Will deck won the Grand Pr... oh, wait.What you are not realizing, is that the Hive Mind player pacted. :tongue:

EDIT: On a serious note, the good part about being right is that reality works regardless of opinion, and that theories are as useful as their predictive power is. Time always proves who is right, so I don't give a damn if I get mocked now as much as I didn't give a damn when I got mocked in 2007.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

What happened to Vintage for it to be "ruined"?

Now, I can't play Vintage (no scene) so it's very possible the format is still a lot of fun to those playing it, though people seem rather unhappy with it reading TMD. But essentially what happened was that Brainstorm (as well Gush, Merchant Scroll and Ponder - all cards Vintage had been thriving without before the Gush era* and therefore clearly not the reason for the drop off) was restricted and tournament-attendance began to crumble (as in, half-size tournaments). This was, admittedly, made worse by the Time Vault unerrata fiasco and as a result organizers stopped preparing large Vintage tournaments and now you're lucky to find a reasonably sized tournament every six months.

*similarly to what people claim about Legacy right now, blue was the clear undisputed top dog in Vintage during the Gush era. Much more so than it is in Legacy. That didn't keep Vintage from being more popular than it had ever been other than maybe during the Gifts era preceding Gush, another time of clear blue dominance.

The ruin isn't so much in it not being fun any more (as I said, I'm not really in a position to judge that, as mentioned nobody here plays Vintage so I don't get to play) but that half the players stopped showing up to tournaments once they didn't get to play with Brainstorm any more.
You can call that an overreaction, biased, stupid, whatever. The truth of the matter is, nothing is worth alienating such a large part of the player-base if what you're interested in is having a fun format to actually play.

/edit: note that I'm talking about this from a European perspective. Not sure how much proxy-troubles influenced this whole thing in the US.

[majikal]

EDIT: On a serious note, the good part about being right is that reality works regardless of opinion, and that theories are as useful as their predictive power is. Time always proves who is right, so I don't give a damn if I get mocked now as much as I didn't give a damn when I got mocked in 2007.

Are you trying to sell me Jesus or your argument about Force of Will? It's becoming hard to tell the difference with you.

[DragoFireheart]

What you are not realizing, is that the Hive Mind player pacted. :tongue:

EDIT: On a serious note, the good part about being right is that reality works regardless of opinion, and that theories are as useful as their predictive power is. Time always proves who is right, so I don't give a damn if I get mocked now as much as I didn't give a damn when I got mocked in 2007.


So much arrogance in that little post. If you expect anyone to take your seriously, try acting a little more humble. The perception of reality is all that really matters in the end.

[menace13]

Force of Will is strip mine. People defend it as a way to defend against imaginary Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale decks, but the hard fact is that it has always been used to prevent the opponent from playing cards that would otherwise interact with your strategy. Actually, the people defending it have an agenda because they enjoy its ability to steal games at random regardless of playskill, and that there's no answer to it.

Mental Misstep is wasteland.

The format is unplayable right now because it allows some decks to run 4 strip mines and 4 wastelands. And you can't play around that strategy unless you play a deck with too many (or no) lands. You can't "adapt" to it because you are not really playing in the same league.

So now you're a expert Legacy analyst with really bad analogies?

Unplayable as in 1100 man GP?
200 man 5ks every week?
8 different decks in top 8 in the GP, 8 different decks total from Orlando and Louisville 5ks? 8 different decks in top 8 of BoM5?
And now all of a sudden FoW takes no playskill, Then What does take skill Nacatl, Lackey, Hymn?

[DrJones]

I didn't say in that post that I'm necessarily the one being right, instead I talk about a property that is true regardless of who is right, which is why I also don't give a damn about being mocked; because if I'm mocked and I'm wrong, I only get what I deserve, and if I'm right it doesn't matter to me if I get mocked or not. Many people can't understand a man to be able to reason this way, and as such search for alternate readings.

As a tip, if you give arguments different weight depending of the perceived arrogance in a speaker, you act as a pretty poor judge. Arrogance is a subjective trait that depends on prejudices and first impressions, and at worst it only signals the speaker's confidence in him or her being right. It's the arguments the ones that let you discern between a person that says "Black" because he only sees the world as Black or White, and a person that says "Black" because it happens to be Black.

Anyways, that blue needs to be nerfed is like IP6 and the international measure system. It has been known for decades that it's necessary, but the managers prefer to avoid the issue because it will inconvenience customers and won't react until it's way too late. There's plenty of precedent in how they managed the reserved list, necropotence, the fate of vintage, the affinity fiasco, and now the Jace fiasco.

[DragoFireheart]

Anyways, that blue needs to be nerfed is like IP6 and the international measure system. It has been known for decades that it's necessary, but the managers prefer to avoid the issue because it will inconvenience customers and won't react until it's way too late. There's plenty of precedent in how they managed the reserved list, necropotence, the fate of vintage, the affinity fiasco, and now the Jace fiasco.

Necropotence is black.

Affinity is mostly artifacts. In fact, the broken cards are black and colorless.

A deck without Force of Will got first place in a recent GP.

I think you need to re-evaluate "reality". Suggesting that you don't care under the guise of "reality will show the truth!" is intellectually dishonest because you admit to being an open fool if reality isn't matching your views, while if reality is matching your views you are doing a poor job of showing it. So, cut the crap, be honest with yourself and us, and admit that you think you are right: the bearing of reality has little standing on what you actually think.

[DrJones]

I think you are more dishonest by claiming that Force of Will isn't busted because the person that happened to win the GP chose to run Force of Will v.2 in its place, when practically everyone that made Top 32 ran both.

Would you also say that Reanimator wasn't busted if ANT had won GP: Madrid (it lost because it misfired)? That Trix wasn't the best extended deck by far because it lost the finals in its first big tournament debut? Can you even mention a single deck in legacy's history that has been banned and that wasn't solely about using FoW to protect your combo?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Force of Will is an elegantly designed, fantastically fair card. It only becomes unfair when your entire deck hinges on running out one specific card to force through a win early, and those decks need to be kept in check.

Brainstorm is clearly the unfair half of this equation. No other card lets you take free mulligans for a single mana; Serum Powder wishes it were this good.

Again, I don't advocate banning Bstorm at the moment, but if blue is too dominant for too long, the first target for the axe should be obvious.

[Iron Buddha]

People play Legacy, because they want to play with their favourite cards: Brainstorm, Force of Will, Goblin Lackey, Humility, Survival of the Fittest, Hymn to Tourach, Dark Ritual, Counterspell and many more. So banning them - Brainstorm, Force of Will, etc. - would hurt the format. However, I don't think that a card like Jace TMS or Mental Misstep is someone's favourite card, since they're new (= no sentimental attachments), limited (just look at MM) and dumb.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

I think you are more dishonest by claiming that Force of Will isn't busted because the person that happened to win the GP chose to run Force of Will v.2 in its place, when practically everyone that made Top 32 ran both.

