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I still have no idea what you're getting at with those numbers.Quote:
Originally Posted by EpicLevelCommoner
UR Delver might run less Dazes and Wastelands, but according to the data you provided, there are 31.6% Delver decks (292/(4*231)) (since pretty much any Delver shell runs 4 Delvers).
One thing that I think might be getting lost in the focus on penetration is that, because blue can filter through it's cards so well, decks which look similar can be vastly different. So even if brainstorm is in 95% of blue decks, all it does is find the card that you actually want. Whether a deck plays delver and pyromancer, or stoneforge and TNN and snapcaster, or counter-top, or Adnausem... The decks all share 4 brainstorm 4 ponder, but they all play very differently. The "blue shell" (though I dislike that term) really only makes whatever you're trying to do more consistent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkenslight
Every deck in legacy has to find a balance between consistency and raw power. Burn takes consistency to the max, and notably isn't blue, nor is Elves!, another very redundant deck. Jund is on the opposite end of the spectrum - every card is a great play. Every card actively disrupts your opponent (thoughtsieze, hymn, wasteland, decay), provides a clock (goyf, Bob, bbe) or both (PFire, DRS, Scooze). The problem is having efficiency that is made more efficient by being more consistent. Cards like Delver and Young Pyromancer do this. The slmost dangerous synergy in legacy is that Delver and YP are each made more efficient by the same thing. Compare to Counterbalance, Top, and Miracle cards - certainly one of the most consistent combinations in legacy. But Countertop isn't efficient, which is why there are so many jokes about Miracles mirrors in the draw bracket.
As a different example, look at the difference between ANT, SI, TES, and High Tide. Each of these decks is a storm deck. Each deck has a different spot on the consistency-efficiency gradient. SI is really fast, but lacks the consistency of ANT or TES. High Tide, meanwhile, is the most consistent - given enough time, it will win - but it can't go off before turn 3, and often waits for turn 4 or more.
But what I'm really getting at is that Delver makes all the controls in your deck say, "In addition to pondering, deal 1 damage to target player", since each catnip you play increases delver flip chance, and 3 power plus evasion is better than a 200% increase in card power.
We have data, but it's alot of work. Take this post as a grain of salt:Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkenslight
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Here are the last 10 scg opens while mental misstep was legal.
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/3015#38988
11 Sep 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 6/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2603#32546
21 Aug 2011
MM: 25/32
Brainstorm: 28/32
Blue decks: 7/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2534#31291
14 Aug 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 5/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2288#27559
31 Jul 2011
MM: 16/32
Brainstorm: 12/32
Blue decks: 4/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2174#26038
24 Jul 2011
MM: 27/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 6/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2059#24356
18 Jul 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 3/8 (that Zoo deck on #1 isn't really blue, but ran Misstep, so 4 MM decks)
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1694#19182
26 Jun 2011
MM: 20/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 5/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1482#16366
12 Jun 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 8/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1358#15016
5 Jun 2011
MM: 28/32
Brainstorm: 26/32
Blue decks: 8/8
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1149#12925
22 May 2011
MM: 24/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 6/8
I'm on your side: I agree that a Delver ban would be the best way to go about banning or unbanning anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Also, it would be 60*231 actually: 60 cards (at least) per list times 231 decks that placed giving me the 13860 total cards ran. Granted, I could be misinterpreting the data.
There probably is, just have to hope they didn't archive it (which tcdecks.net seems to have done) . . . gonna see if they relay the data, preferably in a public forum such as this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkenslight
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I admit, I was in the wrong for responding in such a way. However, in my (admittedly pitiful) defense, debating with someone begins to become frustrating when they begin to make baseless claims such as how the format would be better without Force of Will (which may or not also suggest that mono-U is not only in High Tide and OmniTell, that mono-B is not present in the form of Traditional Pox, that Swamp -> Dark Ritual -> Trinisphere on the play happens often enough to be an issue for Storm decks, that MUD hasn't been using a similar strategy in the form of Ancient Tomb -> Grim Monolith -> Trinisphere, and that while hate does exist for various combo decks, it is often too slow and/or too narrow to combat all varieties like Force of Will does).Quote:
Originally Posted by Gheizen64
For what purpose? You can't run more than 4 Delvers and each Delver list runs the maximum of 4 copies.Quote:
Originally Posted by EpicLevelCommoner
mtgGoldfish has the same "dominance" stuff, but I fail to see the reason behind that.
