All B/R update speculation.

On a non-related note, at least playing ANT/TES/DD whatever requires some counting and calculating, even though Ad Nauseum simplified things a lot. And playing with Dredge postboard requires some thinking.

With Sneak Show I get the impression it's cast either of your namesake cards and draw 14 or wipe your opponent's board. Unless your opponent has more counters than you. Or you have to play around discard or Karakas. But other than that it strikes me as a pretty silly combo deck...

Maybe someone who plays it can comment on the intricacies involved?

EDIT: Just to clarify, this has nothing to do with whether card X should be banned.

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Originally Posted by trivial_matters

Maybe someone who plays it can comment on the intricacies involved?

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Deck is brainless. I would recommend it to anyone who is hungover.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by trivial_matters

On a non-related note, at least playing ANT/TES/DD whatever requires some counting and calculating, even though Ad Nauseum simplified things a lot. And playing with Dredge postboard requires some thinking.

With Sneak Show I get the impression it's cast either of your namesake cards and draw 14 or wipe your opponent's board. Unless your opponent has more counters than you. Or you have to play around discard or Karakas. But other than that it strikes me as a pretty silly combo deck...

Maybe someone who plays it can comment on the intricacies involved?

EDIT: Just to clarify, this has nothing to do with whether card X should be banned.

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http://blip.tv/scglive/scgorl-leg-to...howell-6162584

Watch this match and tell me there is no thinking. Then watch the finals where he loses with a Griselbrand in play.

Edit: also notice how both of these decks would likely lose to cavern of souls-lackey. I think most decks can be played on autopilot, but brainstorm/ponder/muligans are some of the most skill intensive decisions you can make.

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Originally Posted by Star|Scream

Let's unban time walk and black lotus because they are also just powerful cards. Everything will be fine then, right?

You have to draw the line, and you are saying that a turn one 14 card draw is below your line, and I am saying it's way above my line. I suppose that you could tell me to go play modern, but I could just as easily tell you to go play vintage.

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So we have decided to make this discussion unproductive?

"You have to draw the line, and you are saying that a turn one 14 card draw is below your line, and I am saying it's way above my line."

and leave it at that.

No one told you to go play anything. What I did say was what show and tell does is no more broken or degenerate then so many other things that are legal in legacy when left unchecked.

It takes way more then 2 weeks of results to say a card should be axed. Give people a chance to react and prepare for these decks. If at that point they are still putting up numbers where it's play x or play to beat x then by all mean it deserves the ban.

Not sure if you were trying to troll me with your comments but that type of post I would not expect to get on this site.

when is the next B&R List from mothership ?

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Originally Posted by rnightingale

when is the next B&R List from mothership ?

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In about 20 days.

I've been playing Sneak & Show since Griselband came out and here some input to stop the whining before it really starts. :rolleyes:

Sneak & Show is not too strong for the format. As pointed out it is harder to hate out than other combo decks relying on GY or storm, but the deck is forced to mulligan a lot and to run dead cards (i.e. drawing multiple sneak attack or creatures after a mulligan feels like the deck beats itself). So it can never do this powerful stuff as consistent as UW, RUG, Maverick, Belcher, Reanimator, Burn,... implement their gamplan.

Altough KoR into Karakas can be beaten G1, imo Maverick has a much better matchup against Sneak attack than against Storm. In case you want to gamble you can S&T into Emrakul, but they will often enough have that knight. So with S&T Griselbrand you can draw 7, but you won't have a lot of time to setup the win (low life) and you need a lot of mana to win with sneak attack the same turn so pridemage does not spoil the party. So overall, Wasteland, Thalia, Pridemage, KoR & Teeg are already a lot of maindeckable cards to interact with Sneak & Show in a meaningful way.

UW players did not figure out at all how to beat Sneak&Show. A lot of them dig for counterspells and leave all the mana open without applying pressure, just to loose a couterwar. The best weapon that they have is Ethersworn Canonist. It can only be answered by Sneak&Show with FoW and invalidates sneaks 12+ counterspells post-board.

Altough RUGis a slight dog against Sneak, the deck has game against all combo decks. Can't think of some better SB options, but red-blast and maybe blue-blast (vs. blood moon, sneak attack & red-blast) are good options. Here it is all about learning how play & disrupt properly i.e. maybe not letting all the cantrips resolve and play Goyf instead of mongoose altough you are tapped out for a turn.

Besides that there is a countertop-thopter build running ensaring bridge & humility which has a favourable matchup against RUG, Maverick and Sneak Attack but I suppose people don't play it because they don't want to go into extra time...:tongue:

Also Team America (classic tempo not deed control) which is pretty weak right now has a much better combo matchup than RUG. Heavy discard can be answered much easier than a canonist, but getting attacked from so many different angles and a fast clock will always be a combo players nightmare.

Not to forget the other combo decks: Elves, Dredge, Reanimator, TES, ANT, Belcher & High-tide all put up a fair fight against sneak (hard to call a favourite in any of those MU's, except for Belcher beeing dog and Elves beeing a favourite.)

So my advice: Stop whining, start thinking and don't let some short term results (nut-draws from sneak) overestimate its strength.