Would you also say that Reanimator wasn't busted if ANT had won GP: Madrid (it lost because it misfired)? That Trix wasn't the best extended deck by far because it lost the finals in its first big tournament debut? Can you even mention a single deck in legacy's history that has been banned and that wasn't solely about using FoW to protect your combo?

Trix wasn't even in the finals of its first big Extended tournament (GP Seattle). If you want to give examples, irrelevant as they might be for the discussion at hand (the problem with Trix was Necro and if you don't understand that, I'm not sure how to help you), at least use correct facts.
As for decks without FoW being banned:

- Survival was banned at least as much because of GW Survival than anything concerning FoW. Actually, the GW and GBW versions were arguably better than the UG-version and Elf-Survival would probably have proven to be the actual best (that deck looked sick but was luckily not build until a few days before they banned SotF).

- Mystical Tutor was much more of a problem in ANT than in Reanimator imo. The latter deck was realistically hateable (though still unhealthy) while ANT would probably have pressed everything but CB blue out of the meta slowly but surely (not that we ever came close to that point). As you said yourself, ANT only didn't win because it misfired.

[DrJones]

Brainstorm is like Vanguard's Squee. It lets you start with a ten card hand, but there are plenty of cards in all colors that allow decks to get the same advantage (Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top, etc). However, outside of blue there are no 'free timewalks' that have no answers in the +10000 printed cards.

Brainstorm is powerful because there only existed two cards to keep it in check: Chalice of the Void and Chains of Mephistopheles. Now we also have Mental Misstep to add to that list. Mental Misstep will make Brainstorm more fair. People will not be able to rely on Brainstorm from now on, this is a significant change.

However, there are no maindeck answers against Force of Will, other than countermagic. And the only cards that kept free countermagic in check, which where Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey, got a huge hit with the printing of Mental Misstep. I've been saying this since three years now, look at the archives if you don't believe me. What has happened in GP: Providence is that Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey stopped being good against blue.

The deck that won GP Providence was designed to beat decks that were designed to fight Force of Will, not Mental Misstep. However, Mental Misstep is a fair card. Banning Mental Misstep would return to a previous broken format where Force of Will places 3-6 decks in every top 8 and forces the DCI to keep banning good cards like Survival of the Fittest or Brainstorm; banning Force of Will allows for a format where strategies and skill matters, and not just card availability and the color you play.

I think it's a mistake to ask for the banning of brainstorm just now that we got an answer against it.

[DragoFireheart]

I think you are more dishonest by claiming that Force of Will isn't busted because the person that happened to win the GP chose to run Force of Will v.2 in its place, when practically everyone that made Top 32 ran both.

Just because a card is good doesn't mean it's unfair.




Would you also say that Reanimator wasn't busted if ANT had won GP: Madrid (it lost because it misfired)? That Trix wasn't the best extended deck by far because it lost the finals in its first big tournament debut? Can you even mention a single deck in legacy's history that has been banned and that wasn't solely about using FoW to protect your combo?

That's the thing: FoW is a supplement to support the combo. The combo itself is what wins you the game. FoW itself won't win you games.

[DragoFireheart]

However, there are no maindeck answers against Force of Will,

That's because it's not a threat...

Oh fuck, I give up. Someone else can argue with the troll. Apparently he has shroud against arguments that try to target him.

Edit: Sorry, he has Hexproof because he believes in his own argument.

[Gui]

That's because it's not a threat...

Oh fuck, I give up. Someone else can argue with the troll. Apparently he has shroud against arguments that try to target him.

Which is called Hexproof now :P

[dontbiteitholmes]

I didn't say in that post that I'm necessarily the one being right, instead I talk about a property that is true regardless of who is right, which is why I also don't give a damn about being mocked; because if I'm mocked and I'm wrong, I only get what I deserve, and if I'm right it doesn't matter to me if I get mocked or not. Many people can't understand a man to be able to reason this way, and as such search for alternate readings.

As a tip, if you give arguments different weight depending of the perceived arrogance in a speaker, you act as a pretty poor judge. Arrogance is a subjective trait that depends on prejudices and first impressions, and at worst it only signals the speaker's confidence in him or her being right. It's the arguments the ones that let you discern between a person that says "Black" because he only sees the world as Black or White, and a person that says "Black" because it happens to be Black.

Anyways, that blue needs to be nerfed is like IP6 and the international measure system. It has been known for decades that it's necessary, but the managers prefer to avoid the issue because it will inconvenience customers and won't react until it's way too late. There's plenty of precedent in how they managed the reserved list, necropotence, the fate of vintage, the affinity fiasco, and now the Jace fiasco.

Oh man, it's so sad when someone is wrong and then they start to throw around every smart sounding thing they can say in rapid succession, like sounding vaguely intelligent for 2 paragraphs will change the fact they are wrong.

I'm tired of listening to you spout off bullshit on these forums about banning Force of Will every time the card or the color blue is mentioned. To tell you the truth I miss the days when the Source was "elitist" because 10 people explaining this to you for the 100th time is just a waste of energy and 5 years ago they would have just banned you and been done with it...

First off, Force of Will is the reason most people play blue, so almost every Blue deck is going to have 4x Force of Will which might explain why it seems to be all over top 8's.

Second, blue isn't always a good choice historically for Legacy. Remember when Goblins first came out? You couldn't pay people to play Blue for a while. It comes and goes. Force of Will is a good card, but it's not broken by any means. In fact the more people play blue the worse it becomes, because there are plenty of decks that hose Blue and if the meta becomes too predictable a lot more of those decks start to show up.

Let's be real though. The real issue is not the Force of Will is broken, it's that you play shitty decks. Let's take a look...


This is my current test list. Only goldfishing so far, but looks promising:

4 [U] Bayou
1 [TSP] Forest (1)
4 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs

4 [AL] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
4 [PLC] Kavu Predator
4 [NE] Skyshroud Cutter
2 [VI] Quirion Ranger
3 [RAV] Dark Confidant

4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [ON] False Cure
3 [U] Berserk
4 [MM] Invigorate
4 [NE] Reverent Silence
3 [MR] Chalice of the Void
3 [MR] Spoils of the Vault
2 [TO] Strength of Lunacy

Yeah I think I see why you might hate Force of Will... You play terrible decks that rely on key spells resolving, and when you get FOW'd you lose. Stop playing terrible decks or stop complaining, end of discussion. I've seen some of your posts before because every time this comes up I look at the threads you've been posting in to see what is wrong with your perception of MTG, every deck you play is fit for kitchen table at best. Stop being so pompous because no one agrees with you for a reason, that reason being you are incredibly wrong on pretty much every level. FOW is very fair, if it were banned you'd either have to double the size of the banned list or you'd have a lot more to complain about. You remind me of my friend's wife. She's been in 10 car accidents in 4 years and she's always talking about how everyone else is such a shitty driver, what she fails to understand is that she is the shitty driver, it's everyone else who is normal.

