On Blue

[testing32]

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29799_On-Blue.html

About time.

[CabalTherapy]

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29799_On-Blue.html

About time.

Vague and propagandistic.
It is simply faulty to catagorize cards concerning their colours. Colour as a concept shouldn't matter at all.
Banning BS would hurt the format at its essential core. I hope that this won't happen.

It is like: "Hey dude, wanna see my blue Water deck? I guess, you cannot beat me with that shitty Fire pile of yours!"


"I'm done trying to "beat the blue decks" with Abzan hate decks and am throwing in the towel and just joining team Brainstorm + Lightning Bolt."
Sure, follow the mainstream and play Delver.

[Lemnear]

A classic DeMars article. Founded like Tom LaPille's B&R explanations

[CabalTherapy]

A classic DeMars article. Founded like Tom LaPille's B&R explanations

Wait a second, I have found something hilarious:

"Firstly, Jeskai Stoneblade, U/R Delver, Infect, Sneak and Show, and Deathblade are the best decks in the format by a pretty wide margin."
That has to be a joke, right?

[testing32]

Wait a second, I have found something hilarious:

"Firstly, Jeskai Stoneblade, U/R Delver, Infect, Sneak and Show, and Deathblade are the best decks in the format by a pretty wide margin."
That has to be a joke, right?

Yeah.... I'm not sure about that list but I agree with the sentiment. My list would be UWR Stoneblade, Delver and Miracles.

Edit: so, the decks that can run the blue shell + maindeck REBs

[Julian23]

"Firstly, Jeskai Stoneblade, U/R Delver, Infect, Sneak and Show, and Deathblade are the best decks in the format by a pretty wide margin."
That has to be a joke, right?

Him not mentioning Miracles, which has been the best deck for most of 2014 and still is, really makes me wonder.

[Vicar in a tutu]

It is simply faulty to catagorize cards concerning their colours. Colour as a concept shouldn't matter at all.
Why not?

[Vicar in a tutu]

Him not mentioning Miracles, which has been the best deck for most of 2014 and still is, really makes me wonder.
Maybe he should have mentioned Miracles instead of Deathblade.

[Julian23]

Why not?

Because it's just as random of a method as categorizing by odd or even set numbers. We're talking about enjoying competitive Legacy, which is based on the viability of all major archetypes; not some "I want to be a red mage!" kitchen table desires.

[CabalTherapy]

Him not mentioning Miracles, which has been the best deck for most of 2014 and still is, really makes me wonder.
Certainly, a vast mistake.


Why not?
Where are the benefits of such thinking? I shouldn't answer your question, you should rather explain this thinking which supports the notions of W,U,G,R,B as seperate figures of MTG.
I don't evaluate cards concerning their colour but in respect to their functionality in a respective deck.
It's not about colours. One might argue that some people have a "colour identity" which makes them hate on "blue". These are clearly casual MTG features.



Edit: Thank you, Julian.
Edit2: I think that GPNJ has displayed a healthy meta.

[M+1]

There is no way shape or form that anybody can argue and convince me of the health of a format where it is correct and necessary to be maindecking Red Elemental Blast in multiples. It means one thing: the color blue is too good in Legacy and there isn't room for other decks to realistically compete.
That is a terrible argument. I see maindeck Pyroblast as a sign of a healthy, dynamic, self-balancing format. In short, I love it.
Death and Taxes just took down a SCG Open, but I guess that had to be pure luck, and not because the deck can realistically compete. Nice Pyroblasts.
Meanwhile, Blighted Agent is suffering heavy splash damage. As is Delver (the card).

[Asthereal]

Blue is so strong!
Blue is played so much!
Brainstorm is too good!
Boohoo! Ban Brainstorm!
*sigh*

Want a healthier format?
Banning Brainstorm will do nothing at all. It will just be replaced by Preordain.
Instead try banning the following:

1. Delver of Secrets - which idiot prints the best fast attacker in blue? Really?
2. Treasure Cruise - blue is played too much, let's print a functional reprint of Ancestral Recall?
3. True-Name Nemesis - stupid card to begin with, blue creatures should suck.
4. Sensei's Divining Top - stalling device, we don't need that in Legacy.

You're welcome.

[Vicar in a tutu]

Because it's just as random of a method as categorizing by odd or even set numbers. We're talking about enjoying competitive Legacy, which is based on the viability of all major archetypes; not some "I want to be a red mage!" kitchen table desires.
I would say the five colours of magic are far more important and integral than measuring set numbers. But of course, you could instead count Delvers, Ponders and Brainstorms. Are there numbers for day 2 of GP New Jersey, the most commonly played cards? Not just in top 32, but all the decks that made it to day 2.

[Vicar in a tutu]

Where are the benefits of such thinking? I shouldn't answer your question, you should rather explain this thinking which supports the notions of W,U,G,R,B as seperate figures of MTG.
I don't evaluate cards concerning their colour but in respect to their functionality in a respective deck.
It's not about colours. One might argue that some people have a "colour identity" which makes them hate on "blue". These are clearly casual MTG features.
This is fair. In truth, I miss playing against more types of decks. I play against Delver decks over and over and over. The different decks could of course be U/x/x, as long as they feel different from Delver deck X or Stoneforge deck Y. Like I've mentioned before, I strongly feel Wizards should print powerful new cards for certain decks (for example Enchantress, Goblins). I've felt like this for a long time, as I'm sure other people have as well. Instead we get True-Name Nemesis and Treasure Cruise. Theros didn't have a single good enchantment in it (enchantment creatures excluded), and I wish Spirit of the Labyrinth was 2/1 flash. Maybe that would have made it too powerful, but there is nothing stopping wizards from printing stronger, instant speed draw-hate in special products.

[Gheizen64]

The format is becoming Vintage 2.0, where 30+ cards on your list have to be the same just because of how much better than the rest of the format they are, basically a circlejerk format for blue mages. In the meanwhile, cards much weaker than brainstorm are still on the banned list, but this is all good for WotC because the format becoming as degenerate as possible is good for modern popularity. Printing TC was probably their way to say "fuck eternal formats" :laugh:

[Gheizen64]

Blue is so strong!
Blue is played so much!
Brainstorm is too good!
Boohoo! Ban Brainstorm!
*sigh*

Want a healthier format?
Banning Brainstorm will do nothing at all. It will just be replaced by Preordain.
Instead try banning the following:

1. Delver of Secrets - which idiot prints the best fast attacker in blue? Really?
2. Treasure Cruise - blue is played too much, let's print a functional reprint of Ancestral Recall?
3. True-Name Nemesis - stupid card to begin with, blue creatures should suck.
4. Sensei's Divining Top - stalling device, we don't need that in Legacy.

You're welcome.

A broken card replaced by a fair card would do nothing? Well, it would empower black discard by a lot, weaken miracle and delvers by a lot, and weaken blue-based combo too. Literally NOTHING

[Lemnear]

A broken card replaced by a fair card would do nothing? Well, it would empower black discard by a lot, weaken miracle and delvers by a lot, and weaken blue-based combo too. Literally NOTHING

It would do damage to blue-based combo and hurt Delver/Blade-strategies for sure. Would it break the dominance of blue cantrips + fetchlands? No way. All you gain with Brainstorms banning is streamlining decks and 3 rant-free months beforw the bitching about "Ponder/Preordain/SDT + Fetches is so oppressive!" starts again.


Edit: this pattern repeated to damn many times, that I'm just sick of it:

"Ban Survival! It just trumps Zoo and Goblins as a creature strategy! It's overpowered"
"Ban Misstep! It just invalidates our key spells Nacatl, Goblin Lackey and Aether Vial! It's overpowered"
"Ban Show & Tell! The creatures put into play just trump the regular T1/2 creatures!"
"Ban LED! Storm combo just trumps aggressive creature strategies and we don't want to mainboard "narrow" creatures like Thalia or Teeg!"
"Ban SDT! It's jsed for stalling and to setup overpowered sweepers which just trump linear creature aggro strategies!"
"Ban Brainstorm! It's unfair that blue has the best card selection! Green should have those ... and echantment/artifact removal ... and efficient threats!"

[Vicar in a tutu]

It would do damage to blue-based combo and hurt Delver/Blade-strategies for sure. Would it break the dominance of blue cantrips + fetchlands? No way. All you gain with Brainstorms banning is streamlining decks and 3 rant-free months beforw the bitching about "Ponder/Preordain/SDT + Fetches is so oppressive!" starts again.
The point wouldn't necessarily be to break blue's dominance, but weaken it slightly.

[Dice_Box]

That read like a post in the B/R thread.

[CabalTherapy]

A broken card replaced by a fair card would do nothing? Well, it would empower black discard by a lot, weaken miracle and delvers by a lot, and weaken blue-based combo too. Literally NOTHING

I see, I see.
The argument of basically all "rage against the BS" posts is to weaken other decks and make a petdeck playable again.
Dude, try to innovate the format. You've got all the tools for that. Play another deck or be mad and post in this forum.


Banning BS would make the format less skill-intense which might show parallels to the people favouring a ban.

I'm out of the format related discussions because they give me headaches due to the low-level of arguments and evident discrepancies in experience
and understanding of the format. I am still supporting the thesis that only a severely small amount of the players understands the format in its unity. (Doesn't mean
understand each deck and simple stuff like that. Just to make it clear.)

See you, in the established decks forum. :u:

[Vicar in a tutu]

That read like a post in the B/R thread.
Honestly, I don't know why this thread even exists. The Starcity Games-article about banning / unbanning should have been moved to the B&R-thread.

[testing32]

Honestly, I don't know why this thread even exists. The Starcity Games-article about banning / unbanning should have been moved to the B&R-thread.

Because this is about the article which I see as a sea change and the first of many. A year ago no one would ever think that a major writer for a site would openly propose doing away with brainstorm.

[Lemnear]

The point wouldn't necessarily be to break blue's dominance, but weaken it slightly.

For what purpose other than making bad pet decks better?


Edit:

Because this is about the article which I see as a sea change and the first of many. A year ago no one would ever think that a major writer for a site would openly propose doing away with brainstorm.

DeMars was one of the first bitching and raging about the Vintage Apocalypse back then and adding the fact that vintage was literally dead until Vintage Masters on MODO, because of players leaving the format in masses and WotC not giving a shit about Vintage and the formats B&R management since 2007, the whole article is a joke to proof that Brainstorms banning was a fine step for vintages health. It, in fact, degenerated into MUD vs. Anti-MUD for mere 4 years!

[Tylert]

That is a terrible argument. I see maindeck Pyroblast as a sign of a healthy, dynamic, self-balancing format. In short, I love it.
Death and Taxes just took down a SCG Open, but I guess that had to be pure luck, and not because the deck can realistically compete. Nice Pyroblasts.
Meanwhile, Blighted Agent is suffering heavy splash damage. As is Delver (the card).

WHy do people still say that Death and taxes wins only because of luck :)
It's been in the DTB section for quite some time... It's a meta deck that needs some time to react to a particular meta... it will come back (and Barha showed that it is possible).

[Vicar in a tutu]

For what purpose other than making bad pet decks better?
To open up the format? Generally I'm for printing strong answer cards and not for unbannings. But that can backfire as well. Here is Wizards' explanation of the banning of Mental Misstep (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/161b):

"Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.

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

This explanation shows that Wizards also thinks (or at least thought) in terms of colour, although there are some things that I strongly disagree with ("The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card" - That disclaimer doesn't sound very thoughtful).

[Lemnear]

What kind of empty phrase is "open up the format" other than a synonym for "make pet decks more compeditive"?

[Vicar in a tutu]

What kind of empty phrase is "open up the format" other than a synonym for "make pet decks more compeditive"?
Make the format more diverse? Or is "diversity" also just an empty phrase in your eyes, made by people who secretly want to strengthen their pet decks? All a part of the same evil conspiracy?

[EpicLevelCommoner]

That reasoning is still bullshit. Mental Misstep made the format more blue because it fueled the other Legacy playable counterspell, Force of Will, while providing utility against every deck that runs 1-drops. If it had been a white spell that read the same way, well, it wouldnt have been banned.

[(nameless one)]

Blue is so strong!
Blue is played so much!
Brainstorm is too good!
Boohoo! Ban Brainstorm!
*sigh*

Want a healthier format?
Banning Brainstorm will do nothing at all. It will just be replaced by Preordain.
Instead try banning the following:

1. Delver of Secrets - which idiot prints the best fast attacker in blue? Really?
2. Treasure Cruise - blue is played too much, let's print a functional reprint of Ancestral Recall?
3. True-Name Nemesis - stupid card to begin with, blue creatures should suck.
4. Sensei's Divining Top - stalling device, we don't need that in Legacy.

You're welcome.

Out of all these, I think Delver is the most ban worthy. Tempo decks need their tools but this is too much. Might as well unban Black Vise.

Treasure Cruise requires you to fill in your yard. While it's not hard to attain, you still have to build to it. I would rather have Brainstorm gone than this and some decks can auto include Cruises.

True Name Nemesis is annoying and probably under the wrong color but it's not oppressive. Besides, blue is supposed to be the annoying color.

SDT is annoying and enables Miracles but it's not ban worthy. Any other card that involves manipulation can fall under the "stalls the game" scenario. It's your job to make sure your opponent isn't stalling. Call a judge if you have to.


PS. I wish they would print more MUD goodies. I want Legacy MUD to be the anti blue archetype like in Vintage. But I might as well play Vintage...

[Higgs]

Because this is about the article which I see as a sea change and the first of many. A year ago no one would ever think that a major writer for a site would openly propose doing away with brainstorm.

To be honest, he had an article about Vintage probably a year ago suggesting major bans (Mana Drain, Loadstone etc.) to change the face of the format completely would be refreshing. I can be wrong about the details, I'll edit in the article's URL when I find it. So I'm not surprised to see controversial suggestions from him.

Edit: Found it http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27801_Thoughts-On-The-Banned-Restricted-List.html

[Star|Scream]

Did dude really write that he's upset that his deck couldn't beat nonblue decks and that's why blue is too powerful?

[Bobmans]

PS. I wish they would print more MUD goodies. I want Legacy MUD to be the anti blue archetype like in Vintage. But I might as well play Vintage...


Yeah, Robots taking over the world!!! ;-p

[thefreakaccident]

He was right about one thing. Brainstorm was defended by some to their dying breath before it was banned in Vintage... I guess it's a no-brainer something like that would happen in Legacy too.

If you wanted to affect the competitiveness of blue in the format, you'd need to nix a lot more than brainstorm now unfortunately. I think the culprits are actually the countermagic TBH. Cantrips are solely used to find them, removal, more draw, and threats (either combo/critters). If you remove the busted elements, the cantrips decks will look silly while they're getting smashed in the face.

True-name nemesis is not the issue. Obv. not going to get banned. What should be removed are force of wills and stasis. Mostly stasis. It's ruining the format!

But on a more serious note, if force of will was removed from the format there would be a lot more decks out there. Plus people wouldn't have to worry about blue count as much anymore.

[Lemnear]

Did dude really write that he's upset that his deck couldn't beat nonblue decks and that's why blue is too powerful?

Yeah, the same dood, who raged about the banning of Brainstorm + Ponder in Vintage, the same dood who wrote an article series about how overpowered MUD is in Vintage, the same dood who called for bans on several Vintage cards because he's annoyed of them, the same dood who thinks Mental Misstep is creating a healthy format, is now trying to argue that Vintage is a perfectly balanced format because Brainstorm got restricted in 2006, ignoring that all his rants about Vintage are dated later than 2008. Lawl

[Barook]

DeMars was one of the first bitching and raging about the Vintage Apocalypse back then and adding the fact that vintage was literally dead until Vintage Masters on MODO, because of players leaving the format in masses and WotC not giving a shit about Vintage and the formats B&R management since 2007, the whole article is a joke to proof that Brainstorms banning was a fine step for vintages health. It, in fact, degenerated into MUD vs. Anti-MUD for mere 4 years!
Personally, I don't think Vintage is very appealing as a format. Sure, it has flashy plays, but in the end, the games are extremely swingy due to the nature of a huge number of restricted broken cards vs cards to hate them out. Add to that the ridiculous prices for power in Paper and Wizards non-management of the Restricted List and it isn't too suprising that the format keeps struggling.

And it's not like Legacy hasn't degenerated into Brainstorm vs Anti-Brainstorm vs Elves for a while now.

[thefreakaccident]

To reiterate. If countermagic actually costed mana, brainstorm decks wouldn't be as competitive. If Force of will was banned, not every deck running blue would need 20+ blue cards, which might increase color diversity (at least in those decks).

I remember this one time I convinced one of my buddies not to run force of will because it was card disadvantage, and I beat him in tournament because he took it out. LOL


I would be damned surprised if those decks the guy mentioned in his article that ran brainstorm didn't also run FoW. I know they did.

[Lemnear]

Personally, I don't think Vintage is very appealing as a format. Sure, it has flashy plays, but in the end, the games are extremely swingy due to the nature of a huge number of restricted broken cards vs cards to hate them out. Add to that the ridiculous prices for power in Paper and Wizards non-management of the Restricted List and it isn't too suprising that the format keeps struggling.

And it's not like Legacy hasn't degenerated into Brainstorm vs Anti-Brainstorm vs Elves for a while now.

The point is: there is no archetype "Brainstorm", which makes anti-Brainstorm decks pretty pointless. If I look at the worldwide data from the last two months, there is no anomaly between "number of decks with BS played" and "average % of these decks placing in a T8/16". If the metagame is 70% decks with brainstorm we should not wonder to see 6 in a top 8. A problem occurs, if all these Brainstorms feed the same oppressive strategy like we have witnessed with Merchant Scroll in Vintage.

[Barook]

To reiterate. If countermagic actually costed mana, brainstorm decks wouldn't be as competitive. If Force of will was banned, not every deck running blue would need 20+ blue cards, which might increase color diversity (at least in those decks).
Force is a necessity to keep the format healthy. One of the appeals of blue is not getting buttfucked by glasscannon combo before you can get a chance to actually play Magic.

But it would certainly help the format if blue wasn't the only color with maindeckable combo hate that's online on turn zero - e.g. other pitch cards that do on-color stuff to hate combo.

[thefreakaccident]

I wasn't talking about the format at large, simply the competitiveness of blue.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

He was right about one thing. Brainstorm was defended by some to their dying breath before it was banned in Vintage... I guess it's a no-brainer something like that would happen in Legacy too.

If you wanted to affect the competitiveness of blue in the format, you'd need to nix a lot more than brainstorm now unfortunately. I think the culprits are actually the countermagic TBH. Cantrips are solely used to find them, removal, more draw, and threats (either combo/critters). If you remove the busted elements, the cantrips decks will look silly while they're getting smashed in the face.

True-name nemesis is not the issue. Obv. not going to get banned. What should be removed are force of wills and stasis. Mostly stasis. It's ruining the format!

But on a more serious note, if force of will was removed from the format there would be a lot more decks out there. Plus people wouldn't have to worry about blue count as much anymore.

If Force of Will was removed from the format, there would be a lot fewer decks that are actually viable. Belcher and Oops all Spells are a much harsher mistress than blue based Tempo and control decks could ever be in a million years. Instead this:


But it would certainly help the format if blue wasn't the only color with maindeckable combo hate that's online on turn zero - e.g. other pitch cards that do on-color stuff to hate combo.
There's a reason the best-performing non-blue deck is Death and Taxes (Thalia, Karakas, Revoker). Those cards allow the deck to defend itself almost as well as blue decks can while still maintaining solid tools against the non-combo decks in the format.

As to Brian's article, well, yes, Star|Scream is correct, he did
really write that he's upset that his deck couldn't beat nonblue decks and that's why blue is too powerful

Also, this is the long rant his treatment of the Vintage restriction inspired from my side (c/p from the comments section):




Back in the day when*Brainstorm*finally*got restricted in Vintage, there was a very similar sentiment attached to the card by Vintage players just as there is in Legacy.
"Brainstorming is what makes Vintage Vintage."
"If they restrict*Brainstorm, I will sell my cards."
"Restricting*Brainstorm*will ruin the format."
And so on and so forth.
There was a very public, very vocal faction of players who were very opposed to restricting the card in Vintage.
Then the DCI did the unbelievable and restricted*Brainstorm*and life moved on, and pretty much everybody admits now that it was the right thing to do. Nobody is clamoring for the unrestriction ofBrainstorm*in Vintage because everybody knows it deserves its spot on the B&R list and that it had its time in the sun.


Brian, this is patently false and as I know you were an active part of the Vintage community at the time, so I also know that you should know better.

First, almost nobody threatened to sell their cards in case the DCI decided to ban Brainstorm because almost nobody even seriously considered they might do that. Almost everybody I talked to at the time was shellshocked that Ponder and Brainstorm had been hit in addition to Gush and Flash just because people expected it to happen about as much as they expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Second, I know more people who still think that restricting Brainstorm was a a terrible idea than people who admit that it was the right thing to do. Now that is obviously just anecdotal evidence but it's still a simple truth with just as much value to it as your personal observation that “pretty much everybody” is fine with the state of affairs. In fact, it is my impression that so few people are clamoring for the unrestriction of Brainstorm because a) arguing to get Brainstorm back seems stupid when the much weaker Ponder is still on the list (though there are people who have mentioned wanting Brainstorm back to me) and b) there are just extremely few people who give a rats ass about Vintage to the point where they'd be clamoring for anything at all being done about the Vintage restricted list. If there are still 1000 dedicated Vintage players in the world, we can count ourselves lucky, or at least that's what it looks like.

Third and most importantly (because of its link to the second point I just made), “life moved on” is a very interesting rendition of the result of the 2008 bannings. People “threatened to quit” you say? News flash. I don't know anybody who threatened at the time but I DO know a lot of people who simply quit and never came back.
Throughout the years preceding the Brainstorm restriction, Gifts Ungiven legal, Gush legal, whatever, I played in 100+ player Vintage events nearly every freaking month and could have played in twice that many plus a number of ~50 player events if I had had the nerve to travel that much in France and Germany alone.
Today? It's hard to find 50 players to join a Vintage event even every six months. There are like two events with 100+ players PER YEAR now, and that's ALL OVER THE WORLD counting Vintage Champs (afaik, Maybe there are huge Vintage events you never hear about in Japan or something).

If you honestly look back, it's really easy to trace the exact time that apocalyptic moment (as far as active players are concerned) happened. Summer-Fall 2008. As soon as Brainstorm was restricted, Vintage attendance numbers toppled and events became at best half the size they had been before wherever you look, with a ton of events simply ceasing to exist due to a lack of support in the span of a couple of months. The format completely collapsed. You can argue the cause (see below), but you can't realistically contest the timing.

Now, there are a couple of ways you could argue that that wasn't the result of Brainstorm getting the axe. A number of other cards were restricted at the same time as Brainstorm (Ponder, Merchant Scroll, Gush and Flash, to be exact) and Time Vault received the infamous removal of power errata, so there is no way to prove that the Brainstorm restriction was the main cause of the sudden death of Vintage (outside of tracking down those missing players one by one and asking), an event that the format still hasn't even close to recovered from in spite of the P9 finally being available on MTGO to give people a taste of the format. However, simple logic strongly suggests that Brainstorm leaving was the deciding factor here:

1) Gush had already been restricted without causing any fuss before, which points to it being acceptable to Vintage players in a general sense, at least to the point that it shouldn't cause a format apocalypse. Those I talked to at the time were as bewildered as I was that Gush had been unrestricted in the first place and everybody I talked to expected it to go back on the list at some point. Doesn't make restricting Gush sound like a recipe to alienate players, does it?

2) Merchant Scroll: Nobody I've ever met or talked to was so much into Merchant Scroll that they even really minded it getting axed, not to even mention considering to stop playing because that happened. Scroll also fits the mold of Demonic Tutor and friends close enough that it just feels somewhat natural that it should be on the list.

3) Time Vault is dumb as hell and leads to some of the most boring Vintage games ever played, no question about it. However, if that was really the thing that scared people off, how in seven hells did they manage to stand roughly two years of FLASH being legal so they even could quit because of Vault/Key? How about Painter/Grindstone or the old Flame Fussilade/Time Vault combo or freaking Oath of Druids? Face it, Vintage players have a reasonably high tolerance for broken boring crap happening from time to time. Blaming the mass exodus on Vault/Key doesn't make sense, especially given that that would mean people quit Vintage PREEMPTIVELY before even having played with the card given the timing of the Vintage collapse (before there was even much time to play with or against Vault/Key in tournament settings).

4) Ponder: Do I really need to argue this one?

5) Was there some other cause not related to any of these things? Some other major change that drove people away from a format they had been playing for years and, at least here in Europe, invested a significant amount of money into? I don't know one, maybe you can enlighten me?

All of this very strongly suggests the mass exodus of players back in 2008 was triggered with overwhelming likelihood by Brainstorm getting the axe. Life moved on indeed. If that's what “life moved on” looks like, I pray fervently the game as a whole never has to deal with “life moving on” as we'd all probably be in need of a new hobby.

All of that aside, what was banning Brainstorm supposed to accomplish? Basically to help level the playing field and reduce the overwhelming amount of blue decks people were playing in Vintage, right? Well, look at Vintage results and tournaments. The couple of events I attended since Brainstorm left were almost completely blue anyway. Each one had a handful of people playing Shops (just like back in the Brainstorm days), two or three people playing Dredge (also like in the later Brainstorm days, the deck not having been discovered beforehand), one or two people playing hatebear decks (if that) and a sea of people playing blue. Color dominance and deckchoice-wise, banning Brainstorm changed jack shit. Workshoppers workshop, Bazaarers bazaar and blue players play blue cards8. Only the events are at best half the size now and games feel a lot more random and blow-out-driven than they did back in the day. Definitely sounds like banning Brainstorm helped Vintage out a ton, no question about it.

