And Bolt is only good after Servant is in play - by then REB counters Bolt.
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I mean, that you even ask that question reveals how poorly you understand the other side of the argument. Brainstorm is not problematic because it's popular, it's problematic because it's so clearly the most consistent strategy. Its rise in popularity is just a reflection of that. If fewer people are playing brainstorm it's because they've switched to a worse deck or an anti-brainstorm deck.
Also the idea that people who want to ban brainstorm 'hate blue' is pretty silly. Some people are interested in casting blue cards that aren't in the extremely small set of currently playable blue cards.
And that's the problem the Brainstorm hates have. There is an assumption the format should NOT be dominated by blue. WotC gave each color some mechanics. They gave blue the ability to manipulate cards and counter spells. These turned out to be the two most powerful effects in magic. Banning brainstorm is not going to fix the problem. It's not going to make the for at any less blue. People will still want consistant decks with the ability to say no.
Cards that do not fit blues theme are the real issues. TNN and Delver are what push blue into the forefront. These ale the cards that need to be thrown out. I have no problem if people want to cantrip into more cantrips. But when they also have access to the most aggresive creature in the format then there is a real issue. Eternal formats will always be dominated by blue decks because finding your powerful cards will always be the main priority.
Maybe we should unban ancestral recall in that case, as it is a more pure representation of blue's color identity.
He can't untie the two ideas. He actually believes people have hate for a Magic card. Most rational people who want Brainstorm banned are simply observing the facts, the numbers, and the stagnation of a once interesting format.
Blue haters, go play modern, pillar of the format, format defining, some other sideways inane comparison to Vintage which none of the people making the arguments actually play ...
Yes, and don't forget that Brainstorm is actually just as, if not more powerful than Ancestrall Recall because it always draws you three useful cards, and you always have two bad cards to shuffle away, with the fetchland that you always have, all this requires no skill, any monkey with half a brain can do it (this is also why Brainstorm decks never needs to take a mulligan) and so you see it's practically Ancestrall only better because it can't be misdirected, it is never countered and can't be hated because the hate is so weak (please give more powerful hate, Wizards) and it also always flips your delver and hides your hand from discard, rendering discard spells useless in the format, and don't even get me started on Miracles.
:wink:
Are you actually on peyote? I said NOT BASIC lands, I left the card Island out from the discussion. Wasteland isn't banned because it's cost (your land drop) is equitable with it's function. It can be played around far more than Strip Mine. It allows lower curve decks to move forward and fight higher mana curve decks. It also serves as a check and balance with building mana bases. I have no fucking clue what the hell you are talking about otherwise.
Great, but that's not a ban criteria. Aggro Necro, Combo Necro and Control Necro can all coexist and they are different decks but guess what Necro is stone broken. So broken in fact you can play it in any archetype. Just like your precious fucking cantrip.Quote:
[*]When in the history of Legacy has there been a card banned which was run in so many decks with such varied play-styles when none of those decks were particularly dominant? Never! I don't understand why this is such an elusive concept. It's very simple.
You heard. That's convincing. They just held the biggest vintage tournament in history on Sunday. People seemed to get along fine with only one Brainstorm. But I'm not sure why the Vintage comparisons keep popping up.Quote:
Back when Vintage restricted Brainstorm I heard a lot of Vintage players saying exactly that.
We're done.
I was just being facetious - chill out.
My bad. Then again, your penmanship is atrocious!
That's speculation; we don't know what Necro would do to the meta. I personally expect a dominant combo deck would emerge.
Ragadless, Necro was banned on account of being card draw too good for Vintage. From the very first Legacy banned list article:
Brainstorm is CA neutral; to compare the two is silly.Quote:
The Power Nine and other cards that are restricted in Vintage on their own merits: This section includes stuff like fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Channel, Tolarian Academy, etc.), card drawing (Wheel of Fortune, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Windfall, Necropotence, etc.), and lots of other cards that have proven to be problematically strong, such as Strip Mine, Dream Halls, Mind Twist, Balance, Mind's Desire, and Yawgmoth's Will.
Incidentally, Cantrips are not precious to me. I play Lands (almost) exclusively these days.
Pay attention to the conversations you are joining!
- I was responding to Barook who said he had never heard anyone join Legacy because f love for cantrips. I was simply relating my own experience which was different than his.
- What comparison to Vintage? Are you on crystal meth? :tongue: I was referencing Vintage as it was Vintage players specifically who told me they were wanting to play Legacy because of 4x Brainstorm.Just identifying a demographic - not comparing anything.