[Admiral_Arzar]

That's because it's not a threat...

Oh fuck, I give up. Someone else can argue with the troll. Apparently he has shroud against arguments that try to target him.

You mean TROLLshroud?

lolololol

[I am the brainwasher]

Banning Brainstorm isnt the way to go, agreed.
Reasons that the card is restricted in Vintage are that the format itself has so many broken cards (even if those are singletons as well) that the ability to generate such an card quality and filtering through the deck is indeed very unbalanced in front of every other color (besides brown^^). Restricting was okay, if it was totally correct is arguable.
Which cards in Legacy are equal in terms of beeing broken that this needs to happen to Legacy? Moat, Counterbalance, Show&Tell, Stoneforge Mystic? Are you serious? I am happy that I play a format that doesnt has completely ridicolous cards and one-card-combos (as survival) that great cards like Brainstorm are completely fine, even if I must agree that the color pie isnt balanced in a way that would be more likeley.
The conclusion is obviously that the other colors need not just hosers, but more important more impressive cards to be more competetive and make them attractive to be played. But this WILL happen, believe it. Wizards announced a blue year that has become true (wow, at least they kept a promise...) in every kind of sense but so will other colors have their high-time, I am quite sure.
Does anyone remember Judgement? A main-theme of it was that the only gold/2color-cards were GW and in Torment they obviously printed a lot of powerful black cards and a cycle that benefits playing Black. There is no reason why this shouldnt happen in Innistrad as well and I am looking forward to some real bombs in the next sets that arent blue.
As far as I can speak for myself it would be fine for me if other colors would be more tempting but banning cards is hurting as fuck, especially if this is based upon irrational arguments and would hit cards that are literally fair from their own effect. Every card that someone complains about here IS fair but I do understand that players want cards to be printed that are amazingly powerful in other archetypes/strategies and colors besides Control/aggrocontrol.
Cards that I would see likeley are another playable rainbow land that is better than Tarnished Citadel, a incredibly powerful Vanilla-creature that cant be abused by blue decks, more uncounterable cards (Thrun is an awesome card btw, still underestimated.) and cards in general that push Aggro-decks heavily.
Story-technically it could be done easily to create a set where blue is suppressed and marginal in existence and I think that the latest point where this set will be released is in 2012, honest.
Till then I can just recommend to play MM's outside of blue and abuse cards like Top in more decks that are able to produce card quality also.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Again, Brainstorm is undercosted by about two mana. There really isn't a comparably flexible and proactive, undercosted card in any other color. Printing some is out of the question for Wizards. Divining Top and Sylvan Library, while powerful cards don't do at all what Brainstorm does, which is let you get a free mulligan on your hand for one mana. Any such comparison demonstrates a misunderstanding of what Brainstorm does. It's not a strictly digging spell like Top or Ponder, it's a pure filtering spell like Thirst for Knowledge or Compulsive Research, at least with shuffle effects (part of how fetchlands sort of broke the format in some ways; if not for fetchlands I would say that Brainstorm should never be even considered for a ban, but la, here we are).

[bracer028]

Banning Brainstorm isnt the way to go, agreed.
Reasons that the card is restricted in Vintage are that the format itself has so many broken cards (even if those are singletons as well) that the ability to generate such an card quality and filtering through the deck is indeed very unbalanced in front of every other color (besides brown^^). Restricting was okay, if it was totally correct is arguable.
Which cards in Legacy are equal in terms of beeing broken that this needs to happen to Legacy? Moat, Counterbalance, Show&Tell, Stoneforge Mystic? Are you serious? I am happy that I play a format that doesnt has completely ridicolous cards and one-card-combos (as survival) that great cards like Brainstorm are completely fine, even if I must agree that the color pie isnt balanced in a way that would be more likeley.
The conclusion is obviously that the other colors need not just hosers, but more important more impressive cards to be more competetive and make them attractive to be played. But this WILL happen, believe it. Wizards announced a blue year that has become true (wow, at least they kept a promise...) in every kind of sense but so will other colors have their high-time, I am quite sure.
Does anyone remember Judgement? A main-theme of it was that the only gold/2color-cards were GW and in Torment they obviously printed a lot of powerful black cards and a cycle that benefits playing Black. There is no reason why this shouldnt happen in Innistrad as well and I am looking forward to some real bombs in the next sets that arent blue.
As far as I can speak for myself it would be fine for me if other colors would be more tempting but banning cards is hurting as fuck, especially if this is based upon irrational arguments and would hit cards that are literally fair from their own effect. Every card that someone complains about here IS fair but I do understand that players want cards to be printed that are amazingly powerful in other archetypes/strategies and colors besides Control/aggrocontrol.
Cards that I would see likeley are another playable rainbow land that is better than Tarnished Citadel, a incredibly powerful Vanilla-creature that cant be abused by blue decks, more uncounterable cards (Thrun is an awesome card btw, still underestimated.) and cards in general that push Aggro-decks heavily.
Story-technically it could be done easily to create a set where blue is suppressed and marginal in existence and I think that the latest point where this set will be released is in 2012, honest.
Till then I can just recommend to play MM's outside of blue and abuse cards like Top in more decks that are able to produce card quality also.

you really cannot and should not play MM outside of blue. If you don't get your MM in your opening hand, it becomes rather useless FAST. you cannot pitch to force either so its really a bad topdeck card and a dead card altogether.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

you really cannot and should not play MM outside of blue. If you don't get your MM in your opening hand, it becomes rather useless FAST. you cannot pitch to force either so its really a bad topdeck card and a dead card altogether.


This is so insanely wrong in every way possible.

What you do if you're playing an aggro deck, need Misstep and don't have two life left to give: OOPS YOU ALREADY LOST ANYWAY.

What you do if you're playing an aggro deck, draw Misstep, and don't see any targets all game: OOPS YOU ALREADY WON ANYWAY.

Seriously. If you're playing Zoo and your opponent has no one drops, just go fucking kill him then. This isn't too hard.

[SlopeeJ]

If you're playing Zoo and your opponent has no one drops, just go fucking kill him then. This isn't too hard.
I'm not trying to bring the misstep debate into this thread and usually agree with what you post Bear but this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The reason why misstep is so powerful is because of all the other cards that blue has to go with it ie force, brainstorm, daze other counterspells etc etc.

If you are playing zoo and your opp has one drops you should just go kill them.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm not trying to bring the misstep debate into this thread and usually agree with what you post Bear but this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The reason why misstep is so powerful is because of all the other cards that blue has to go with it ie force, brainstorm, daze other counterspells etc etc.

If you are playing zoo and your opp has one drops you should just go kill them.

