Brainstorms 14/Top16 @ SCG Nashville

Holy Crap that's the most Brainstormtastic Top 16 I think I've ever seen. Tezzerator and Merfolk are the only 2 decks not running 4 BS. Anyone seen any MORE BS saturated Top 16's of late?

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...B2%5D=&compari

Deck Finish Player Event Date Location
Esper Stoneblade 1st
Esper Stoneblade 2nd
NO Bant 3rd
Shardless BUG 4th
ANT 5th
ANT 6th
Esper Stoneblade 7th
Tezzerator 8th
Ad Nauseam 9th
Sneak and Show 10th
RUG Delver 11th
Sneak and Show 12th
Merfolk 13th
RUG Delver 14th
Team America 15th
Reanimator 16th

Crazy...

And its fucking beautiful.

And next week, we get the BS supporters post a Top 8 with less Brainstorms. :rolleyes:

If BS really is that much of a problem, people are going to play more Notion Thiefs. The blow-outs it can create in response to BS/Jace are really devestating, as the SCG semi-finals have shown today.

Nothing strange with that. It's Legacy, we'll see fewer Brainstorms next week.

Unless you really want to feed the Modern-supporters inside Hasbro with some more ideas to hurt our format a little more. A banning on BS could be a very convenient predatory strategy, I guess.

I didn't even look at the top 8 lists, but I did watch the finals and as soon as I saw 2 of the same decks up there I knew there was going to be one of these fucking threads tonight asking to ban something.

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Originally Posted by Koby

And its fucking beautiful.

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So true.

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Originally Posted by SilverGreen

Nothing strange with that. It's Legacy, we'll see fewer Brainstorms next week.

Unless you really want to feed the Modern-supporters inside Hasbro with some more ideas to hurt our format a little more. A banning on BS could be a very convenient predatory strategy, I guess.

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My favorite post on the Source so far.

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Originally Posted by dontbiteitholmes

I didn't even look at the top 8 lists, but I did watch the finals and as soon as I saw 2 of the same decks up there I knew there was going to be one of these fucking threads tonight asking to ban something.

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Couldn't have said it better.

Brainstorm will never be banned. The reason for it is that Eternal players want to play with the card. The bluepocalypse in vintage caused many players to transition to legacy, but modern doesn't have brainstorm in the format so if brainstorm would get banned in legacy, people will simply quit the game instead of migrate to another format.

Leave Brainstorm alone unless you hate legacy.

Not only are 14/16 Brainstorm decks, but 16/16 are blue! The real problem is basic Island as it enables Brainstorm even against possible Wasteland shenanigans :mad:

and then they decide to print a island-hoser in blue with Lord of Atlantis....

10 different decks represented in that list.

The increased representation of Brainstorm is just a side effect of the increased representation of decks that can beat Show and Tell.

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Originally Posted by Malakai

10 different decks represented in that list.

The increased representation of Brainstorm is just a side effect of the increased representation of decks that can beat Show and Tell.

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I think its more of this, the most repressive card to non-counterbased strategies atm is show and tell. There are plenty of hatebears and non-counter answers to storm, dredge, etc. Not much hoses cheat turn 3 gristelbrand or omescience into emrakul from hand. It hurts the "fair," decks that just want to be normal aggro. Aggro decks that don't have ways around show and tell can't exist and many aggro decks that do have answers do not have strong enough ones.

I'm not arguing for any bans, we need an effective hate to show and tell for non-maverick decks, and a more powerful hate against griselbrand wouldn't' be unhealthy for the format either.

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Originally Posted by dunkle_stille

Not only are 14/16 Brainstorm decks, but 16/16 are blue! The real problem is basic Island as it enables Brainstorm even against possible Wasteland shenanigans :mad:

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Then ban Island? :laugh:

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Originally Posted by kingtk3

Then ban Island? :laugh:

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Congratulations on your mindless parroting of the most tired joke in Magic.

