Not having Awesome is huge dude. And i could play RB Pyro/Delver! Discard goes better with pyro anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
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Not having Awesome is huge dude. And i could play RB Pyro/Delver! Discard goes better with pyro anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
This x1000000.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Delver is, to me, doing more damage to the Legacy meta than anything else right now. I don't really care if one color or card is pervasive, as long as there are a variety of viable strategies. The problem with Delver is that it's a build-around card. It requires a certain type of shell to work, but it's so good that it's worth working within those constraints for. You can't run a bunch of support creatures or hatebears, so you run counters to protect Delver. You need to guarantee Delver's going to flip, so you run a bunch of cantrips. Add some burn or cheap removal to keep things out of Delver's way, and you've got a deck.
We now have four of the format's top decks based on the same shell, and they all play so similarly that it just makes the format boring. The last big event I went to felt like Standard. Just staring across the table at the same cards in every matchup.
At least when everyone was bitching about Tarmogoyf being ubiquitous, it was because people were dropping it into basically everything that wasn't storm combo.
This was exactly what my post was supposed to say, but you explained it much better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
1 mana to draw three straight up, a 3 power beater, and Hallowed Burial are all too strong to me.
In terms of how good a card is, I'd ban Brainstorm
In terms of how uncolor-ific a card is, I'd ban Delver of Secrets.
In terms of how unfun a card is, I'd ban True-Name Nemesis (even though he's not seen a ton of play recently, he sucks to play against everytime)
In terms of how retarded a card is, I'd ban Show and Tell.
Treasure Cruise also probably deserves the axe, but I don't think it offends any dimension more than any of the previous three cards. I can see them banning it, if simply for the sake of preserving Brainstorm.
http://www.tcdecks.net/mostplayedcar...s=10&anio=2014
I'm still amazed how someone can look at a list like this and conclude that the 15th most played card is the problem. There are 5 blue cards ahead of it while there isn't even a non-blue non-land card in the top 10.
If the only blue ban is Treasure Cruise it'll be a slap in the player bases's face by a company that just doesn't give a crap about them.
If they're paying attention to Legacy then they know that Brainstorm and Delver of Secrets are the meta-warping cards, one long-term and one of the last couple of years.
If they somehow come to the conclusion that "oops Treasure Cruise is too good but nothing else is wrong" well that means they're either very dense and unimaginative about their own product or they're slapping the players.
Even if you ban delver, it doesn't change the fact treasure cruise/dig are remarkably powerful cards and vice versa
Brainstorm has been the best/most played card in the format for a while but that argument has been done verbatim so there is little point in discussing it I feel
I wouldnt expect a SCG author to call for a Brainstorm ban despite it being obviously better than Cruise (900 to 300 most played, played across archtypes, etc. etc.) 2 weeks before GP Brainstorm which SCG is hosting.
If you ban Delver, the delver variants become more varied. Each color group no longer has an efficient one-mana beater, and no longer needs a critical mass of spells.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
If you ban Treasure Cruise, people play the next best cantrip in its place, and nothing really changes in the format. All that Cruise has done is change which Delver flavor is on top.
224 out of 293 decks (or 76.45%) ran Brainstorm - compare that to ~73% Mental Misstep during its heydays, which was banned because it made the format too blue and went into every deck. Brainstorm just surpassed that.Quote:
Originally Posted by testing32
Both Brainstorm and TC are ban-worthy and need to go down the road, but I see TC as the more urgent problem. While blue decks lose some really dumb interactions and can't semi-mulligan each time, they would replace Brainstorm with another cantrip and still be good to go due 4x Ancestral Recall.
I wonder, are there any seriously powerful non-blue cards that can be unbanned to balance the power of the delver-goodstuff shell if WOTC are unwilling to ban brainstorm? I feel like even if they go ahead with Cruise and do nothing else (which seems likely) it'll just go back to what it was before Cruise, which wasn't good either.
People should ask them on Twitter until someone's answers them (@wizards_magic for Wizards offical page, @ErikLauer who's responsible for the management of the B&R list, or @mtgaaron since he seems like one of the few people how actually gives a crap about questions.)Quote:
Originally Posted by HrishiQQ
If this farce continues, people should call them out on it.
We should ask for the unbanning of Bazaar in exchange for a TC banning. :tongue:Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
I guess unbanning Black Vise would help. But most Delver decks aside from BUG wouldn't realy care because they can drop their hand so quickly now. U/R Delver could probably play Vise themselves?
I am not sure if banning Delver would solve any issues. Perhaps it will but in my eyes, the biggest warping card is Brainstorm. Banning Brainstorm nerfs Delver anyway, people would have to use Ponder to flip it, perhaps drawing a not so good card. I simply don't understand the reasoning of "it's already so long in the format, it will never be banned". That is a very wrong reasoning...
Unbanning Vise either wouldn't do jack or would do stupid things in a Delver shell because people WILL have large hands when they can't play their stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
Lovely list there. I don't hate Delver as much as many seem to - it might do bad things to the meta but I don't cringe every time I see it played.Quote:
Originally Posted by akatsuki
Show and Tell I'd rather ban the stupidest targets so S&T and Reanimator get back on plans where the creature gives them a huge advantage or needs a specific boardstate to be insta-win instead of just winning then and there almost no matter what.