Is it mainly Americans who are advocating these rapid bans for every tournament winning strategy or is this a more international phenomenon? I don't remember hearing anyone for example in Finland whining about anything since Flash. Or other Europians either. If there's a popular deck you cannot win, maybe you should do something differently, then.

Also, don't take SCG results so seriously. Look at the coverage videos and the level of play. The general feeling is that people are playing sloppy, bad and - the most important thing - anything that did well last week. So you could talk of a SCG meta but maybe it's a little too much to try to extrapolate that to apply to the whole worldwide legacy scene. So basically asking for Show and Tell to be banned based on one week's tournament data is totally retarded and should be kept to yourself, not sent to public message boards.

With all due respect... but the main problem here is Griselbrand.
Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned in this format, for a reason. Now we have updated Bargain that hits for 7, has evasion and lifelink?
Something's not right here...

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Originally Posted by Hopo

Is it mainly Americans who are advocating these rapid bans for every tournament winning strategy or is this a more international phenomenon? I don't remember hearing anyone for example in Finland whining about anything since Flash. Or other Europians either. If there's a popular deck you cannot win, maybe you should do something differently, then.

Also, don't take SCG results so seriously. Look at the coverage videos and the level of play. The general feeling is that people are playing sloppy, bad and - the most important thing - anything that did well last week. So you could talk of a SCG meta but maybe it's a little too much to try to extrapolate that to apply to the whole worldwide legacy scene. So basically asking for Show and Tell to be banned based on one week's tournament data is totally retarded and should be kept to yourself, not sent to public message boards.

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So true. We have very few solid decks which put up results regularly on a worldwide scale, namely Tempo Thresh, UWx Blade wathever and Maverick. But, in europe most of the times those 3 decks will represent less than 30% of any meta of any tournament, because the format is incredibly deep and diverse and people here don't just play the flavor of the week. Decks like SnT, or Dredge put up results in a less constant way here in europe. If you want to ban something because it warped your metagame, is your problem that players playing in your scene should resolve, not Wizards.

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Originally Posted by Pippin

With all due respect... but the main problem here is Griselbrand.
Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned in this format, for a reason. Now we have updated Bargain that hits for 7, has evasion and lifelink?
Something's not right here...

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Do you realize that Thresh owns Griselbrand ? I mean, Tempo package, + stifle for your Griselbrand activations, and super fast clock?
Also Merfolk should have a really easy time in beating that stuff. Any blue based control deck with Pyroblasts in sb has a nice mu against it. What's wrong with the guy? Start boarding 4 Needles instead of crying...

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Originally Posted by kiblast

Do you realize that Thresh owns Griselbrand ? I mean, Tempo package, + stifle for your Griselbrand activations, and super fast clock?
Also Merfolk should have a really easy time in beating that stuff. Any blue based control deck with Pyroblasts in sb has a nice mu against it. What's wrong with the guy? Start boarding 4 Needles instead of crying...

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So the solution to the problem is to play one deck (maybe mirroring current T2 metagame?) OR board something like needle... because show and tell doesn't have bounce or other win conditions?
Gotcha.

On a more serious note - Show and Tell was fine before since Knight + Karakas was keeping it in check for the most part. This isn't the case anymore with Griselbrand around. One more time - Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned in the format, but we currently have a vastly improved version available. Something is rotten here.

I'm glad to finally hear the thoughts of people with a clear view on what's going on such as Kiblast and Catmint.

This thread (and similar B/R threads) has gotten so out of hand with everyone spitting out any irrational thought of banning a 'flavor of the week' type of card.
The funny thing is that most people are just foolish enough to jump onto the ban train as soon as they have formed an idea of an imaginary dominance mostly based on other peoples comments.
I'm sick of this..learn to form an idea of your own or don't post here, please...

I don't care if Show and Tell gets banned or not - I think it is a fun challenge to beat that card with weird SB options - that I can rely on getting onto the battefield for free. :)

But I do think Show and Tell is ban worthy, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was banned. It is an insanely powerful effect, even for Legacy.
It has nothing to do with SCG or Griselbrand btw.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pippin

So the solution to the problem is to play one deck (maybe mirroring current T2 metagame?) OR board something like needle... because show and tell doesn't have bounce or other win conditions?
Gotcha.

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Dude, is not that your deck is 4 pithing needle and 56 cards.

You clearly have the Weltanschauung of a mono red player. ''If I play Pithing needle, he's going to have the bouncer'' and you? Don't you play other cards/ answers as well? As tutors for multiple Needles, or counters, or discard spells/effects?
Moreover, do I need to make a list about how good Needle is? Do I need to tell you that Miracles (yeah! The other card people like you love to whine about) are triggered and set up by Top mostly, and Top is shut down by Needle? Or that Liliana and JTMS currently see a freaking ton of play, and both of them can be name'd with Needle?

Also, you can play counterspells + Canonist and Snapcaster (to cycle counterspells) as another way to beat SNT.

Or Pyroblast.

You have so many options that you could even win through playing your Mono Red build. Seriously.

There is absolutely no card that warrants banning in current legacy. Banning something should mean that terrible things are happening unless bannings happen. That clearly is not the case. There is no such deck in existence at the moment that would dominate everything else besides a dedicated hate deck.