Kitty Zoo is an early game deck; it's problems come from two angles,

1) Late game resilience

2) Early game mana chokes

Misstep does nothing about the former, but helps enormously with the latter. The first mana you spend is often the most important. Making sure that your Nacatl or other beater sticks, your opponent is off his Aether Vial, or can't resolve a Top or Brainstorm to dig for answers, without costing you any mana so you can focus on emptying your hand to kill the opponent is enormously powerful.

Yes, either way your plan is to just go kill him, but the point is that an enormous number of things that interfere with this plan can be stopped by simply playing Misstep.

[DragoFireheart]

Yes, either way your plan is to just go kill him, but the point is that an enormous number of things that interfere with this plan can be stopped by simply playing Misstep.

Sadly if they draw MMS in too many copies, they can't get rid of them or pitch them to Fow.

[Offler]

I think that meta will be healthy when people are still searching for new cards and new ways of playing. When new cards are printed (such as mental misstep) and it provokes such reactions I think the job is done well.

Each strategy has its strong and its weak points. There is just no way fix all holes. Banning of any card will cause players to replace it with the second best with similar effect.

For example, when highlander format banned Survival of the fittest people automatically tried to play Fauna shaman and now the Birthing Pod. As a result decks based around Survival returned back to play, however the meta is much healthier because only few people returned to the old theme, but as a result some combo decks are now bit overpowered.

because i dont own Force of Will yet i tried Commandeer instead as an easy to find replacement, Later Daze and Foil. All three cards have bit mixed power level but in comparation with FOW they were able to do similar job (counterspelling without having any mana).

Most players who own playsets of best rated spells usually play them, and dont care about weaker variations on same theme. From this raised "we play the best cards ever printed" and while testing of other cards was never so good as in early era. People are conservative. 10 years playing with fow will not force player to buy another playset of Foil "just in case".

However if players stick with FOW the way of banning is not the right one. Mostly it means that players were unable to find suitable counter-strategy. better way is to adapt, and evolve strategy which works against FOW. Banning of fow will just allow weaker strategies to be viable, while its remaining in Legacy will help players to adapt - but only if they are willing to adapt.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Sadly if they draw MMS in too many copies, they can't get rid of them or pitch them to Fow.

I mean that's also true of Path to Exile. Or lands.

I mean you're describing why Brainstorm is good, not why Zoo shouldn't play Misstep.


Banning of any card will cause players to replace it with the second best with similar effect.

I mean this is simply a trite and over-used cliche without basis in reality. I still remember when people were trying to reconstruct the same old 1.5 decks immediately after the separation, with people playing Wormfang Crab instead of Dragon, sans the Bazaars.

Ponder and Top are no Brainstorm. Daze and Commandeer can't do the job Force does. In most decks, Path to Exile is way worse than StP. There's no easy replacement to LED or Lightning Bolt or Wild Nacatl. No one's going to play Quicksilver Amulet just because Aether Vial gets banned. Steelshaper's Gift will see all the play after an SFM banning that it did prior.

Cards are good for specific reasons. It doesn't matter their other similarities, people play Goyf and not Leatherback Baloth because the former is easy to play and cheaper and the latter costs three goddamned green mana.

[DragoFireheart]

I mean that's also true of Path to Exile. Or lands.

I mean you're describing why Brainstorm is good, not why Zoo shouldn't play Misstep.



Which is why it's better in a blue deck. Aggro decks can't afford dead draws as easily as blue decks.

[Offler]

Cards are good for specific reasons. It doesn't matter their other similarities, people play Goyf and not Leatherback Baloth because the former is easy to play and cheaper and the latter costs three goddamned green mana.

Cards are good because people know how and when to play them, and eventually how to combine them well. If the card does not need any other cards to work it makes it easier to play. However I still meet people who play Mountain, Raging Goblin and then dont attack immediately (no blocker on my side...)


I use Brainstorm, I know why I like it. But once one guy asked me why i did not do anything during my first turn. during his turn he dropped land, mox diamond casted sensei and passed turn. I cast Brainstorm afterwards. His comment was "so you didt anything in your first turn". I dont agree with his statement, but I have to agree that his strategy produced much more mana, at any color base.

he had 2 manasources, I had one, I brainstormed my hand, he checked top of library...

so... can you tell which strategy is better? I cannot. I even do not dare. But I Tried to adapt. Island, Retraced image, Island via its resolve, waiting with Force spike/Daze on hand, or playing Brainstorm at the end of opponents turn eventually. On my own surprise it worked. At least in local meta.

I know that brainstorm means free mulligan to fix the hand and this improves chance to have that specific combination of cards i mentioned previously. STD does not have this possibility on same turn, but it has other set of advantages.

[Forbiddian]

EDIT: On a serious note, the good part about being right is that reality works regardless of opinion, and that theories are as useful as their predictive power is. Time always proves who is right, so I don't give a damn if I get mocked now as much as I didn't give a damn when I got mocked in 2007.

You've been blithely wrong for 4 years. Also, I'm pretty sure that Jesus is coming in October.

[DrJones]

You've been blithely wrong for 4 years. Also, I'm pretty sure that Jesus is coming in October.Why? Legacy is getting worse and more blue-centric each year since 2006, and this year is so bad that WotC has announced Legacy-lite. If I had spent $2000 dollars on legacy staples, which I didn't, I would be worried right now. :laugh:

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Which is why it's better in a blue deck. Aggro decks can't afford dead draws as easily as blue decks.

And yet people play somewhat situational cards outside of blue.

But the situation in which Path or Pridemage or Misstep is likely to be good is pretty damned common.

[Richard Cheese]

The problem with printing spells that stop Blue or unbanning cards that stop Blue or suggesting cards that beat blue is that they'll just be run ALONGSIDE BLUE.

Survival's the perfect example. What was one of the top decks in Legacy when it was legal? U/G Vengevine Survival. Sure, there were some G/W lists, and a G/B here or there, maybe a mono-green, but there was also a ton of blue. And that was then. This is now, in the Mental Misstep era. I've played against a few Intuition/Vengevine/Madness decks since then, and like every other deck it can just win off the back of being able to tap out every turn and have 12 cards in the deck that disrupt your shit.

Stoneforge Mystic's another example. It's a great white card. It's pretty good against blue, especially now that Batterskull exists. What does Owen Turtenwald do? Stick it in a blue control shell and top 8 a Grand Prix.

Aether Vial supposedly beats blue if you resolve it, right? Except that the primary deck that runs it is also mono blue. Seems good.

You get my point, right? There's very little you can unban, print, etc. that can't just be splashed into blue and be better. Most cards that beat your opponents' blue don't also kill your own.

This x1000.

Try to think of something that actually hurts prominent blue decks but that isn't easily integrated into them, and isn't so narrow as to be dead in non-blue matchups. The closest I can come is Thrun or Sable stag.

Still, blue is a necessary evil, it's just unfortunate that it just seems to keep getting new tools to work with while red and black just keep getting chaff and marginal improvements to old cards.

[Pippin]

Seriously, who even started this thread?