Banlist shortness shouldn't really be valued, IMO. Whether the list is long or short doesn't make one bit of difference on whether the format is fun to play or not, but stupid cards being there or not does.
To all the people who want to ban Brainstorm because of the numbers it is played: Then what? A new card comes and takes the place of the most ubiquitous one. Should that be banned next? As it seems, there's always the most popular card in a format. You should be happy that in legacy it's apparently a cantrip instead of some truly oppressive shit. Cantrips help you to build your deck more consistent. They come in all flavors and there can be seen some hierarchy among them. How exactly is it any better if people auto-switch the Brainstorms to Ponders and Ponders to some lesser cantrips? It's highly unlikely that players will stop using cantrips in vast numbers in the case of a ban.
It also seems that some of you clump storm, miracles tempo decks as one just because they share among other things a specific cantrip. That's technically correct, of course, but the implications and conclusions are plain stupid.
You aren't quite getting the point. It isn't that people don't like others playing cantrips, it's the quality of that specific cantrip in conjunction with fetchland.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
With that being said, perhaps WotC should run a policy where if a non-land card shows up >50% of all possible slots in all top 8's of all registered tournaments w/attendance of >129 players or so for more then 1 year, it'd merrit an auto-ban. This year FoW gets banned? Perhaps next year, some broken-ass combo card (b/c FoW isn't there to keep it in check anymore mayhaps) and so on. The meta would change regularly and problems'll be fixed by WotC if the community doesn't manage to fix it themselves.
Anywho - death to Delver, FoW, Daze, Brainstorm and Ponder! That's a solid 20 I see in roughly 50-75% of my matches at the moment. So boring!
Uh. Brainstorm is an indicator of the format's blueness. The canary in the goldmine, so to speak, because it's so absurdly ubiquitous. The question is not about if there's a most played card. It's about:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
1. Brainstorm itself. The card is busted. Strong card selection spells like Ponder, Preordain and GSZ are a category behind.
2. Brainstorm's strength and versatility encourages everyone to play blue. This is a problem because of the starkly limited supply of blue lands and because ubiquitous cantrip shells homogenizes play patterns a ton. All the fair blue decks, despite being very different in strategy, play somewhat similar in individual situations. This would happen less if other colours stood a more even chance. ie. Shardless and Jund feel different despite similar strategy. Elves and Storm feel different to operate despite the underlying operations of make mana, draw shitton of cards, cast busted spell that will kill you being very similar. Or take more Prison-style builds of Miracles vs. D&T. Very different feel. The Shardless, Miracles, Storm will inevitably feel more similar to each other than Jund, Elves, D&T.
3. Brainstorm actively counteracts things like discard that could traditionally be used by other colors to offset blue's consistency advantage for no real investment and enables pretty disgusting unmulligans that weaker card selection spells like Ponder, Preordain and GSZ just can't, or are way slower or more conditional to do (Ancestral, Confidant, Elves' draw engines).
Honestly? Delver should have never had flying as efficient as it is. Color really doesnt matter except in terms of the card pool available to supplement it, but an evasive 3 power 1 drop in any color means that most spot removal cant trade favorably with it, and most legacy playble 1 drops cant block it. This then means that the possibility of them overextending into a terminus or other sweeper unlikely.
As someone who defended TNN's right to remain unbanned, I should say that Delver comes down two turns earlier with the same power once flipped, and typically TNN is rarely the only creature on the board, making sweepers much more viable.
TNN has no right to anything, except getting burned at the stake. At least I can point any removal ever at Delver and it will die.Quote:
Originally Posted by EpicLevelCommoner
Not all removal has to be pointed... There are plenty of answers for it, some coincidentally also working well against decks like Elves! and UR Delver, which is seeing a lot of play at the moment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
TNN never has been nor ever will be a big problem - it's still only a creature. Put it in front of a Moat and it weeps. Is it a silly card? Yes. Is it overpowered? No, not by a long shot.
By that logic, Nimble Mongoose should have been banned a long time ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
Sure Delver dies to most things, but it is never a favorable tempo advantage for the one removing the delver. Combine this with the fact that Delver cannot be blocked efficiently either (best options for trading/walling it are at least 2 cmc) means that riding a single Delver to victory isnt exactly unfeasible.
Is the idea behind this thinking that format should be 20% of each color, or ~17% if you count artifacts in? If not, I don't get it. If yes, I don't get it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
Agreed. I wouldn't expect less from eternal staples.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
People want to play strong decks, I get it. I just don't see it as a problem and I haven't seen anything mature or credible that states otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
Sure. I guess there are many, many powerful cards out there and some of them just happen to be the best at their jobs. Since it's legacy we are talking about here, I don't know what to say to that. Cards are powerful, broken even, but it's hard to say that about a cantrip even when it's a really good cantrip.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
When you think about it this way, why ban anything? Why do we have a banlist? Unban the whole thing because where do you draw the line? Obviously nowhere...Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
Except it isn't a cantrip but essentially a :Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
- draw 3 if u have a fetch
- activate miracle engine
- activate delver engine
- dodge discard engine
- free mulligan engine
- shuffle bombs back into deck engine (relevant with entomb and Oath) + activate counterbalance in a pinch
Ponder, the next best thing there is can do maybe 2 of those things (aka activate delver and miracle), while increasing consistency (dig 3 deep as BS) but is nowhere as good as brainstorm at doing those things AND STILL SEE PLAY AS 4-OF IN MOST BLUE DECKS.