All I took out of this is you use dark ritual to cast trinisphereQuote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Because you don't just play with a single playset, you play with any number of different cards that total up to at least 60 per deck. Also, the fact that the more cards that two lists have in common the more similar they'll play (to the point where if it's the same 60 cards, they'll play very much the same), hence why I'm not focusing on just Delver or Brainstorm in my arguments, but also the cards that are used in conjunction with those.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Like I said, a single card cannot be oppressive unless A) it has a high penetration and B) the shell it demands composes a considerable portion of the decks it is ran in.
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Fair enough: though I can't say I'll use the ignore list (doesn't actually help a discussion if you just ignore everyone that makes a bad argument), I will refrain from lashing out in the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gheizen64
@ FoolafaTook: I'm sorry for being an asshat.
It would be a common play in a post-Force of Will meta. You can discard other rituals to things like Liliana and Smallpox after you've set up your lock.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
A lot of things are counter-intuitive until you see them in play.
The issue with taking Force from the format though is that you in effect cut the Police funding. The reason we don't have cards like Beltcher and Glimpse on the ban list is because Force stops them from taking over. I just don't feel like anyone has to this point made a reasonable argument to the effect that the format would be better without Force and from my point of view, not liking it is not a reasonable argument. If is was, SnT would have vanished long ago and Bridge along with it.
I highly doubt this, as it's a pretty awful line in the abstract, even without getting 1-for-1'ed by Force (or 2-for-1'ed by any other counter or artifact removal spell). Decks like Pox aren't weak because Force ruins them - Force frequently plays into their discard heavy game plan - but they're weak because eventually their opponents will draw out of being resource strapped and the Pox decks are even lighter on threats than Delver decks. Blue decks are certainly the best at reassembling because of Ponder and Brainstorm, but Jund (to chose just one example) is also good because of Bob and Sylvan Library or even just DRS and Punishing Fire. When your goal is to start a topdeck war it's important to be able to win it, and Pox just can't do that consistently.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Also, Force doesn't stop most blue decks from running classic UU Counterspell, but Daze and Spell Pierce do. Daze forces answers to be either extremely cheap (StP, Bolt) or uncounterable (Abrupt Decay), and Pierce is cheaper, so it's better as defense against Bolt and StP once Daze is dead and at winning a counterwar over haymakers like Jace, Cruise, or Dig. Counterspell is superior in control/midrange matchups, but as long as Delver is the threat of choice from the aggro decks, Counterspell is going to be too slow except as a 1-2 of in midrange/control strategies.
It's not just Pox lists, it's Black Suicide, BW Suicide, BG Suicide, etc. The blue shell recovers too well to be disrupted and defeated as a strategy. The only lists that actually manage to defeat blue by doing this are other blue shells, like RUG Tempo and extremely focused taxing strategies with lots of redundant threats like D&T. When the blue shell is 60% of the overall meta as it is now black basically rolls over and dies.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
The day 1 undefeateds at GP NJ played exactly 600 spells among 16 lists. There were 26.5 black spells among the 600 (counting DRS and Abrupt Decay as half a black spell for consistency. There were 275 blue spells among the 16 lists. That's something like a 10-1 ratio of blue over black and it is precisely because blue invalidates most of what black tries to do. There were 70 artifact spells among the 600. There were only 255 non-blue colored spells represented.