- Are you calling me a liar?
Yep. If you're resorting to comparisons between Brainstorm and Necro it's probably a good time to take a step back.
It's not far-fetched at all. All the arguments presented for Brainstorm can be applied to Necropotence as well. I'm not saying that Brainstorm should be banned, but you must be blind if you can't see all these arguments can apply to Necropotence as well. If you can't see that Brainstorm is on a similar power level to cards like Necropotence, you are the one who needs to take a step back.
The criteria for power level is not simply whether a card results in card advantage or not. If that were true, Black Lotus would not be considered a powerful card.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...n-Vintage.html
Obviously this applies to Vintage and not Legacy, but do take a look at the perceived power level of Brainstorm compared to many other restricted cards in Vintage.
The criteria for banning is not simply power level. Why don't you reread the quote I was referencing. Fast mana, along with powerful card draw are two criteria WotC used in creating the Legacy banned list. Efficient card selection is not. Never mind that Brainstorm is "use once" while Necro is a one card engine.
Isn't that the format where they banned 3Sphere and Lotus Petal? Getting off topic here, but I'm glad to know Brainstorm is good in Vintage.
It's been said before: cantrips are only as powerful as the cards they find. Hence the power difference in Vintage.
All the BS BS is getting tiresome. Can we go back to arguing over Top instead?
You are right, Necro isn't a good comp. It never 32/32 ed a GP. There were people stubbornly playing white decks.
I wonder what's the most broken thing is you could do with Necro. I doubt it could 32/32 GP Top 8s like Brainstorm does.
I love both winning and Brainstorm, and I'm currently playing JunkBlade. Roll that up and tug on it.
Do what you want, you can. Choosing not to is affecting your enjoyment of a wonderful hobby to the point that you are bitching about it on an internet message board thread to what I assume are mostly all complete strangers. Ridiculous.
From my phone. I do my best, dammit!
I think modern has more diversity do to the higher presence of creature strategies in the format. This gives decks more ways to win with different strategies, if you can answer their creatures, off course. That's why, in my opinion, control sucks (to many creatures to deal with), and that's why decks like bloom are so hard to answer. Aside from titan they offer so few targets for your removals.
Legacy is different. Almost any deck aims to win trough one single (most of the times) non-creature spell. There's just not enough time to play creatures without a mana denial plan and you need cantrips to find your win condition or something tobstop them. If you want to change that you have to ban the cards that enables those tipe of strategies. If you want to change that yoi have to ban those tipe of cards, not the cantrips. It's like necro, don't ban the cards that allows to find it, just ban necro!
Besides in a format where sensei and terminus are legal you can't have an aggro strategy.
I think modern has many problems, but its diversity is the prove that non emotional and unpopular bans are always better that leaving players decide, they are just not able to see things in a detached way.
Neither has Black Lotus. Do you know what the secret is? Neither card is actually legal In this format!
Necro wouldn't need to go 32/32 to cause an issue because (likely) the decks it would support would have less variation than the decks which run Brainstorm.
If you guys seriously want to discuss unbanning Necro, go right ahead. To me the unabn is too unlikely, and the resultant meta to uncertain, to bother wanting to discuss it with you.
On the other hand, if you need to compare the current Legacy meta to a hypothetical and speculative meta in attempt to prove that Brainstorm is as busted as Necro then your going to need something a little more substantial to convince anybody.
I feel the exact opposite! From my perspective Modern looks to offer very few viable strategies which are not creature-centric. Is there even a tier one creature-less deck at all?
And there you have it!
As the creature powercreep is the central theme of MaRo's vision of MTG, I wouldn't even ask Modern for having creature-light or -less decks at all. Its just unsatisfying that mlst decks boils down to "I kill you because I have the biggest threat dominating the red zone". Its not that Wizards pushed creature interaction aside attacking/blocking and developed synergizing effects of small, cheap creatures at all. They just kept printing 3-6 mana powerhouses trumping each other with the result that there is basically "no game" happening in the first three turns of Standard and that impacts Modern as well and leads to the iffy picture a deck like Ascension leaves if paired against a midrange deck
Lantern control has no creatures, Storm if it had not be banned into the stone age had good builds we thought creatures too. Elves (That new build) feels more like the old Legacy Elf deck of old, back when the kill was Emmy. It's fucking rewarding to play it too. It feels more like a Storm deck then a creature one.