Seeing as you brought up the parallel of Vintage past and current Legacy, if there's anything to learn from what happened when the DCI touched Brainstorm in Vintage it's that you freaking don't touch that darn card because people freaking love playing with it (and fyi that's what bannings are meant to do: get people to want to play Magic). There's a reason we called the second Gush era a golden age for Vintage even while it was happening and its not because the format was boring and nobody wanted to play it. In fact, it was the exact opposite. Tournament attendance steadily climbed and people jumped through incredible hoops to acquire the cards to finally be able to participate in the format – kind of like what has been happening with Legacy for a couple of years now.
I wish they had left Vintage well enough alone and I could still play in as many Vintage events as I could back then. Having a ton of people excited to play in a format that is not balanced according to color wheel shenanigans seems much better than trying to create some much vaulted but never achieved color balance or some other theoretical fancy schmanzy wonderland where people who love how blue control, tempo or combo decks play suddenly decide to play other decks in doves in a format with turn one and two wins (hint: Force of Will is a card – thank god or the Eternal formats would be unplayable) just because you take away one of their favorite toys.
If history is any indication, people either adapt what they run to not having access to that card any more or simply stop playing. The literal only point of reference as to what happens when Brainstorm is removed from an Eternal format says that doing so changes nothing as far as the decks people play are concerned but severely lowers the number of people wanting to play in the first place.
Now, Vintage isn't Legacy so that doesn't prove things would turn out the same this time around (though the common sentiment among a vast majority of Legacy players seems to be reasonably similar to how Vintage players reacted to learning Brainstorm had been hit) but there also is no indication whatsoever that it wouldn't. Add to that that Legacy is thriving just the way it is and has been for years now and this sounds like terrible EV and utterly pointless risk-taking given what the best and worst case scenarios are (slightly fewer people playing blue – if you expect anything more as the result of no Brainstorm, stop kidding yourself, far too many people like having access to countermagic and library manipulation far too much – vs half the player population disappearing overnight).

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Force of Will could be banned, but only if they unban Mental Misstep. Not sure exactly, but it would hurt the prevalence of blue decks without throwing the entire format into combo hell.

Still think Delver is the bigger issue though ... though having something with utility that can deal with it would be nice.

[iGrok]

Posted in B/R thread, posting here for relevance:


Ok, so many people are calling for weird bans that I actually went and did some math.

I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

So then I decided to see what the results look like if we remove the delver decks.

http://i.imgur.com/nqwb69N.png

That looks a lot better, though still skewed a bit. Miracles and Stoneblade are now 17.5% of the meta, Dredge and Storm are 12%each, Elves is 9%, Death and taxes, Lands, and Sneak and Show make up 6% each. Blue falls to 59%, with Red basically tied, but now White is close, with Black and Green still underrepresented. But if there aren't any delver decks, perhaps Black and Green decks could fill in the missing slots.

Anyways, here's some numbers to chew on. To me, this screams "Delver is the issue!", but I can understand why some people would disagree - even I didn't realize how skewed it was towards Delver before I threw this together.

[Vicar in a tutu]

What do you guys think would happen if Delver of Secrets got the axe? (Just curious, not being rhetorical or snarky.)

[sjmcc13]

All of that aside, what was banning Brainstorm supposed to accomplish? Basically to help level the playing field and reduce the overwhelming amount of blue decks people were playing in Vintage, right? It always felt to me that it was to try and kill/neuter combo decks. by weakening their tools for consistency.

The problem being that since Vintage decks are so varied due to the restricted cards that you need something to reduce variance in a competitive environment (as no one like losing games because they drew the wrong card) and Brainstorm+shuffle effect was doing that job.
Though that was also around the time they started with Mythic rares which disillusioned me with the game for a while, and I know a couple players who stopped competitive play due to dislike of some of wizards policies that came out shortly afterwards. Also I first heard about EDH a little while before the bannings, so to me at least that format was growing in popularity at the same time, and might have takes some of the vintage player base with it, I know some people who pretty much gave up on other forms of Magic to play EDH (and pre-releases).

[iGrok]

What do you guys think would happen if Delver of Secrets got the axe? (Just curious, not being rhetorical or snarky.)

Personally, I think Jund comes back in a big way. This May be skewed because there's a very good local Jund player, but Jund seems like it has really good matchups vs Miracles and Stoneblade.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

What do you guys think would happen if Delver of Secrets got the axe? (Just curious, not being rhetorical or snarky.)

With the loss of their signature evasive threat, all forms of Delver decks (UR, UWR, RUG, BUG, etc.) would have to use other options such as Nimble Mongoose, Goblin Guide, Grim Lavamancer, Deathrite Shaman, etc., returning to their roots as Tempo decks. Since none are the same evasive clock that Delver is, this gives non-Delver non-combo a chance to buy time against Delver decks without necessarily needing removal then and there. They would still have to fight against combo, but at least the Delver/Tempo matchup is more in their favor than currently, and the presence of Delver itself would check the combo decks. Miracles would still have similar matchups since I really doubt its the evasion and not the clock that allows Delver to fight it.

Really, it wouldn't change much except make it more of a rock-paper-scissors between Blue Non-Combo, Non-Blue Non-Combo, and Combo. But that's what makes it such a good option: it hits the biggest target hard without completing warping everything.

[Di]

What do you guys think would happen if Delver of Secrets got the axe? (Just curious, not being rhetorical or snarky.)

This would make for a curious predicament for blue tempo shells. On one hand, they need to resort to the old guard of green creatures in Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf to stay afloat. On the other, those win conditions play incredibly poorly with Treasure Cruise. Though really, it'd probably just lead more of those types of players to run BBD's winning UWR Stoneblade list, or at least iterations close to that. But at least it would slow those decks down a bit without a turn two 3/2 flyer, and UR would no longer be a (really good) thing.

FWIW though, I think that's the best course of action in general. Blue decks, although still overwhelmingly popular, weren't as oppressive pre-Delver as they are currently post-Delver/Cruise/TNN.

[Koby]

My personal experience with DeMars has shown me that while he is a smart player, his method of vocalizing it and reasoning it are much closer to "kitchen table magic".

At the conclusion of a series of games *in Vintage* where he piloted Smenendian's Burning Oath Tendrils and I with Grixis Slaverless, he lamented the fact that I was getting lucky by (correcting identifying and) countering his Oath and winning out from there. Mind that we played ~10 games which is statistically insignificant to form a broad opinion.

He writes: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25917_The-Zombies-Win-Again-AGAIN.html


Another interesting thing about my testing was that my opponent was clearly cheating the whole time. He kept all eight of his opening hands of seven, all of which included Force of Will. To add insult to injury, four of his openers also had Black Lotus. I, on the other hand, mulliganed four times and never had Black Lotus in my opening hand.

Wah, wah, wah... Right? Wrong. I'm not complaining about my misfortune in playtesting, but rather I'm trying to communicate a point. I went 4-4 against one of my "worst matchups" where the opponent kept seven with Force of Will eight times in a row, two of his wins were due to my misplays, I mulliganed in half my games, and he had Black Lotus four times. The point is that against my opponent having pretty much his best possible draws and me having mediocre ones, with tight play I could have been 6-2. That is a really strong testament to how powerful the deck is.

Clearly, I was cheating in playtesting against a player I respect[ed]. That experience with Demars made me realize just the type of player he is. The "On Blue" article he writes is more in line with Hoogland's Modern/Legacy article than actually breaking down the point that Brainstorm is the best thing to do in Leagcy. He also misses Miracles in his analysis, which indicates he's looking through the lens of a single event, rather than the last months' of events.

[menace13]

I will now evoke Nedleeds and summarize this thread in hashtags.

#SkillIntensive #IWouldQuit #SomethingAboutVintage #PlayModern #PillarOfFormat

[FoolofaTook]

Him not mentioning Miracles, which has been the best deck for most of 2014 and still is, really makes me wonder.

Miracles is the best overall list when it is piloted by a great player. It's not a great list in the hands of the average player. All the other lists he mentioned can be leveraged by almost any competent pilot.

I don't play Miracles because I'm just not fast enough to make it work. I go into the tank too often when presented with 3 cards to look at and the need to setup 2 and 3 turns down the road. I make minor play mistakes all the time. With most of the lists I pilot that doesn't matter, the list is solid enough that it will overpower the opponent as long as I don't make a critical error along the way. With Miracles every time I give away minor value I am dramatically increasing the chance that I will lose.

I'm guessing that's why he didn't list it. It's not a great list in most player's hands and it will not reward somebody quickly for picking it up and trying to play it.

[testing32]

What do you guys think would happen if Delver of Secrets got the axe? (Just curious, not being rhetorical or snarky.)

I think that UR burn would still be a very strong deck. You lose delver, replace it with goblin guide and take more of a burn route. This would still be the best treasure cruise deck. The UWR blade deck and Miracles would still be the best decks. Combo would still be depressed.

If they ever printed another overly aggresive 1 drop we would be back in the exact same spot we are now except complaining about that creature.

[FoolofaTook]

The "On Blue" article he writes is more in line with Hoogland's Modern/Legacy article than actually breaking down the point that Brainstorm is the best thing to do in Leagcy. He also misses Miracles in his analysis, which indicates he's looking through the lens of a single event, rather than the last months' of events.

Miracles was 2 of the top 8 at GPNJ. He didn't miss it because it didn't show up in front of him. He missed it because it's not a great list in most player's hands. UR Delver is a great list in anybody's hands but it requires a very good player to get by the great players prepared to handle a powerful one trick pony at the end.

[ReAnimator]

My thoughts on banning Delver over Brainstrom are similar to banning Vengevine instead SoTF.

Like Delver is anywhere from bad/fair to excellent in formats without BS, but super insane with it.



My personal experience with DeMars has shown me that while he is a smart player, his method of vocalizing it and reasoning it are much closer to "kitchen table magic".

At the conclusion of a series of games *in Vintage* where he piloted Smenendian's Burning Oath Tendrils and I with Grixis Slaverless, he lamented the fact that I was getting lucky by (correcting identifying and) countering his Oath and winning out from there. Mind that we played ~10 games which is statistically insignificant to form a broad opinion.

He writes: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25917_The-Zombies-Win-Again-AGAIN.html


Clearly, I was cheating in playtesting against a player I respect[ed]. That experience with Demars made me realize just the type of player he is. The "On Blue" article he writes is more in line with Hoogland's Modern/Legacy article than actually breaking down the point that Brainstorm is the best thing to do in Leagcy. He also misses Miracles in his analysis, which indicates he's looking through the lens of a single event, rather than the last months' of events.

Isn't he not actually saying/accusing you of cheating but using the example to illustrate a point?
Maybe i'm reading it wrong, but that's how i understood those two paragraphs.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

I think that UR burn would still be a very strong deck. You lose delver, replace it with goblin guide and take more of a burn route. This would still be the best treasure cruise deck. The UWR blade deck and Miracles would still be the best decks. Combo would still be depressed.

If they ever printed another overly aggresive 1 drop we would be back in the exact same spot we are now except complaining about that creature.

They could print a 5/5 for 1 and I would still say Delver is a problem because it isnt the body: its the body and the evasion.

See there is thing called blocking that can allow decks to buy time searching for answers if not answer it by blocking then and there.

[Zombie]

Because it's just as random of a method as categorizing by odd or even set numbers. We're talking about enjoying competitive Legacy, which is based on the viability of all major archetypes; not some "I want to be a red mage!" kitchen table desires.

Fuck that argument. Just fuck it. You know it's bullshit and a strawman argument so incredibly stupid it boggles the mind, yet you keep making it. Why? A card's color has a distinct impact on gameplay, and the game has, what a surprise, been designed around the idea of a card's color being meaningful from the get go. The game is designed to have five colors. Not one.

Set numbers? Don't matter. At all. You know it. They're completely outside gameplay, and intentionally so.

So please STFU. I know you can make an intelligent argument if you'd only bother, so please do or just shut the fuck up and don't spew that drivel ever again.

[FoolofaTook]

Isn't he not actually saying/accusing you of cheating but using the example to illustrate a point?
Maybe i'm reading it wrong, but that's how i understood those two paragraphs.

I don't read that article as an actual accusation of cheating. He shouldn't have used the phrase though. What he was saying was that in playing Magic he went 4-4 against an opponent who had 8 consecutive excellent hands.

I finished second at a 128 person tournament in 1994 and had Black Lotus in my opening hands 3 of the 5 games in the final. After I played my second opening turn Serra Angel I heard somebody gasp behind me and say "he's had lotus in his opening hand four games in a row now!" It was my opponent from the semis that I had beaten 3 games to none with opening turn Juzam Djinns or Erg Raiders with Unholy Strength all 3 games. It happens.

My opponent in the finals was a guy I played late in tourneys all the time. He knew me and he had seen things bounce both ways so he just smiled at the comment. Then he StP'd the angel and went on to beat me three games to two.

If the guy behind me had accused me of cheating or even used the words in an offbeat manner I would have been pissed. Magic is Magic. You get lucky some times and you're totally screwed sometimes. The blue shell skews this some in your favor but it still isn't definitive, it's just enough of an edge to make you have to play it.

[nedleeds]

Edit2: I think that GPNJ has displayed a healthy meta.

Your version of health differs greatly from many others. I think Brainstorm at 80% +, maindeck REBs and Pyros, isn't a healthy meta. Health in legacy to me is that no spells have overwhelming (80-90%) ubiquity, you can build 60 cards decks, not 56 or 52 or 48 card decks.

Brainstorm goes 14 for 16. That seems healthy? WTF? Decks with like 8 colored mana producers are navigating 8-12 round tourneys. Earthcraft, Mind Twist and freaking Black Vise are banned. This is getting laughable. Defenders of Brainstorm are starting to sound like religious zealots ... answering the unanswerable with stuff like, 'it defines the format', 'it's a pillar', 'skill intensive', 'go play modern', 'go play vintage', 'core card', 'i would quit' and other indirect non-answers that have absolutey no relationship to the criteria used to ban cards



Banning Brainstorm will do nothing at all. It will just be replaced by Preordain.

You're welcome.

You think Preordain is comparable to Brainstorm. You show your complete ignorance of the power level of cards with idiocy like this. Preordain is vastly inferior to Brainstorm in a world where shuffling in the middle of the game is legal. You expose yourself as a bit of a troll when you say things like this, because I can't believe anyone who has played any amount of legacy with the cantrip cabal would ever think this. You then propose banning 4 cards that have nowhere near the raw power or ubiquity of Brainstorm cementing your ignorance. But I'll bite on your troll. Ponder and Preordain are great cards for filtering and mana fixing, but they (in a world with fetch lands anyway) are leagues below Brainstorm for a number of reasons. One is the obvious synergy with shuffle effects (ponder touches this a bit but still isn't close to brainstorm). The other huge one is that Brainstorm is the best protection against disruption in the form of discard. You have to Ponder in your main phase. Ponder and Preordain would remain staple blue cantrips, but when Brainstorm is banned you'll see targeted discard become more effective (oh ... and also, targeted discard is 'skill intensive').



The argument of basically all "rage against the BS" posts is to weaken other decks and make a petdeck playable again.


Nobody is crying to play pet decks, people are just pointing out the obvious crutch cards, and nobody can provide a compelling reason not to play Brainstorm.



Banning BS would make the format less skill-intense which might show parallels to the people favouring a ban.


Really? Skill intensive is still the best you clowns can come up with? How hard is it to unmulligan with Brainstorm? Stop repeating the semi-pro bullshit line of Brainstorm being this holy fucking grail of skill in magic. Which just isn't true. So many cards test "skill" many more so then your average 'I haven't hit my land drop' brainstorm. The whole 'skill intensive' argument which discounts the game state is just dumb anyway. Umezawa's Jitte can be a skill intensive (tm) card when you are facing an Ensnaring Bridge with an equipped Noble Hierarch. Targeted discard can be the most skill intensive (tm) activity in magic, because it involves thinking through your future lines of play, their lines of play, your resources, the %'s of their top decks, their mana ratio, your threats, etc. etc.. Brainstorm can absolutely be a card that requires tough decision making, weighing odds and resources, but it's not some fucking Jacobian matrix problem. The other blue cantrips are just as skill intensive (tm) as a Brainstorm because they are less powerful and don't allow you to just exchange situationally more powerful cards at instant speed and shuffle the trash away.

Go innovate? Why? Brainstorm is a crutch for all the decks you talk about, control, combo and aggro. It makes the format too easy. It makes deck building too easy. Ban it and then you go build a fucking deck without such a crutch.

Or as I've said a billion times unban some of the cards that are a joke in the face of Brainstorm, Show and Tell, and Griselbrand.

Next up are the trolls telling me that lands should be banned. Nobody ever refutes the arguments about the cards power level and ubiquity. You say brainstorm, a blue card, is the 'core' of legacy. Which of course doesn't actually mean anything.


The format is becoming Vintage 2.0, where 30+ cards on your list have to be the same just because of how much better than the rest of the format they are, basically a circlejerk format for blue mages. In the meanwhile, cards much weaker than brainstorm are still on the banned list, but this is all good for WotC because the format becoming as degenerate as possible is good for modern popularity. Printing TC was probably their way to say "fuck eternal formats" :laugh:

Treasure Cruise without Brainstorm is fine, my hope is it was a bone thrown to the Cult of Brainstorm to pad the loss of their sacred skill testing fucking blue messiah.


What kind of empty phrase is "open up the format" other than a synonym for "make pet decks more compeditive"?

STFU about pet decks and condescending every poster like they are yearning to play Cavern of Beasts. It's about not starting deck construction at 52, or 56 cards. You are building 56 card decks right now because there is no compelling reason, besides a chalice on 1 not to play 4 x Brainstorm. It doesn't take a savant deck builder to realize that.


Death and Taxes just took down a SCG Open, but I guess that had to be pure luck, and not because the deck can realistically compete.

One Death and Taxes player not succumbing to a triple Karakas mulligan twice in 9 rounds isn't reflective of another cards power level. He's also likely an order of magnitude better at Magic than 75% of the players he faced. Have you ever registered for an SCG? People don't know what activated abilities are. It's about a coin flip for people missing beneficial triggers in the early rounds.


Posted in B/R thread, posting here for relevance:

Ok, so many people are calling for weird bans that I actually went and did some math.

I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Brainstorm. It's not even close to other archetypes. Brainstorm has a commanding lead with delver not too far behind, and everything else is day old shit. Brainstorm represents 71% of the past 3 Top 16s.

[Zombie]

I see, I see.
The argument of basically all "rage against the BS" posts is to weaken other decks and make a petdeck playable again.
Dude, try to innovate the format. You've got all the tools for that. Play another deck or be mad and post in this forum.


Banning BS would make the format less skill-intense which might show parallels to the people favouring a ban.

And fuck this line of argument too. Ponder and Preordain will still exist, and now you have to consider whether mulligans are discard-proof, whether to keep mana open or not, whether a card is actually too clunky to play, all manner of stuff which Bullshitstorm excuses you from.

#nedleedstags.




I'm out of the format related discussions because they give me headaches due to the low-level of arguments and evident discrepancies in experience
and understanding of the format. I am still supporting the thesis that only a severely small amount of the players understands the format in its unity. (Doesn't mean
understand each deck and simple stuff like that. Just to make it clear.)

Yup, think Brainstorm is banworthy, want to play other colors on more even terms with blue, you don't understand the format. Ab-so-lute-ly. Brilliant logic. Wait, it's not. It's the same kind of inane drivel Julian keeps spouting about collector numbers.

[iGrok]

Hey Ned, if you cut out the delver decks brainstorm becomes much less common in the top 8, and that's before we even consider that non-brainstorm decks might take it's place (decks like Jund, burn, or nicfit). Can you at least agree with that assessment?

Again, im not saying that if you ban delver then nin-brainstorm decks will be just as good as brainstorm decks (I think that would take a while to sort itself out), just can you agree that if we banned Delver, brainstorm would be significantly less "ubiquitous"?

[ReAnimator]

Hey Ned, if you cut out the delver decks brainstorm becomes much less common in the top 8, and that's before we even consider that non-brainstorm decks might take it's place (decks like Jund, burn, or nicfit). Can you at least agree with that assessment?

Again, im not saying that if you ban delver then nin-brainstorm decks will be just as good as brainstorm decks (I think that would take a while to sort itself out), just can you agree that if we banned Delver, brainstorm would be significantly less "ubiquitous"?

But why not just ban brainstorm to knock down the power of Delver?
This is VVine vs SoTF all over again.


@Nedleeds

Thanks for that rebuttal/response. I agree with 100% of it and you saved me having to write that up myself.

So many disingenuous arguments.

[iGrok]

But why not just ban brainstorm to knock down the power of Delver?
This is VVine vs SoTF all over again.


@Nedleeds

Because that nukes a lot of other archetypes as well. I'm not one of the people saying "blue will just play preordain and be fine," because that is a bad argument. But brainstorm enables a decent number of combo decks, and obviously helps miracles (which only gets a bad rap because most of it's pilots like experience so it goes slowly). I get that many people dislike playing against combo or miracles, but combo decks are incredibly varied, and already are barely represented outside of ANT.

I'm playing mono-white tribal this weekend because its a better deck against a sea of tempo decks with countermagic, chump blockers, and evasive threats.

[Dice_Box]

It is also because of all the decks that play Brainstorm, Delver would be hurt the lest by it's loss.

[FoolofaTook]

It is also because of all the decks that play Brainstorm, Delver would be hurt the lest by it's loss.

I disagree on this point. Delver - Daze and Brainstorm in your opening hand is flipped Delver about 80% of the time, not 50% like it would be with a sorcery speed cantrip that couldn't put an instant or sorcery from your hand on the top of your library in response to the upkeep trigger. Even Ponder won't flip that Delver turn 2.

[Dice_Box]

Meh, naturally flipping your 3/2 does not seam like the worst thing ever. If that is all they lose, I stand by Delver getting off better than: Storm, High Tide, Omnishow, Reanimater, Sneak and Show, Miracles, Blade Control, NO Bant, Tezarator, Shardless, Aluren....

[LLCoolDave]

I disagree on this point. Delver - Daze and Brainstorm in your opening hand is flipped Delver about 80% of the time, not 50% like it would be with a sorcery speed cantrip that couldn't put an instant or sorcery from your hand on the top of your library in response to the upkeep trigger. Even Ponder won't flip that Delver turn 2.

If you think that's the best you can do with Brainstorm in the Delver decks, I'm not sure you can argue for the card being too good in those decks. I think there's a good reason it's not a play we see all that often, it's simply not all that good in most scenarios.

[ReAnimator]

I think delver is hit the hardest by BS going away.

I think the argument that combo gets super unplayable if the format isn't 80% blue is crazyness. Also Targeted Discard actually becomes way more playable in a format without brainstorm, that's both good and bad for combo in it's present state. Things like Jund/Junk/Deadguy get a huge boost as they suddenly have relevant disruption. Sure maybe the specific combo decks that are seeing play right now might get a down grade but to say that all combo goes away is lunacy, especially if everyone else doesn't have brainstorm either.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Whatever I read from BS defenders is pure nonsense. As much as I dislike one member's pompous behaviour, I think I'll just post his hashtags to each and every BS discussion, at least until WotC finally bans that crap of a card.

Also, I find it both funny and annoying how the BS sect always belittles anyone daring to even mention the possibility of non-blue decks with phrases like "lol lol go play your petdeck to kitchen table", etc., while in fact I see lots of petdeckers in the blue bracket, a real heaps of people afraid that they'd:
- need to invent new techs and build new decks
- lose their auto-win status against portion of field, and the ability to umulligan halfway through the game.

So the petdeckers shout "don't touch our petdeck!" while trembling in fear over a loss of 0.02€ common. Source at its best.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

And I'm done. So many bad arguments from the anti-Brainstorm crowd it just doesn't do well for my mental health.

Before I go though, let me ask you this: why is Brainstorm, a single card that is found in a variety of lists, banworthy? And don't appeal to tradition and point to Survival and MM: Survival was a healthy ban due to spawning an archetype by itself, and MM was a healthy ban due to being extra good when backed by Force of Will. Both are arguments I've used to argue for a Delver ban, and are more relevant to Delver than Brainstorm.

[iGrok]

I think delver is hit the hardest by BS going away.

I think the argument that combo gets super unplayable if the format isn't 80% blue is crazyness. Also Targeted Discard actually becomes way more playable in a format without brainstorm, that's both good and bad for combo in it's present state. Things like Jund/Junk/Deadguy get a huge boost as they suddenly have relevant disruption. Sure maybe the specific combo decks that are seeing play right now might get a down grade but to say that all combo goes away is lunacy, especially if everyone else doesn't have brainstorm either.

I hyperbolized a bitbit when I used the word "nuked"I can see that on rereading. But you're hyperbolizing as well, both when you say that current discard spells are irrelevant and when you suggest that my stance is that combo "becomes unplayable when the format isn't 80% blue". Please don't do that, I'll try not to either :)


Whatever I read from BS defenders is pure nonsense. As much as I dislike one member's pompous behaviour, I think I'll just post his hashtags to each and every BS discussion, at least until WotC finally bans that crap of a card.

Also, I find it both funny and annoying how the BS sect always belittles anyone daring to even mention the possibility of non-blue decks with phrases like "lol lol go play your petdeck to kitchen table", etc., while in fact I see lots of petdeckers in the blue bracket, a real heaps of people afraid that they'd:
- need to invent new techs and build new decks
- lose their auto-win status against portion of field, and the ability to umulligan halfway through the game.

