That's an often repeated fallacy. If the Duress is followed up with a threat/combo, hiding your FoW did literally nothing positive. Ancestral remains plain better.Quote:
Originally Posted by tsabo_tavoc
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That's an often repeated fallacy. If the Duress is followed up with a threat/combo, hiding your FoW did literally nothing positive. Ancestral remains plain better.Quote:
Originally Posted by tsabo_tavoc
Good job at quoting the 'relevant' half, it was clearly meant to show the Ancestral/Brainstorm comparison is not fitting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
This does not mean Brainstorm is an innocuous card. Some people like to use Ancestral to demonstrate a card draw at a wrong mana cost can be very dangerous, and I versed it in a less provoking way:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tsabo_tavoc
For the record (Because this seems to have been missed) when I mentioned Recall it was not in talk of having it be unbanned. The point was that arguments for keeping something in the format that should be removed only look like reasonable arguments when you put them next to an accepted and tolerated card. These arguments, all exactly the same, break down when you put them next to obviously unsafe cards. Recall has no merit in itself being debated, the card is not safe for removal.
Because so many of the arguments used are based not on the merits of the card themselves but external abstractions like "Skill" and "Feels", not actual data points. Not that that matters anymore, the data is no longer valid because the card is protected from logical debate by Wotc.
I think his point is that cantrips are so good that you should either play them or play decks that prey on it like Dragon Stompy or Death and Taxes.Quote:
Originally Posted by taconaut
I suppose it's the same thing with the boogeyman Deathrite Shaman. Decks like Reanimator and dredge still work fine with Deathrites running around, albeit with some adjustments. But an argument people have is that the card (shaman) is so good that you need a darn good reason not to run it.
I find it funny that sure Deathrite is everywhere but so are all the blue cantrips. It's not like people are complaining about Deathrite in say Elves or Jund.
Nothing imo should be banned. A few things could be unbanned actually. I'd bring back Sensei's Divining Top if they really changed the rules about Slow play infractions. But I'm not sure there's a way to crack down on that.
Ancestral is obviously better than Brainstorm most of the time, but it's not -strictly- better because there are times where a Brainstorm lets you do something that Ancestral can't like set up an Infernal Tutor or your uncastable bricks, err miracle spells.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
There are also times where brainstorm feels closer to Ancestral than to a cantrip.
What you describe is the core functionality the card has for various combo decks and lots of conditional/redundant cards in the format like Emrakul/Griselbrand/Stifle/Daze/Removal/etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rascalyote
No mention of how it combos with counterbalance or shelldock isle?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Not complaining about Elves. Also not about Miracles, Storm, or S&T.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wilkin
What worries me is too many creature based decks made of a balanced mix of threats and answered played on a fair mana curve - especially decks which run mostly cards that are independently good. So if Jund were a relevant deck, it would be part of the issue - another "good-stuff" fair creature deck. Yawn.
I personally don't like to see fair, creature decks above 50%. Fair, "good-stuff" creature decks, I don't like to see above 40%. We need space for combo, and for prison/hard-control in order to have a well balanced meta.
Right now the (potentially) offending decks all run cantrip, FoW, and DRS. One of those cards strongly pushes the overabundant play-style, the others do not.
Agreed - at this time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wilkin
Right now MTGTop8 has (non-elf) DRS decks at 36%. Considering the "tempo" versions are borderline midrange, that's a lot more than ideal.
To put it in context, if 36% of the meta was combo that would be okay. But if that 36% where all Storm variations (Ruby, ANT, TES, High-Tide, Solidarity, and SI), that would be a lot uglier. Back to the midrange plague, if the meta share grows, and holds, I will advocate a ban. I would hate to see the top-16 at Birmingham become anything close to representative of the meta-game.
For that matter, Serum Visions is also not strictly worse than Recall. Obviously broken!Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
Only if you don't understand the arguments in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
"Skill-testing" is bull crap, totally agreed.
As for the other argument, we are not saying BS is okay because it fits in lots of different decks! Black Lotus also fits in just about any sort of deck.
The argument is that BS fits into many (strategically) different decks which can coexist in a strategically balanced meta.
You completely miss this because you are not personally concerned with strategic diversity, and you refuse to make an effort to understand that for some of us this is the primary concern.
Recall could go in every deck, but there is zero reason to believe the result would be a strategically balanced meta! We know TC and DTT didn't. We know Brainstorm can and has. That's the difference.
Here's the real rub.Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn
When SDT was legal, I argued that Miracles was unique in being "hard control". The ban-bs-camp argued tooth and nail that, eg, the BUG midrange/control decks were absolutely control decks and very different from the delver decks.
Now that Miracles has receded, the anti-blue-camp are saying the midrange/control decks are the same as the Delver decks!