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Originally Posted by kingtk3

Then ban Island? :laugh:

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Did anyone even play a basic island... ? ;-P

Anyone noticed it was also 12/16 w. FoW (except the 3 ANT and the BUG pile)?!

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Originally Posted by Umezete

I think its more of this, the most repressive card to non-counterbased strategies atm is show and tell. There are plenty of hatebears and non-counter answers to storm, dredge, etc. Not much hoses cheat turn 3 gristelbrand or omescience into emrakul from hand. It hurts the "fair," decks that just want to be normal aggro. Aggro decks that don't have ways around show and tell can't exist and many aggro decks that do have answers do not have strong enough ones.

I'm not arguing for any bans, we need an effective hate to show and tell for non-maverick decks, and a more powerful hate against griselbrand wouldn't' be unhealthy for the format either.

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Ethersworn Canonist has been one of the most underplayed cards against Show&Tell strategies for quite a while. It's pretty good against anything non-Sneak Attack when combined with other forms of applying pressure and having a way to deal with the card your opponent puts into play via Show and Tell, e.g. Qasali Pridemage, Krosan Grip etc. It's not "hosing" Show and Tell but a really good card especially against the non-creature variants.

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Originally Posted by thefringthing

Congratulations on your mindless parroting of the most tired joke in Magic.

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Thanks, at least I have some sense of humor.

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If BS really is that much of a problem, people are going to play more Notion Thiefs. The blow-outs it can create in response to BS/Jace are really devestating, as the SCG semi-finals have shown today.

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Not that I totally disagree, but Notion Thief will be played in a deck with Brainstorm. If one's just looking to reduce the number of Brainstorms in the Top 16, playing more Blue isn't going to do that.

I get that Brainstorm is real good, but I do not believe that its presence in decks is a sign that "decks which play BS top 8 more often because of BS". All of those lists are playing Brainstorm because they are playing Blue; meaning, no one is like rocking random decks that splash for Brainstorm because it's so fucking good with fetches and cards in your library. I'm sure there's some corner case where some insidious young Magic player splashed for Brainstorm in, like, Goblins or Zilla Stompy or whatever back in the day, but you don't ever see that.

It's one thing to piss and moan about Blue dominance. I hate Delver and Jace too, man. Brainstorm's prevalence is just a residue of a different issue though. That Merfolk player probably had to justify his choice on the include - people still go back and forth on its usefulness in that deck.

Notion Thief is clearly WotC's attempt to attack Brainstorm and Jace TMS while making the card somewhat vanilla in other formats.

After that blow out in Nashville, people will start considering and second-guessing when they see 4 or more Mana sources in which they are capable of producing UB.

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Originally Posted by twndomn

Notion Thief is clearly WotC's attempt to attack Brainstorm and Jace TMS while making the card somewhat vanilla in other formats.

After that blow out in Nashville, people will start considering and second-guessing when they see 4 or more Mana sources in which they are capable of producing UB.

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I don't expect NT to make much of an impact in Legacy just because of its casting cost. But if I'm wrong and he does become a md or sb standard, I welcome it. As a dedicated Goblins player it makes me smirk to envision more card slots in the meta being dedicated to fighting BS. That gives more wiggle-room to the rest of us non-blue players. I don't see BS going anywhere or even getting less popular after Notion Thief, but I do see NT stealing sb slots that could otherwise be Engineered Plagues.

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Originally Posted by jrw1985

I don't expect NT to make much of an impact in Legacy just because of its casting cost. But if I'm wrong and he does become a md or sb standard, I welcome it. As a dedicated Goblins player it makes me smirk to envision more card slots in the meta being dedicated to fighting BS. That gives more wiggle-room to the rest of us non-blue players. I don't see BS going anywhere or even getting less popular after Notion Thief, but I do see NT stealing sb slots that could otherwise be Engineered Plagues.

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This.
Also, the amount of brainstorms would tell me to play Dnt at that event.