So the petdeckers shout "don't touch our petdeck!" while trembling in fear over a loss of 0.02€ common. Source at its best.
I haven't seen much of that in this thread, so do everyone a favor and stop trying to instigate that, thanks.

[FoolofaTook]

If you think that's the best you can do with Brainstorm in the Delver decks, I'm not sure you can argue for the card being too good in those decks. I think there's a good reason it's not a play we see all that often, it's simply not all that good in most scenarios.

There are some lists you have to blitz if you want to win. A turn 1 Delver that you can protect is a huge part of that. Try beating Miracles waiting 3 turns for your delver to naturally flip.

[testing32]

And I'm done. So many bad arguments from the anti-Brainstorm crowd it just doesn't do well for my mental health.

Before I go though, let me ask you this: why is Brainstorm, a single card that is found in a variety of lists, banworthy? And don't appeal to tradition and point to Survival and MM: Survival was a healthy ban due to spawning an archetype by itself, and MM was a healthy ban due to being extra good when backed by Force of Will. Both are arguments I've used to argue for a Delver ban, and are more relevant to Delver than Brainstorm.

Why is it ban worthy?

I have 2 questions for you.

What is the 2nd best card in the format and how many cards currently on the ban list is brainstorm better than?

I think the answers are "I have no idea (ponder? FoW?) but it's not even close to as good as the best card" and "13".

[btm10]

My personal experience with DeMars has shown me that while he is a smart player, his method of vocalizing it and reasoning it are much closer to "kitchen table magic".

DeMars has a pronounced bias toward creature/hatebear decks to begin with. I can totally see why he personally doesn't like Brainstorm or what it does to the format, but the article fails to make his point on the merits, even without taking personal preferences and traits in account.


I think delver is hit the hardest by BS going away.

I think the argument that combo gets super unplayable if the format isn't 80% blue is crazyness. Also Targeted Discard actually becomes way more playable in a format without brainstorm, that's both good and bad for combo in it's present state. Things like Jund/Junk/Deadguy get a huge boost as they suddenly have relevant disruption. Sure maybe the specific combo decks that are seeing play right now might get a down grade but to say that all combo goes away is lunacy, especially if everyone else doesn't have brainstorm either.

Lots of people who are more experienced at playing combo than I am have pointed this out, but the ability not only to hide stuff from discard, but to swap excess combo pieces/mana acceleration/disruption for whatever you're missing is critical for combo to work. I trust their assessment in this, and keeping combo, espeically Storm, strong enough to compete is reason enough to keep Brainstorm around. Why would we do anything to weaken an already precariously positioned critical metagame component?

[Dice_Box]

There are some lists you have to blitz if you want to win. A turn 1 Delver that you can protect is a huge part of that. Try beating Miracles waiting 3 turns for your delver to naturally flip.

If Miracles had also lost Brainstorm, I think that would not be as difficult an ask as you are suggesting.

Keep in mind, all decks are not effected equally in this. So a deck you might fear right now, could be mostly harmless after. While I think Miracles could battle on, it would not be the same. Waiting 3 turns to flip your Delver would not be so scary if you can keep the Top from resolving and then just play a waiting game.

I think that is the flaw here, the lens some of you are looking at this though is very two dimensional. If you take this card away, Delver loses some of its plays yes, but I do not feel it loses as much of it's plays as other decks in the format. So if you zoom out and look a everything as a whole, this could be quite damaging. I would argue that, if Delver is the deck you wish to see hampered, the name sake card would be a far more effective target than Brainstorm.

But I do not really think it matters. People sit on different sides of this issue and will not move. I kind of feel like Brainstorm is almost as decisive and issue here as the topic of Religion or Politics would be. No one is really going to change their views, so why do we keep on doing this to ourselves?

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Why is it ban worthy?

I have 2 questions for you.

What is the 2nd best card in the format and how many cards currently on the ban list is brainstorm better than?

I think the answers are "I have no idea (ponder? FoW?) but it's not even close to as good as the best card" and 13.

A power level argument ... havent seen one of those ever.

Power level shouldnt be a criteria for banning. Otherwise it would just be a slippery slope, as something would always be better. Impact on the metagame, however, should be the main criteria for banning, and so far Brainstorm has enabled more archetypes than banning it would.

[Gheizen64]

I haven't seen much of that in this thread, so do everyone a favor and stop trying to instigate that, thanks.

You haven't? The "good" players with snarky comments about petdecks are all over B&R discussions where people try to talk about banning BS or unbanning other things. It's all a stream of "you aren't good players if you think this" , "stop wanting to play your petdeck" (because blue decks can't be petdecks? nice cognitive dissonance), "go play modern", "you remove skill intensive cards from the format". All of those have been rebutted times and times again and aren't even real arguments by now, the skill intensive part is so hilarious because the very next best card after BS, Preordain, is way more skill intensive than brainstorm itself and isn't played only because of power level reasons. Portent is a card that is like 10 times as skill intensive compared to any other blue cantrip, but apparently being skill intensive isn't as important as just being broken, who knew?

It's funny also how Mental Misstep was "too good" with FoW when it's a 1-for-1 card that was amazing mostly because you could shuffle away dead copies of it with, you guess what, Brainstorm, or how Survival had to be axed because "it created a new archetype". Really what? Survival wouldn't even touch the domain of blue on this format anymore and would be a T1.5 deck at best, at least until Delver remain legal. Vise, Twist, and Earthcraft wouldn't see play at all. Tax needed YEARS to come off the list because they were afraid the card was too good, in a format that had brainstorm legal jesus lol. It's just hysterical :laugh:

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I hyperbolized a bitbit when I used the word "nuked"I can see that on rereading. But you're hyperbolizing as well, both when you say that current discard spells are irrelevant and when you suggest that my stance is that combo "becomes unplayable when the format isn't 80% blue". Please don't do that, I'll try not to either :)


I haven't seen much of that in this thread, so do everyone a favor and stop trying to instigate that, thanks.

This thread has three or four pages so far and iut was mentioned on several occasions already. Not to speak of all other ban threads...



Before I go though, let me ask you this: why is Brainstorm, a single card that is found in a variety of lists, banworthy?
Umm... Power level, maybe?



Lots of people who are more experienced at playing combo than I am have pointed this out, but the ability not only to hide stuff from discard, but to swap excess combo pieces/mana acceleration/disruption for whatever you're missing is critical for combo to work. I trust their assessment in this, and keeping combo, espeically Storm, strong enough to compete is reason enough to keep Brainstorm around.
Why? Why is this one pile so necessary, while the average Taiga.dec may gtfo? I'm not even trolling, I'm simply asking. Cause I really see no difference between "I want Storm to remain good" and "I want Loam to become good"; for me it's just two petdeckers having an argument over their gusto.



Why would we do anything to weaken an already precariously positioned critical metagame component?
You meant that Taiga.dec, right? Cause I may ask "Why would we not do anything to strenghten an already critically missing metagame component?"



A power level argument ... havent seen one of those ever.

Power level shouldnt be a criteria for banning. Otherwise it would just be a slippery slope, as something would always be better. Impact on the metagame, however, should be the main criteria for banning, and so far Brainstorm has enabled more archetypes than banning it would.
Yeah, lets unban Balance, Ancestral Recall, Demonic Tutor, Wheel of Fortune and Oath of Druids.

[Gheizen64]

A power level argument ... havent seen one of those ever.

Power level shouldnt be a criteria for banning. Otherwise it would just be a slippery slope, as something would always be better. Impact on the metagame, however, should be the main criteria for banning, and so far Brainstorm has enabled more archetypes than banning it would.

Power level not a criteria for banning? What is an ubiquity of a card if not a power level proof? Or are we now arbitrarily defining "power level" as anything else? Because you can't define power level as anything else but how much a card get played relative to other options. Not in a system with so many variable as mtg.

[ReAnimator]

I hyperbolized a bitbit when I used the word "nuked"I can see that on rereading. But you're hyperbolizing as well, both when you say that current discard spells are irrelevant and when you suggest that my stance is that combo "becomes unplayable when the format isn't 80% blue". Please don't do that, I'll try not to either :)

Ha ha, fair enough.
:)

I think it is fair to say that just using targeted discard as your only disruption isn't exactly viable in legacy right now for most decks. It's fine in combo, because you only need a one turn window to win. But playing a midrange or aggro control deck like Jund/junk/deadguy etc. with thoughtseizes et al vs anything (especially combo) with brainstorm is just not really reliable or good. Thoughtseize/therapy is only really doable if you have counters to back them up or a combo right now.
I'm mostly just repeating myself as i've discussed this stuff before (i think in the ban thread).

[clavio]

And I'm done. So many bad arguments from the anti-Brainstorm crowd it just doesn't do well for my mental health.

Before I go though, let me ask you this: why is Brainstorm, a single card that is found in a variety of lists, banworthy? And don't appeal to tradition and point to Survival and MM: Survival was a healthy ban due to spawning an archetype by itself, and MM was a healthy ban due to being extra good when backed by Force of Will. Both are arguments I've used to argue for a Delver ban, and are more relevant to Delver than Brainstorm.

I love brainstorm. I really do. But it's just so much better than any card in the format. It's absolutely better than cards on the banned list.

[iGrok]

Ha ha, fair enough.
:)

I think it is fair to say that just using targeted discard as your only disruption isn't exactly viable in legacy right now for most decks. It's fine in combo, because you only need a one turn window to win. But playing a midrange or aggro control deck like Jund/junk/deadguy etc. with thoughtseizes et al vs anything (especially combo) with brainstorm is just not really reliable or good. Thoughtseize/therapy is only really doable if you have counters to back them up or a combo right now.
I'm mostly just repeating myself as i've discussed this stuff before (i think in the ban thread).
I think right now discard is only good en masse. 4 thoughtsieze, 4 liliana, 3-4 hymn. And in my personal experience, that much discard is bad against tempo decks because they just kill you while you shred their hand. Which makes it difficult to play that much discard.

[ReAnimator]

Lots of people who are more experienced at playing combo than I am have pointed this out, but the ability not only to hide stuff from discard, but to swap excess combo pieces/mana acceleration/disruption for whatever you're missing is critical for combo to work. I trust their assessment in this, and keeping combo, espeically Storm, strong enough to compete is reason enough to keep Brainstorm around. Why would we do anything to weaken an already precariously positioned critical metagame component?

I think combo being a part of the format is integral and something i want to be a thing for as long as this format exists.
I don't feel that S&T and Storm HAVE to be the premier combo decks at all, i don't see either of those as sacred cows.
I think it is fair to say that those decks will be harmed for sure by a BS banning, but i also think that other combo decks will have an opportunity to shine. If the format is less blue in general, than combo might improve over all as a metagame choice. If targeted discard goes up, maybe combo decks move away from specific 2 card combos or fragile specific cards, and move to more brute force approaches with lots of card drawing or to builds centred on more redundant pieces to mitigate that. Maybe they become slower more resilient builds that aim to win a bit later. I think all of that is fine personally.

[Asthereal]

You think Preordain is comparable to Brainstorm. You show your complete ignorance of the power level of cards with idiocy like this. Preordain is vastly inferior to Brainstorm in a world where shuffling in the middle of the game is legal. You expose yourself as a bit of a troll when you say things like this, because I can't believe anyone who has played any amount of legacy with the cantrip cabal would ever think this. You then propose banning 4 cards that have nowhere near the raw power or ubiquity of Brainstorm cementing your ignorance. But I'll bite on your troll. Ponder and Preordain are great cards for filtering and mana fixing, but they (in a world with fetch lands anyway) are leagues below Brainstorm for a number of reasons. One is the obvious synergy with shuffle effects (ponder touches this a bit but still isn't close to brainstorm). The other huge one is that Brainstorm is the best protection against disruption in the form of discard. You have to Ponder in your main phase. Ponder and Preordain would remain staple blue cantrips, but when Brainstorm is banned you'll see targeted discard become more effective (oh ... and also, targeted discard is 'skill intensive').
You fail to read my entire post and take one line and bash it.
And yet you dare to accuse me of ignorance and stupidity.
Take a hike.

What do we want?
We want a diverse and interesting Legacy format.

What do we see wrong with the current Legacy format?
Too much blue, other decks get hated out.

Solution?
Ban Brainstorm. Really, that's your solution?
It isn't. Brainstorm, like I said, will be replaced by Preordain.
Will this make the decks worse? yes, of course it will.
But blue will still be stronger than other colours.

The problem is this:
Blue has card selection, card advantage, good fast creatures, good slow creatures, good interaction with opposing stuff. It's just too much. Banning Brainstorm makes the card selection worse, but still the best in the format. All the other stuff is still there. The currently popular types of decks will not change. The prevalence of blue will not change. Just slamming Delvers, no-braining to an easy victory.

So I propose we even out the other stuff. We cut out the two best creatures (a fast one and a slow one), and we cut out the stupid Treasure Cruise, which was silly to print anyway. Just let it sink in. A format without Delver, TNN, Cruise and my personal suggestion would also be to ban Top because it's a stalling device and blue profits the most from it anyway (hiding a counterspell, Counterbalance, the Miracles deck as a whole). Just let it sink in, a format without those four, and you will realise the potential.

Blue Midrange decks will have to look for new beatsticks. Canadian Thresh will become a risky cutting edge style deck again, like it once was. Blue control will still be viable, just stightly less powerful. We will see pure aggro return in the meta. Junk style decks could become viable again. We will have a much more diverse format.

[iGrok]

You fail to read my entire post and take one line and bash it.
And yet you dare to accuse me of ignorance and stupidity.
Take a hike.

What do we want?
We want a diverse and interesting Legacy format.

What do we see wrong with the current Legacy format?
Too much blue, other decks get hated out.

Solution?
Ban Brainstorm. Really, that's your solution?
It isn't. Brainstorm, like I said, will be replaced by Preordain.
Will this make the decks worse? yes, of course it will.
But blue will still be stronger than other colours.

The problem is this:
Blue has card selection, card advantage, good fast creatures, good slow creatures, good interaction with opposing stuff. It's just too much. Banning Brainstorm makes the card selection worse, but still the best in the format. All the other stuff is still there. The currently popular types of decks will not change. The prevalence of blue will not change. Just slamming Delvers, no-braining to an easy victory.

So I propose we even out the other stuff. We cut out the two best creatures (a fast one and a slow one), and we cut out the stupid Treasure Cruise, which was silly to print anyway. Just let it sink in. A format without Delver, TNN, Cruise and my personal suggestion would also be to ban Top because it's a stalling device and blue profits the most from it anyway (hiding a counterspell, Counterbalance, the Miracles deck as a whole). Just let it sink in, a format without those four, and you will realise the potential.

Blue Midrange decks will have to look for new beatsticks. Canadian Thresh will become a risky cutting edge style deck again, like it once was. Blue control will still be viable, just stightly less powerful. We will see pure aggro return in the meta. Junk style decks could become viable again. We will have a much more diverse format.

I don't think you even need that. Without delver, thresh needs golf and goose again, so it can't play cruise. Non-agro decks tend to want dig through time anyways. And TNN isn't really that big of a deal if you can play -1/-1 effects because suddenly they hit TNN, pyromancer, tokens, and goose pre-threshold. Golgari charm, just as an example, even has multiple uses. Banning 4 cards isn't going to happen. Banning one card probably won't, but might.

[Asthereal]

I don't think you even need that. Without delver, thresh needs golf and goose again, so it can't play cruise. Non-agro decks tend to want dig through time anyways. And TNN isn't really that big of a deal if you can play -1/-1 effects because suddenly they hit TNN, pyromancer, tokens, and goose pre-threshold. Golgari charm, just as an example, even has multiple uses. Banning 4 cards isn't going to happen. Banning one card probably won't, but might.
Banning just Delver will make everyone play Miracles or Stoneblade.
Still no aggro back in the meta if that happens.
And Cruise is just stupid. Even a splash blue for Cruise in Burn is valid.

Of course Wizards won't listen to me. (Damnit! :mad:) But the idea is solid.

[Richard Cheese]

But why not just ban brainstorm to knock down the power of Delver?
This is VVine vs SoTF all over again.


Because Delver puts constraints on deck building in a way that Brainstorm never has and never will? Every Delver deck has to follow a basic formula, and they all feel basically the same to play against.

Is Brainstorm overpowered? Probably. Is it ubiquitous? Obviously. But what's worse, a ubiquitous card or a ubiquitous archetype?

[Rood]

Delver is far and beyond the most insane creature in legacy right now...maybe ever printed TBH. I think they should heavily consider banning him first and Treasure Cruise.

[bruizar]

I don't see the problem here. I love running maindeck chalice of the void, pyroblast AND choke! :)

[btm10]

I think combo being a part of the format is integral and something i want to be a thing for as long as this format exists.
I don't feel that S&T and Storm HAVE to be the premier combo decks at all, i don't see either of those as sacred cows.
I think it is fair to say that those decks will be harmed for sure by a BS banning, but i also think that other combo decks will have an opportunity to shine. If the format is less blue in general, than combo might improve over all as a metagame choice. If targeted discard goes up, maybe combo decks move away from specific 2 card combos or fragile specific cards, and move to more brute force approaches with lots of card drawing or to builds centred on more redundant pieces to mitigate that. Maybe they become slower more resilient builds that aim to win a bit later. I think all of that is fine personally.

I agree in principle, but in practice you usually end up somewhere closer to combo-control than pure combo if A+B combo or Storm isn't good enough. Part of being an all-in combo deck is needing specific cards at a specific times. If the combo deck is going to try to slowly amass card advantage, how is that any different than putting A+B into Miracles or Tezzerator? I totally understand wanting a few more resilient combo decks out there, and a deck like BUG Food Chain should still exist, but that deck can also just play the Shardless Agent + Misthollow Griffin plan and win as a midrange creature deck, albeit one with some clunky components.



Why? Why is this one pile so necessary, while the average Taiga.dec may gtfo? I'm not even trolling, I'm simply asking. Cause I really see no difference between "I want Storm to remain good" and "I want Loam to become good"; for me it's just two petdeckers having an argument over their gusto.



You meant that Taiga.dec, right? Cause I may ask "Why would we not do anything to strengthen an already critically missing metagame component?"


Taiga.dec is largely indistinguishable from Plateau.dec, Scrubland.dec, and Savannah.dec (among others) wrt these questions, so I'm going to write this fairly broadly.

Loam, Jund, and two-to-thee-color-hatebears are likely the only things to come out of these decks, and they don't add a new strategic angle to the meta. Lands is basically a control deck that usually has a combo (Stage/Depths) finish and plays most of the game out of its graveyard. Other Loam decks genreally fall into the aggro-midrange-prison sphere like Death and Taxes, but with some cards from other colors. None of these is going to provide anything approximating a true modern combo deck like ProsBloom, Academy, Trix, or Long. I'll take less color diversity over less strategic diversity any day of the week.

[FoolofaTook]

Y'all just mad about getting Brainstorm banned because you spend $1-2K on your blue-based manabase.

Blue is still going to be the best shell in the absence of Brainstorm. It won't be the no-brainer shell any more though. Brainstorm is the best spell in Legacy and it is more than enough to tip the meta towards blue.

[Gheizen64]

You fail to read my entire post and take one line and bash it.
And yet you dare to accuse me of ignorance and stupidity.
Take a hike.

What do we want?
We want a diverse and interesting Legacy format.

What do we see wrong with the current Legacy format?
Too much blue, other decks get hated out.

Solution?
Ban Brainstorm. Really, that's your solution?
It isn't. Brainstorm, like I said, will be replaced by Preordain.
Will this make the decks worse? yes, of course it will.
But blue will still be stronger than other colours.

The problem is this:
Blue has card selection, card advantage, good fast creatures, good slow creatures, good interaction with opposing stuff. It's just too much. Banning Brainstorm makes the card selection worse, but still the best in the format. All the other stuff is still there. The currently popular types of decks will not change. The prevalence of blue will not change. Just slamming Delvers, no-braining to an easy victory.

So I propose we even out the other stuff. We cut out the two best creatures (a fast one and a slow one), and we cut out the stupid Treasure Cruise, which was silly to print anyway. Just let it sink in. A format without Delver, TNN, Cruise and my personal suggestion would also be to ban Top because it's a stalling device and blue profits the most from it anyway (hiding a counterspell, Counterbalance, the Miracles deck as a whole). Just let it sink in, a format without those four, and you will realise the potential.

Blue Midrange decks will have to look for new beatsticks. Canadian Thresh will become a risky cutting edge style deck again, like it once was. Blue control will still be viable, just stightly less powerful. We will see pure aggro return in the meta. Junk style decks could become viable again. We will have a much more diverse format.

Blue will ALWAYS be better than other colors in eternal formats, unless you ban dozens of cards, like modern did. But if it didn't just invalidate discard by existing, you'd see a lot more decks viable which is what we all want. When SnT can't hide SnT from thoughtseize, SnT suddendly isn't as good anymore. When miracle can't easily BS for Terminus T2, suddendly aggro become a lot better. When UR Delver lose his best cantrip, TC fueler, and way to flip delver, UR delver isn't as good anymore. By weakening all those T1 strats, T1.5 strats become a lot better. This is exactly what you'd want, create a more open format. Banning Delvers and whatsnot is more risky because you effectively remove an archetype from the game, without being sure that more would be created. Banning Brainstorm wouldn't remove any archetype from the game, just strenghten relatively all those T1.5 ones.

[bruizar]

When SnT can't hide SnT from thoughtseize, SnT suddendly isn't as good anymore. When miracle can't easily BS for Terminus T2, suddendly aggro become a lot better. When UR Delver lose his best cantrip, TC fueler, and way to flip delver, UR delver isn't as good anymore. By weakening all those T1 strats, T1.5 strats become a lot better.

Someone hitting the nail on the head real hard

[ReAnimator]

While i might disagree i can at least understand and accept peoples arguments for banning certain cards over BS.

What i can't understand in any conceivable way is why TC should be banned over BS.

Is it as ubiquitous? No
Is it as poweful? No
Does it just slot in anything that can cast it regardless of deck composition? No

So ban a less powerful and prevalent card just because we have only had it for a little while and we aren't used to it? Seriously? You say you want to hurt delver, by banning TC but that doesn't make any sense at all, delver decks were already tier one without it, and they aren't crushing every other archetype now because of it. Just absurd.

[Asthereal]

Blue will ALWAYS be better than other colors in eternal formats, unless you ban dozens of cards, like modern did. But if it didn't just invalidate discard by existing, you'd see a lot more decks viable which is what we all want. When SnT can't hide SnT from thoughtseize, SnT suddendly isn't as good anymore. When miracle can't easily BS for Terminus T2, suddendly aggro become a lot better. When UR Delver lose his best cantrip, TC fueler, and way to flip delver, UR delver isn't as good anymore. By weakening all those T1 strats, T1.5 strats become a lot better. This is exactly what you'd want, create a more open format. Banning Delvers and whatsnot is more risky because you effectively remove an archetype from the game, without being sure that more would be created. Banning Brainstorm wouldn't remove any archetype from the game, just strenghten relatively all those T1.5 ones.
A card shouldn't be an archetype, yet we call the archetype Delver.
That's because Delver is what's unhealthy in that particular archetype.
We had Threshold before, but Delver took the whole idea of blue midrange over the top.
And then they made it worse by printing a new Ancestral Recall.

Banning Brainstorm also creates a different problem:
What does your average combo deck look like without Brainstorm?
You bet people will play more Belcher/Oops All Spells style combo decks.
Stuff that blows up on turn one. Not very nice to play against. And very restrictive for deck choice.



Someone hitting the nail on the head real hard
You seem to forget that Ponder can also hide a card.
Which leads to the biggest problem of discard: it doesn't stop the topdeck.
The combo player just digs for a new business spell and plays that.

[bruizar]

Treasure Cruise has made so many decks more sensitive to sideboard hate and hate strategies in general.

The decks that play it have become more specialized and more efficient. However, efficiency always comes at the cost of resilience. The deck constraints make TC-decks much more fragile. This is a law of nature.

Because predators can now emerge, I think that the format will evolve to become more diverse WITH treasure cruise than without it. Predators like the deck Lejay is working on, and hopefully the one I am working on too, will be able to curb the dominance of blue to some extent.

[Barook]

Banning Delver would most likely reduce the amount of blue in the meta, but not as much as one would think, simply because people would run another threat in its spot or another blue deck with Brainstorm.

It would help decks with lock pieces, though, as they can't just play a T1 Delver and ride it to victory while ignoring the rest of the board thanks to countermagic and Delver's evasion.


Before I go though, let me ask you this: why is Mental Misstep, a single card that is found in a variety of lists, banworthy? And don't appeal to tradition and point to Survival and Brainstorm: Survival was a healthy ban due to spawning an archetype by itself, and Brainstorm was a healthy ban due to being extra good when backed by Force of Will.
Change the bolded cards and the same reasons apply.


I don't see the problem here. I love running maindeck chalice of the void, pyroblast AND choke! :)
It's kinda sad when brewing a competitive deck nowadays involve running 4 MD Chokes and CotV (plus Trinisphere), as seen with Lejay's Sylvan Plug.

[Lemnear]

Why? Why is this one pile so necessary, while the average Taiga.dec may gtfo? I'm not even trolling, I'm simply asking. Cause I really see no difference between "I want Storm to remain good" and "I want Loam to become good"; for me it's just two petdeckers having an argument over their gusto.