In the top 8 there were 21 black spells, all in the ANT list which also had 15 blue spells. There were 163 blue spells in that top 8, only 8 to 1 this time.
And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.
In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
There really isn't one. Foil is the worst free counter I can think of, next best thing is Counterspell.
Not that I would have much invested in a post Force format. I would not be sticking around. I would just move to Vintage full time. I really don't see how banning it could be healthy.
When you saw that meta in play you'd stick around to play in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Even if the best Storm combo list has a 30% chance to have a T1 kill in hand, they're only on the play half the time. Some times games come down to who goes first. Not a lot of the time but it happens. It's not a Chess match. It's a game of chance.
I would not stay, because if you ban Force you have to start banning all the degenerate combo cards too. Beltcher, ETW, Glimpse, Tendrils and Dread Return have to go right away. From there, you only move up an ever increasing list as the format becomes a race to the fastest kills. If all I have to worry about is Daze, you can bet the format would become something nasty.
Why do you want to see Force banned? Do you honestly think that the format would be better without it? If so, how do you think the format improves with the removal of this card?
I think the format improves with a move away from the blue shell as the dominant organizing structure that dictates what works and what doesn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Combo and aggro don't organize the way the blue shell does. There are many different ways to disrupt early game strategies but all of them are inferior to having or bluffing a free counter. Add in the ability of the blue shell to sort out the variables in it's own strategy and it becomes just too good to ignore, which is why most competitive players play it.
In the absence of the fully functional blue shell people would find other answers to common problems, like turn 1 combo and heavy aggro. The meta would become a wider play field that featured more diversity in strategy and solutions. In the presence of the blue shell that's just not possible because the blue shell is the best way to approach the meta right now. The problem is that it is cannibalizing diversity in the process as more and more people make the correct decision that fighting the blue shell is worse than playing the blue shell.
Well, that's your opinion and your welcome to it, just don't hope your going to get to many people agreeing with you here. I mean, people want to see Blue cut down a notch or two, but I think your on your own about Force.
While force may have a very high penetration in the meta, there is at least a valid reason most people want it. Keeping degenerate combo in check is a valid enough reason. Cutting brainstorm would lower the prevalence of force somewhat and while the player base might bitch and moan I think the format would survive. Banning force I feel could have some negative side effects
Even ignoring the fact that counting Decay and DRS as half a spell each is absurd (they don't half-trigger Quirion Dryad or get half-targeted by Lifeforce), what does this prove other than blue being better than the other colors? We already knew that, and it's part of playing Eternal formats. When you play Legacy and/or Vintage, should expect blue to be the best color.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
The issue isn't that Ritual into a permanent is intrinsically bad, it's that Ritual into Trinisphere is a poor line for any deck that might conceptually want it - either you don't want Ritual (MUD with a black splash), or you get little mileage out of Trinisphere (Pox) before it gets destroyed. Congratulations, you've successfully 2-for-1'ed yourself and gotten a slight tempo edge out of it. I hope you drew your manland or could discard Nether Spirit to hand size before your opponent cast a spell, because if you didn't you probably still lose.Quote:
And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.
It's hard to tell, since it would require the banning of, at a minimum, about ten other cards. In the brief hypothetical period where Force is banned and fast mana artifacts, Show and Tell, and Reanimate/Exhume aren't banned, I imagine it would be Disrupting Shoal so some people could not play combo while having a chance to not get blown out.Quote:
In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?
Without Force you realize most combo decks would just trade a big chunk of their preboard disruption for gas, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
How much more gas is actually available? Particularly with Brainstorm banned. Storm and most combo depend on being able to sort out their cards in a hurry. A few lists, like Fetchland Tendrils go a bit more controlling but are also slower in the process.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
It's not like Storm combo isn't already playing LED, 7 or 8 rituals, Lotus Petals and even the odd Chrome Mox here and there. They can't add much more gas than they already have and with Brainstorm gone they'll be looking for additional ways to sort anyway.