There's been 8 different decks in top 8 of latest Legacy GP, with decks like dredge, goblins lurking just outside of that scope...
Every SCG tournament keeps shifting and top 8 is more player dependent than deck dependent.

Will we have these kind of topics after EVERY GP?

[DragoFireheart]

Seriously, who even started this thread?

There's been 8 different decks in top 8 of latest Legacy GP, with decks like dredge, goblins lurking just outside of that scope...
Every SCG tournament keeps shifting and top 8 is more player dependent than deck dependent.

Will we have these kind of topics after EVERY GP?


Well, this is an eternal format where a single card can shift the meta game. People need a little excitement once in awhile.

[kiblast]

Probably the format just needs a good ''hate'' strategy available. Randomly ''Hate'' pops up in vintage, but it's very rarely played in legacy. Problem is that there are not enough very good hatebears available. Revoker is very good, but it's also a mere 2/1. Thrun and Great Sable Stag are good during the combat phase, but that's it. Magus of the Moon is too slow at 3 cc. Hex Parasite and Vexing Shusher are nice, but they're both too narrow. Probably the best one as a ''catch all'' answer is still Glowrider, or even better a combination of Glowrider + Mana Denial + random hatebears such as Gaddock ,Aven Mindcensor, Meddling Mage.
Anyway, Blue doesn't need bans. Probably other colours just need better anti-Blue hatebears that are unsplashable in U based strategies ( like Glowrider, for example).

[dontbiteitholmes]

Why? Legacy is getting worse and more blue-centric each year since 2006, and this year is so bad that WotC has announced Legacy-lite. If I had spent $2000 dollars on legacy staples, which I didn't, I would be worried right now. :laugh:

Yeah, Wizards of the Coast made a new format because Legacy is soooo bad... Oh wait, they actually had to make a new format because Legacy is so popular it caused demand to go through the roof and prices of the cards have skyrocketed since 2006. Oh, and I'm sure Legacy staples will tank in value now that WotC announced a new format that pretty much won't exist unless Legacy staples keep going up [/sarcasm]. Dual lands will probably go up at least 20% in the next 3 years. At this point Wizards has more or less written in stone that they will never ever reprint Dual lands. Duals are never going below 85% of what they are at right now and if they do it will only be temporary. Why don't you go play Modern now? It's obvious every time you open your mouth you have no idea what you are talking about and its obvious you are mad at Force of Will because it rains on your parade AND you don't have Legacy staples. No but seriously go play Modern and never come back. As there is now an official format without FoW I'd say you have no reason to complain about that any more, just go play a format that is more your speed.

[DTC]

Actually FOW basically keeps the entire format in check, by making every non-blue deck suboptimal.

Except decks like Zoo, Dredge, and everything non-blue that simply doesn't care about FOW anyway.

[Honorik]

Really, I cannot find the right reason why they printed card like Mental Misstep. The meta before of this printing was very healthy - so many different strategies at Star City Opens - it was unbelievable . The only really strong deck was High Tide...but Wizards made this possible by unbanning Time Spiral.

The only reason I see in printing Mental Misstep is to fight combo decks. But in reality this card just push out of the meta so many different decks - Goblins, Junk, Death and Taxes, Elves along with all combo. May be only Zoo and Dredge survive. The card just close the door for many decks, not only current ones but deck of the future.

The peoples saying the meta should adapt and "Mental Misstep is a narrow card" are insane. The card it's just too good, the card is right after Brainstorm in Fow in terms of power.

In my testing i just discovered that Mental Misstep is a way more powerful than a Thoughtseize for example. Why any non blue deck should ever run Thoughtseize right now ? They blue decks can just countering with no mana or they can brainstorm and hide the cards. Why someone will ever play the best spot discard spell versus the blue mages ?

SO you get my point - the real problem right now it's not in FoW or Brainstorm it's in the new card. Yes the combo should be tamed, but this is not the right way. Mental Misstep can be completely different and nice card if counter only Instant and Sorcery - Dark Ritual, Brainstorm, Ponder, Rite of Flame, Silence, Orim's Chant, Duress, High Tide.

So...I don't see any other way but to ban Mental Misstep.

[lavafrogg]

The metagame will adapt, Loam decks will come back and be the rage, see Lands and the various garden decks becoming more and more popular.

Also the midrange bomb decks will also rise up to kill the counter based decks that are playing spell snare and mental misstep. When your deck "skips" one and two drops suddenly the odds are quite a bit more fair.

This is very similar to when spell snare was printed but a lot more extreme, the fact that the card is free is really just a bonus but right now the format revolves around bomb one drop cards and that cannot be the case in this mental misstep metagame.

[DragoFireheart]

Lets see... no storm combo AND no countertop?

Time to break out my burn deck!

[ThoSha]

i had the same thought last tournament and it worked wonders :)
grim lavamancer and goblin guide rule the format right now :D

[eq.firemind]

Wizards need to print this:

Tomas de Torquemada :wr:
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric
Tomas can't be countered
Whenever a spell is played without paying mana cost, counter that spell.
1/1

On more serious note, I urge you to be patient, intellegent and opened for innovations.
Note: my pet is DnT and Misstep striked it badly. But I take it as challenge to my deckbuilder abilities and a footstep to improvement. Positive mindstate actually helps (not only in magic).

[DrJones]

Not bad, but I can do it better:

Failed Blue hate 1R
Sorcery
Failed Blue Hate deals damage to each player equal to the number of blue cards in that player's library. Shuffle all libraries.

According to blue players, this card is fair in legacy because it can be countered, and because you can only play it on bad (nonblue) decks.

[Sims]

Tomas de Torquemada :wr:
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric
Tomas can't be countered
Whenever a spell is played without paying mana cost, counter that spell.
1/1


Anyone else getting History of the World, Part 1 flashbacks here? The Inquisition! What a show! The Inquisition! Here we go!
Seriously. Nice reference to history and a hilarious movie.

[Gui]

Not bad, but I can do it better:

Failed Blue hate 1R
Sorcery
Failed Blue Hate deals damage to each player equal to the number of blue cards in that player's library. Shuffle all libraries.

According to blue players, this card is fair in legacy because it can be countered, and because you can only play it on bad (nonblue) decks.

To be honest, yes, this is what would happen. This would be SB card for Burn and non-blue decks, and would get countered more often than not, and people would still play blue without much more fear.

[dontbiteitholmes]

To be honest, yes, this is what would happen. This would be SB card for Burn and non-blue decks, and would get countered more often than not, and people would still play blue without much more fear.

LOL, are you and Dr. Jones trolling or do you two just never play blue? You can't counter everything. Most Landstill decks lose to Burn very badly even without a "win the game for 1r" card.

[Zach Tartell]

LOL, are you and Dr. Jones trolling or do you two just never play blue? You can't counter everything. Most Landstill decks lose to Burn very badly even without a "win the game for 1r" card.