Both have their place in Legacy as Lands is clearly a Taiga.dec with Life From the Loam and Punishing Fire. The general Problem is that one deck is a dog to combo unless you are fucking willing to adapt to the metagame like Niklas Kronberger demonstrated. Loam won a fucking GP full of Brainstorms so claiming that the deck has to space to breathe with Brainstorm around is pure nonsense. You can however decide to not play Chalice/Liliana like Hoogland did and whine how unfair Legacy is.

You guys complain that 70% of decks start with 4 Brainstorm atm? Ask the 96% of Vintage players which start the deckbuilding with 5 Moxen, a Lotus, a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt and basically only play 52-card-decks. Honestly, there is no Problem as long as strategic diversity is still given and the only card which sucks more than 27% of the metagame into a single strategy is Delver of Secrets, which is close To the numbers WotC decided to react in terms of Gush and Survival.

[Gheizen64]

While i might disagree i can at least understand and accept peoples arguments for banning certain cards over BS.

What i can't understand in any conceivable way is why TC should be banned over BS.

Is it as ubiquitous? No
Is it as poweful? No
Does it just slot in anything that can cast it regardless of deck composition? No

So ban a less powerful and prevalent card just because we have only had it for a little while and we aren't used to it? Seriously? You say you want to hurt delver, by banning TC but that doesn't make any sense at all, delver decks were already tier one without it, and they aren't crushing every other archetype now because of it. Just absurd.


It was funny seeing all those coverages of tournaments talking all the time about TC, when BS + fetches did the best Ancestral recall impressions for years and no one really bothered. And judging by the numbers, TC is nowhere as dominant as brainstorm is. But more importantly, TC put some constraints on your deck (heavy 1 and 2 cmc spells to fill gy) and make you suffer from splash grave hate. A countered TC is also often devastating for TC players.
Brainstorm put basically no constraint on your deck and is played in every deck that play blue, with the only exception of Merfolk. In that sense it's more similar to a jewerly piece or A.Recall on how ubiquos it is, and how little require from your deck to be optimal (fetches). I know a lot of this is true for FoW too, but FoW is a purely reactive card that keep the banlist much shorter and serve as a stop against all those otherwise stupidly fast combo decks with no disruption like All Spells and Belcher.

I must say i'm happy TC was printed, because it shook the meta significantly (we lost BUG for UR basically, and Punishing fire is now the best thing ever), and made people realize that as good as this card is, it's still nowhere as prevalent as brainstorm. And that make you think, which's always good.

[bruizar]

You seem to forget that Ponder can also hide a card.
Which leads to the biggest problem of discard: it doesn't stop the topdeck.
The combo player just digs for a new business spell and plays that.

I'm not advocating the banning of brainstorm actually. I was just saying that he was correct in his analysis of the decks that would be impacted by brainstorms absence as well as the cards that would gain in power. I think that banning brainstorm is a suicidal business decision; not much better ways to alienate loyal eternal fans as we've seen with vintage.

[bruizar]

It's kinda sad when brewing a competitive deck nowadays involve running 4 MD Chokes and CotV (plus Trinisphere), as seen with Lejay's Sylvan Plug.

Then again shoving a green butt plug up blue's ass makes it all worth it :)

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Taiga.dec is largely indistinguishable from Plateau.dec, Scrubland.dec, and Savannah.dec (among others) wrt these questions, so I'm going to write this fairly broadly.

Loam, Jund, and two-to-thee-color-hatebears are likely the only things to come out of these decks, and they don't add a new strategic angle to the meta. Lands is basically a control deck that usually has a combo (Stage/Depths) finish and plays most of the game out of its graveyard. Other Loam decks genreally fall into the aggro-midrange-prison sphere like Death and Taxes, but with some cards from other colors. None of these is going to provide anything approximating a true modern combo deck like ProsBloom, Academy, Trix, or Long. I'll take less color diversity over less strategic diversity any day of the week.
Don't be that concentrated on Loam, it was a placeholder card/deck. I simply ask why blue decks (oh so strategically diverse Delverddelvrldelrvldelrvldelrlvdelvlderl metagame) are fine and necessary and skill-intensive and wutnot, while non-blue may sit in the corner with their mouth shut.

Also, part of the reason why you see mostly hatebears deck in those colors is that this is how they fight blue metagame.

And... I'm not even advocating more colored metagame, although it would have been good in some aspects. I'm just asking why a wish to have non-blue represented is "petdeckers moaning" while adamant resistance of The Blue Guys is okay and legitimate, because "skillar of fromat", "go play by you chicken table" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, read the many B&R threads.

Again: why the wish for more non-blue in meta is said to be a petdecksers' whining, while the opposite wish is not a different petdeckers' whining? Are the non-blue petdeckers somehow less legitimate members of community, or do the blue petdeckers simply fear and loathe that their petdeck might not be the best/easiest-to-pilot anymore?
But don't take it personally, I just want to know how the cards are dealt...



It's kinda sad when brewing a competitive deck nowadays involve running 4 MD Chokes and CotV (plus Trinisphere), as seen with Lejay's Sylvan Plug.
Academy much? Wow, such a format.



You guys complain that 70% of decks start with 4 Brainstorm atm? Ask the 96% of Vintage players which start the deckbuilding with 5 Moxen, a Lotus, a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt and basically only play 52-card-decks. Honestly, there is no Problem as long as strategic diversity is still given and the only card which sucks more than 27% of the metagame into a single strategy is Delver of Secrets, which is close To the numbers WotC decided to react in terms of Gush and Survival.
Asking which one of the 127 remaining Vintage players worldwide should I start?


edit:

unless you are fucking willing to adapt to the metagame like Niklas Kronberger demonstrated.
Well, I adapted; it involved MKM and some sells.
Funny that you mention the adaptation, though. I hope they unban ancestral (heck, no... Dark Pact) so that we may start some discussion on adaptation.

[bruizar]

The very concept of magic the gathering is that there are five identities in magic, represented by their color. If magic is functionally a one color game, we can conclude that it deviates too much from the original intent of the creator. Given that original intent has been used to apply erratas on the nigh 20k card pool, we can conclude that original intent is important to the developer of the game.

Therefore, blue dominance must be addressed. The question is which tools do they set in motion to swing the pendulum to a format that is more representative of the original intent of the game.

[negativeview]

Therefore, blue dominance must be addressed. The question is which tools do they set in motion to swing the pendulum to a format that is more representative to the original intent of the game.

If blue were dominant in Modern or Standard, I'd agree. It's not infeasible that Wizards has just decided to give up on having "balance" and "Legacy" in the same sentence. Blue is strong but not oppressive in Modern and it's actually pretty weak in Standard right now.

[Lemnear]

Don't be that concentrated on Loam, it was a placeholder card/deck. I simply ask why blue decks (oh so strategically diverse Delverddelvrldelrvldelrvldelrlvdelvlderl metagame) are fine and necessary and skill-intensive and wutnot, while non-blue may sit in the corner with their mouth shut.

Also, part of the reason why you see mostly hatebears deck in those colors is that this is how they fight blue metagame.

And... I'm not even advocating more colored metagame, although it would have been good in some aspects. I'm just asking why a wish to have non-blue represented is "petdeckers moaning" while adamant resistance of The Blue Guys is okay and legitimate, because "skillar of fromat", "go play by you chicken table" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, read the many B&R threads.

Again: why the wish for more non-blue in meta is said to be a petdecksers' whining, while the opposite wish is not a different petdeckers' whining? Are the non-blue petdeckers somehow less legitimate members of community, or do the blue petdeckers simply fear and loathe that their petdeck might not be the best/easiest-to-pilot anymore?

Don't you think that chopping Delver is a valid way to Force players between choosing between Goose/Goyf and TC on the other side while removing the biggest annoyance for R/G/B which is the flying-ability?

The critical point is that you not only piss off 70% of your player base by banning Brainstorm, but the results are pretty unforeseeable and dangerous if you look at Vintage and how it fell apart. The Wish to possibly make more non-blue card/decks more viable is not enough for this big move.

[bruizar]

Wizards has just decided to give up on having "balance" and "Legacy" in the same sentence.

This is the grim reality


I think that wizards itself is just very unclear on what is the best path forward. I doubt they , I think they identified the problem, but find it too difficult to solve the problem so instead they don't decide anything. The reason why they keep printing blue cards that are powerful is because of standard. This is their cash cow after all, and they need 5 colors to make for a competitive format so blue needs goods there.

[Lemnear]

The very concept of magic the gathering is that there are five identities in magic, represented by their color. If magic is functionally a one color game, we can conclude that it deviates too much from the original intent of the creator. Given that original intent has been used to apply erratas on the nigh 20k card pool, we can conclude that original intent is important to the developer of the game.

Therefore, blue dominance must be addressed. The question is which tools do they set in motion to swing the pendulum to a format that is more representative of the original intent of the game.

The original concept also allowed to play more than 4 of any card. R. Garfield even admitted that he didn't have a clue about balance from the start. The whole argument is fucked, dood.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Don't you think that chopping Delver is a valid way to Force players between choosing between Goose/Goyf and TC on the other side while removing the biggest annoyance for R/G/B which is the flying-ability?

The critical point is that you not only piss off 70% of your player base by banning Brainstorm, but the results are pretty unforeseeable and dangerous if you look at Vintage and how it fell apart. The Wish to possibly make more non-blue card/decks more viable is not enough for this big move.

Where come those 70 % from? You made some public opinion research?
Since when the bans are based on piss potential? I think you remeber the time when they axed Survival. I estimate that 70 % of players were pissed...
Petdecker's gusto again.

Nothing to see here. "Nice thread" said nobody ever...

[bruizar]

The original concept also allowed to play more than 4 of any card. R. Garfield even admitted that he didn't have a clue about balance from the start. The whole argument is fucked, dood.

>4 card limits, ante cards and chaos orbs aside, it is still the basis on which wizards decides to errata cards, dood.

You just have to ask yourself ONE question, and that is:
"How is magic supposed to be played?"

[Lemnear]

>4 card limits, ante cards and chaos orbs aside, it is still the basis on which wizards decides to errata cards, dood.

You just have to ask yourself ONE question, and that is:
"How is magic supposed to be played?"

And YOU can answer that, while R. Garfield was unable to do so?

[bruizar]

And YOU can answer that, while R. Garfield was unable to do so?

Yes I can. The answer is, with 5 colors. I doubt R. Garfield would say with 1 color.

[Lemnear]

Yes I can. The answer is, with 5 colors. I doubt R. Garfield would say with 1 color.

I doubt, he would say that all 5 colors have to be on par in terms of power

[bruizar]

I doubt, he would say that all 5 colors have to be on par in terms of power

True. Would you conclude however, that 4 out of 5 colors should have marginal power, to the point where they are no longer relevant?

[Vicar in a tutu]

Don't you think that chopping Delver is a valid way to Force players between choosing between Goose/Goyf and TC on the other side while removing the biggest annoyance for R/G/B which is the flying-ability?

The critical point is that you not only piss off 70% of your player base by banning Brainstorm, but the results are pretty unforeseeable and dangerous if you look at Vintage and how it fell apart. The Wish to possibly make more non-blue card/decks more viable is not enough for this big move.
This is a good answer, Lemnear. I would love for there to be more interesting decisions to deck construction, like, should I go for Treasure Cruise or Goose/Goyf. Maybe Delver of Secrets is the card that needs to go.

[Vicar in a tutu]

And YOU can answer that, while R. Garfield was unable to do so?
I'm not sure invoking Richard Garfield's vision for the game is all that relevant to legacy. I'm pretty sure Dredge, for example, doesn't follow Garfield's grand vision.

[bruizar]

This is a good answer, Lemnear. I would love for there to be more interesting decisions to deck construction, like, should I go for Treasure Cruise or Goose/Goyf. Maybe Delver of Secrets is the card that needs to go.

Or just play sudden shock and move on.

[Star|Scream]

I'm not sure invoking Richard Garfield's vision for the game is all that relevant to legacy. I'm pretty sure Dredge, for example, doesn't follow Garfield's grand vision.

BAN Led

[Lemnear]

True. Would you conclude however, that 4 out of 5 colors should have marginal power, to the point where they are no longer relevant?

That stupid hyperboles are the reason I can't take you serious. Blue can't destroy creatures, artifacts or enchantments and should not have the best threats like TNN or Delver which you can easily undo like Misstep. Ergo blue needs other colors to be successful which was fine up to the point where Delver and TNN define more than 35% of the complete Legacy Metagame

[Barook]

The critical point is that you not only piss off 70% of your player base by banning Brainstorm, but the results are pretty unforeseeable and dangerous if you look at Vintage and how it fell apart. The Wish to possibly make more non-blue card/decks more viable is not enough for this big move.
Who says that actually those 70% like to play Brainstorm that much? That number doesn't recognize the number of players that simply play it because it's the best card which is heads and above the rest of the format.

An Vintage is a clusterfuck of a format, Brainstorm or not. Sadly, the archive of Wizards is empty, but wasn't BS restricted in Vintage because it was too efficient at digging for broken 1-ofs, quite similiar to tutor effects?

[lordofthepit]

Wait a second, I have found something hilarious:

"Firstly, Jeskai Stoneblade, U/R Delver, Infect, Sneak and Show, and Deathblade are the best decks in the format by a pretty wide margin."
That has to be a joke, right?

His comments on the power level of Brainstorm are accurate, but this was an absolutely laughable statement in the article.

[Lemnear]

I'm not sure invoking Richard Garfield's vision for the game is all that relevant to legacy. I'm pretty sure Dredge, for example, doesn't follow Garfield's grand vision.

So we ban all those decks from all formats and call it a day, because they are off from the idea, color identity and concepts Alpha set as standards, according to bruizar?


Edit:

Who says that actually those 70% like to play Brainstorm that much? That number doesn't recognize the number of players that simply play it because it's the best card which is heads and above the rest of the format.

An Vintage is a clusterfuck of a format, Brainstorm or not. Sadly, the archive of Wizards is empty, but wasn't BS restricted in Vintage because it was too efficient at digging for broken 1-ofs, quite similiar to tutor effects?

Yeah, that was pretty much the reasoning for Ponder and Brainstorm. Mind that this reasoning doesn't stand true for Legacy

[bruizar]

That stupid hyperboles are the reason I can't take you serious. Blue can't destroy creatures, artifacts or enchantments and should not have the best threats like TNN or Delver which you can easily undo like Misstep. Ergo blue needs other colors to be successful which was fine up to the point where Delver and TNN define more than 35% of the complete Legacy Metagame

You are the one bringing no-card limit to the discussion. How is that not hyperbolically meant to derail the conversation? Blue doesn't need to destroy creatures or artifacts or enchantments because it can make sure they never resolve in the first place. In the cases where that is impossible, blue has bounce (Rock Lee's romance with Repeal is well documented in the Turbo Eldrazi thread). Guess what? Repeal draws a card too! Because that's what blue does! Did I mention that Repeal is also played as a mana accelerant and storm accelerant in vintage? Apparently, bouncing mana crypt, mana vault, moxen or even sol ring is pretty good!

Blue is problematic not because of 3/2's and 3/1's. It is problematic because it's the only color that can control what it draws with any sort of reliability, while benefitting from nearly free cantrips (See Storm mechanic, delve mechanic, flashback mechanic (Past in Flames, Snapcaster Mage, Yawgmoth's Will in vintage).

[Dice_Box]

So we ban all those decks from all formats and call it a day, because they are off from the idea, color identity and concepts Alpha set as standards.

Well, if you want to look at Alpha, at the very lest UR Delver would be less of an issue.

[bruizar]

So we ban all those decks from all formats and call it a day, because they are off from the idea, color identity and concepts Alpha set as standards, according to Wizards




"Over the years, the sheer number of rules revisions and changes of rules managers the game has undergone—as well as unintended consequences that arise when new mechanics and card abilities are unleashed each set—has led to cards slipping through the cracks. As the evil genius currently in charge of maintaining Oracle, Magic rules manager and former cult-leading columnist Mark Gottlieb is a strong, strong believer that cards should have functionality that matches their printed intent as often as possible."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af127

Could not make it any more clear than this.

[lordofthepit]

Did dude really write that he's upset that his deck couldn't beat nonblue decks and that's why blue is too powerful?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1LaF1hqKSc

[Lemnear]

You are the one bringing no-card limit to the discussion. How is that not hyperbolically meant to derail the conversation? Blue doesn't need to destroy creatures or artifacts or enchantments because it can make sure they never resolve in the first place. In the cases where that is impossible, blue has bounce (Rock Lee's romance with Repeal is well documented in the Turbo Eldrazi thread). Guess what? Repeal draws a card too! Because that's what blue does! Did I mention that Repeal is also played as a mana accelerant and storm accelerant in vintage? Apparently, bouncing mana crypt, mana vault, moxen or even sol ring is pretty good!

Blue is problematic not because of 3/2's and 3/1's. It is problematic because it's the only color that can control what it draws with any sort of reliability, while benefitting from nearly free cantrips (See Storm mechanic, delve mechanic, flashback mechanic (Past in Flames, Snapcaster Mage, Yawgmoth's Will in vintage).

It was you who picked up the 5-color-parity-idea as original concept, so you have to swallow the whole pie of "original concepts". The concept of Repeal on Mox Sapphire for free storm and draw isn't new, but I din't see what it has to do with Legacy unless you want to join DeMars for inaccurate Legacy-Vintage-parallels.

Afaik, Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library are green, SDT is colorless and WotC puts scry/Delve/storm/phyrexian mana not only on blue cards. It's not my fucking business if Jund players refuse to utilize SDT to adjust their flow on disruption, threats and mana while also turning Dark Confidant into an insane carddraw-engine, but run 1-2 random Libraries only because "drawing multiple Libraries is bad because they don't shuffle themselves away like brainstorm does mimimimimimi".

[bruizar]

The very concept of magic the gathering is that there are five identities in magic, represented by their color. If magic is functionally a one color game, we can conclude that it deviates too much from the original intent of the creator. Given that original intent has been used to apply erratas on the nigh 20k card pool, we can conclude that original intent is important to the developer of the game.

Therefore, blue dominance must be addressed. The question is which tools do they set in motion to swing the pendulum to a format that is more representative of the original intent of the game.


It was you who picked up the 5-color-parity-idea as original concept, so you have to swallow the whole pie of "original concepts".

I did not pick up on 5 color parity. I picked up on 5 color tournament relevance. As I acknowledged from your post before, I do not expect all colors to be equal in power, but I do expect all colors to be able to win tournaments, given the meta-game shifts that reshuffle the balance of power would be plausible and probable.

Parity refers to homogeneity whereas the color wheel refers to heterogeneity. I'm talking about every color being unique and competitive.

[Lemnear]

I did not pick up on 5 color parity. I picked up on 5 color tournament relevance. As I acknowledged from your post before, I do not expect all colors to be equal in power, but I do expect all colors to be able to win tournaments, given the meta-game shifts that reshuffle the balance of power would be plausible and probable.

Given that we have UR Delver, BG Elves, 4c Loam and Death and Taxes seen as top performers/tournament winners several times within the last year, I think, the balance is intact

[Barook]

Afaik, Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library are green, SDT is colorless and WotC puts scry/Delve/storm/phyrexian mana not only on blue cards. It's not my fucking business if Jund players refuse to utilize SDT to adjust their flow on disruption, threats and mana while also turning Dark Confidant into an insane carddraw-engine, but run 1-2 random Libraries only because "drawing multiple Libraries is bad because they don't shuffle themselves away like brainstorm does mimimimimimi".
But that is actually a viable argument - nobody wants to gimp himself intentionally by drawing dead cards. Brainstorm will never be bad by itself since it will always at the very least cantrip. Multiple Libraries, however, are pretty redundant.

[bruizar]

Given that we have UR Delver, BG Elves, 4c Loam and Death and Taxes seen as top performers/tournament winners several times within the last year, I think, the balance is intact

See, this is *again* where statistics come into play. Your subjective opinion is simply not convincing (hence why I added a reference from wizards in my previous post).

Run a time series analysis on the top 8s, do a significance test and see how well non-blue white performs, and how brainstorm-decks perform. Test the 0.05 and 0.01 alphas and there is your conclusive evidence.

As an aside: I have a lot of difficulty discussing anything with you Lemnear. You seem to make a sport out of disagreeing with others for the sole purpose of disagreeing. Never have I seen any real evidence backing up your strongly opinionated posts. On top of this, you seem to take enjoyment out of marginalizing others on this board. Perhaps they did so in a PM, but I'm telling you this here since I believe moderators should have long called you out on your behavior.

[Lord Seth]

Who says that actually those 70% like to play Brainstorm that much? That number doesn't recognize the number of players that simply play it because it's the best card which is heads and above the rest of the format.

An Vintage is a clusterfuck of a format, Brainstorm or not. Sadly, the archive of Wizards is empty, but wasn't BS restricted in Vintage because it was too efficient at digging for broken 1-ofs, quite similiar to tutor effects?This was the exact explanation given for Brainstorm and the other cards being banned in Vintage:
The DCI is continually looking to do what is best for the health of the Vintage format.

The combination of Flash with only a few cards, leads to too many turn zero and turn one kills. The speed and ease of these Flash combos led to Flash being added to the Restricted list.

Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm and Ponder have all been added to the restricted list. Merchant Scroll tutors for the most powerful cards. Likewise the access power of Brainstorm and Ponder make finding the powerful restricted cards in a deck too easy.

Gush returns to the restricted list. Last year, we removed four cards from the Vintage Restricted list. Of those cards only Gush has proven problematic as a free card-drawing instant.

Emphasis added. Source here (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/dl40).

[Lemnear]

But that is actually a viable argument - nobody wants to gimp himself intentionally by drawing dead cards. Brainstorm will never be bad by itself since it will always at the very least cantrip. Multiple Libraries, however, are pretty redundant.

Even non blue decks like Imperial Painter use SDT for card selection so I feel the urge to slap every Jund player right into their face if they complain about Blue's card selection but decide to run only a single Library in their deck for increasing card quality.

[Gheizen64]

It was you who picked up the 5-color-parity-idea as original concept, so you have to swallow the whole pie of "original concepts". The concept of Repeal on Mox Sapphire for free storm and draw isn't new, but I din't see what it has to do with Legacy unless you want to join DeMars for inaccurate Legacy-Vintage-parallels.

Afaik, Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library are green, SDT is colorless and WotC puts scry/Delve/storm/phyrexian mana not only on blue cards. It's not my fucking business if Jund players refuse to utilize SDT to adjust their flow on disruption, threats and mana while also turning Dark Confidant into an insane carddraw-engine, but run 1-2 random Libraries only because "drawing multiple Libraries is bad because they don't shuffle themselves away like brainstorm does mimimimimimi".

Tbh SDT is used only in miracles (EDIT: and 12-post because being colorless in that deck actually matter, thanks Seth for the correction i forgot about that) and for good reasons. The cards is slow. Decks that don't use it usually do because:

- they are not control decks so they need to stay on curve more
- they can't shuffle back extra SDT they naturally draw (if they aren't blue)
- they don't play miracle cards so you just play Mirri's Guile
- are chalice decks

Library is better than SDT in every deck that run green and isn't miracle (EDIT: considering the case of 12-post, the ability to be played off colorless lands is important when you run ~10 colored sources). The ability to draw extra is insanely good in some matchups, which is why Library is played and Guile is not.
Confidant isn't played anymore because Courser is just better in a format with so many bolts around, and Courser is in fact played in green decks alongside Library. I love myself some draw 2 every turn + lifegain combination. In general, with discard being pretty bad against BS and Delve , and burn decks being so strong, black isn't that attractive anymore.
Green decks also often run GSZ, and WG decks run KotR, so i'm not sure where you're getting the impression that people "refuse to adjust their flow on cards" while in fact they do, but it just ain't good enough for the format, with some exceptions like Elves, which run 4 GSZ and tons of draw. Maverick play a decent amount of tutors (4GSZ+4KotR+2/3SFM)and lot of cards that are extremely good against the meta (punishing variant especially), but isn't considered top tier anymore. D&T is extremely redundant in his mana denial strat so it doesn't need manipulation, likewise Burn is redundancy by definition.


Also i think it was Pikula that said it best: "you see, you play CotV because it blocks all the best spells of the format, but then you're not playing the best spells of the format!"

[Barook]

Even non blue decks like Imperial Painter use SDT for card selection so I feel the urge to slap every Jund player right into their face if they complain about Blue's card selection but decide to run only a single Library in their deck for increasing card quality.
SDT offers fancy interactions with Welder. Sylvan Library doesn't do that in Jund.

[Lord Seth]

Library is better than SDT in every deck that run green and isn't miracle.What about 12-Post?

[Gheizen64]

Even non blue decks like Imperial Painter use SDT for card selection so I feel the urge to slap every Jund player right into their face if they complain about Blue's card selection but decide to run only a single Library in their deck for increasing card quality.

Well, SDT in painter is much different from SDT in Jund. Jund can't use tricks with welder to cycle extra ones, and Painter play a much more reactive role compared to a deck like Jund that run tons of discards, which is why Painter can afford to leave 1 extra open at the end of each turn where jund much more rarely can. That's also the reason Library is much better because beside from the first investment, the card is maintenment-free. But in general i'm not even sure why we'd talk about jund which is just a subpar color combination now. GRW (punishing Mav.) is much better than GBR right now because Liliana as a card is the worst it has ever been (YP and Delve spells ruin it), discard in general is badly positioned, and black draw also is at an all-time low (Confidant's bad with so many bolts around). Black best spells in this meta are probably AD (of which sudden shock does a decent impression however) and Toxic Deluge which is indeed really good.

[Gheizen64]

What about 12-Post?

You're right forgot about post, colorless mana matter in that case i should add it.

[Lemnear]

See, this is *again* where statistics come into play. Your subjective opinion is simply not convincing (hence why I added a reference from wizards in my previous post).