There's a deck with tons of gas. It's called belcher. Ban force of will and see where belcher goes with that. Ban force and this format's banlist is like modern's where you actually have to ban a ton more cards in addition. Banning force is never going to happen if it does congratulations WotC just successfully killed legacy.
Belcher is a truly terrible list in the current meta. It fizzles on it's own and it loses to Force of Will and to Wasteland if the draw doesn't let them go off right away. Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou and sayonara.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Ritual
So if your point is that Belcher might be a bit scary in a format without Force of Will, well a lot of lists are scary in a format *with* Force of Will and most of them play... Force of Will.
BTW, there's a simple solution to the blue shell. Ban Brainstorm and announce that Force of Will is on the watch list. See what happens. If Force of Will is still in a high percentage of winning lists it gets the axe next time around.
Annnd a deck with 12 Plains just went 12-0 and hardly dropped a game all day.
I guess 24 Brainstorm in the top 8 is evidence that blue is on the down swing.
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Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
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Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
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Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
I'm sorry... what?Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Have... Have you ever seen a belcher deck?
I mean... SI is a thing. It's not a good thing... But I guess it's a thing that exists in the realm of magic the gathering
Some builds of Spanish Inquisition runs belcher and bayou, But that deck is not Belcher.Quote:
Originally Posted by iGrok
Belcher normally runs just taiga, 0 Dark Rituals, and does not really care about Wasteland.
Hereiis a link to a recent belcher list for reference : http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=8143&d=246907&f=LE
So, the idea is to ban Force so that there are more turn1 DRit->Trinisphere.
Dat format.
T1 Dark Ritual into Trinisphere is just stupid if you can drop a Sol Land and play Thorn of Amethyst/Chalice of the Void/Sphere of Resistance instead to harass storm.
I can't believe we are even talking about FoW here. Imo it's pretty clear that Disrupting Shoal would be the best card to prevent T1 combos on the draw, as you still have plenty of 1cc spells to Pitch within the cantrip-shell like BS/Ponder/Delver, Daze/SCM/Counterspell/Shoal for 2cc, TNN/Clique for 3cc just as an example
It's all good as long as one or two non blue decks can top.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
So, everything is fine until it's 16/16 BS?Quote:
Originally Posted by menace13
If this was a little league game they would have stopped the beating already and discontinue the printing of all non-island basics.
Sorry, haven't actually played against Belcher since 2010 and the 2-land variant was the one I was seeing in tourney's at that point. They'd Land Grant for Bayou as the black source to power the rituals when that was the direction they went. Force on a ritual and waste on a Bayou was game over for them. That's one of the reasons the list stopped getting played.
The list without black does seem more consistent but it has no turn 1 disruption. The 2 land lists always played Duress as a playset.
Yeah, that's the point. If you have a meta where 60% of the lists are blue shell and 40% are everything else and then the blue shell is consistently taking 6 to 8 top 8 slots, well that's no meta at all. That's just 40% of the crowd confused about what they should be playing at the start.Quote:
Originally Posted by testing32
Everybody complains about the price of getting into Legacy with good lists. Those prices are as high as they are because so few cards are playable in competitive lists. $250 blue duals and $60 Savannahs is part of the problem. The fact that all the rare blue staples are very expensive compared to the other color counterparts is part of that. The fact that Legends rare lands are very expensive due to the way they interact with the few lists able to compete with the blue shell is part of that.
Anybody can build a bad cheap Legacy list but there's no incentive to do that.
If there were 200 Legacy staples that saw wide play prices on those staples would go up some but prices on the few that see play now would drop dramatically.
This is where WotC has the vision problem. They see Legacy as some kind of victory lap that doesn't produce a lot of sales for them but that testifies to Magic's staying power over time. If they instead saw Legacy as a format to feed cards to regularly in each set they'd be in a much better position than they are now.