The irony is so rich!
Never going to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by JDK
Some folks have been holding out desperately for a BS ban (for years now). ArFo has ruined their dreams, and many are now frothing at the mouth.
Maybe we should just leave them to stew for a while?
I am not talking about the recent decision to allow none.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nestalim
I'm talking about ~2004 when they said we couldn't have BoP & Llanowar standard legal at the same time because two dorks were too many.
A year or two later, Llanowar, BoP, Deep Shadow, and Boreal Druid were all in the same Standard. Point being WotC likes to flip-flops.
And what you are missing is that a lot of us are asking for strategic and (let's call it) tactical diversity. Brainstorm (+fetches) stifles this by making cantrips the best possible engine. We just want this engine to be turned down a notch (not killed off!!!) so that other engines will become viable. I guess a Ponder + Preordain ban could achieve the same thing but I like to have the least amount of cards on the banlist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
I understand that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
I do understand the desire for more engines that support fair magic. But I don't believe health of the format hinges on that for the reasons above.
- Personally I'm less concerned with diversity in engines because they are not the most interactive parts of the deck. I want decks to play differently against each other. I care a lot less how each deck manages its own resources (aka, how they play with themselves).
- I think a lot of the other engines are on par (or close to it) in the decks they support. the difference is that they are narrow and support fewer archetypes. And they mostly support unfair strategies. If you're playing fair MTG, cantrips are the best. Playing combo or prison, not so much.
The second point feels like progress. A lot of people here remember fair decks not running Brainstorm. There used to be zoo, goblins, Merfolk, deadguy and some fringe ones. Prison decks run thalia or chalice and related cards which hasn't changed much. Combo is still diverse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
The first point is wrong and a bit bizarre?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pettdan
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
I decided to back up my previous post with some numbers. I'm on a train and bored so why not?
Per mtg top 8 for the full 2011 year the following fair decks without brainstorm but with > 1% meta share are:
Merfolk 7%
Zoo 7%
Goblins 3%
The rock 4%
Guess how many fair decks without brainstorm have > 1% meta share now? (Note: I consider thalia decks prison not fair)
Still wondering why Top was banned... Every major paper event since the ban has had every round go to time++.
Oh I understand all this, I just think it's a hollow and shit argument. Because against my comment is where you can put in another broken card and the argument still holds. Here:Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
The argument is that Recall fits into many (strategically) different decks which can coexist in a strategically balanced meta.
Looks weak to me. But Recall would go in Control, Midrange, Combo... Strategic derversity...
Any yes, it could go into everything and it might not be balanced, but we already have a card that does that.
Also my argument is not about Cantrips, I am not looking to axe them all like I think that would make Legacy better. Just that one, very very broken card.
We have a card that already stifles every fucking thing, it's that card alone that in my mind is the issue, not the idea that the Blue engine would not exist after or even continue to be dominate. I'm not a total idiot, I am aware it would be.
So just to clarify (though I assume you knew what I meant), my point about Deathrite is that the decks that people are complaining about that have that creature are only blue decks. Actually, probably only 2, Czech Pile and Grixis Delver. I haven't seen BUG Delver post a ton of good results lately.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
Hm....I would personally like more combo decks in the meta. I find it more interesting when you could face Storm or Sneak show. Right now, where I play it's only really Reanimator. One problem IMHO is the lack of good combo cards being printed and the 2nd being power creep of creatures. Once upon a time Tarmogoyf and Goblin Lackey were seen as oppressive.
I would agree Deathrite does push more than Force and cantrips into making a deck builder decide to play midrange. But if the metric that people are using as an issue (% of the meta), than it's just going to be another blue variant. Canadian Threshold would be my guess. Grixis I still think is a better deck than Threshold, although getting my lands wasted, my fetches Stifled and staring down a Goose with a Plow in hand sucks.
Lately it seems the innovations in the format are really limited to Stompy decks, especially with Karn slotting into some of the Sol decks. The Chalice shell seems to be the only real area that is getting significant attention for brewing. Just lately saw the Mono-Black Stompy shell, which swaps out the Red cards for Lilianas and some black kill spells essentially.
The format comparisons of Legacy turning into Vintage light of Cantrips vs Prison vs Combo seem pretty apt. "Combo" being where you have random stuff like Burn (7 card combo!), Turbo Depths, BR Reanimator, and Elves.
I disagree respectfully with linking it to "a card". It's the absurd card selection/quality for next to no opportunity cost which makes "the blue shell" soooooo much better than most non-blue decks. It's pretty irrelevant if your cantrip/cardselection core is BS/Ponder/Probe, Ponder/Preordain/Probe or SDT/Ponder/BS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
If you want an example of the power of blue card selection even without Brainstorm, I think the History of Modern and its Ux combo decks gives a decent example of such. We both know how excessive the bans have been in order to bring down "the blue shell" in that format down to the level of non-blue decks.