Run a time series analysis on the top 8s, do a significance test and see how well non-blue white performs, and how brainstorm-decks perform. Test the 0.05 and 0.01 alphas and there is your conclusive evidence.

As an aside: I have a lot of difficulty discussing anything with you Lemnear. You seem to make a sport out of disagreeing with others for the sole purpose of disagreeing. Never have I seen any real evidence backing up your strongly opinionated posts. On top of this, you seem to take enjoyment out of marginalizing others on this board. Perhaps they did so in a PM, but I'm telling you this here since I believe moderators should have long called you out on your behavior.

Well, I'm not attacking people like our dear Sean did as he wrote "STFU" right after quoting me, but I ask questions about mere bold statements & opinions presented as facts and supported by twisted numbers or intended misinformation. Disagreeing with flawed logic like that "blue is the only color that can control it's draws" has nothing to do with enjoyment, but with keeping discussion serious and on-track. Of course i feel free to react to blatant hyperboles with irony or my own hyperboles to hint at the initial flaw.

What might confuses you is that you seem to not only overread my counterarguments for given points (and tbh there have been quite a lot over the course of the last weeks in various threads), but miss the fact that Brainstorm is still legal and the Burden of proof is on the anti-brainstorm-party, with most of the "evidence" brought up within years on the subject of Brainstorm roots on personal bias or a misunderstanding of numbers (like the quantity of Brainstorms in average top 8s compared to the average number of Brainstorms in the field which is misinterpreted as proof for Brainstorm overperforming which is clearly not the case).

Given that I have never received a PM or warnings for my "behaviour" from Patrick or any other Moderator and avoid discussions enter a personal level, I think my style of participation is still within the acceptable frame, despite me sure not being a Cotton-mouth here and IRL. If I or other users take things too far, I'm positive that our mods will find a way to communicate this.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

True. Would you conclude however, that 4 out of 5 colors should have marginal power, to the point where they are no longer relevant?

Warning, just being cheeky for the heck of it: Given Alpha, the answer would be hell yes. I mean, look at those cards: Ancestral Recall. Time Walk. Blue is so far beyond all the other colors in Alpha, it isn't even close to anything we've seen ever since. Given Control Magic, Counterspell, Mahamoti Djinn and Psionic Blast you could even argue that blue was already supposed to be the one color that can do all the things.

/edit: Well, I guess black is supposed to be good between Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor and Contract from Below.

[Lemnear]

- they can't shuffle back extra SDT they naturally draw (if they aren't blue)

Jesus Christ! What about reading the tap-ability? In combination with a shuffle effect you can get rid of SDT anytime. There is no fucking need to run blue for that.

[Lemnear]

Warning, just being cheeky for the heck of it: Given Alpha, the answer would be hell yes. I mean, look at those cards: Ancestral Recall. Time Walk. Blue is so far beyond all the other colors in Alpha, it isn't even close to anything we've seen ever since.

/edit: Well, I guess black is supposed to be good between Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor and Contract from Below.

Let me add that among Dark Ritual, Healing Salve, Giant Growth and Lightning Bolt, Ancestral Recall was the only rare ;P

[frafen]

I think that the brainstorm ban would be a good thing.

I can see two possible results:

1) Without that card, the blue shell is not anymore the best shell. People will obviously keep playing blue decks (all the good cards are still there -and preoradin is pretty good) but at least we won't see 6/7 blue decks out of 8 in top8s and more non-blue strategies could find space (also we won't see again that abomination that is maindecking pyroblast).

2) In my opinion it's not likely, but like someone said blue could be dominant like it is now also without brainstorm. Well, I would be happy about that. At least the broken card is banned and the format is not revolutionized. Many palyers like the formats as is (me for example).

I just think that I would like a more varied format without one card that's by far the more powerful.

[FoolofaTook]

Main list Pyroblasts are because of Treasure Cruise. Many of the other blue spells are good enough to blast but Treasure Cruise is what put red blasts mainlist over the top. A draw 3 for :u: is always going to be worth countering at whatever the price. Using Force of Will + a blue card to counter was a knife-edge play because if they counter your Force and resolve TC anyway then you're really screwed. Red blasts resolve that issue nicely.

[Dice_Box]

Without Brainstorm the Blue shell remains the best shell. It still has control and filtering, even if it loses one of those filter cards. I would not say that nothing changes, but I think your a bit naive if you believe that the shell would not still be the best in the format.

I mean, yes we have Gush and it's nuts, but in Vintage when we lost Ponder and Brainstorm we just moved down to the next best thing. Modern did the same. No reason to think the same would not happen here.

[Lord Seth]

Warning, just being cheeky for the heck of it: Given Alpha, the answer would be hell yes. I mean, look at those cards: Ancestral Recall. Time Walk. Blue is so far beyond all the other colors in Alpha, it isn't even close to anything we've seen ever since. Given Control Magic, Counterspell, Mahamoti Djinn and Psionic Blast you could even argue that blue was already supposed to be the one color that can do all the things.

/edit: Well, I guess black is supposed to be good between Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor and Contract from Below.Not even Ancestral Recall is as good as Contract from Below. I'd actually argue that Black was the strongest color in Alpha.

[Gheizen64]

Jesus Christ! What about reading the tap-ability? In combination with a shuffle effect you can get rid of SDT anytime. There is no fucking need to run blue for that.

No there's no ,a-hem, "fucking" need to run blue to reshuffle them, but it's a matter of opportunity costs. SDT without blue or trick to easily reshuffle/cycle it (like welder which also double as permission-insurance) , become just subpar, at which point you just run other things like S. Library, GSZ, KotR, SFM etc...

My fault should've just written that as "can't as easily recycle extra SDT they draw", but i felt the point's was pretty clear. Card has been out for more than ten years and have found only a limited amount of homes for a reason after all, having extra copies of it remain unwieldy compared to other options.

EDIT: citing alpha seems a bit naive. The game was a first of its kind, it's a miracle its creator didn't balance it even worst than he actually did. As far as the vision of what he did, it seems pretty obvious that he didn't create 5 colors only to make 4 of them bad, he just didn't have the material possibility to balance it since he had no previous experience on the matter.

[Lemnear]

No there's no ,a-hem, "fucking" need to run blue to reshuffle them, but it's a matter of opportunity costs. SDT without blue or trick to easily reshuffle/cycle it (like welder which also double as permission-insurance) , become just subpar, at which point you just run other things like S. Library, GSZ, KotR, SFM etc...

My fault should've just written that as "can't as easily recycle extra SDT they draw", but i felt the point's was pretty clear. Card has been out for more than ten years and have found only a limited amount of homes for a reason after all, having extra copies of it remain unwieldy compared to other options.

Just because I stumbled over it:


There was a National Legacy tourney here in brazil with 118 players, and a Jund player took the 1st place.
http://i.imgur.com/6Wo9OaB.jpg
You can see the coverage here, go towards the end of the video to see the finals, vs UR delver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G4ddhKARUk#t=30840 towards 8:34:00.

Looks like it indeed took Ten years, lol

[Gheizen64]

Just because I stumbled over it:



Looks like it indeed took Ten years, lol

Uhm, i'm not really sure what is your intent here? Are you confirming what i said?
Because, that's what i said: "found only a limited amounts of homes", you finding a 2-of the card in a tournament in brazil is pretty much exactly that.
The card may be good but it's evidently far from optimal in decks not tailored for it, else it would've seen a lot more play in such a long time.

[Koby]

Main list Pyroblasts are because of Treasure Cruise. Many of the other blue spells are good enough to blast but Treasure Cruise is what put red blasts mainlist over the top. A draw 3 for :u: is always going to be worth countering at whatever the price. Using Force of Will + a blue card to counter was a knife-edge play because if they counter your Force and resolve TC anyway then you're really screwed. Red blasts resolve that issue nicely.

I want to address this specifically.

Pyroblast is there fore Treasure Cruise, but it's the straw that breaks the boat. Brainstorm, as innocent the card can be, is the real reason such a Treasure Cruise deck can even exist. The format was already playing maindeck Pyroblast in blue decks due to the ubiquity of Brainstorm and blue decks prior to KTK. Treasure Cruise simply made it glaringly obvious at just how saturated with Islands this format has become. It is a bad sign for the format that Pyroblast is maindeck only in the sense that deckbuilding addresses that saturation. But it's not the color imbalance that is the unhealthy part. (others have and will continue to point out that color balance is a farcical idea given Blue's strength in everything) It's that Brainstorm enables all these blue decks to be Blue without consideration for other cards. Delver of Secrets abuses the hell out of this, but Miracles, Combo, and Midrange blue decks too. The card is ridiculously good and the onus is on non-Brainstorm decks to answer as to "why not?"


Just because I stumbled over it:

Looks like it indeed took Ten years, lol


Uhm, i'm not really sure what is your intent here? Are you confirming what i said?
Because, that's what i said: "found only a limited amounts of homes", you finding a 2-of the card in a tournament in brazil is pretty much exactly that.
The card may be good but it's evidently far from optimal in decks not tailored for it, else it would've seen a lot more play in such a long time.

It only took 10 years for 4 REB to be played maindeck? This sounds like an awful format.

[Gheizen64]

It only took 10 years for 4 REB to be played maindeck? This sounds like an awful format.

I guess people suddendly discovered blue was a good color, it took them a long while though!

[aluisiocsantos]

Also, in GP NJ there was a jund in top3 I think in day 1, and he had maindeck Chains, and Sidebaord Chains.

It's impossible to think the format is healthy if you got to place blue specific hate in the MAINDECK in order to stand a chance. Even in this brazillian tourney, top eight was: 2 jund decks (the second one followed more o nthe GP list), FOUR jeskai blade decks, UR delver and storm.

Blue errerywere

[Lormador]

It's red, not blue, that appears in 100% of the top 8 decklists in the aforementioned Brazilian tournament: not that I contest the obvious fact that Legacy is a very blue format.

I simply contest that this is entirely due to the presence of Brainstorm. It wasn't such a long time ago that were were enjoying the sunny summer of Maverick, sideboarding Perish, and remarking upon what a subtly wonderful card Mother of Runes was.

I think the story of this format is one more complicated than a simple and unimpeded dominance of Brainstorm. The "bluing" effect that Elves has had in the metagame is something I've only heard discussed once, on Eternal Central. Terminus has had an even more profound influence, and I can't believe no mention of Miracles was made in the article under discussion.

The role of finance is also something to consider, I think. When one can invest $X in blue fetches, duals, and Force of Will to make several strategically different and viable decks, or invest $Y (less than X but still substantial) in the cards required to make decks of a single, different, archetype... $X ils a better deal to a long-term player. All the advice in the "what deck should I play" threads tends to be "blue deck." Even if I wanted to play Elves, for instance, I wouldn't be willing to trade my blue stuff for the deck... nor am I jumping at the chance to invest in 4 Gaea's Cradle. Blue it is, then!

[EpicLevelCommoner]

First, blue is just a color. Not a strategy, not an archetype, and certainly not a deck. It is a fucking color.

I'm not arguing that brainstorm isn't powerful, because it is. I'm also not arguing that blue isn't a prevalent color in Legacy, because it is. However, saying that we should ban Brainstorm because it is making the format too blue is bullshit. Instead of looking at how many decks have blue in them, take a look at how many blue cards are in those decks compared to the other colors/lands.

[Lord Seth]

Am I the only one who thinks that a particular card being in 70% of the decks is a problem in and of itself?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Am I the only one who thinks that a particular card being in 70% of the decks is a problem in and of itself?

Brainstorm is an invaluable and irreplaceable card that enables a whole lot of strategies. Also, if you ban it, it will be easily replaced by Preordain.

#goplaymodernskillintensivepillaroftheformatimproveyourplayingnicepetdeck

[iGrok]

Am I the only one who thinks that a particular card being in 70% of the decks is a problem in and of itself?

No, clearly you aren't. There are a lot of people who think that.

The question is more of is Delver or Brainstorm the worse offender. Personally, I believe Delver is worse. The two cards work very well together, for sure. Delver essentially forces an archetype on you, play 30 instants/sorceries. There are two recently printed creatures which also benefit from that archetype, Pyromancer and Swiftspear, and all three of these promote an aggressive archetype with mass amounts of cantrips and countermagic. What makes Delver so much better than the other two is that a) It only needs 1 spell and B) It has evasion. When you're playing a deck with 30 spells, Delver is often just a 3/2 flier for U.

I don't know if you looked at my stats a couple pages back, but compare Delver placing lists to any other list and you'll see that Delver is far and away the most represented archetype. Yes, there are different flavors of Delver, but they are all blue tempo decks that splash various colors for a powerful evasive creature. Brainstorm in other decks is good, I don't think anyone is denying that, but it is nowhere near as powerful as in Delver, because it may as well say "Draw 3, put back 2, Deal 2 damage to your opponent" Because of Delver.

The other problem is that Blue is the best equipped to deal with blue tempo decks because it has countermagic and cantrips of its own, and red is a close second due to REB and even Sudden Shock (which has seen Maindeck play). Miracles can survive against Delver because of Terminus and the ability to pay or counter their dazes. Stoneblade decks are also good because TNN stops all creatures in their deck except delver, and batterskull buys time. UR decks have literally 0 ways to deal with a resolved TNN. Fast combo has a good matchup against delver, though its by no means guaranteed. Its what they hate most: Countermagic AND a fast clock.

And finally, Red is a close second to Blue in terms of which color is most represented. Basically, when a blue deck is the best deck, and other blue decks are the best at beating that deck, REB becomes really, really strong, and isn't even much of a color commitment. And since you're splashing red, take a couple Lightning Bolts.

I would be surprised if blue was ever the second most popular color. Blue is good at reducing variance (no matter which cantrip you're playing, they all do it to some degree), which is a good thing if you are trying to win 12-13 matches in a row. Its also the best reactive color thanks to countermagic. What it's not supposed to be is the best aggro color. All of blue's creatures (aside from Delver and Snapcaster, and TNN) suck, and Snapcaster is a crappy creature with a good effect. Even TNN isn't so oppressive because it costs 3 mana.

So yeah, most of us agree that blue is very heavily represented in the meta, and at least some of the Brainstorm supporters agree that there's too much blue. But my contention is two-fold:
1) Brainstorm, while incredibly good, enables many different archetypes, while Delver enables only Blue (Ux/Uxx/) Tempo.
2) Banning Delver would significantly reduce the amount of Blue played.

[Megadeus]

If you think things wouldn't change if brainstorm got banned just because it would get "replaced" by preordain you're insane. The power level is far below brainstorm

[Lord Seth]

If you think things wouldn't change if brainstorm got banned just because it would get "replaced" by preordain you're insane. The power level is far below brainstormWell, this is nitpicking, but Brainstorm doesn't get replaced by Preordain. It gets replaced by Ponder. It's just that decks that are already running Brainstorm and Ponder then need something to replace the Ponders that have moved into the Brainstorm slot, and Preordain is that card. Wonder what will be the card to replace Preordain in the decks that are already running all three; Sleight of Hand, maybe?

As a side note, for as much discussion as the article is getting in regards to Brainstorm, I find it odd there's been no comment on what the majority of the article is actually about, which is Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern. Granted, this is a Legacy forum so I understand people focusing on the Legacy portion (then again, the comment section of the article seems to be dominated by Brainstorm discussion), but it's aggravating to see another person yammer on about how broken Jeskai Ascendancy supposedly is in Modern when it doesn't have the results to back up that claim. Hard, objective data indicates the card is not currently a problem, but I suppose ignoring objective data so you can scream loudly about it gets more page views.

[LOLWut]

Oh, someone just make a new Banned List poll already. Ask which card(s) people would like to see banned, include all the suspects, include a none of the above option, and allow for multiple selections. I'm waiting.

[Megadeus]

Well, this is nitpicking, but Brainstorm doesn't get replaced by Preordain. It gets replaced by Ponder. It's just that decks that are already running Brainstorm and Ponder then need something to replace the Ponders that have moved into the Brainstorm slot, and Preordain is that card. Wonder what will be the card to replace Preordain in the decks that are already running all three; Sleight of Hand, maybe?

As a side note, for as much discussion as the article is getting in regards to Brainstorm, I find it odd there's been no comment on what the majority of the article is actually about, which is Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern. Granted, this is a Legacy forum so I understand people focusing on the Legacy portion (then again, the comment section of the article seems to be dominated by Brainstorm discussion), but it's aggravating to see another person yammer on about how broken Jeskai Ascendancy supposedly is in Modern when it doesn't have the results to back up that claim. Hard, objective data indicates the card is not currently a problem, but I suppose ignoring reality so you can scream loudly about it gets more page views.
True. Though to be honest, most blue decks are running both at this point. Maybe the blade decks and some of the miracles decks aren't at this point.

The second point, the deck doesn't seem that good. I've only played against it one though. And if you kill their mana dudes, their deck is a pile of shit

[iGrok]

@Megadeus: He's being sarcastic. He's quite good at it.


Brainstorm is an invaluable and irreplaceable card that enables a whole lot of strategies. Also, if you ban it, it will be easily replaced by Preordain.

#goplaymodernskillintensivepillaroftheformatimproveyourplayingnicepetdeck

Alright, you know what, you've successfully trolled me into getting a little derailed.

Just for fun, I went back through this thread and looked up all the times your hashtags were mentioned. As I said before, this thread, unlike the B/R List thread, is generating some meaningful discussion without arguments like the above. Lets take a look and see! I'll even put the Pro-Brainstorm people in blue and the Anti-Brainstorm people in Green.

Play Modern
menace13 summarizes the thread with "#PlayModern", despite no one having said that.
nedleeds accuses Pro-Brainstorm players of saying "go play modern", again despite no one having said that.
Gheizen64 accuses Pro-Brainstorm crowd of saying "go play modern." Still, no one has said that.
Bed Decks Palyer hashtags "goplaymodern...". Once again, no one has said that.

Skill Intensive
Brainstorm is a skill-intensive card, though I would say not as much as some people suggest. There are several instances of people saying skill-intensive on both sides, but that is an argument which doesn't attack non-brainstorm players. It doesn't match the rest of your hashtags.

Pillar of the Format
menace13 summarizes the thread by sarcastically writing #PillarOfFormat (also #PlayModern), which no one has said yet.
nedleeds accuses Pro-Brainstorm crowd of arguing that "it's a pillar", which no one has said yet.
Bed Decks Palyer hastags "#...pillaroftheformat". Once again, no one has said that.

Improve your Play
Bed Decks Palyer: the only instance of "improve your play" is in your hashtag. As a bonus, there are zero instances of people telling someone to play "better".

Nice Pet Deck
CabalTherapy accuses Anti-Brainstorm crowd of wanting petdecks to be good (see, I'm actually not biased!) ;)
Lemnear suggests that weakening blue would only server to make "bad pet decks better".
Lemnear does so again.
nedleeds says that "Nobody is crying to play pet decks."
nedleeds tells Lemnear to "STFU about pet decks"
Bed Decks Palyer says the 'BS sect' belittles what they call petdecks, while calling Blue players "petdeckers" in the same sentence.
Gheizen64 says that people use the petdeck argument in the B/R thread.
Bed Decks Palyer calls all people who want a specific deck to be good "petdeckers"
Bed Decks Palyer says that all Anti-blue people are dismissed as "petdeckers moaning" by "The Blue Guys".
Bed Decks Palyer calls all players petdeckers.
Bed Decks Palyer calls people upset by survival's ban "Petdeckers"
Bed Decks Palyer hashtags #...nicepetdeck"

Final count:
Total Instances of your hashtags: 20
Anti Brainstorm people: 17
Pro Brainstorm people: 3
You: 9 - You're almost half of the total occurences!

Number of your hashtags with any relevance to this thread: 2/5
Number of your hashtags which no one has said in this thread: 3/5

So, would you mind trying to contribute, or at least not trying to bait people with misquoted appeals? Perhaps you could even try contributing something useful yourself.

[iGrok]

Oh, someone just make a new Banned List poll already. Ask which card(s) people would like to see banned, include all the suspects, include a none of the above option, and allow for multiple selections. I'm waiting.

We did that a couple days ago (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28858-What-should-be-banned-for-more-format-diversity-Poll). Delver was the highest vote, followed closely by "nothing". No other options were even close.

[force_of_phil]

We did that a couple days ago (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28858-What-should-be-banned-for-more-format-diversity-Poll). Delver was the highest vote, followed closely by "nothing". No other options were even close.

Because of UR? Delver isn't even the best creature in that deck. URW players have been cutting it, and the delverless versions have outperformed the versions with it. The BUG and RUG versions have obviously fallen off. But this is The Source, and we've got sacred cows to protect, so screw it, let's ban delver. You got my vote.

[LOLWut]

We did that a couple days ago (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28858-What-should-be-banned-for-more-format-diversity-Poll). Delver was the highest vote, followed closely by "nothing". No other options were even close.

Thanks; I missed that. I guess it makes sense to close a Banned List poll, as we do have that closed one from 5 years ago with Phyrexian Dreadnought and Standstill on it; that should give everyone a good enough idea of what people can do without.

[iGrok]

Because of UR? Delver isn't even the best creature in that deck. URW players have been cutting it, and the delverless versions have outperformed the versions with it. The BUG and RUG versions have obviously fallen off. But this is The Source, and we've got sacred cows to protect, so screw it, let's ban delver. You got my vote.

Here's what I posted earlier - if you'd like to read the whole argument, its on page 3.


I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

WUR Delver and WUR Stoneblade are separate decks. They share a lot of the same cards, but their game plan (what creatures, speed of attack) are quite different.

Delver (Uxx Tempo) has outperformed Stoneblade. These stats don't include GPNJ, but GPNJ had more Delver decks than anything day 2, and an equal number of delver vs stoneblade decks in top 16.

I mean, sure if you want to vote for a delver ban, thats awesome and I support that, but I'd like for people to actually agree rather than say "screw it"! So hopefully I can convince you that delver is a better ban.

[Mr Miagi]

ban delver - because it invalidates other agro strategies - That's how wizards would depict it (as they did with Wild nacatl ban).

I'd really hate to see brainstorm go (and I don't think it should), but then again it's also hard to make the case for Delver ban.. although I must admit that we have to much blue.. and I would not mind seeing Delver go.. but then it would be probably replaced by TNN... hooray.. thanks wizards for.. providing us with "creative" creatures..

[Zombie]

First, blue is just a color. Not a strategy, not an archetype, and certainly not a deck. It is a fucking color.

I'm not arguing that brainstorm isn't powerful, because it is. I'm also not arguing that blue isn't a prevalent color in Legacy, because it is. However, saying that we should ban Brainstorm because it is making the format too blue is bullshit. Instead of looking at how many decks have blue in them, take a look at how many blue cards are in those decks compared to the other colors/lands.

GPNJ had 16 undefeated lists after Day 1, IIRC. 600 spells in those decks. 270-280 or so were blue. Half the cards that saw play. Most of black's cards were DRS and Decays.

[aluisiocsantos]

Tnn is what a "fair" delver is anyway. Delver is a flying Wild Nacatl that doesnt even need plateau in game fto work for fucks sake.

[Higgs]

Brainstorm is an invaluable and irreplaceable card that enables a whole lot of strategies. Also, if you ban it, it will be easily replaced by Preordain.

#goplaymodernskillintensivepillaroftheformatimproveyourplayingnicepetdeck

So that's what I was talking about in my deleted post in the B/R thread. Some hipsters tend to think that hastagging an argument will make it invalid, but I think some of those concatenated arguments behind the hashtag are quite valid and make absolute sense.

[frafen]

Without Brainstorm the Blue shell remains the best shell. It still has control and filtering, even if it loses one of those filter cards. I would not say that nothing changes, but I think your a bit naive if you believe that the shell would not still be the best in the format.

I mean, yes we have Gush and it's nuts, but in Vintage when we lost Ponder and Brainstorm we just moved down to the next best thing. Modern did the same. No reason to think the same would not happen here.
I wasn't clear in my post, I wanted to say that with the bs ban blue shell won't be the best shell -by far- like it is now. It will be still the best, but it's power level will be lower than before for sure. I hope that this disempowerment will be good to improve variety and to help players answering the "why not blue?" question.

About the jund list that won in Brazil, for me it's a big (and pretty hilarious) sign of a unbalanced format the fact that a deck can win maindecking 4 dead cards against non-blue strategies.

[Lemnear]

I wasn't clear in my post, I wanted to say that with the bs ban blue shell won't be the best shell -by far- like it is now. It will be still the best, but it's power level will be lower than before for sure. I hope that this disempowerment will be good to improve variety and to help players answering the "why not blue?" question.

About the jund list that won in Brazil, for me it's a big (and pretty hilarious) sign of a unbalanced format the fact that a deck can win maindecking 4 dead cards against non-blue strategies.

If the blue cantrip shell remains the best shell to reduce variance thanks to Fetchlands, SDT, Ponder and Preordain, why would the majority of players suddenly pick up a non-blue shell? They won't. Tournament players would continue to play the best shell and it remains the blue one. The UWR Stoneblade mirror during the GP NJ stream gives you a glimpse to the future of how well Stoneblade decks would opperate with SDT.

It's also hilarious that people Maindeck Swords to Plowshares which are absolutely dead against various combo decks. The concept is the same. You include cards into your MB which you expect to do well against the biggest slice of the metagame. If it's Delver/TNN/Counterbalance/S&T/Cruise, maindecking REBs is fine, if you face plenty of tempo decks, overloading on spot removal like Sudden shock, Forked Bolts or the like is also fine which can be considered bad against a large margin of decks otherwise, starting with Maverick to Miracles to combo. You get the idea. Hinting that it's a bad sign that players have to metagame against a changing field is ridiculous itself. That brazilian Jund player reacted to the metagame and got rewarded, instead of sitting in a forum whinning that his beloved 2010 list doesn't cut it anymore. Would you have moaned as well if he ran Forked Bolt instead of the Blasts, or is it just because he idenitfied Delver/TNN/S&T/Counterbalance the biggest annoyances in the current format?

