ftfy.
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I would really enjoy a format, where a lot of the blue shell is banned and people bring their Goblins, Zoos and Nic Fit decks to a Legacy Grand Prix to give quite consistent byes to combo players. I mean for reference, just look at the very first Modern Pro Tour. The combo decks were very good, fast and consistent, even without Brainstorm etc.
Dark Ritual. dec with Serum Visions vs Goblins is still not a fair fight.
I always kind of enjoy my play experience whenever I play a combo deck vs a fair non blue deck. Feels like playing a Vintage control deck vs a Standard Control deck. They play sweet 5 mana dragons and you just kill them with Time Vault.
Blue's comparative strength against non-glass cannon combo is overstated. If I'm on Storm or Omni, I'll take on most decks with blue over MUD any day. Same with Sneak & Show but with Death & Taxes. Plenty of combo decks fear discard more than counter spells. Hell, Burn probably scares stuff like Storm and Painter more than a lot of decks with blue. Merfolk and U/B Tezz are no slouches if we're including blue decks without Brainstorm. Obviously blue is awesome, but the way you said that, ehhhh.
False choice, really. We don't have to listen to randoms on the Source posting in their boxers, or listen to fly-by "professionals". People like Bob Huang, Philipp Schönegger, Phillip Braverman, Carsten Kotter, and Julian Knab (as well as pros who are also Legacy aficionados) are well-known and knowledgeable, assuming WotC can be bothered to do more research than checking tweets of pros they know.
Yeah, Wizards should totally listen to people who have been playing 1-2 decks over several years for their objective thinking about banning cards. /sarcasm
Slow players can take their time just as well with preordain/ponder/brainstorm/sylvan library/jace. WOTC just needs to be way more strict about slow-play and give judges more power to punish for it.
How often do you use resolve a Brainstorm and how often do you use a resolved SDT? SDT goes the extramile. At least one activation per turn. At least...
When you have a deck like Omni or Miracles though, things get out of hand.
Look, you can play slowly with any deck in any format. But SDT decks are slow by their very nature. Any time you have repeated activations and repeated Brainstorm effects for one mana means that you increase alot more thinking and decision-making and thus TIME into the game.
If you ban Top, a huge majority of these time-consuming processes are just ABSENT from the format. The entire Legacy format speeds up, tournaments finish on time, and people have more fun (except the few people who liked to play Miracles, and even these guys will likely move on to some other Ux control deck and not even care in a few months time).
What was the meta penetration of Vengevine Survival before it got banned?
You mean the one with Brainstorm to shuffle away extra SotFs?
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=35558
or G/w Maverick
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=35503
or Madness Aggro
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=35427
or Combo
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=35557
Look ... mid range, aggro, combo decks! They're all different guys! Survival is just the fabric of the deck, pillar of the format, skill intensive, background noise.
Top 8 was 4 decks on Survival, 5 on Brainstorm. This was pre-Green Sun's Zenith, Delver, Revoker, Abrupt Decay.
Look at the sideboards ... they are a joke. 1 Faerie Macabre. Survival would be sweet but wouldn't touch Brainstorms level of 80-100% penetration.
I was thinking about Sensei's Divning Top vs Brainstorm, which ban would open meta.
Let's see which decks runs both cards:
SDT:
Miracles
Nic Fit
Imperial Painter
Doomsday
(some builds of Jund)
12Post
Brainstorm:
All blue decks except Fishes (Merfolks), I'm probably too lazy to write them down - important all DTB except D&T runs it.
I'm not a huge fun of staling with SDT. SDT stalling for 10 years, I think I get used to it, specially after U/w Control became Miracles instead Moat/Humility control.
SDT isn't blue - it's colorless every deck can run it, there are non-blue decks which need them - like Nic Fit or Painter. Brainstorm is blue, sure it's running in Legacy since it's called Legacy and before (1.5) and even on old Extended, but now blue has also much more to offer then card selecting and permission - flying Nacatl, CA with DTT, S&T has much stronger targets etc..