But hey it's a cantrip! Yes, demonic tutor is a cantrip too by that definition then.
Same shit, different day. Same lame tired arguments for why brainstorm isn't bannable. #ItMakesLegacyFun #SkillIntensive
This. And the Demonic Tutor quote too...Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
Look, I'm all for consistency, and I dislike topdeck wars, mulligans to three and all other stuff that BS prevents, but I cannot understand why people cannot see that BS is level above all other cantrips in Legacy. This isn't "ban BS" argument, in fact I got mixed opinion on the card, as I like to play with (the set of) it, but I cannot be blind to its power.
Enter "blue chokehold" and "price of duals" and all usual things right here...
No one is arguing for even color split. Combo is going to need cantrips to find pieces and control is naturally going to be blue because of counters. But, aggro and midrange being blue too is bullshit.
Current top 8 decks:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º DeathBlade
4º Team America
5º Elves
6º Patriot
7º Reanimator
8º OmniTell
I'd want to see top 8 decks like this:
1º Miracle Control
2º UR Burn
3º Jund
4º Goblins
5º Elves
6º Death and Taxes
7º Reanimator
8º ANT
I don't want to be forced to play one color and 8/12 specific cards to win.
Nobody claims that the format should be a perfect 20% of each color. That's just unrealistic. But 76+% of the format being blue isn't healthy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
Wizards banned Mental Misstep for exactly that reason:
The two reasons they banned MM were:Quote:
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.
1) It makes the meta too blue - except Brainstorm is one of the main reasons the current meta is even more blue than during the Mental Misstep era.
2) It goes into every deck, no matter the type - again, the same applies to Brainstorm. It does currently see play in a higher percentage of the meta than MM ever did, and as a full 4-of at that.
And that doesn't take into account how busted the card is.
Again, you can bump that up to the complete Delver + FoW + Daze + Brainstorm + Ponder-shell.
Add in at least 14 assorted fetch & duals/basics and you've got 34 set-in-stone cards of over 50% of the decks out there. Looks healthy *cough*.
Or cut Delver and get 30 set-in-stone cards in over 70% of the current meta, lol. And yes, this is me saying that that entire shell should be banned, perhaps along Delver - just to stir things up.
Banning FoW + Daze, unlike a Brainstorm ban, would actually increase the number of T1 glass combo decks by a good chunk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
I just don't get what is the problem with blue being the most played colour - flavor aside, of course. I guess people are more casual than I have thought. In general when talking about competitive gaming, you should play with what you think is the most powerful deck and that's what people are doing.
Because things like discard, Leylines, Mindbreak Trap and whatnot suddenly don't exist anymore? I knew this arguement would be the first thing to be said, lol. Even as an Elves!-player, I can stop that shit dead in it's tracks. Blue shells are for pussies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
It makes the meta mindnumbingly boring. I don't even want to know how many times I got a hit naming FoW on a blind Cabal Therapy, even in games where I wasn't sure what my opponent was playing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
It would be fair to call that issue mostly subjective. Also, pretty much all other formats have quite strict decks to beat and established matchups. I'm not sure why legacy can't have such.Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
Because of the 50%+ overlap in cards and roughly 90% overlap in gameplan..? And yes, I'm generalizing rather fiercely here. Delver X, in its entirety, boils down to stall the early game as long as you can and finish the game as soon as possible. To do so, each build uses the same 20 with 6 to 10 extra in-color creatures and 16 to 20 extra "stallers", ranging from burn to spotremoval to discard to mana denial. Same plan, different means.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
Force gets banned, next year half the format dies and Beltcher, Burning Wish, Laboratory Maniac, ETW, Dread return, ect, become issues. That sounds like a really bad format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
Force is the one card that if it got banned, I would leave. I don't enjoy playing against it, but then again who enjoys dealing with the Cops? But, when shit hits the fan your glad they are there. Force stays. I can lose Brainstorm, TC, Delver, some number of Elves and whatever else a deck I will stay. At Force though, I draw the line.
You need to refine your idea.
Fixed that for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Seriously, each and every one of those glass cannons can be anwered without FoWs/Dazes. I honestly don't see the problem. Stifle, Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt, Chalice of the Void, Ethersworn Canonist and god knows what else won't cease to exist. Heck, perhaps we'll run Gemstone Caverns so we can cast answers when our opponent is on the play for all I care.
If you think force is an issue, you're an idiot. It's barely even a good card.
I never said it's an issue, you might want to pay more attention to what you are reading before saying such silly things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
I called it boring, which isn't a measure of card quality. I did say it isn't the do-all end-all answer everybody thinks it to be. I merely stated there are more answers available to us as a community then just FoW, but that seems to fall on deaf ears.