[FoolofaTook]

But I do not really think it matters. People sit on different sides of this issue and will not move. I kind of feel like Brainstorm is almost as decisive and issue here as the topic of Religion or Politics would be. No one is really going to change their views, so why do we keep on doing this to ourselves?

Because Brainstorm keeps defining the format as the blue shell vs everything else and Brainstorm is the best card in the blue shell. Because WotC has been hypocritical about bans and the reasons for bans in the past. Because the people who hate playing against the blue shell all the time are just as numerous as the people who like playing it all the time. If they weren't then Legacy would be a 90% blue shell game.

I play the damn thing all the time because it's too consistent to ignore. I get sick of it and play other things and then I switch back when I'm tired of losing to the blue shell due to consistency issues. I still don't understand why WotC thought Survival of the Fittest was oppressive in that context. All it did was to give non-blue lists something approaching the consistency of blue lists. One cycle of that and WotC threw up their hands. We've been living with the blue shell for much longer. And since when is Survival of the Fittest not Force-able?

It's the gross hypocrisy of WotC's decision-making that drives most of the venom. That and the sneaking suspicion that some of the people who make the decisions just like playing the blue shell and so they're protecting their pet play style from disruption at all costs.

[FoolofaTook]

I want to address this specifically.

Pyroblast is there fore Treasure Cruise, but it's the straw that breaks the boat. Brainstorm, as innocent the card can be, is the real reason such a Treasure Cruise deck can even exist. The format was already playing maindeck Pyroblast in blue decks due to the ubiquity of Brainstorm and blue decks prior to KTK. Treasure Cruise simply made it glaringly obvious at just how saturated with Islands this format has become. It is a bad sign for the format that Pyroblast is maindeck only in the sense that deckbuilding addresses that saturation. But it's not the color imbalance that is the unhealthy part. (others have and will continue to point out that color balance is a farcical idea given Blue's strength in everything) It's that Brainstorm enables all these blue decks to be Blue without consideration for other cards. Delver of Secrets abuses the hell out of this, but Miracles, Combo, and Midrange blue decks too. The card is ridiculously good and the onus is on non-Brainstorm decks to answer as to "why not?"

Main list red blast is here to stay until 20 card blue shells are less than half the format. Banning Brainstorm won't accomplish that. People will just slide Preordain in and keep cruising. The main list red blasts will still be a good deal in most of the lists running them now. Banning Brainstorm is going to reduce the number of blue shell lists played but we're talking from 70% to 50% is my guess.

If you want to get rid of the main list red blasts you have to ban Treasure Cruise. Even then they're still a good deal against the blue shell. It just took Treasure Cruise to make the point incontrovertible. Red blasting a Force of Will turns the theoretical card disadvantage that people have pointed at for years into a reality. Red blasting a Brainstorm in the mid-game is just so good on many levels. Red blasting a Delver of Secrets turn 2 saves a lot of pain.

I'm guessing Treasure Cruise is the minimum ban required to get rid of main list red blasts. Brainstorm *and* Force of Will might get it done if TC stays in the format but I doubt it. Draw 3 for :u: x4 is more than enough reason to play at least a couple of red blasts, particularly in lists that do not have blue in them.

[Asthereal]

It's the gross hypocrisy of WotC's decision-making that drives most of the venom. That and the sneaking suspicion that some of the people who make the decisions just like playing the blue shell and so they're protecting their pet play style from disruption at all costs.
Good point.

I was really sad when they banned Mental Misstep because "they saw more blue decks than ever". They never gave the meta a chance to adapt. I mean, look at the decks we saw when Misstep was there. Misstep slowed the format down so much suddenly Green-White Creatures was a tier-1 deck. In Legacy! A format where you can easily die on turn one, Green-White Creatures starts to top-8 everywhere. People also started playing all kinds of weird stuff like Hive Mind combo. I really liked those days. You could play basically anything, as long as you ran 4x Mental Misstep. And since Misstep was uncommon, everybody had access to it. When they banned it, I was really angry. Way more so than when they banned Survival, which as you mentioned also sucked as a decision. Come on, even Pithing Needle stops it, and that's a one mana artifact you can easily play in any sideboard. The solution to Survival was already there. Banning it was just stupid.

But that's the whole point. Banning decisions are bad. New rediculous cards get printed which mess up Legacy (Delver, mostly, but also TNN, one mana Wrath of God, rediculous fatties). It is clear the guys at Wizards don't understand Legacy, and don't care to either.

[Lemnear]

Because Brainstorm keeps defining the format as the blue shell vs everything else and Brainstorm is the best card in the blue shell. Because WotC has been hypocritical about bans and the reasons for bans in the past. Because the people who hate playing against the blue shell all the time are just as numerous as the people who like playing it all the time. If they weren't then Legacy would be a 90% blue shell game.

We're back to bold claims? We know that about 66% of the metagame plays Brainstorm, but we have no idea how those 66% or the remaining 34% feels about playing against blue. It's your opinion here, which you might share with others. Claiming that the number of people hating to play against Brainstorm is 50% of the playerbase is laughable.


I play the damn thing all the time because it's too consistent to ignore. I get sick of it and play other things and then I switch back when I'm tired of losing to the blue shell due to consistency issues. I still don't understand why WotC thought Demonic Tutor was oppressive in that context. All it did was to give non-blue lists something approaching the consistency of blue lists. One cycle of that and WotC threw up their hands. We've been living with the blue shell for much longer. And since when is Demonic Tutor not Force-able?

Just a small edit to Highlight how bad the argument is. Feel free to enter Necropotence, Vampiric Tutor or the like, if you simply don't want to understand that there is a difference between a Tutor attached to a combo engine (Vice versa) and a scroll rack on steroids

[FoolofaTook]

Good point.

I was really sad when they banned Mental Misstep because "they saw more blue decks than ever".

If Mental Misstep had cast for :u: we'd still have it in the format. The only reason WotC hasn't reprinted it in that form is that it would be a blatant attempt to steer the format instead of all the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" attempts we've had in recent years.

Treasure Cruise my ass.

[Asthereal]

If Mental Misstep had cast for :u: we'd still have it in the format. The only reason WotC hasn't reprinted it in that form is that it would be a blatant attempt to steer the format instead of all the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" attempts we've had in recent years.

Treasure Cruise my ass.
They mentioned in the banning explanation that they wanted a less strong Force of Willish card that every deck could play, in order to try and keep the fastest combo decks in check without beiong forced to play blue. They hoped it would increase diversity. And then the idiots never gave it a chance to achieve just that. They saw more blue and immidiately banned it. Whereas I saw more diversity on the horizon. Goblins with 4x Misstep winning a tournament, that sort of stuff. People needed to adapt to the new meta, incorporating Misstep, but they never got the chance. Just a few major tournaments later it got the axe.

Misstep costing :u: instead, I am actually not sure whether I would play that. On the play it is really strong, but on the draw not so much. Additionally, what they tried to achieve with Misstep was a free counterspell for everyone, not something only a blue mage can play, so I'm not sure where you want to go with that remark.

[frafen]

If the blue cantrip shell remains the best shell to reduce variance thanks to Fetchlands, SDT, Ponder and Preordain, why would the majority of players suddenly pick up a non-blue shell? They won't. Tournament players would continue to play the best shell and it remains the blue one. The UWR Stoneblade mirror during the GP NJ stream gives you a glimpse to the future of how well Stoneblade decks would opperate with SDT.

It's also hilarious that people Maindeck Swords to Plowshares which are absolutely dead against various combo decks. The concept is the same. You include cards into your MB which you expect to do well against the biggest slice of the metagame. If it's Delver/TNN/Counterbalance/S&T/Cruise, maindecking REBs is fine, if you face plenty of tempo decks, overloading on spot removal like Sudden shock, Forked Bolts or the like is also fine which can be considered bad against a large margin of decks otherwise, starting with Maverick to Miracles to combo. You get the idea. Hinting that it's a bad sign that players have to metagame against a changing field is ridiculous itself. That brazilian Jund player reacted to the metagame and got rewarded, instead of sitting in a forum whinning that his beloved 2010 list doesn't cut it anymore. Would you have moaned as well if he ran Forked Bolt instead of the Blasts, or is it just because he idenitfied Delver/TNN/S&T/Counterbalance the biggest annoyances in the current format?
I think that is likely that more people (not the majority, but for sure more than now) will pick up non-blue shell simply because the power level gap between blue and non-blue will be smaller without the best card (blue has many powerful cards, but nothing comes close to bs). I also think that without brainstorm blue decks will become a bit more difficult to play properly and more unforgiving.

About stp,the concept is not the same, you have to play removals if you don't want to die to everything, I've heard that attacking with creatures is a pretty common winning strategy in magic. You expect to play against lots of creatures. But if you play 4 blasts maindeck, means that you are expecting to face so many blue decks that the (in theory big) drawback of having 4 dead cards against non-blue decks becomes negligible. It's like building a deck assuming that non-blue strategies aren't relevant. And than winning, confirming that assumption. That is a bad sign, not that jund player adapting like a boss at the metagame.

And I'm not moaning, like I've said before I'm ok with the format as is. I just think that it could be better without brainstorm.

[aluisiocsantos]

In other hand, if everyone played Mental Misstep, might as well as just make the Magic max card count 56 ?

[Asthereal]

In other hand, if everyone played Mental Misstep, might as well as just make the Magic max card count 56 ?
Reprint in every core set as an uncommon or common. Keep it cheap.
And there will always be people just playing Chalice, Moxen and CMC2+ stuff.
I don't see the problem.

[maharis]

If the blue cantrip shell remains the best shell to reduce variance thanks to Fetchlands, SDT, Ponder and Preordain, why would the majority of players suddenly pick up a non-blue shell? They won't. Tournament players would continue to play the best shell and it remains the blue one. The UWR Stoneblade mirror during the GP NJ stream gives you a glimpse to the future of how well Stoneblade decks would opperate with SDT.

It's also hilarious that people Maindeck Swords to Plowshares which are absolutely dead against various combo decks. The concept is the same. You include cards into your MB which you expect to do well against the biggest slice of the metagame. If it's Delver/TNN/Counterbalance/S&T/Cruise, maindecking REBs is fine, if you face plenty of tempo decks, overloading on spot removal like Sudden shock, Forked Bolts or the like is also fine which can be considered bad against a large margin of decks otherwise, starting with Maverick to Miracles to combo. You get the idea. Hinting that it's a bad sign that players have to metagame against a changing field is ridiculous itself. That brazilian Jund player reacted to the metagame and got rewarded, instead of sitting in a forum whinning that his beloved 2010 list doesn't cut it anymore. Would you have moaned as well if he ran Forked Bolt instead of the Blasts, or is it just because he idenitfied Delver/TNN/S&T/Counterbalance the biggest annoyances in the current format?

You can't compare creature removal to color-specific hate. Every color has creatures and the vast, vast majority of decks throughout Magic's history, regardless of format, have won through creature combat. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of a given field is going to attempt to win through creature combat, even certain "combo" decks like Elves, Dredge, Reanimator and S&T. While spot removal is various levels of good against those decks, there's always the chance that a poor draw or incorrect decision in game one will open up the opportunity for Swords to be key in the matchup.

No one is really "whining that their beloved 2010 list isn't working anymore" in any thread. That is a strawman you've concocted. For a time I was running with no MB hate for blue or islands and had constructed a non-blue deck that was 75% against blue decks but 45% against non-blue decks. I was more worried about facing Elves and Burn than any Delver deck.

What people are "whining" about, if anything, is the narrowing almost to a point of the amount of playable cards at a high level in Legacy. BBD's winning deck and Eli Kassis' 14th-place deck each played:

1 Basic Island
9 fetchlands
6 blue duals
20 total cantrip shell cards (4 each Probe, BS, Ponder, FoW, and Cruise)
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Pyroblast
4 Young Pyromancer

45 out of 60 cards — 3/4 of the deck — is identical. In the other 15 cards:
—Eli played a 7th blue dual. BBD played a basic plains and an extra fetchland. So a minor mana-base difference.
—Eli played a 4th Lightning Bolt, a Forked Bolt, and a Sudden Demise. BBD played 3 STP. So each went with 3 extra pieces of creature removal.
—Eli played a Counterspell. BBD played 2 Spell Pierce. Each selected additional counterspell to their taste.
—Eli played 2 Dack Fayden. BBD had equipment. Each chose exactly two persistent threats.
—Eli played Strix + Notion Thief. BBD had 2 True-Name Nemesis. Each chose exactly 2 utility creatures.
—Eli played 2 Snapcaster Mage. BBD had 4 Stoneforge Mystic. Each chose some number of 2-drop card advantage creatures.
—Eli played 3 Cabal Therapy.

Where are the real differences between these decks? One player played black and chose to exploit Cabal Therapy. The other played white and chose a Stoneforge Mystic package. Eli's deck is certainly more interesting. In fact, Dack and Therapy are both great cards against Stoneforge Mystic. But at it's core — hell, I would say 75% is more than just the core — it's pretty much the same deck, despite playing a whole different color.

You want to tell me about "strategic diversity?" The strategy is basically "play the blue cantrips, then win with _____." Maybe it's Delver, maybe it's SFM, maybe it's Notion Thief, maybe it's Entreat the Angels, maybe it's Tendrils of Agony. And within that, there will always be 1-2 "best" win conditions and any "strategic diversity" will be entirely up to the whim of a pilot who is willing to give up percentage points by not playing those in hopes that his consistency tools will help them ride their nonstandard wincons to victory.

[FoolofaTook]

They mentioned in the banning explanation that they wanted a less strong Force of Willish card that every deck could play, in order to try and keep the fastest combo decks in check without beiong forced to play blue. They hoped it would increase diversity. And then the idiots never gave it a chance to achieve just that. They saw more blue and immidiately banned it. Whereas I saw more diversity on the horizon. Goblins with 4x Misstep winning a tournament, that sort of stuff. People needed to adapt to the new meta, incorporating Misstep, but they never got the chance. Just a few major tournaments later it got the axe.

Misstep costing :u: instead, I am actually not sure whether I would play that. On the play it is really strong, but on the draw not so much. Additionally, what they tried to achieve with Misstep was a free counterspell for everyone, not something only a blue mage can play, so I'm not sure where you want to go with that remark.

If they were looking for a free counterspell for everybody they'd have made it cost colorless mana that was also phyrexian. They were looking to give the blue shell another way to handle opposing Brainstorms, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolts, etc. Then they got embarrassed by having the blue shell overwhelmingly turn out with it.

You have to look at the hidden motivations and my guess is that there are a lot of hidden motivations behind the R&D and banning processes.

[Asthereal]

If they were looking for a free counterspell for everybody they'd have made it cost colorless mana that was also phyrexian. They were looking to give the blue shell another way to handle opposing Brainstorms, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolts, etc. Then they got embarrassed by having the blue shell overwhelmingly turn out with it.

You have to look at the hidden motivations and my guess is that there are a lot of hidden motivations behind the R&D and banning processes.
Conspiracy theories! :laugh: I like those.

Please elaborate.

[Gheizen64]

They mentioned in the banning explanation that they wanted a less strong Force of Willish card that every deck could play, in order to try and keep the fastest combo decks in check without beiong forced to play blue. They hoped it would increase diversity. And then the idiots never gave it a chance to achieve just that. They saw more blue and immidiately banned it. Whereas I saw more diversity on the horizon. Goblins with 4x Misstep winning a tournament, that sort of stuff. People needed to adapt to the new meta, incorporating Misstep, but they never got the chance. Just a few major tournaments later it got the axe.

Misstep costing :u: instead, I am actually not sure whether I would play that. On the play it is really strong, but on the draw not so much. Additionally, what they tried to achieve with Misstep was a free counterspell for everyone, not something only a blue mage can play, so I'm not sure where you want to go with that remark.

Agree, i was against MM banning as well, but the card was seriously everywhere (and this was before snapcaster was printed, which is an obnoxious combination tbh). Also, with Delver printed, MM is probably gone up in relative power level unlike Survival which would be fairly harmless in today's legacy. I'd like to see it unbanned just to make maverick/jund midrange and MUD relatively better compared to the rest of the format. I'm afraid MM would make D&T relatively a lot worse however, not sure.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

In a format like Legacy where we have had True Name, Mongoose, Jace, Liliana, Emrakul, Progenitus, Tendrils of Agony, Empty the Warrens, Young Pyromancer, or any number of win-cons that A) ignore spot removal for creatures or B) generate so many creatures to the point that a single spot removal spell won't hinder it as much, I believe Lemnear's argument is just as valid in terms of adapting to the metagame.

However, the health of a format is indicated by its diversity in strategy, not color. And currently, as indicated by decks that made it to Day 2 at GP NJ (could've sworn that looking at the top 16 of an event that large wasn't exactly a credible source, but eh).

And now that I've had a time to check my email for a response from The Council:

Mental Misstep Era
http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php?mess=8&format=Legacy%20Archive&finicio=2011-8-01&ffinal=2011-8-31
http://www.tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy%20Archive&fecha=2011-08

356 Top Lists with at least 60 cards each = 21360 Cards in Top lists (26700 including 15 in Sideboard)
Typical Blue Core: Brainstorm, Force of Will, Mental Misstep; Comprises 8.72% to 10.90% of the meta.
Blade Control Core: Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Stoneforge Mystic, Swords to Plowshares; Comprises an additional 4.32% to 5.41% of the meta. (13.04% to 16.31% with blue core)
Blade Control Penetration: 37 Tops, or 10.40% of all Tops.
Additional Notes: Brainstorm is 3rd and comprises 2.77% to 3.46% of the meta by itself; 12 out of the top 20 cards can either be paid for with blue mana or provide blue mana.

Delver Era
http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcards.php
http://www.tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy

361 Top Lists with at least 60 cards each = 21660 Cards in Top lists (27075 including 15 in Sideboard)
Typical Blue Core: Brainstorm, Force of Will, Ponder; Comprises 9.78% to 12.22% of the meta.
UR Delver Core: Delver of Secrets, Daze, Wasteland; Comprises an additional 5.39% to 6.74% of the meta (15.17% to 18.96% with blue core)
UR Delver Penetration: 56 Tops, or 15.51% of all Tops
Additional Notes: Brainstorm is 1st and comprises to 3.60% to 4.51% of the meta by itself; 12 out of the top 20 cards can either be paid for with blue mana or provide blue mana.

Conclusion
A case can be made for either a Delver ban or a Brainstorm ban in all honesty, as Brainstorm is the most popular card and Delver.dec is the most popular archetype. However, I should explicitly mention that the Mental Misstep era is slightly better than the current era of Delver, as evidenced by the percentages for both the blue core and the top deck core.

While I still believe a ban on Delver would improve the diversity of strategies used in the metagame, a ban on Brainstorm isn't out of the question now.

[Blastoderm]

I don't think brainstorm should be banned although it gives a huge advantage to decks that do play it.....it greatly increases consistency and this is very important in a large tournament. While this is a good argument for it to get banned since decks without brainstorm have less of a chance (seemingly), it is the glue that keeps many decks together. A banning would hit way too many strategies.

Delver on the other hand is just dumb. People crying for format diversity should direct their attention to this card....

[Zombie]

However, the health of a format is indicated by its diversity in strategy, not color.

Why is it that strategic diversity should be the only criterion for balance? Why is it that color cannot matter, or color-related differences in gameplay pattern (eg. Elves v. Storm, D&T v. Miracles, Jund v. Shardless as some examples of playfeel difference) even if the overall strategy (and thus patterns related to it) is different?

We would complain if the format was only Storm (UBr), S&T (UR), Elves (Gb), Painter (R/Ru) because gameplay diversity would be lacking from a strategic standpoint. But what about the lack of variety in texture of the smaller-scale card interactions/play patterns? Why is acceptable to complain about a combo meta but not about Cantrip Cartel meta?

[testing32]

Data

Good to see you're are coming around.

Banning delver won't stop blue from dominating though. And the next time wizards prints some aggressively costed one drop (real easy, see swiftspear) you are going to be right back in the same spot.

[Gheizen64]

I don't think brainstorm should be banned although it gives a huge advantage to decks that do play it.....it greatly increases consistency and this is very important in a large tournament. While this is a good argument for it to get banned since decks without brainstorm have less of a chance (seemingly), it is the glue that keeps many decks together. A banning would hit way too many strategies.

Delver on the other hand is just dumb. People crying for format diversity should direct their attention to this card....

Why would i want to straight kill an archetype instead of making all the top tier archetypes sightly worse without killing any of them if i wanted more diversity?
It's possible that a Delver ban would open the meta more than a BS one, but it's a way riskier ban, because you for SURE lose a big part of the meta, and you could get things like Canadian Thresh back (but really, who want that again?), but you could also get something like Patriot vs Miracle format.

EDIT: just as thought excercise: if AR were legal and that made UR delver or AdN the top deck, you'd ban AdN or Delver before Ancestral?

[Gheizen64]

And also i'm honestly baffled at all those people that say that if BS were banned, another card would just take its place and be the next best thing. Legacy didn't have Brainstorm as the most present card in T8 for as long as it existed. Goyf was the most played card for a while, and i think even Lackey was for a while. In general the top card spots weren't as stale as they have been in the last years. There was more ebb and flow about it, as strategies got hated out and in.
With BS gone is very possibly that the most played card could slowly swap between ponder, FoW, Wasteland or GSZ. And even if Ponder were to become effectively BS 2.0, it would never get the level of relative dominance BS had if only because blue would be relatively worse as a color.

I've played formats were blue was the best color for as long as i remember (old extended, Vintage, Legacy), but aside from Vintage, Legacy is the first where i'm starting to see cards like Choke and Pyroblast maindeck. You weren't seeing maindeck Pithing needles during vengevine era (we probably would if WotC gave the card more time, but people just played more E. Removals and Extirpates SB, you can check lists around that time here (http://www.tcdecks.net/formato.php?format=Legacy%20Archive&page=30)), nor you saw Chokes or REBs during the "format got too blue" MM era.

EDIT: i found actually a list that played one main P. Needle during Survival era: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12&iddeck=80
Still, people generally had little in mains aside from more Pridemages in Survival lists and Extirpates/Faerie Macabre in the sb.
And actual tournaments results from that era:

http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=24

With 3 storm in T8, 2 VV survival, 1 faerie, 1 merfolk, 1 TA.

Or something like this:

http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12&iddeck=82

Where there were 2 goblins in T16, 1 Dredge, 1 monoblack, 2 Landstills, 1 Countertop, 1 Stiflenought, 1 Junk Rock and 4 survivals.

Or this:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=118

Where you had : 7 Survivals (4 GW, 3 UG), 2 Goblins, 1 Zoo, 2 Merfolk, 3 Rock/Junk, 1 AdN.

[Asthereal]

Why would i want to straight kill an archetype instead of making all the top tier archetypes sightly worse without killing any of them if i wanted more diversity?
Delver isn't an archetype. It's an overpowered creature in the wrong colour.
The archetype is blue aggro control, and it won't die with the banning of Delver. It will just become a more difficult to build and play archetype.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Why is it that strategic diversity should be the only criterion for balance? Why is it that color cannot matter, or color-related differences in gameplay pattern (eg. Elves v. Storm, D&T v. Miracles, Jund v. Shardless as some examples of playfeel difference) even if the overall strategy (and thus patterns related to it) is different?

We would complain if the format was only Storm (UBr), S&T (UR), Elves (Gb), Painter (R/Ru) because gameplay diversity would be lacking from a strategic standpoint. But what about the lack of variety in texture of the smaller-scale card interactions/play patterns? Why is acceptable to complain about a combo meta but not about Cantrip Cartel meta?

First, color-related differences in gameplay are also strategic related differences. You can't tell me that simply having the five colors use the same strategy (let's say, tribal aggro) is better than just one color using five different strategies. In fact, in regards to you comparisons, there are distinct differences in strategy:

Elves wants to spam the board with a bunch of mana dorks and utility dorks before cheating in a Craterhoof Behemoth to swing for lethal. Storm variants want to spam the stack with a bunch of rituals and other spells before casting a Storm card. Both are combo, but the methods of fighting them are very different.

D&T and Miracles both want to make your life hell, but D&T does so via Wasteland, Karakas, and hatebears (Revoker and Thalia in particular) while Miracles does so with CounterTop and Miracle cards. Both are control, but the methods of fighting them are very different.

Jund wants to generate value just as much as Shardless BUG does. However, one has burn, the other counterspells. Not much else to say here, as this is honestly like comparing UR delver to BUG delver.

Second, the "Cantrip Cartel meta", as you call it, consists of three (four if Probe is included) cards that are present in most lists. A combo meta as you describe would consist of four decks that are present in the entire meta. Which brings me back to one of my points: its a deck that is oppressive, not a card.

Since you're a fighter, let me put into fighting game terms: banning Brainstorm because most lists run it as a playset is akin to banning projectiles because most characters have them. Banning Delver, on the other hand, is more like banning Akuma/Kabal/etc. (or rather, limiting the potential those characters have against the rest of the cast).

[AznSeal]

First they came for Survival of the Fittest, and I did not speak out, for I did not play survival decks.
Next they came for Brainstorm, and I did not speak out, for I did not play blue.
Then they came for Natural Order, and there was no one left to speak for me.