Pretty sure they already printed one and it's called Price of Progress.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Pretty sure they already printed one and it's called Price of Progress.

Exactly.

[zalachan]

Pretty sure they already printed one and it's called Price of Progress.

Full of win.

There's no need to print anything new i guess. But i can see the frustration considering MM. My friend is playing WB Junk Sth. and is pretty desperate to land Top since MM arrived. I gladly counter it, since i know how Junk w/o Top performs.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Full of win.

There's no need to print anything new i guess. But i can see the frustration considering MM. My friend is playing WB Junk Sth. and is pretty desperate to land Top since MM arrived. I gladly counter it, since i know how Junk w/o Top performs.

He should probably be playing more Sylvan Libraries then. It's stronger than Top in a lot of contexts anyway but especially against blue (where you can actually safely ancestral with it).

[into_play]

Even though I'm mostly indifferent to the issue, I would be perfectly fine with the banning of Brainstorm if only to shake up the meta a little bit. Ponder and Preordain are already more "fair" alternatives, just like Personal Tutor and Fauna Shaman are around as subpar replacements for cards deemed too powerful. Also, getting rid of Brainstorm wouldn't allow a degenerate strategy or decktype to fill the void, like say combo being everywhere if FoW were to be banned. I can definitely understand people's love for the card, but if you've ever played a deck with Brainstorm in it (I assume almost everyone on these forums has), you know that including Brainstorm in your 60 automatically gives it an unparalleled step-up in consistency. And that is definitely a downside for deck construction IMO.

[zalachan]

He should probably be playing more Sylvan Libraries then. It's stronger than Top in a lot of contexts anyway but especially against blue (where you can actually safely ancestral with it).

Yeah, thats a good substitute, but he's basically playing WB only, so more Pikul-ish type of a deck.

[Forbiddian]

I was discussing this yesterday, I thought they should print:

Red Bear 1R
Creature Bear
During each player's upkeep, ~ deals damage to that player equal to the number of nonbasic lands he or she controls.
2/2

[DragoFireheart]

I was discussing this yesterday, I thought they should print:

Red Bear 1R
Creature Bear
During each player's upkeep, ~ deals damage to that player equal to the number of nonbasic lands he or she controls.
2/2


Make it cost double red and I'm sold.

[Lord_Cyrus]

Make it cost double red and I'm sold.

Nice!! I think it's a good idea. Unfortunately it will help MUC and Hightide lol! I'm sure they'll continue to tap their basic islands and politely shake your hand when you lose.

[Nonex]

I don't see the need for such specifically anti-blue cards. To me, the best anti-blue concept is the "can't be countered" clause. Just print good, generic stuff, and then make it uncounterable. Thrun, the Last Troll is a good example. It's a 4/4 vanilla beater at heart, but with a couple of good protection abilities it becomes a sort of a powerhouse against control; without them, it would be just a trash common.

You could also think of Vexing Shusher, but note the difference: while it's uncounterable, it's just a mere 2/2 that isn't going anywhere by itself. Rather than being good uncounterable stuff, it makes good stuff uncounterable. It's good, but not exactly the kind of thing we should be looking for.

Seriously, other colors don't actually need anything Choke-like, just more Thruns, better Combusts and cheaper Wreak Havocs.

[Forbiddian]

Nice!! I think it's a good idea. Unfortunately it will help MUC and Hightide lol! I'm sure they'll continue to tap their basic islands and politely shake your hand when you lose.

Wait, do people hate every deck just because it has blue in it?

I guess I completely misunderstand the paranoia.

[Surging Chaos]

There are a lot of good points in this thread regarding the power level of blue. What it really boils down is simply looking at the fundamentals of the game. The four most powerful abilities in Magic are as follows:
- Tutoring
- Fast mana
- Countermagic
- Card draw

Blue has a monopoly on card drawing and countermagic, as both of those are firmly in its color pie (yes, we know about black and green card draw, but let's be honest, neither of those two can hold a candle to blue card draw). Tutoring and fast mana have been severely nerfed by Wizards as those two have been the scapegoats for degenerate decks and awful formats. Countermagic and card draw have also been weakened, but they haven't even been nerfed close to the degree of tutors and fast mana. As such, we continue to get many powerful counters and card draw/selection.

Blue is always going to be the best color in the game as long as it is the best at countering and drawing/selection. There is a reason why blue is by far the hardest color in the game to balance.

[death]

Blue really got better with Mental Misstep. It's premature to ban a card that has just been printed, but if there's anything blue that is worth banning it should be Mental Misstep Imo. I remember the meta was doing absolutely fine until this card was spoiled /sadface.

The most played/powerful blue cards in the format (in descending order):
#1 Mental Misstep
#2 Force of Will
#3 Brainstorm - don't ban me please!
#4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

[DragoFireheart]

Notice that half of the new broken blue cards were printed recently.

[Bardo]

For everyone complaining that Force of Mental Misstep needs to be banned, please see the Legacy banned list and rethink your argument.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=judge/resources/sfrlegacy

The banned list includes these classes of cards:

1. Degenerate combo enablers (Mind's Desire, Necropotence, Memory Jar, Flash, etc.)
2. Tier one fast mana (SoLoMoxen, etc.)
3. Ante cards (Jeweled Bird and friends)
4. Dexterity cards (Falling Star and Chaos Orb)
5. Br0ken cards (Balance, Tinker, Oath, etc.)
6. Tier one Tutors (Demonic, Vampiric, etc.)
7. Shaharazad

And then odd things like Land Tax and Earthcraft which can come off the list.

Nowhere do you see: Efficient Answers to Other Cards. Force and MMS will never be banned. Deal.

[Gheizen64]

Vise and Twist are both reactionary card that have no place on that list either.

[Bardo]

Yeah, I don't want to sidetrack this thread into what shouldn't be on the Banned List, and only wanted to point how contrary it is to the management of the banned list to ban answer cards like Force and MMS.

[Forbiddian]

There are a lot of good points in this thread regarding the power level of blue. What it really boils down is simply looking at the fundamentals of the game. The four most powerful abilities in Magic are as follows:
- Tutoring
- Fast mana
- Countermagic
- Card draw


Threats and answers don't even make your list of the most powerful abilities (both of which, blue is weak in, btw).

[Hitman82]

Why are ban discussions allowed here at all??? All they ever turn out to be are ignorants ranting and haters flaming. The number of intelligent posts is so negligent I don't get why these threads are allowed to exist. It's not like you have any control over the DCI's decision-making anyway.

[honestabe]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=21948

Ok, this arguement is over. Everyone stop.

[TossUsToLions]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=21948

Ok, this arguement is over. Everyone stop.

Hahahahaha. Looks like it took the legacy community a LONG time to adapt to all of the blue decks...

[Admiral_Arzar]

hahahahaha. Looks like it took the legacy community a long time to adapt to all of the blue decks...

Get there zoo!