This banning discussion gets really old when everybody wants to get heard even when they have little understanding on what is actually going on. Why is no one wanting to ban anything from GW decks, for example? They seem to be performing as or more solid than S&T all over the world.

I can't understand the miserable understanding of trends, timelines, variation, common sense and the meaning of one particular tournament in providing a perspective to competitive legacy as a whole in this forum. I thought originally that MTGSalvation was the place to be if you don't have a grasp of reality or any common sense at all, but generally speaking the understanding seems to be absent from the Source as well nowadays. There's always someone who you can clearly see is experienced and well-thought player or writer, but the signal/noise ratio is getting lower and lower. Against every member who actually has something to contribute, there are 50 random bashers who just want to ban Brainstorm or are convinced that their deck is the shit, without even considering that reality might prove them wrong any minute.

Crying for bans without any backup is retarded behaviour. Someone winning a tournament with some card doesn't count as backup.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hopo

There is absolutely no card that warrants banning in current legacy. Banning something should mean that terrible things are happening unless bannings happen. That clearly is not the case. There is no such deck in existence at the moment that would dominate everything else besides a dedicated hate deck.

This banning discussion gets really old when everybody wants to get heard even when they have little understanding on what is actually going on. Why is no one wanting to ban anything from GW decks, for example? They seem to be performing as or more solid than S&T all over the world.

I can't understand the miserable understanding of trends, timelines, variation, common sense and the meaning of one particular tournament in providing a perspective to competitive legacy as a whole in this forum. I thought originally that MTGSalvation was the place to be if you don't have a grasp of reality or any common sense at all, but generally speaking the understanding seems to be absent from the Source as well nowadays. There's always someone who you can clearly see is experienced and well-thought player or writer, but the signal/noise ratio is getting lower and lower. Against every member who actually has something to contribute, there are 50 random bashers who just want to ban Brainstorm or are convinced that their deck is the shit, without even considering that reality might prove them wrong any minute.

Crying for bans without any backup is retarded behaviour. Someone winning a tournament with some card doesn't count as backup.

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Here we go again. There is enough backup to Brainstorm having to be banned:

- according to TC decks it is the most played card in every month since the Mental Misstep banning, even over Force of Will
- the 10x weaker Brainstormesque effect Ponder is banned in formats above and below Legacy (Modern, Vintage)
- it massively supports problematic combos by giving them a too cheap way to trade excess pieces for fresh cards
- as a lesser effect it also voids Discard effects and sets up "top card of Library" effects too easily

Basically the only reason why Brainstorm isn't banned is because Legacy players like it. So the real whiners are those who support Brainstorm despite statistical evidence and threaten a massive whinestorm once it would get banned.

Oh no, Sneak and Show plays 4 Brainstorm!

People are speculating here. There is no evidence that Show and Tell is dominating. It is apparent to most people that Show and Tell could create a problem with the use of Grislebrand or in the future if new powerful cards are printed(which is the trend at WotC).

I am sure Show and Tell has been on the DCI's watch list for who knows how long because it is a powerful card. If random people are noticing the power level of Grislebrand + Show and Tell then it is a pretty safe bet the DCi is noticing too.

Conclusion: If you plan on playing a Show and Tell deck for the Grand Prix: Atlanta then I would have a backup deck just in case. At the end of the day it isn't the random posters on these forums that decide whether or not cards should be banned, but it is the DCI. The DCI have banned less broken/powerful cards than the Show and Tell & Grislebrand duo, so you may want to be prepared.

Holy Cow, Maverick was dominating forever, and when it does play Brainstorm, we can start banning it!

Brainstorm being restricted in Vintage does not necessarily mean that it should be banned in Legacy. The two formats are entirely different and it can be argued that Brainstorm is the defining pillar of Legacy (where blue maintains its stronghold in eternal formats). I will continue to argue that blue NEEDS to be a stronghold in any eternal format, otherwise people will be whining at unwinnable Belcher/SI/insert-balls-in-wall-combo.format.

Thankfully, blue control-based decks can be stopped these days easily by non-blue decks (Maverick, Nic Fit, Rock etc). The only pure strength of blue comes when you have an exceptional pilot piloting decks that rape good decks in the format aka Thresh. CT has always raped good decks under the hands of good pilots, and this is nothing new, and does not add to the argument that Brainstorm needs to go. In fact, it's hilarious that as we were talking about Brainstorm being the culprit again, Maverick has gone on a stomping streak for months.

Now an old archetype of SnT/Sneak has surfaced again and people haven't been prepared against it, so inevitably the "B/R update speculation" thread gets active again. Aside from MM and Vengevine, I seriously doubt that any card has shaken and unbalanced the format yet. Even a powerhouse like Delver could still be considered fair, although edging on the 'overpowered' side of Legacy cards.

Calling Maverick "dominating" is wrong. There hasn't been a single month yet in which there were not at least twice as many Brainstorms than Green Sun's Zenith .

The tools are available. You can easily falsify any statistical arguing that Brainstorm does not dominate the format by checking here:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/mostplayedcards.php