#freebrainstorm

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Why would i want to straight kill an archetype instead of making all the top tier archetypes sightly worse without killing any of them if i wanted more diversity?

Because it isn't just the top decks that run Brainstorm. ANT. Sneak Attack. Deathblade. Blade Control. Reanimator. Need I go on?

What decks run Delver outside of Uxx Tempo that just happen to be called Delver decks now?

[Lemnear]

They mentioned in the banning explanation that they wanted a less strong Force of Willish card that every deck could play, in order to try and keep the fastest combo decks in check without beiong forced to play blue. They hoped it would increase diversity. And then the idiots never gave it a chance to achieve just that. They saw more blue and immidiately banned it. Whereas I saw more diversity on the horizon. Goblins with 4x Misstep winning a tournament, that sort of stuff. People needed to adapt to the new meta, incorporating Misstep, but they never got the chance. Just a few major tournaments later it got the axe.

Misstep costing :u: instead, I am actually not sure whether I would play that. On the play it is really strong, but on the draw not so much. Additionally, what they tried to achieve with Misstep was a free counterspell for everyone, not something only a blue mage can play, so I'm not sure where you want to go with that remark.

You ignore some issues:

1) you could push Key cards like Vial/Rituals/Discard/etc against the wall without Tempo loss
2) you could disrupt T1 combo cheaper than with FoW without caring for the blue count which had the result that FoW was REPLACED by Misstep in many decks
3) tapping out for T 1/2 Delver/SFM? No Problem with FoW+Misstep to shield them from removal
4) the interaction with Snapcaster. Go try storm against FoW+ Snapcaster+Misstep. At some point Adaption is no longer possible for certain decks

[Gheizen64]

Delver isn't an archetype. It's an overpowered creature in the wrong colour.
The archetype is blue aggro control, and it won't die with the banning of Delver. It will just become a more difficult to build and play archetype.

UR Delver was a huge part of SGC Richmond and GP NJ meta, but placed 1 copies in both T16. There were 12 Delvers in both GP NJ and SGC Richmond T16. There was 1 UR Delver at God's Tournament in Japan (188 players) and 4 Delvers in all the Top 16. Oakland had again 1 UR Delver in T16, and 12 Delver copies. Only Charlotte had an high delver presence, with 6 UR decks in T16, and 28 Delver copies.


I don't see a lot of reason to ban the card. It's surely vastly overplayed compared to how it place because of how cheap, good, and easy to play it is.

[Gheizen64]

Because it isn't just the top decks that run Brainstorm. ANT. Sneak Attack. Deathblade. Blade Control. Reanimator. Need I go on?

What decks run Delver outside of Uxx Tempo that just happen to be called Delver decks now?

If you hit all blue decks, then their relative power level to each other remain mostly unchanged (with exceptions for SnT and Reanimator i guess which get hit harder). What change is the relative power level of non-blue strats.
If you kill Delver, you arbitrarily kill an archetype that isn't even that good placing right now (see previous post) which set a bad precedent (similarly to mystical tutor), for no reason but "delver is too good even if the number don't support it". As much as i dislike Delver as a card and i voiced my dislike for it thousands of times, killing a card that isn't placing would be as stupid as axing SFM.

[iGrok]

UR Delver was a huge part of SGC Richmond and GP NJ meta, but placed 1 copies in both T16. There were 12 Delvers in both GP NJ and SGC Richmond T16. There was 1 UR Delver at God's Tournament in Japan (188 players) and 4 Delvers in all the Top 16. Oakland had again 1 UR Delver in T16, and 12 Delver copies. Only Charlotte had an high delver presence, with 6 UR decks in T16, and 28 Delver copies.


I don't see a lot of reason to ban the card. It's surely vastly overplayed compared to how it place because of how cheap, good, and easy to play it is.

Hi, I'm going to repost this data because its quite relevant:


I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

...

To me, this screams "Delver is the issue!", but I can understand why some people would disagree before seeing the data - even I didn't realize how skewed it was towards Delver before I threw this together.

So yeah, I'd say the numbers do support it.

[clavio]

Can someone please tell me why having five equal colors would improve the game at all?

[Lord Seth]

They mentioned in the banning explanation that they wanted a less strong Force of Willish card that every deck could play, in order to try and keep the fastest combo decks in check without beiong forced to play blue. They hoped it would increase diversity. And then the idiots never gave it a chance to achieve just that. They saw more blue and immidiately banned it. Whereas I saw more diversity on the horizon. Goblins with 4x Misstep winning a tournament, that sort of stuff. People needed to adapt to the new meta, incorporating Misstep, but they never got the chance. Just a few major tournaments later it got the axe.I saw far less diversity on the horizon, because Snapcaster Mage+Mental Misstep (which thankfully the format was spared due to the ban) would probably make the format even more Blue-dominated than it is now.

[Gheizen64]

Hi, I'm going to repost this data because its quite relevant:


I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/rPQup8V.png

There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

...

To me, this screams "Delver is the issue!", but I can understand why some people would disagree before seeing the data - even I didn't realize how skewed it was towards Delver before I threw this together.

So yeah, I'd say the numbers do support it.

The five tournament i've listed, which are the last 5 over 160 players legacy tournaments (Prague sadly has only the T8 online), had 56 Delvers being placed, or 14 Delvers decks being played in 5 T16. That's an average of 2.8 Delver decks for each T16. That's 17.5% representation, hardly "dominating" anything imho.

Just as an exercise i've checked SFM. From the most recent to less recent: Richmond : 20 SFM. GP NJ: 14 SFM. Columbus: 14 SFM. Japan: 4 SFM. Oakland: 3 SFM.
That's 55 SFM, just 1 less copy than delver, and apparently on a steady an upward trend.

Numbers are far too low and for far too short of a timeframe to justify a ban for Delver, especially considering how much it's played because it's the new burn deck.

[nedleeds]

Hey Ned, if you cut out the delver decks brainstorm becomes much less common in the top 8, and that's before we even consider that non-brainstorm decks might take it's place (decks like Jund, burn, or nicfit). Can you at least agree with that assessment?

Again, im not saying that if you ban delver then nin-brainstorm decks will be just as good as brainstorm decks (I think that would take a while to sort itself out), just can you agree that if we banned Delver, brainstorm would be significantly less "ubiquitous"?

First off, thank you for presenting numbers and facts. I agree that removing delver decks makes for less Brainstorm but that's basically stating an orange is orange. Delver is an oppressive card largely because of Brainstorm. Without Brainstorm it would still be good (see Vintage and Modern), but crafting a hand to protect it on the fly or ensuring it flips in situations where it's optimal is a big part of delver.

I don't like Delver, Griselderp, Cruise, or TNN but banning should be based on power level, ubiquity and constraining deck design and Brainstorm just destroys all those cards with respect to those criteria.

If they aren't ready to ban Brainstorm quite yet after 5 years of unrelenting dominance, then I'd like to see 3-4 cards come off. Then in a 1/2 year to a year you'd still see Brainstorm at 80% and even it's staunchest defenders could finally STFU. Compared to some cards on the list Brainstorm is absurdly more powerful.


If you hit all blue decks, then their relative power level to each other remain mostly unchanged (with exceptions for SnT and Reanimator i guess which get hit harder).

You hit the Miracle mechanic hardest (obv). Which is pretty absurd because the card Brainstorm exists. Resolving Jace, Jacestorming back a Terminus and then casting it seems perfectly fair as you could have just Supreme Verdicted at that point. Control would need to shift to more traditional control without one mana Hyper Wrath Instant God and a one card 30 power making Derp. The non miracle dig through time decks might be the best analog. Control players would have to (gasp) make a new deck, or wait until BVP posts one for them to copy.

The second hardest hit is 2 card derp combo because having extra pieces in your hand is so awful. I think 3rd is SFM decks because the synergy between Batterderp, SFM's shuffle and search and recycling cards with Brainstorm is pretty strong. The tempo decks are piles of redundant cards and Brainstorm is mostly letting them cheat on their mana to an obscene level (6 colored lands, 4 wastelands), which highlights the misery of building mana bases without Braincrutch / Fetch.

[Asthereal]

You ignore some issues:

1) you could push Key cards like Vial/Rituals/Discard/etc against the wall without Tempo loss
2) you could disrupt T1 combo cheaper than with FoW without caring for the blue count which had the result that FoW was REPLACED by Misstep in many decks
3) tapping out for T 1/2 Delver/SFM? No Problem with FoW+Misstep to shield them from removal
4) the interaction with Snapcaster. Go try storm against FoW+ Snapcaster+Misstep. At some point Adaption is no longer possible for certain decks
Point 3 was the main reason why Misstep was banned.
Point 4, I grant you, does suck. But Snapcaster was printed after Misstep was banned, right?

[btm10]

To shift the topic slightly: given that both bannings and unbannings are unlikely, is there any reason to prefer changing what some see as a stale format with bannings rather than unbannings?

[iGrok]

The five tournament i've listed, which are the last 5 over 160 players legacy tournaments (Prague sadly has only the T8 online), had 56 Delvers being placed, or 14 Delvers decks being played in 5 T16. That's an average of 2.8 Delver decks for each T16. That's 17.5% representation, hardly "dominating" anything imho.

Just as an exercise i've checked SFM. From the most recent to less recent: Richmond : 20 SFM. GP NJ: 14 SFM. Columbus: 14 SFM. Japan: 4 SFM. Oakland: 3 SFM.
That's 55 SFM, just 1 less copy than delver, and apparently on a steady an upward trend.

Numbers are far too low and for far too short of a timeframe to justify a ban for Delver, especially considering how much it's played because it's the new burn deck.

I can't find the top 16 for Tokyo, only top 8, can you send them to me?

I'm counting SCG Richmond, SCG Colombus, and SCG Oakland in the above numbers. If I add in GPNJ, Delver is 26.5%, Stoneblade is 14%, Miracles is 12.5%,
Storm is 8%, Dredge is 6%, Elves is 6%, and everything else is less. So from here it still looks like Delver is still head and shoulders above everything else.

SFM is gaining in popularity, in my opinion, because the delver decks can't actually beat a resolved SFM getting BSkull, and the WUR Stoneblade decks play enough spot removal (4 bolt 4 swords) to deal with the handful of creatures Delver has. So the increase in SFM seems to be a response to the dominance of Delver, similar to REB gaining in popularity.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

If you hit all blue decks, then their relative power level to each other remain mostly unchanged (with exceptions for SnT and Reanimator i guess which get hit harder). What change is the relative power level of non-blue strats.
If you kill Delver, you arbitrarily kill an archetype that isn't even that good placing right now (see previous post) which set a bad precedent (similarly to mystical tutor), for no reason but "delver is too good even if the number don't support it". As much as i dislike Delver as a card and i voiced my dislike for it thousands of times, killing a card that isn't placing would be as stupid as axing SFM.

Do you use any data other than what suits you? Even as vehement as I am concerning a Delver ban, I used the data provided by the Council for the current month and came to the conclusion that Delver as an archetype is the most popular and Brainstorm as a card is the most popular. And the fact that Delver made up a considerable portion of the decks that made it to Day 2 should indicate against most of the Day 1 meta, Delver had the best chance at getting to Day 2.

Also, Uxx Tempo existed before Delver: Candian Threshold (or RUG Delver now) and Team America Tempo (or BUG Delver now).

[Gheizen64]

I can't find the top 16 for Tokyo, only top 8, can you send them to me?

I'm counting SCG Richmond, SCG Colombus, and SCG Oakland in the above numbers. If I add in GPNJ, Delver is 26.5%, Stoneblade is 14%, Miracles is 12.5%,
Storm is 8%, Dredge is 6%, Elves is 6%, and everything else is less. So from here it still looks like Delver is still head and shoulders above everything else.

SFM is gaining in popularity, in my opinion, because the delver decks can't actually beat a resolved SFM getting BSkull, and the WUR Stoneblade decks play enough spot removal (4 bolt 4 swords) to deal with the handful of creatures Delver has. So the increase in SFM seems to be a response to the dominance of Delver, similar to REB gaining in popularity.

Japan: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15254

Almost every tournament T16 is here anyway: http://www.tcdecks.net/formato.php?format=Legacy

And on unbanning vs banning: i'd rather have them unban a lot of cards, but WotC has historically been extremely slow at unbanning things whereas it has been more liberal with bannings, and i don't think there's a single card that would open the format without also breaking it imho. Survival is close but would probably just be another another T1.5 almost T1 deck, other cards like Twist Vise etc... would see 0 play anyway, and then some cards are just stupid like Workshop.

[iGrok]

Japan: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15254

Almost every tournament T16 is here anyway: http://www.tcdecks.net/formato.php?format=Legacy

And on unbanning vs banning: i'd rather have them unban a lot of cards, but WotC has historically been extremely slow at unbanning things whereas it has been more liberal with bannings, and i don't think there's a single card that would open the format without also breaking it imho. Survival is close but would probably just be another another T1.5 fringe deck, other cards like Twist Vise etc... would see 0 play anyway, and then some cards are just stupid like Workshop.

Yeah, there aren't many cards you could unban that wouldn't break it. Twist, sure, though unlike a lot of you I think it would see some play. Vise? Decent, probably safe. The only other card I can see would be Survival. Beyond that I'm not sure what you would take off the list.

Survival is the only card that would do much to shake up the metagame. Ban Delver and the whole meta shifts. And it doesn't even kill Tempo as a strategy! It just makes you have to pick Goyf & Goose vs Treasure Cruise.

[btm10]

Yeah, there aren't many cards you could unban that wouldn't break it. Twist, sure, though unlike a lot of you I think it would see some play. Vise? Decent, probably safe. The only other card I can see would be Survival. Beyond that I'm not sure what you would take off the list.

Survival is the only card that would do much to shake up the metagame. Ban Delver and the whole meta shifts. And it doesn't even kill Tempo as a strategy! It just makes you have to pick Goyf & Goose vs Treasure Cruise.

I'm not 100% convinced that non UR Delver (which I think is less a tempo deck and more an aggro/burn deck) would be particularly good without Delver, but that's neither here nor there. There are three banned cards that I see as having potential to shake up the metagame. First is Survival and the arguments for that have been made pretty clearly (leaving aside whether it would be a good thing). Second, Frantic Search would power up High Tide and possibly give something like Madness a shot, though that's unlikely. I'm not even sure it would make Tide good enough, but if it does nothing, it shouldn't be banned. Earthcraft opens up some interesting strategies without making Elves degenerate because they can't untap Cradle with it. Enchantress is pretty well positioned right now (still not much combo, Blade decks are its best non-Painter matchups, has insane card advantage...) and Earthcraft might be the last push over the edge to being a tier 1 deck again.

[bruizar]

Frantic Search is going to fuel Treasure Cruises like crazy, it will just make UR delver stronger and push high tide over the top.

Survival in my biased opinion can go off the list.

[Higgs]

...and push high tide over the top.

You mean playable surely.

[ReAnimator]

Frantic Search is going to fuel Treasure Cruises like crazy, it will just make UR delver stronger and push high tide over the top.

Frantic Search is still a MILLION times more fair and less powerful than Brainstorm, for that reason alone it should come off (or BS should go on).

[bruizar]

You mean playable surely.

Well, the card is basically a free "2 of your worst cards go into the graveyard as well as this, draw 2 better cards".

It somehow sounds like a weird mixture between gitaxian probe and faithless looting. This would dig and fuel delve spells better than any spell we currently have. (not counting any high tide mana ramp shenanigans)

[bruizar]

Frantic Search is still a MILLION times more fair and less powerful than Brainstorm, for that reason alone it should come off (or BS should go on).

I'd love for these to change spots.

[ReAnimator]

I'd love for these to change spots.

Me too, it would certainly make a lot more sense.

I think the fear of it fuelling something super degenerate is pretty small. It's unplayable before turn 3 a lot of the time, and if you do it's usually by giving up some value of the mana cheat (moxes or drs's etc). It's straight worse than Careful or Faithless on turns 1 and 2 (and sometimes 3 as well). It's still card disadvantage.

I'm honestly having a hard time coming up with a list that would do anything ridiculous with it in today's legacy. Maybe i'm not thinking hard enough.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So, would you mind trying to contribute, or at least not trying to bait people with misquoted appeals? Perhaps you could even try contributing something useful yourself.
So, would you mind doing this analysis for the whole rest of the damned site? I'd be really interested how many times the usual mantra of "go play Modern" and "gtfo with your petdecks" shows up.

And next time do me a favor, please. Be so kind to not count me into anti-BS crowd, because

I never argued for BS ban.

[FoolofaTook]

To shift the topic slightly: given that both bannings and unbannings are unlikely, is there any reason to prefer changing what some see as a stale format with bannings rather than unbannings?

If they don't ban something blue in January the format will continue to degenerate into blue vs anti-blue shell with a few lists that can fight both approaches, like D&T, MUD and Elves.

I'm probably going to wind up back in Jund rocking 4 main list red blasts and tuning them out when they're not appropriate. Other approaches I see people moving towards already in my local meta are lists with 4 main list Chalices (Abrupt Decay will manage those I hope) and a lot of experimentation with Gwx Hate bears.

It's going to be a format that blows chunks.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

You ignore some issues:
...
4) the interaction with Snapcaster. Go try storm against FoW+ Snapcaster+Misstep. At some point Adaption is no longer possible for certain decks
This thread is amazing. So did you literally whined that your petdeck would be unplayable?
The adaptation won't be possible anymore? Wow! And what about all those non-blue lists that cannot adapt to nowadays metagame? Irrelevant, I guess.

[iGrok]

So, would you mind doing this analysis for the whole rest of the damned site? I'd be really interested how many times the usual mantra of "go play Modern" and "gtfo with your petdecks" shows up.

And next time do me a favor, please. Be so kind to not count me into anti-BS crowd, because

Ok.

I don't give a shit about stats for the site as a whole. Pretty much every forum site has a majority of idiots who spew some bullshit. But this thread has been pretty good about it, so complaining that this thread is full of that hashtag bullshit is ridiculous, especially when you are the largest contributor.

But sure, I can ungroup you from the Anto-Brainstorm crowd.

3 Instances of Pro-Brainstorm people using those arguments.
8 Instantces of Anti-Brainstorm people using those arguments.
9 Instances of Bed Decks Palyer claiming that all that happens is Pro-Brainstorm people using those arguments.

Separated you out :). Hey look, you win!

I've seen you claim that you would be ok with a Delver ban despite that it "would severely hurt the only "real" deck [you] own", but you want tempo to still exist. Tempo will still exist, in Trueblade/Youngblade lists. I've also noticed that you never directly call for a brainstorm ban, you just list a bunch of reasons why you think Brainstorm "might be oppressive". I'm not sure why this is. Maybe you can simplify this for me? Do you think BS should be banned or not?

-----

As someone who has High Tide built, I have a playset of Frantic Search for whenever it gets unbanned. Please, please do this (don't really do this its probably too strong in reanimator).

[warfordium]

Erudite and reasonable perspectives.

credit where credit is due. this strikes at the heart of the matter.

Personally, I'm more into a Delver ban, both since it will allow the format to slow, and remove the metagame punisher (be it RUG or UR delver) which punishes playing anything less consistent than the cantrip cartel with hyper-efficient cards.

[alderon666]

In Brazil we just had a national Legacy tournament. It had 118 players and the prize pool was basically similar to a 5k from SCG.

The winner was playing Jund with 3 maindeck Pyroblasts. He wanted to play 4, but someone talked him out of it.

In the top 8, there were something like 5 blue decks wish either Treasure Cruize or DTT. He won easily... turns out that blasting a Cruise is much better than discarding it, because they just lose their graveyard.

I don't this is a healthy format at all. Are we back to the time when a creatureless deck plays Jitte, just to hate out the opponent's Jitte?

[Lord Seth]

Point 3 was the main reason why Misstep was banned.
Point 4, I grant you, does suck. But Snapcaster was printed after Misstep was banned, right?Actually, Snapcaster Mage became legal in Legacy exactly one day before Mental Misstep's banning took effect. So for one day, they were simultaneously legal.

[AznSeal]

If they don't ban something blue in January the format will continue to degenerate into blue vs anti-blue shell with a few lists that can fight both approaches, like D&T, MUD and Elves.

I'm probably going to wind up back in Jund rocking 4 main list red blasts and tuning them out when they're not appropriate. Other approaches I see people moving towards already in my local meta are lists with 4 main list Chalices (Abrupt Decay will manage those I hope) and a lot of experimentation with Gwx Hate bears.

It's going to be a format that blows chunks.

The term "blue deck" shouldn't even be a thing. The archtype isn't "blue". It's like saying Elves, Jund, etc are "green decks". Color is irrelevant. The archtype is what counts. Delver is nothing like Miracles which is nothing like stoneblade which is nothing like high tide.

[FoolofaTook]

The term "blue deck" shouldn't even be a thing. The archtype isn't "blue". It's like saying Elves, Jund, etc are "green decks". Color is irrelevant. The archtype is what counts. Delver is nothing like Miracles which is nothing like stoneblade which is nothing like high tide.

Blue shell defines Legacy right now. Green shell doesn't. Red shell doesn't. White shell doesn't. Black shell doesn't. Blue shell does.

And if you think the blue shell doesn't exist I have a bridge to sell you that lies between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Cheap.

[iGrok]

Blue shell defines Legacy right now. Green shell doesn't. Red shell doesn't. White shell doesn't. Black shell doesn't. Blue shell does.

And if you think the blue shell doesn't exist I have a bridge to sell you that lies between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Cheap.
Well obviously the blue shell is the best, we all learned that in Mario kart lol.

@the Brazilian guy, can you post the top 16 archetypes? 118 players is comparable to a USA ptq.

[FoolofaTook]

Me too, it would certainly make a lot more sense.

I think the fear of it fuelling something super degenerate is pretty small. It's unplayable before turn 3 a lot of the time, and if you do it's usually by giving up some value of the mana cheat (moxes or drs's etc). It's straight worse than Careful or Faithless on turns 1 and 2 (and sometimes 3 as well). It's still card disadvantage.

I'm honestly having a hard time coming up with a list that would do anything ridiculous with it in today's legacy. Maybe i'm not thinking hard enough.

Solidarity? Drawing cards and untapping Islands in the process is pretty damn good in that list.

[maharis]

The problem with the Delver ban is that Delver is just the best Brainstorm deck at the moment. The next best Brainstorm deck will take over and we will just keep removing wincons until we end up banning every Legacy-playable card printed since 2007 just to save the sacred cow.

[starfox444]

I think we have to approach this from a more game design point of view, which is what I imagine WoTC does if they give a shit about the format at all.

We are all in the interest of having fun playing legacy - for most of us that means meaningful decision points leading to a satisfying conclusion to the game and match. This means each of the players gets to do a bunch of things that are relevant to the game (making relevant strategic and tactical decisions) then eventually one person wins in a reasonable time frame (a game takes maybe 10-20 mins on average if no slow play). The mechanical reasons aren't relevant at this stage, the idea is that we have a starting point for what the format should be about.

So we have to ask, in the context of decision making, what does brainstorm (and cantrips in general) allow us to do? In combination with fetchlands, it allows players to manipulate the most easily understood and tangible resource - cards. It allows management of options. That's why I've always been happy to have brainstorm in the format. Variance is reduced and game conclusions are reached based very heavily on play decision.

I think if people seriously want to discuss reasons for bannings of any kind there either needs to be a sound theoretical basis for how the format will change, or lock some decent legacy players in a room for a week without whats being banned to try and get a feel for the new format. The same goes for unbannings - there needs to be some time invested to figure out what the new meta will be like.

There are tons of fun formats that don't have as powerful card selection as legacy does and that's because they still have meaningful decision points. There's no reason I can think of that culling a sacred cow would do bad, but I don't think it would do any particular good either. Decks would change and the meta would adapt, but to what end? So we can say a certain colour had more top16s than another? I don't mean to be condescending, but what is the actual value of colour diversity? What other reasons do we have for enacting change?

[alderon666]

@the Brazilian guy, can you post the top 16 archetypes? 118 players is comparable to a USA ptq.

The tournament was invite only, so there's that.

Only have the top 8 breakdown.

Jund Blast with 3x Blast MD (1x Chain of Mephistopheles + 2x Choke SB)
UR Delver
4x Jeskai Blade
ANT
Jund with 2x Ooze and 1x Chain of Mephistopheles MD (+1 Chain and 3x Blast SB)

All blue decks or blue hate, and a lone storm deck. But the storm deck is there because the player is just the best storm player in Brazil.

[ReAnimator]

Solidarity? Drawing cards and untapping Islands in the process is pretty damn good in that list.

Sure it could go in that deck, do you think it would push it over the top? i certainly don't, i doubt it even comes close. If it was tier 1 for whatever reason, do you see it being totally unfair and actually hard to hate out for any deck that wanted to? I certainly don't.
I doubt any tempo deck would be a positive matchup at all, same with Reanimator or S&T.

[Barook]

Jund Blast with 3x Blast MD (1x Chain of Mephistopheles + 2x Choke SB)

4 Blasts actually, 3 Pyros and 1 REB.

[mikeshimoji]

I think we have to approach this from a more game design point of view, which is what I imagine WoTC does if they give a shit about the format at all.

We are all in the interest of having fun playing legacy - for most of us that means meaningful decision points leading to a satisfying conclusion to the game and match. This means each of the players gets to do a bunch of things that are relevant to the game (making relevant strategic and tactical decisions) then eventually one person wins in a reasonable time frame (a game takes maybe 10-20 mins on average if no slow play). The mechanical reasons aren't relevant at this stage, the idea is that we have a starting point for what the format should be about.