Chopping BS is just harming a few decks who rely on it as a tool to get rid of clunky chaff, but isn't really neutering the fundamental advantage the blue shell has over the rest. It would need banning the top 2-3 cards of that shell at once, to feel a shakeup. I however doubt, that this is going to happen ever, as the outcome would be a drastic backlash of the community.
The thing is we are well past where you can turn back that clock, for good or ill that is a part of this format. So if you take out Brainstorm, a card I feel has a power level unmatched but any card in the format not named Gaia's Cradle, you bring down the power level of that engine some. But that engine is not going away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
You could ban 4 Cantrips tomorrow and Legacy would find more. There are a ton to use as proven buy Portent popping up. I know it's for other reasons then just it's a cantrip, but it's still a point to think about. If you want to kill the engine totally you have to ban so much shit the format becomes laughable. It's better to accept that in this case the war is over, your not going to win.
My complaint is that Brainstorm itself is far far more powerful than anything that could replace it. I think it should go for a bunch of reasons but I do not think we should take a chainsaw to Blue. Ponder or Preodain I think are not realistic asks for banning.
Modern's blue decks are pretty well balanced in terms of cantrips right now, so I don't agree with this. Blue is a good color to play in Modern, but stuff like Serum Visions and Opt aren't nearly powerful enough to justify in every non-prison deck. Jund is a thing that exists still in Modern. Search for Azcanta is making a more powerful argument for adding blue to random decks, but Serum Visions and company haven't swayed Modern in that direction yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
This is correct. BS is far and away better than anything that you can use other than it. Ponder/Preordain are good, but not to the point of replacing your last 2 top decked lands with relevant cards. BS allows people to keep hands that are only 5/7ths good knowing that they can get rid of the bad stuff for good stuff. BS allows you to hide the thing you don't want to be Thoughtseized. The other cards help with variance but not nearly at the same level.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
That's why I said "history of modern" to point at the fact that they had to ban DDT, TC, Probe, Ponder and Preordain (as well as almost all the combo enablers these blue cards could fetch), before blue was "just another color" in the format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition
Mind that these had to be banned in WotCs opinion, despite many blue powerhouses not even in the format due to their age (like Force of Will) and the creature powercreep within the last decade.
So, if you stall your opponents with Wasteland, Daze, Spell Peirce, Cabal Therapy, you can be a fair deck, but if you stall them with Wasteland, Thalia, and other hate bears you're not a fair deck? That's not how I would define "fair", but if we go that way surely Maverick is also not fair. It runs Thalia, Teeg, other hate bears, and can waste-lock the opponent.Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
Prison is just a kind of control, and it follows aggro/prison is just a kind of aggro/control. DnT is a prison deck in the same sense that Czech or Blade are control decks.
I would define "fair" as:
That counts Maverick and D&T, but excludes Burn and eldrazi.
- Creature based.
- A balanced mix of threats and answers.
- A "fair" mana curve.
We're having a good talk (:smile:), but I guess I'm not explaining this well. I'll try again.Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
The majority of PvP interaction comes at the hands of threats, answers, lock pieces, and combos. We don't use pur engines to interact. I don't "Loam" my opponent. I interact with the Lands I get. Loam only gets Lands, so that limits the type of interactions it produces, but BS gets anything. I don't "get Brainstormed". My opponent casts BS, and then they don't interact with the cards they find.
As somebody primarily interested in PvP interaction, I don't care if your cards come from Silvan Library, BoB, Brainstorm, Faithless Looting, or redundancy. I care about what those cards are - threats, answers, lock pieces, combo pieces.
I understand that Miracles interacts by setting their top deck for CB. But that's unique to that deck. There is false bidding cards from discard. But the majority of the time, BS is used for card selection; which is not actually interactive. It facilitates interaction, but the type of interaction it facilitates is determined by the play-styles of the deck - not by the nature of BS.
DRS, on the other hand, is directly interactive, and interacts the same way in pretty much every deck that plays it. It makes for same-ish decks.
Those of those decks were struggling by 2012 - Maverick Summer. Can't really blame cantrip.Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
More relevantly, How many fair decks are not running DRS? U/R Prowess at 3%. And Prowess plays quite a bit differently than all the BUGx midrange (and Grixis midrange/tempo). Prowess is a border line aggro deck.
Virtually every fair deck in the format runs BS & Delver, or both. So if we were to ban one of those cards, why chose the card that enables our only classic control deck as well helping combo stay relevant? Are we trying to maximise splash damage?