After those thoughts I think hammering brainstorm would give a spin much better then SDT, Miracles should exist, but not so strong as now, banning SDT would just kill it, banning brainstorm would change all decks so same changes for all of them, and miracles still can compete, but you just can't reshuffle Terminus/EtA from opening without Jace, which would give a way for aggro to have a window before SDT stack the pipe.
Imperial Painter, Doomsday, Jund, Nic Fit and 12Post all run SDT as a tertiary tool and no more than a 1-of or 2-of except in the rarest of circumstances.
All of those decks are fringe Tier 2 strategies, and all of those decks could still play at peak efficiency or near peak efficiency even without Top.
The difference between Brainstorm and Top is that the effects of banning Brainstorm would have wide, and far-ranging implications that aren't entirely predictable, whereas the effects of banning SDT are very simple to predict: No More Tier 1 Miracles deck, but very little else is affected heavily.Quote:
Brainstorm:
All blue decks except Fishes (Merfolks), I'm probably too lazy to write them down - important all DTB except D&T runs it.
I'm not a huge fun of staling with SDT. SDT stalling for 10 years, I think I get used to it, specially after U/w Control became Miracles instead Moat/Humility control.
SDT isn't blue - it's colorless every deck can run it, there are non-blue decks which need them - like Nic Fit or Painter. Brainstorm is blue, sure it's running in Legacy since it's called Legacy and before (1.5) and even on old Extended, but now blue has also much more to offer then card selecting and permission - flying Nacatl, CA with DTT, S&T has much stronger targets etc..
After those thoughts I think hammering brainstorm would give a spin much better then SDT, Miracles should exist, but not so strong as now, banning SDT would just kill it, banning brainstorm would change all decks so same changes for all of them, and miracles still can compete, but you just can't reshuffle Terminus/EtA from opening without Jace, which would give a way for aggro to have a window before SDT stack the pipe.
Very delicious stuff in here. I would love to know the jobs of the majority of people in this thread.
No Brainstorm ban is going to happen, probably ever. Card has just become too iconc for the format throughout the years and also Wizards of the Coast does not have enough insight/interest in attempting to re-model the format. All the talk that is being made on the topic is just wasted time, so is any attempt to provide rationales for its banning. As much as those can make sense (and they usually do), it is not about the power-level of the card, otherwise it would have been axed since a long time; it is about keeping intact the facade of a format that still generates revenues through (not-so-frequent-anymore) GPs. Also, keeping a good chunk of their customers happy is as important, and we can agree that despites the controversy, the majority of Legacy players does love Brainstorm.
Legacy is bound to be dominated by blue decks probably until the end of its existence. It is pretty unfair but it is just the way things are. The glorious day of fair decks with a low power-ceiling and very complex games played off small edges are long gone. If you strive for those again I would suggest moving to either Standard or Limited. The latter also rewards deckbuilding skills, both creative and thoughtful. Modern has at times this kind of element in it but unfortunately unfair, shortcut games are also there (see Splinter Twin). I know that Legacy has its particular charm as both an Eternal format and probably the one with the greatest amount of layers in decisions (ironically also thanks to Brainstorm) so moving on is pretty hard. Still, those formats can be as satisfying if you leave the stigma behind.
As for Dig, three non-blue decks in this last GP top8ing means nothing is going to change. It is somewhat funny to follow the coverage and hear the commentators (or better, one of them, Lybaert) complaining several times about the brokenness of the card (for which he is absolutely right) for nothing.
Very well writen, that should be the first post of this thread.
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If Wotc wants to decrease the number of blue decks in the format, they should start banning fast mana (City of Traitors, Lotus Petal etc. ; so about 30 cards). Then people can bring their fair non blue decks and compete. Aggro Loam for example does very well against all the fair blue decks, but the problem people might have with this deck and other non blue decks (at least I have) is that you have to hope for good pairings (dodge Combo). Playing with a fair non blue deck against Combo is anything but fun, and even if you have your SB full of hate cards, you are still not a favorite to win, due to the nature of combo decks and card games.