[ivanpei]

Haha exactly, people adapt. I saw zoo/ affinity As great decks and advocated them in this meta. Looks like it's coming true. Affinity is way too easy to hate since everyone seems to be playing null rods or ancient grudge. Zoo, not so much. Dear blue, eat kitties! Storm coming back now?

Junk also seems like a good choice.

[Sims]

Dan's a local player to here, they had the stream going at the LGS while a legacy tourney was running today. Didn't end up hearing what happened in the quarters, but looks like the folk couldn't stop Zoo. Sucks for Dan, but hell it's still another 5k Top8.

Go go gadget turning creatures sideways.

[Darth Nihilus]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-06-05&end_date=2011-06-05&event_ID=21


i say ban nactal


maybe ppl should start thinking instead of net decking and than wonder why one color shows up more often. i got called an idiot on cockatrice for thinking that zoo is the right meta deck atm and that zoo beats most controll lists.
i mean cmon zoo was designed to beat control decks, so instead of going nerdrage take 2 seconds and look up lists that beat controll

[Zlatzman]

Hopefully the invitational is more representative than the Legacy Open. The numbers in the open don't really speak for blue not being dominant.

15 of 16 decks in T16 played blue, many of the with blue as the primary colour, source: here (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t%5BC1%5D=3&start_date=2011-06-05&end_date=2011-06-05&event_ID=20)


edit, more numers:
Card name // Number i T8 // Number in T16
Force of Will // 32 // 60
Mental Misstep // 27 // 53
Jace, TMS // 12 // 21
Stoneforge Mystic // 8 // 20
Tarmogoyf // 8 // 20
Mishra's Factory // 11 / 15
Manriki-Gusari in sideboards // 2 // 6 (across 5 decks)

[Gheizen64]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-06-05&end_date=2011-06-05&event_ID=21


i say ban nactal


maybe ppl should start thinking instead of net decking and than wonder why one color shows up more often. i got called an idiot on cockatrice for thinking that zoo is the right meta deck atm and that zoo beats most controll lists.
i mean cmon zoo was designed to beat control decks, so instead of going nerdrage take 2 seconds and look up lists that beat controll

Because Zoo has an history of winning GP and SGC and whatsnot. Please, the level of the discussion here is getting ridicolous. No one said that blue was unwinnable for any other deck, just that it was extremely statistically dominant as a winner of tournaments (see IBA's numbers) and that since WotC did little to nothing in those years to fix this maybe a ban was in order. One invitational going to a non-blue deck hardly shift statistics the other way neither invalidate the point made in this topic, especially when the finalist of the open were both blue decks.

[dahcmai]

The nice thing is Goblins was second.

[Amon Amarth]

The nice thing is Goblins was second.

I was happy to see a Red-centric Finals! I really liked Pat Sullivans Zoo list with Wastes and tons of 1 drops.

[honestabe]

The nice thing is Goblins was second.

Yeah, Goblins with BLUE!!! Blue is obv too good, ban anything with a shade of blue on the art, text, or anywhere else on the card. Even non-blue cards that have been altered to have any drop of blue paint on them need to be banned.

Look, when the best players in the format played a non-blue deck, they won. When good people play, they win, who knew. The thing is, all the good players just play blue, because it gives them the best opportunity to leverage their skill over their opponent.

[=^.^= & <:3 )~]

What's that meme about? So, blue wins tournaments? Whatever... It's like whining that queen is the best figure. Yeah, queen discriminates pawns!

It's all over and over again and again...


Omg! Brainstorm (or Vial, or Lackey, or Enlightened Tutor...) is too powerful, they should ban it!

WotC prints Mental Misstep


Omg! Mental Misstep is too powerful, it counters Brainstorm (or Vial, or Lackey, or Enlightened Tutor...) they should ban it!

:headdesk

[GGoober]

I heard Goblin Lackey and Vial beats blue, I heard Wild Nacatl is a really unfair green card. Format seems good, blue is and always will be good, but doesn't mean it's unstoppable or too good, thread is boring.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Goblins isn't blue just because you add Mental Misstep. Misstep is a colorless card in function.


So, blue wins tournaments? Whatever... It's like whining that queen is the best figure. Yeah, queen discriminates pawns!

This is an awful argument.


I heard Goblin Lackey and Vial beats blue, I heard Wild Nacatl is a really unfair green card. Format seems good, blue is and always will be good, but doesn't mean it's unstoppable or too good, thread is boring.

Whether it's too good would be determined by numbers. The numbers of the past six months don't seem to help your case much. We'll see how the next several months shape up.

In the meantime, you can just not click on the thread if you don't want to join a serious conversation.

[Koby]

In more positive MM news, GW Maverick has been placed within Top 4 of a 60+ person tournament over the weekend, with only 2 "islands" to cast it. Proceeds to manhandle Ad Nauseum in 2 games.

Linky (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20897-Los-Angeles-CA-June-5th-FREE-ENTRY-Legacy-Mox-Emerald-more&p=557239&viewfull=1#post557239) [mtgthesource.com]

This gives some credence to the idea that non-blue decks can run MM to gain an edge in the metagame.

However, it still lost to Jace + blue cards...

[Mr_Miyagi]

I am one of those people who suffer from insomnia. I just want to say thanks to the threadstarter for this thread. Fell asleep reading somewhere on page 4:smile:

[GGoober]

In the meantime, you can just not click on the thread if you don't want to join a serious conversation.

Are you in all seriousness thinking this thread was heading in any serious discussion?

I apologize and politely resign myself from this thread.

Sometimes I wonder if people on the internet can detect a slight hint of sarcasm, like my post on Lackey and Nacatls. I guess not. But I'll not be posting in this thread at all now, given that it's a serious conversation about blue needing a nerf.

[Xero]

The Invitational isn't as telling as the Legacy Open. The Invitational took into account Legacy and Standard performance, while the Open was just Legacy.

[Gheizen64]

Are you in all seriousness thinking this thread was heading in any serious discussion?

I apologize and politely resign myself from this thread.

Sometimes I wonder if people on the internet can detect a slight hint of sarcasm, like my post on Lackey and Nacatls. I guess not. But I'll not be posting in this thread at all now, given that it's a serious conversation about blue needing a nerf.

Posting stupid things only because new users with 3 post are posting shit isn't exactly helping the discussion in the topic and it's making people previously willing to discuss unwilling to do so because of the stupid amount of trolling and strawman arguments from "i play magic from yesterday and you all suck herp derp".

Not referencing to you in particular since i find you're an intelligent poster most of the time, but the attitude in this topic and around is stupid. After this topic was created, 3 differents topic on the same issue were created and one was an openly declared rant. Really? The source has done better than this and can continue to do so.