The Griselbrand deck is cool, feels something akin to a Legacy deck in its speed and aggression, held in place only by its lack of cantrips, Grixis control is another deck that is not really creature centric. Runs Tasigur, Snapcaster and Angler. Snapcaster used about as much for his ass as Imperial Recruiter is. The other two just there to end out a game once you well and truly take control of it.
Modern is a good amount of fun to play when you want to turn your brain down for a night. It's a format you can go play after an hour or two at the pub. It's not as complex as Legacy on a spell level while also not being as predictable as Standard. But it doesn't deserve the heat it takes. A Modern deck running Arbor Elf is still more complex then a Legacy deck running SnT and that's something too many people overlook. It also offers its own complexity. There is not a lot of times you have to learn to play around Terminate in Legacy, Modern it's a pest. That's a skill you need to know. While you might not have to play around Force, there is still strong and effective interaction in the format. It just lacks the flair of Force, Brainstorm, Ponder and Daze.
Anyway, I doubt this is news to anyone, the card pool is smaller so it's different and less complex then Legacy, but that also makes it unique and fun when you want to play it. Playing Storm with a bunch of little green men made me happy in Legacy, makes me just as happy in Modern, even if I can't Natural Order for a Hoof in Modern.
Honestly I'm a little tempted to play Scapeshift - I like any strategy which is lands-centric, plus it looks a lot like a traditional stack based control deck. Tron also looks fun because you can play Tron, and 8-Rack because you can play The Rack. I keep thinking I'd like t play Affinity, then I remember I can't play Seat of the Synod. :(
I think I'd be a little let down by the meta though, and really miss things like Force, Wasteland, Dark Ritual, Cradle, Maze, and those cool Legends rares. As it is I don't have the free time to play nearly as much Legacy as I'd like, passing on easily half events in my area. Also, Even a Modern deck has a non-trivial price tag. For the coast of building Scapeshift I could get some cooler old/RL cards for Commander or Legacy which I might enjoy more.
That's like, your opinion mang. Grixis Control being a DTB laughs at your opinion.
Amulet Bloom. No seriously - with Scapeshift you just play some lands and cast your one-card combo. With Bloom, you face extremely elaborate decision trees that involve sequencing Lands, tutoring for the correct things, etc. You will enjoy it, although it takes getting used to as the decisions are different, but no less complex. Plus you get to blatantly violate the turn 4 rule with a number of hands, and that's always a plus.
This is just in: A deck full of removal, countermagic and card advantage tools that tries to wear the opponent down and then push through with a large threat or an academic win condition is not control.
Ladies and gentlemen:
Not Control Enough(TM)
//Creatures
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
//Planeswalkers
4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 Liliana of the Veil
//Other spells:
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Terminate
4 Serum Visions
2 Thought Scour
3 Remand
2 Spell Snare
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
//Lands:
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
2 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Darkslick Shores
//Sideboard
2 Dragon's Claw
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Spellskite
3 Dispel
3 Molten Rain
2 Pyroclasm
1 Thoughtseize
Modern decklists? I thought this thread couldn't get any worse.
Modern Grixis Control doesn't have a reliable way to nullify several of your opponents cards at once (e.g. Moat, Counterbalance, Terminus.) The bulk of its cards are one-for-one answers that are replayed via Jace, Snapcasters, etc. I think that is what he is referring to.
Considering the decklist in question is pointedly proving the idiocy of a poster, I'll allow it :cool:.
So the deck with 6 Planeswalkers, a bunch of Kolaghan's Commands, and 8 ways to flashback its spells doesn't have the ability to deal with multiple threats or generate card advantage? Am I reading this right or did I just step into some kind of alternate universe where brain function is unnecessary?
You'll need to properly define what 'creature-centric' is supposed to mean.
Well, there's not a tier one creatureless deck in Legacy either. You take a look at the "Decks to Beat" forum and every single deck there plays creatures. The only creatureless deck I can think of that's worth anything at all is Storm (which is not currently Tier 1), and technically Storm is not creature-less as it regularly runs Xantid Swarm out of the sideboard.Quote:
Is there even a tier one creature-less deck at all?
I like to sprinkle insults in for flavor in my B&R posts. As for Jund, it is a midrange deck. The debate whether that makes it control or not has been raging literally since Jund was first in Standard. In practice, it plays like control against faster decks and like disruptive agro against slower ones.
Heck, Grixis control in Legacy generally runs a bunch of 1 for 1 answers and disruption and pulls ahead via incremental advantage...just like the Modern one (!)
That modern Grixis list is janky as fuck. Thought you should know.
From my phone. I do my best, dammit!