So we have to ask, in the context of decision making, what does brainstorm (and cantrips in general) allow us to do? In combination with fetchlands, it allows players to manipulate the most easily understood and tangible resource - cards. It allows management of options. That's why I've always been happy to have brainstorm in the format. Variance is reduced and game conclusions are reached based very heavily on play decision.

I think if people seriously want to discuss reasons for bannings of any kind there either needs to be a sound theoretical basis for how the format will change, or lock some decent legacy players in a room for a week without whats being banned to try and get a feel for the new format. The same goes for unbannings - there needs to be some time invested to figure out what the new meta will be like.

There are tons of fun formats that don't have as powerful card selection as legacy does and that's because they still have meaningful decision points. There's no reason I can think of that culling a sacred cow would do bad, but I don't think it would do any particular good either. Decks would change and the meta would adapt, but to what end? So we can say a certain colour had more top16s than another? I don't mean to be condescending, but what is the actual value of colour diversity? What other reasons do we have for enacting change?

I think color diversity and color personality is exactly what makes Magic different from other card games and have its charm. Perhaps the decision making is fun for those who want to win using strategy, but there are plenty here in Japan who loves/are loyal to their colors because they represent somerthing about themseves. I dont know why things have to be viewed through the lens of competiton all the time. My 2.

I also am pretty sure wotc cares about color too. There have been decision of bannings by them due to color diversity, no?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

The term "blue deck" shouldn't even be a thing. The archtype isn't "blue". It's like saying Elves, Jund, etc are "green decks". Color is irrelevant. The archtype is what counts. Delver is nothing like Miracles which is nothing like stoneblade which is nothing like high tide.

Nobody said that. At least I never said that.
What I find annoying is the repetitive gaming experience "fetch, crack, blue dual, Ponder, go" and "BS, draw3, crack fetch" and "Delver, Daze, Stifle, Waste". It's getting old. And the power of BS is what makes this all happening.

Also, I don't like how the people who enjoy other things in MtG than counting to ten are repeatedly said to "go play in your kitchen" like if creature combat is something inferior to owlin mine decks the kind of Miracles. Legacy was a place for creature decks, but it's slowly turning into Vintage lite with it's bomby plays (AdN/PiF, CB+Top, Natural Order... well, the whole Elves, stupid things like SnT into overcosted win-nows, Jace). If I'd wanted to play Vintage with its randomness factors, the EDHesque nature, the "resolve big spells" over "build an incremental advantage", I'd play Vintage, right? So forgive me if I find it irritating that the last MtG format I play is turning into something I dislike. Again, it's quite possible that BS and its power is the reason why is this happening.

BS is the best spell in format and while its right that there will always be the best spell, trouble of BS is that it! far too powerful. It undoes more (in)correct mulligan decissions than Wheel of Fortune and Trevor Humphries combined. It's as close to Ancestral Recall as possible. Yeah, it draws only one out of three, but the two cards returned are very often unimportant to have in hand (if not outright unwanted - Progenitus, AdN returned by BS then drawn via GP and played with LED mana, other examples exist). BS allows much more powerful turns managment, as it opens a possibility for a switch between responses (mostly counterspells, but also discard protection) or eot tricks (mostly BS into removal, but also BS into winning hand).

By what measure it's decided that card should be banned? If anybody says that power level has nothing to do with it and it's only a matter of oppressivness, then I ask when does this come from. Illustration? Expansion symbol? Cards are oppressive when they are powerful. Period. Name one oppressive card that is weak. Please. Are there banned cards that are not strong anymore? Of course they are. Are there cards that ended on banned list for other reasons then power? Sure they exist, Shahrathing, Chaos Orb, CfB... Of course that some of the banned stuff is not dangerous anymore and wouldn't make any impact, see the past experiences like Land Tax. But the most usual reason to ban card is its power.

Look, I'm not saying that BS should be banned. I'm not sure. (Also, with each day I'm taking less and less care, as I start to despise the game and the community more and more.) But what I don't like and understand is how the BS crowd cannot stand other people's opinions and feels an urge to belittle anyone daring to look for different things in MtG than counting to ten and undoing mulligans like there's no rule at starting hands at all.

Speaking of color identity.. well, if that's so unimportant, than why there are five colors with distinct features (except for blue which can anythng including fast aggro)? In b4 "color identity doesn't matter" - it does. Look up the price of blue duals. Do they not chokehold Legacy's growth?
This brings me to "pillar of format". Its not BS. If that phrase means something like the Vintage pillars, then we already got them. Like there are Shops in Vintage, here we got blue duals. Similarly to Bazaars, we got Cradle. And similarly to Drain, there's Karakas. Stupid comparisons? W/e. Just check the prices.

I dislike where's Legacy heading. If it's due to the power of BS (ok, and the power of recent printings),then I'd love it to go.

(Silently disappearing to his kitchen table...)

[Quasim0ff]

BS is the best spell in format and while its right that there will always be the best spell, trouble of BS is that it! far too powerful. It undoes more (in)correct mulligan decissions than Wheel of Fortune and Trevor Humphries combined. It's as close to Ancestral Recall as possible. Yeah, it draws only one out of three, but the two cards returned are very often unimportant to have in hand (if not outright unwanted - Progenitus, AdN returned by BS then drawn via GP and played with LED mana, other examples exist). BS allows much more powerful turns managment, as it opens a possibility for a switch between responses (mostly counterspells, but also discard protection) or eot tricks (mostly BS into removal, but also BS into winning hand)
This is a pretty fun paragraph, considering an Ancestral Recall was just printed.

[Zombie]

I think we have to approach this from a more game design point of view, which is what I imagine WoTC does if they give a shit about the format at all.

We are all in the interest of having fun playing legacy - for most of us that means meaningful decision points leading to a satisfying conclusion to the game and match. This means each of the players gets to do a bunch of things that are relevant to the game (making relevant strategic and tactical decisions) then eventually one person wins in a reasonable time frame (a game takes maybe 10-20 mins on average if no slow play). The mechanical reasons aren't relevant at this stage, the idea is that we have a starting point for what the format should be about.

So we have to ask, in the context of decision making, what does brainstorm (and cantrips in general) allow us to do? In combination with fetchlands, it allows players to manipulate the most easily understood and tangible resource - cards. It allows management of options. That's why I've always been happy to have brainstorm in the format. Variance is reduced and game conclusions are reached based very heavily on play decision.

I think if people seriously want to discuss reasons for bannings of any kind there either needs to be a sound theoretical basis for how the format will change, or lock some decent legacy players in a room for a week without whats being banned to try and get a feel for the new format. The same goes for unbannings - there needs to be some time invested to figure out what the new meta will be like.

There are tons of fun formats that don't have as powerful card selection as legacy does and that's because they still have meaningful decision points. There's no reason I can think of that culling a sacred cow would do bad, but I don't think it would do any particular good either. Decks would change and the meta would adapt, but to what end? So we can say a certain colour had more top16s than another? I don't mean to be condescending, but what is the actual value of colour diversity? What other reasons do we have for enacting change?

Thing here is, blue won't suddenly lose the ability to control its draws. There's still a saturation of strong card draw/selection effects in blue. Ponder, Preordain, Ancestral, JTMS (and maybe Delve draws) are cards and do their job well, and there should be enough of them that you can still do characteristically blue things.

It's just that their power level is more in line with the likes of GSZ, Symbiote-Visionary engine, the more common Glimpses that won't just kill you, SDT, Bob, Sylvan Library, KotR, SFM etc. Brainstorm is leagues ahead of all those barring maybe the nuttier side of Glimpse chains.

It would mean you have to decide whether to keep mana open, consider a card's clunkiness more when building decks and keeping hands, and are more vulnerable to opposing disruption like discard like normal colors have to. It's not like anyone is going after Ponder and Preordain here.

[M+1]

I think color diversity and color personality is exactly what makes Magic different from other card games and have its charm. Perhaps the decision making is fun for those who want to win using strategy, but there are plenty here in Japan who loves/are loyal to their colors because they represent somerthing about themseves. I dont know why things have to be viewed through the lens of competiton all the time. My 2.

I also am pretty sure wotc cares about color too. There have been decision of bannings by them due to color diversity, no?
Yes colors do matter, but you write the word Magic like it is a format. I think it is important to remember that the constructed formats are very different, and exist for different reasons. The color balance argument may be very valid for Standard and Limited, but not so much for Legacy which is a different beast. One of the reasons Legacy exists in the first place is that people are allowed to play with all the cards they own, as long as they are not completely messed up powerwise. Using the ban list to manage and balance the five colors in a format with 20+ years of Magics greatest hit cards, including a number cards that are obvious design mistakes by modern standards, would be a disaster. Banning popular cards, just for being the most powerful cards of a certain color, would be wrong for Legacy IMHO.

[menace13]

Banning popular cards, just for being the most powerful cards of a certain color.
How are most banned cards NOT one of the most powerful and popular cards in their color?

[M+1]

How are most banned cards NOT one of the most powerful and popular cards in their color?
They obviously are, but they are not banned because of their color, but because of their power.
I hope that you can see the difference?
Time Walk is not banned for being blue, and similarly Black Lotus is not banned for being an artifact.

[Zombie]

They obviously are, but they are not banned because of their color, but because of their power.
I hope that you can see the difference?
Time Walk is not banned for being blue, and similarly Black Lotus is not banned for being an artifact.

The suggestion for banning Brainstorm is not because it is blue. It's suggested because it's everywhere, it's by far the best card in the format and you basically don't ever want to not have it. The bigger the event, the more the card's power shines. The color complaints are because such a powerful card is blue. You have to play blue to have the power and consistency.

And that one card and it's cousins being everywhere creates a repetitive play experience where people dance the same cantrip dance over and over again. Without Brainstorm the power discrepancy between blue's style and other colors' styles would be a lot less and thus encourage people to play other colors, which even if they end up playing similar strategies will have a different feel to them, which then ends up in a less monotonic feel and more fun.

I mean, let's face it. None or next to none of us are getting paid to play this game - in fact we pay exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege. I'm as competitively minded as anyone, and playing just for the lulz holds no appeal for me. But I play competitively because it's fun and satisfying, not because I'm following some robotic, relativistic ideal of it. If the standard play experience becomes so monotonic as to not be fun anymore, what's the goddamn point in a 1500 euro pile of cardboard?

[Lemnear]

Yes colors do matter, but you write the word Magic like it is a format. I think it is important to remember that the constructed formats are very different, and exist for different reasons. The color balance argument may be very valid for Standard and Limited, but not so much for Legacy which is a different beast. One of the reasons Legacy exists in the first place is that people are allowed to play with all the cards they own, as long as they are not completely messed up powerwise. Using the ban list to manage and balance the five colors in a format with 20+ years of Magics greatest hit cards, including a number cards that are obvious design mistakes by modern standards, would be a disaster. Banning popular cards, just for being the most powerful cards of a certain color, would be wrong for Legacy IMHO.

I think the point is that quite some players (including me) care for strategies, cards and effects rather than colors. If we feel like playing a certain card, mana is adjusted and the card enters the deck. You cherrypick your options in modern MTG. Simple.

[Lemnear]

This thread is amazing. So did you literally whined that your petdeck would be unplayable?
The adaptation won't be possible anymore? Wow! And what about all those non-blue lists that cannot adapt to nowadays metagame? Irrelevant, I guess.

No, I just highlighted that you can't play decks like Storm which rely on 1cc spells against Misstep and Snapcaster. This was as true for storm as for Goblins. We tested lists with critical 1cc spells against Misstep decks at that time and it was just THAT BAD. In fact, I did not play storm during the misstep era because of that problem (so what?), but picked a deck which dodged the metagame as I usually do, because for certain decks and metagame structure there is sure a thres.hold for adaption and crossing it equals extinction of the archetype, which is natural for the evolution of eternal formats. There is quite some difference between adding metagame hate like chalice or REB to your deck and being unable to resolve 90% of your spells against Misstep + Countertop-lock. Sorry that I picked an example, I actually knew that I was talking, about to illustrate that ine point on my list. I'll pick Aether Vial and Phyrexian Dreadnought the next time instead


Edit:

How are most banned cards NOT one of the most powerful and popular cards in their color?

We can pick Sheherazade as example. It was neither powerful, popular or broken, but plain annoying to play against because it is a tool for stalling. We can also look at earthcraft which was a pretty annoying card back in the days because it basically removed summoning sickness and turned any creature into a llanowar elf for mere two mana which was also used for some endless lasting turns, but is a joke today.

[Hopo]

I think the point is that quite some players (including me) care for strategies, cards and effects rather than colors. If we feel like playing a certain card, mana is adjusted and the card enters the deck. You cherrypick your options in modern MTG. Simple.

This is the only thing that matters and every other approach to competitive tournament legacy should be classified as casual. Which apparently is something the people who are so concerned about colour"balance" are not willing to accept.

[maharis]

I'm going to repeat a version of my post upthread to see if anyone wants to respond.

The issue that bothers people is that the pool of Legacy-playable cards is getting smaller. That is because of the raw power of the blue cantrip base. I know someone will point to the success of a random Loam or Jund deck here or there to try and discredit this point but the fact is, based on any way you slice the data, that the best decks rely on the card selection and filtering of Brainstorm and friends.

Let's compare a few top-placing decks, starting with BBD's GPNJ winner (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76124) and Eli Kassis' 14th-place Grixis list (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76144).

They share 45 of the exact same cards:

1 Basic Island
9 fetchlands
6 blue duals
20 total cantrip shell cards (4 each Probe, BS, Ponder, FoW, and Cruise)
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Pyroblast
4 Young Pyromancer

They share a further 5 cards whose functions are largely a matter of taste:
Each play another land
Each play additional counterspell: Eli 1 Counterspell, BBD 1+1 Spell Pierce (not counting the second one yet, just the first one)
Each play three pieces of creature removal: Eli a 4th Lightning Bolt, 1 Forked Bolt, and 1 Sudden Demise; BBD 3 Swords to Plowshares.

That's 50 cards that are essentially the same. That means you can boil the differences in the decks down to 10 cards:
BBD: 4 Stoneforge Mystic, 2 True-Name Nemesis, 1 Batterskull, 1 Umezawa's Jitte, the other Spell Pierce, and 1 Plains
Eli: 3 Cabal Therapy, 2 Dack Fayden, 2 Snapcaster Mage, 1 Notion Thief, 1 Baleful Strix, 1 Nihil Spellbomb

Eli's deck is more interesting, sure, but the differences are all at the margins. In fact, the win conditions of either decks are the only difference. The rest of the decks are identical suites of lands, cantrips, and disruption.

Now let's look at two other decks that also share two colors: The Jund Blast deck from the other page (https://www.facebook.com/CentralMagic/photos/a.893150140710147.1073741956.405738072784692/893150327376795/?type=3&theater) and the highest placing BUG deck from the last SCG: (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76653)

They share:
4 black fetchlands
2 Bayou
3 other black-producing lands
2 other green duals
4 Wasteland
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Abrupt Decay

That's 26 cards. Again: These are decks that share two colors. They only share 26 cards. Hell, let's just give 'em the 27th (Jund's Pulse, BUG's Decay). That's 18-23 fewer cards in common than blue-based three-color decks. Simply by not playing blue, a world of new cards are opened up.

How does the BUG deck compare to BBD's deck?
4 blue fetchlands
2 non-blue fetchlands
5 blue duals
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Treasure Cruise
2 True-Name Nemesis

That's 28 cards. And let's line up the other similarities: Each has an additional 2 fetchlands and at least 4 pieces of creature removal (Abrupt Decay vs. Bolt/STP). And 2 additional counterspell effects (Daze & Spell Pierce). This is between two decks where the only common color is blue.

The efficiency and power of Brainstorm makes it almost always correct to start there and add at the margins. It constrains deck construction. And only one of these four decks features Delver of Secrets, so clearly not playing that card is no obstacle to a highly efficient and successful deck.

When you don't have a clear-cut best card in that way, so many more cards are available to you. Let's look at how the Jund deck compares to another deck it shares two colors with: The 8th-place Lands deck from the latest SCG (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76652)

4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Punishing Fire
4 Wasteland
1 Forest
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 other green fetchlands
2 green dual lands

Only 18 cards. Only 3 non-land cards.


Pyroblast is there fore Treasure Cruise, but it's the straw that breaks the boat. Brainstorm, as innocent the card can be, is the real reason such a Treasure Cruise deck can even exist. The format was already playing maindeck Pyroblast in blue decks due to the ubiquity of Brainstorm and blue decks prior to KTK. Treasure Cruise simply made it glaringly obvious at just how saturated with Islands this format has become. It is a bad sign for the format that Pyroblast is maindeck only in the sense that deckbuilding addresses that saturation. But it's not the color imbalance that is the unhealthy part. (others have and will continue to point out that color balance is a farcical idea given Blue's strength in everything) It's that Brainstorm enables all these blue decks to be Blue without consideration for other cards. Delver of Secrets abuses the hell out of this, but Miracles, Combo, and Midrange blue decks too. The card is ridiculously good and the onus is on non-Brainstorm decks to answer as to "why not?"

Exactly. Why is red in every list of the Brazilian tournament? Because the best card for fighting blue is red. It could be a Yu-Gi-Oh card and people would be cracking those tins to jam it in next to their Brainstorms.


I think the story of this format is one more complicated than a simple and unimpeded dominance of Brainstorm. The "bluing" effect that Elves has had in the metagame is something I've only heard discussed once, on Eternal Central. Terminus has had an even more profound influence, and I can't believe no mention of Miracles was made in the article under discussion.

That is true. So if absent more blue decks these takeover, we have to think about other bans. That's OK. We might find out that not having Brainstorm in the format opens up new answers to these decks.


The role of finance is also something to consider, I think. When one can invest $X in blue fetches, duals, and Force of Will to make several strategically different and viable decks, or invest $Y (less than X but still substantial) in the cards required to make decks of a single, different, archetype... $X ils a better deal to a long-term player. All the advice in the "what deck should I play" threads tends to be "blue deck." Even if I wanted to play Elves, for instance, I wouldn't be willing to trade my blue stuff for the deck... nor am I jumping at the chance to invest in 4 Gaea's Cradle. Blue it is, then!

I don't disagree with this, but I disagree with the bolded. All this so-called "strategic diversity" revolves around the strength of a few cards. The real strategy is "play the blue cantrip suite, then win with whatever." And there will always be a most effective win condition with those cards. There aren't a ton of Bant decks now, but if you ban Delver, maybe Bant becomes the best deck for some reason. And then where are you?

[maharis]

I think the point is that quite some players (including me) care for strategies, cards and effects rather than colors. If we feel like playing a certain card, mana is adjusted and the card enters the deck. You cherrypick your options in modern MTG. Simple.


This is the only thing that matters and every other approach to competitive tournament legacy should be classified as casual. Which apparently is something the people who are so concerned about colour"balance" are not willing to accept.

Except this statement says nothing. Care for strategies, cards, and effects rather than colors? So you'd be fine if all black cards were banned because all you care about is strategy? Certainly the other four colors can satisfy your strategic needs.

Or do you enjoy some of the strategy that comes with playing black cards specifically?

What about the people who enjoy the strategy of flipping Delver and blowing up everything in its way for 7 turns?

What about the people who enjoy old-style Goblin strategies? You've indicated there's no place for them.

What about the people who enjoy Survival of the Fittest-based toolbox strategies? Same as above.

This discussion is about balancing the format to make it accessible and enjoyable to the most players possible, not satisfying Lemnear's own personal need to do whatever with cardboard.

You consistently say that banning Brainstorm would cripple two decks, Storm and Miracles, specifically. You say people want to do that so they can play their own "pet decks." So you suggest banning other cards that won't impact Storm or Miracles. How are you only concerned with "strategy, cards and effects?" You only care about preserving what you want.

[FoolofaTook]

I don't disagree with this, but I disagree with the bolded. All this so-called "strategic diversity" revolves around the strength of a few cards. The real strategy is "play the blue cantrip suite, then win with whatever." And there will always be a most effective win condition with those cards. There aren't a ton of Bant decks now, but if you ban Delver, maybe Bant becomes the best deck for some reason. And then where are you?

Why would anybody who was bent on winning not play a list in which at least 8 cards allowed them to dig 3 deep into their pile to find answers when they need them?

Doing that simplifies the mulligan process, since you'll see more cards early, and it makes the mid-game stronger since you'll have card advantage off of the real draw spells after the opening hands have been depleted.

It's actually very depressing to realize that at the highest levels there is one suite of cards that must be included in serious attempts to win. If Magic was a game of skill in which everybody shared the same pieces this would be ok. However at it's heart Magic is a game of chance in which bringing the best cards to the table is just openers in the conversation and all the skill in the world won't save you when the draw goes sour on you all of a sudden.

In that context having to play 8 or more cards out of a limited set of 20 or so that qualify as "best" cards is ridiculous. If the draw is going to define things as much as it does over the course of a long event it's a very bad thing to have the few cards that remedy that a bit confined to one color.

Things like Sylvan Library being a 1-of or 2-of in the best lists that use it are also depressing. They highlight how important the draw is and how ineffective colors other than blue are in smoothing things out. If you had lots of draw effects going into lists 4 times then things would be a bit different. But what we have instead is only 4 effects that let you look at multiple cards going into top tier lists as a play set (Brainstorm, Ponder, Treasure Cruise and Sensei's Divining Top) and 3 of them are blue and the 4th only goes into blue lists as a 4-of.

That's just broken.

Really WotC should ban Brainstorm, Ponder, Treasure Cruise and Sensei's Divining Top. It's not like blue would suffer from having no ways to look at cards after that and it's not like anybody else's options would get better, they'd just be playing on a more even field with blue-based lists.

[aluisiocsantos]

While I've always been pro-ban of Delver of Secrets, even when I was playing mud and a rogue sneak attack deck, I eventually change dto Jund.. and right now I'm mostly annoyed by Treasure Cruise the most since it blows Jund's tactics which is essentially creating card advantage. A hymn to tourach is actually giving them 1 cards after TC resolves.

I mean, TC proeminence is there because Delver exists, but still, I just keep getting pissed. First, the blue shell gets a flying Nacatl without the land disadvantage. Then it gets a SECOND Delver card (TNN), and now two cards that are identical to banned cards + benefits from being disrupted - oh and they also blow DRS and Tarmogoyf shenanigans.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Except this statement says nothing. Care for strategies, cards, and effects rather than colors? So you'd be fine if all black cards were banned because all you care about is strategy? Certainly the other four colors can satisfy your strategic needs.

Or do you enjoy some of the strategy that comes with playing black cards specifically?

What about the people who enjoy the strategy of flipping Delver and blowing up everything in its way for 7 turns?

What about the people who enjoy old-style Goblin strategies? You've indicated there's no place for them.

What about the people who enjoy Survival of the Fittest-based toolbox strategies? Same as above.

This discussion is about balancing the format to make it accessible and enjoyable to the most players possible, not satisfying Lemnear's own personal need to do whatever with cardboard.

You consistently say that banning Brainstorm would cripple two decks, Storm and Miracles, specifically. You say people want to do that so they can play their own "pet decks." So you suggest banning other cards that won't impact Storm or Miracles. How are you only concerned with "strategy, cards and effects?" You only care about preserving what you want.

Color-related differences are also strategy-related differences. Sure we could have 5 different colors, perhaps even more if that's what WotC wanted. But if they all play the same (think of this as Planar Chaos color shifts for same 60 card deck), then there is no true difference other than aesthetics.

And that is the problem with Delver archetype: all of them are similar strategies with one common color that comprises a large part of the competitive environment (see the decks that made it to Day 2 at GP NJ). Delver does more to make the format stale than Brainstorm does, as Brainstorm can at least make fringe-playable decks more consistent and is found in more than just Uxx Tempo.

[aluisiocsantos]

Exactly. Brainstorm is used in many different deck strategies, and generally combo decks are the most reliant on the card, and I'm fine with that.

[AznSeal]

I think color diversity and color personality is exactly what makes Magic different from other card games and have its charm. Perhaps the decision making is fun for those who want to win using strategy, but there are plenty here in Japan who loves/are loyal to their colors because they represent somerthing about themseves. I dont know why things have to be viewed through the lens of competiton all the time. My 2.

I also am pretty sure wotc cares about color too. There have been decision of bannings by them due to color diversity, no?

But the banning is solely for the purpose of competition. Hate brainstorm? Ban it on your kitchen table.

[mikeshimoji]

But the banning is solely for the purpose of competition. Hate brainstorm? Ban it on your kitchen table.

I never said i hate brainstorm... But anywhoo, whether for competition or not, color is what makes magic magic. Personal opinion.

[Julian23]

Am I the only one here who actually doesn't care at all whether Brainstorm is banned or not? As in: I don't think it needs to be addressed - but would also be super excited to see what happened if it was gone?

I much more care about strategies. I don't like that Delver enables the strongest Aggro strategy to be paired with Countermagic. In the past we had Aggro-Control side-by-side with pure Aggro as in Zoo; the later doesn't have a place in the meta anymore. (It would be easy to point to Miracles here but in fact, Zoo was already pretty much gone long before Terminus was released. Funny enough, partially due to Maverick/SFM).

[AznSeal]

I never said i hate brainstorm... But anywhoo, whether for competition or not, color is what makes magic magic. Personal opinion.

You're free to have it. I love casual magic from time to time with no restrictions but that's casual and not meant to be effected by the ban list.




That's just broken.

Really WotC should ban Brainstorm, Ponder, Treasure Cruise and Sensei's Divining Top. It's not like blue would suffer from having no ways to look at cards after that and it's not like anybody else's options would get better, they'd just be playing on a more even field with blue-based lists.

Now I know he's trolling lol.