[Finn]

Look, when the best players in the format played a non-blue deck, they won. When good people play, they win, who knew. The thing is, all the good players just play blue, because it gives them the best opportunity to leverage their skill over their opponent.
I think we all know this to be true, but it does not hurt to read it again. The trick here would be for Wizards to begin printing cards that are not blue, and yet gives players an opportunity to outplay opponents the way blue tends to. That is probably going to mean screwing with the color wheel.

Life from the Loam
Stoneforge Mystic
Sensei's Divining Top

...are all cards that do that. But lo and behold, the two that are popular right now are in blue decks.

How about something that is very color-intensive with a powerful, skill-intensive ability that can spawn many different kinds of decks the way Brainstorm and Force of Will can?

Quickly, stuff like this:

Search and Destroy
RRR
Enchantment
R, discard a red card: Search your library for an instant or sorcery with converted mana cost 2 or less. You may cast that spell this turn without paying its mana cost. Play this ability any time you could cast a sorcery.

or

Fuqyurfun
1WW
Legendary Creature - Hoser
2/1
Flash
All creature spells have Flash. Noncreature spells may only be cast any time that player may cast a sorcery. Activated abilities on permanents may only be activated any time that player could cast a sorcery.

or

Too Many Secrets
RG
Creature - Human Sneaker
0/1
Flash
Sacrifice Too Many Secrets: Too Many Secrets does x damage to target player where x is its power.
At the beginning of the next End Step, sacrifice Too Many Secrets.
If a player searches his or her library for a nonland card, looks at the top card in a library without searching it, or draws a card at any time other than his draw step, each of his or her opponents may search their libraries for a creature card and put it on the battlefield.
If an opponent reveals the top card of his or her library, put a +1/+1 counter on Too Many Secrets.

[Fsk]

I heard Goblin Lackey and Vial beats blue, I heard Wild Nacatl is a really unfair green card. Format seems good, blue is and always will be good, but doesn't mean it's unstoppable or too good, thread is boring.

Placing 4 copies in a top8 make them unfair for sure. Let me remind you the top16 of the legacy open for those of you who are blind :

1 NO RUG
2 Reanimator
3 Merfolk
4 Hive Mind
5 UWR Stoneblade
6 UW Control
7 RUG Tempo
8 UW Landstill
9 UW Stoneblade
10 Team America
11 UWB Stoneblade
12 BW Discard
13 NO RUG
14 Team America
15 Merfolk
16 Merfolk

32 FOW in top8, 60 in top16
"blue is and always will be good, but doesn't mean it's unstoppable or too good"

[GGoober]

32 FOW in top8, 60 in top16
"blue is and always will be good, but doesn't mean it's unstoppable or too good"

Did I say anything wrong here? Anyone who has played competitive MTG knows that blue is and always will and always had been the best color. It's the nature of the game, where the combination and/or of drawing cards/manipulating library/countering spell, is by definition the best and safest strategy when executed against opposing decks.

If someone argues blue isn't good or isn't the best color, then they obviously have not played competitive MTG at some point of life.

Did I say anything wrong with blue being unstoppable or too good? I don't think so, because there you have it, Zoo/Gobs/many other decks that are capable of beating blue-based decks. It's true that blue-based decks will constantly have much higher placing than non-blue decks, but that doesn't mean it's unstoppable.

Until the day WotC shifts to printing stronger colors where non-blue cards actually form a DECK/SHELL that makes a non-blue DECK/SHELL very viable, blue will continue to show this trend. If your solution is to ban either or of Brainstorm/FoW, you are not really solving the problem. You ban FoW, suddenly combo becomes the pillar of the format, then you would have to ban something. You ban Brainstorm, suddenly Legacy dies as a format (a little extreme but really, Brainstorm is one of the most iconic cards in Legacy since it became restricted in Vintage).

It so happens that since blue was always the stronger colors, decks with blues tend to be more popularly played, and placing well. Decks like Hulk Flash, MTutor ANT/Reanimator were good examples of very powerful decks back in the day that were broken in a blue shell. These days, it's hard to say that deck X with blue is brokenly powerful. At least I can't point to such a deck except Merfolks, which happens to be easily answered by non-blue decks.

[SlopeeJ]

I always find these discussions interesting, some people do have some solid and valid arguments. (from both sides) I'm not saying anything needs to be banned, but brainstorm is Recall and it is banned for a reason. Jace is very strong and I think they should print more cards that interact with him besides trying to attack him. Tarmogoyf protected him okay, but now batterskull just owns aggro plans.

I play Merfolk because I love Force and I love creatures. Not sure if it was this thread or another but I also wish they would print more old school color hosers. Those cards are awesome and are fun to play with

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I swear you said you were going to stop posting itt.

32 Force in the top 8 is a red flashing light. The Invitational performance is really the edge of where blue should be allowed to stray in terms of regular dominance, yet it seems to be an outlier in terms of underperformance.

Also, again, it's churlish to conflate blue being the best color- it hasn't always been, but it's certainly been pretty close at the top throughout Legacy's history- with blue being utterly dominant. Winning six out of seven tournaments is utterly dominant.

And in fact that's only counting Opens. If we throw in the Invitational, BoM, and GP Providence, blue decks have won 15 out of 17 of the post-Survival major Legacy tournaments (or at least those I can get numbers on; if anyone knows of other big Legacy tournaments in Europe we can add, they'll have to let me know as deckcheck is down).

And actually, that even puts a bold face on it. Because blue decks have won 15 out of the past 15 of those tournaments.

eta: Misread on my part, the Invitational itself was won by Zoo. So 14 out of 17.

[Fsk]

Blue has always been the best color/shell in legacy. This is nothing new. But at this point i think it is just too good. There is no point running a non-blue deck at the moment if you want to have a shot at winning a legacy tournament. Yes, you can luck your way with zoo and maybe goblin but playing blue is just a better idea.

I'm fed up with this argument that FOW keeps combo in check. What combo are you talking about? Dredge? doesnt care about it. Storm? there is a lot of cards which can hate it, especially now that MM has been printed. ALL the other combo decks run FOW/blue shell themselves (it is the main reason they are doing so well..). I may be wrong but i would like to see better arguments that "roflonoob l2p no fow = combo format".

How can you say legacy is a nice format at the moment? If you want play a tier 1 deck you basically need to play FOW. And playing it force you into 12-20 other blue cards (which are often the same "blue shell").
When there is more cards of 1 color in a top16 than of all the other 4 colors i think something is wrong. But maybe that's just me and i know nothing about competitive magic..

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Force doesn't make blue too good. Force is only amazing if your opponent is reliant on resolving particular cards, the rest of the time it's a very fair card. That's why it often gets sided out. Banning Force would do terrible things to the metagame.

Brainstorm is much the richer target for any axe that might have to come down at some point, although, especially with Zoo winning the Invitational, it's worth waiting a bit to see.

[Hanni]

I remember a time not so long ago, when everyone was crying about how overpowered Zoo was...

Oh, and remember that time when Goblins dominated the metagame for upwards of 2-3 years?