Why do the blue dual lands cost so much? Because they power the broken cards lists. Because they're scarce.
If WotC was regularly feeding cards into the Legacy pool that didn't play well with the duals they'd make more sales off of stores opening boxes to find those cards to sell as singles. They'd get many more people interested in legacy. They'd grow the player base significantly as the barrier to entry to effective Legacy play became much lower.
They're going to have to knock the blue shell off it's pedestal to make that work. It's ok to have it as a player in the meta but not as the only player that really matters. That's what WotC needs to do.
If they think Standard and Draft are enough to keep Magic growing they're nuts. People play in one or two standards in high school and college and then they move on for the most part because the other formats are just too expensive to consider. Maybe they draft now and then to feed their casual card collection but mostly they move on. WotC needs to find a way to smooth the path into eternal for people who get tired of Standard and want to play a bigger game.
You clearly don't play enough legacy, the deck is rather consistent with ETW and Belcher in the deck. As far as the format goes I think with Treasure Cruise being printed we're seeing more decks we haven't seen in awhile rise up again such as omni show, maverick, and storm decks return to the meta in a more prevalent force. Which I am glad to see these return.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
The removal of such things increase speed. The deck is faster than the one you are describing because everything is either gas or ways to get gas. The deck has no disruption because it plays the numbers. It's a gamble every time you sleeve it.
Without Force, that would be the best deck in the format. Because all you would need to play around would be soft counters and while Spell Piece can hurt, it's not the end of the world for a skilled pilot of Beltcher.
I am thinking you did not quite understand what we all meant when we told you Force does a service for the format. Yes, it's a pain, but it's a part of life and while I hate to play against it, I rather lose a spell here and there over playing a round that consists of playing 3 turns total 3 times in a row.
Edit:
Price is not a reason to kill cards in the format. While I sympathise with you, I can not agree that the issue is all about the cost of Blue Duals. After all, non Blue decks like DnT and Elves have seen quite the rise in costs and now match UR Delver in cost.
They have, it's called Modern. WotC has stated before that they do not and have no plans to design cards for Legacy/Vintage.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
If you're sick of FoW and Brainstorm, there's a format for you already.
saying "if you don't like it go to modern" is a bad argument. I disagree with FoW/Brainstorm bans as well, but the idea that bans can't improve a format and if you want to see improving formats you should go to modern is silly.
Funny thing how FoW somehow became a problem. In fact I see it quite the opposite, I playit to stop problems. Like, you know... that turn1 Trinisphere that stops and wins the game right here. Or Belcher. Or anything else.
Banning FoW is like "don't play Swords (or Bolt or Terror or Pillage), it's unjust as it kills my Sengir (or Birds or Erhnam or Outpost)" mantra I heard back in the days. Yeah, it sucks to spend mana or other resources to have your dude/land/spell killed or countered, but that's the game. And Force is pretty ineffective in countering spells, look, it needs another card to properly function. (Counterspells as a whole suck, there are what, three-four of them used in the whole Eternal?) So if the people really wish just to look at their collectible pictures or cuddle with their decks, fine, but once they wish to actually play the game, they should expect at least some interaction and some opponent's attempts to stop the gameplan/wincons. Which is where FoW excels. Thus it's played. Easy as that.
I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy. People who want Modern-like features should play Modern, because Legacy clearly isn't something they enjoy at this point.Quote:
Originally Posted by gainsay
I agree with you here. My point is that bans sometimes make sense in legacy to make the format of legacy better. Playing modern isn't an argument in the sphere of making legacy better.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
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Originally Posted by Meekrab
They don't have to design cards for Legacy and Vintage because they're already legal for both formats when released anyhow. Obviously Wizards isn't going to design something for Legacy and Vintage specifically because the legal card pool never rotates; it's always the same until a new set is released. Most of the time cards just happen to be good in Legacy or Vintage inadvertently, which is fine. We already have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from.