I'm not convinced banning SDT is actually going to decrease tournament time. Hell, I tuned into the GP at the end of day 2 and saw an Omni-tell player have an unintentional draw against a RUG delver player. Draws are still going to happen, especially at larger size tournaments. Unless you are able to somehow remove all unintentional draws, nothing is actually accomplished in terms of saving time, for the most part. Sure maybe a couple top 8s clip around a bit faster, but making top 8s go faster does not seem to be in line with any kind of banning policy. I play a fair amount of Modern too, and those tournaments also go to time as well, and the format should be significantly easier to play. Unintentional draws are just things that happen. That said, the real problems are combo decks which take forever to finish on their combo turn. For example, think of high tide decks--these can potentially drag a tournament on a lot longer due to their final turns taking so long. However, these types of decks are not widespread enough to warrant any change.
Agreed.
Another option for making "fair" nonblue decks more competitive might be to ban Ponder; it avoids the more contentious issue of Brainstorm while making combo less consistent so (for example) the Omni-Tell/Aggro Loam matchup ends up ~60/40 for Omni rather than 70/30. I'm not sure that this is a good plan, but if the goal is to improve the standing of these decks, it's something that has the benefit of actually being palatable to a broad swath of the community while not doing nothing.
As for Dig Through Time, I don't think I've ever been more disappointed that a problematic card was poorly represented in a major Top 8.
Brainstorm is the main culprit of the cantrip shell. Replacing Ponder with Preordain is going to achieve jackshit as the quality sorcery cantrips are pretty much interchangable with little power drops in-between.
DTT placed 5 deck running it in the Top 8, so there's still hope for a ban.
@valtrix
The faster turns before the combo make up for it most of the time. Anyway, it's a fringe deck and at least I have less draws with it than I have against Miracles. I also cannot remember seeing many draws in its few feature matches.
Modo's chess clock is actually something good for the game.
@barook
We get it, you despise Brainstorm to the fullest. :tongue:
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that was pretty stupid. Why would we ban cards like city of traitors and lotus petal? Those aren't problem cards at all. Like for fucks sake. If that's your proposition to nerfing combo,you apparently have no fucking clue or you just refuse to accept that brainstorm is a real problem because you play the card
I really hope that Brainstorm gets banned.
I like playing combo against non blue decks. And only copying my first sentence is really dumb. Blue is so heavily played, because there is not a lot incentive to play non blue decks. Yeah well you play Aggro Loam and try to punish the blue cantrip shell and have a 60/40 MU or even better. But then you play against MUD, Storm, Show and Tell etc. and have a nightmare matchup. Better play a deck that is more versatile and does not have any horrible matchups.
If Wotc wants more non blue decks, they should slow down combo.
This is pretty lulzy
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/c...sts-2015-07-05
"Hey guys, look at all these non-cantrip-cartel decks that that did sort of ok! Look, there's even Goblins, come on guys, the format's healthy!"
/s
"anywhere near the top eight"
You do realize, that those places are often only tiebreakers or 1-3 points away from top8, right? :eyebrow:
Yes, I agree. Goblins in 152th place was fucked on breakers. Elves at 55 had the same issue. Oh and Fish on 112th. Those fucking breakers.
Not all drivers of cars with tinted windows are shady. Heck, I have a friend who is nice as can be and he has a car with tinted windows.
Similarly, not all shady people drive with tinted windows. I know a habitual burglar who drives a brand new Prius with perfectly clear windows!
See, by coming up with anecdotal evidence like this, I can come to faulty conclusions too!
The fact of the matter is that 80%+ of draws in tournaments is the result of Miracles. Not all draws are a result of Miracles-players, and not all Miracles-players draw in any given tournament, but banning SDT an decreasing the number of Miracles players in Legacy tournaments would have a greater impact on tournament length and slow play in general than anything else we can do with the banlist.