But there is no evidence that decks of all those styles would actually be competitive. Your just pulling that conjecture out of your ass.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
We are talking about recall here. I would bet the GDP of a small nation they would be competitive. Not that it was ever really the argument. The argument was that arguments used in defence of Brainstorm have to be about abstractions, because when arguments made on things such as, well, numbers, facts and metrics are used we have to ignore them. You want a debate on that one go talk to Aaron, it was his fucking tweet that said exactly that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
Also as for talking out of said ass, did you read the title of thread your posting in? What else did you think happens in here? Honest and frank discussion and debate with people who have any wish other than to amuse themselves and fit into tribes of which to attack the other side? Come on, your a prick, but your not a fool.
Wait a moment? Are you serious? You never blew up a Sylvan Library or BoB? You never surgicalled a Loam? You never revoked a LED?? This makes no sense...Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
That's because you don't believe other decks will finally be able to perform. Decks that are just not good enough in a format dominated by Brainstorm. I believe that brewers will finally start again with a blank slate and not just with 4 BS, 4 Ponder, 4 Fow and a bunch of blue fetches.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
I agree with your assessment on the blue shell advantage, but it does not mean Brainstorm should not be axed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
It is dangerous to group Brainstorm together with other cantrips, as Brainstorm clearly stands out. Brainstorm is between cantrips and Ancestral Recall! Sorry if some people do not like the analogy, but let's see the fact:
A cantrip draws you 1 card, and has +0 CA
Brainstrom draws you 3 cards, and has +0 CA
Ancestral recall draws you 3 cards, and has +2 CA
Banning any real blue cantrip does not make much sense: Ponder can be replaced by Portent, Preordain by Serum Vision, for example. Yes they are downgrades in terms of card selection, but you get the basic draw 1 card, +0 CA.
But try to replace Brainstorm, you get worse selection, draw 2 fewer cards, and only keep the +0 CA aspect. I have no doubt blue cantrip shell would still work without Brainstorm, but it will be much fairer and therefore less dominant. Legacy welcomes powerful strategies, and welcomes the blue cantrip shell. I just can not agree with people pointing fingers to a B/G creature to fix the problem, like they did to a 1G creature, while the problem lies in a U instant. Blue mages, please give Legacy some justice.
PS: I have seen Brainstorm as the problem since the beginning of the thread, and only get softer during some new card releases that can be perceived as Brainstorm hoser (for example, Spirit of the Labyrinth). Do we really want to face the Vintage situation that they ban all the Artefacts before touching the Workshop?
Yes I have. With answers, which are what you use to the interact. The other engine itself is not an interactive tool - it sets interactions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
If the DRS/Cantrip fair decks take a hit, something fair that was held back will be able to perform to a more competitive level. I don't personally care if it's Punishing Maverick, Merfolk, Affinity, Thresh, Prowess, or Infect. Those decks are all sufficiently different from the BUGX midrange which is dominating the fair-deck sector.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielsie
I'm not a interested in choosing which fair decks benefit from the ban. (If I were to choose, I would want to see faster tempo and aggro - not just a different flavour of "midrange grind" please).
But I do care about preserving combo and hard control. BS does more work by miles than DRS at supporting those styles. To me, that's more important than making KotR (or Goblins, or whatever) great again.
We just have different values.
Only "saturation" metrics, if I recall ArFo's comments.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Arguments based on play-styles diversity (a foreign concept to you, apparently), are at the forefront. You consistently ignore this PoV, because you can't (or won't) imagine anybody could actually care about that more than engines.
You're not a fool either, so you must be purposely closing your mind to this.
They won't all be competitive if one style rises above the rest. Do you honestly believe if we unleashed Black Lotus that fair decks would even stand a chance? Lotus slots into fair decks easily enough, but that doesn't mean they could compete with the combo and prison decks that would truly abuse Lotus.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Sometimes Intellectual honesty happens here. There is no excuse for anything less in a public discussion forum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Edit - why do you think I want to keep BS legal? You sure as hell aren't listening to my stated reasons, so you must have a theory? You know I have zero interest in playing the damn card...
Yup, I'm in agreement with this. Rounds just aren't any shorter with top banned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tittliewinks22
I'd quite like to see top unbanned for format diversity (nic fit, doomsday, painter, cloudpost etc) with counterbalance banned to prevent the lock returning to miracles, which will make it weaker to combo and delver and means that not everyone would have to play decays. I think terminus is a key card to have access to as one of the few ways shaman and delver can be kept up with, alongside being a clean answer to true name and leovold.
Top is/was such a sweet card to play with (and against imo, lots of interesting mind games and play patterns) and it's a shame it's gone.
So, Merfolk is still played but is a worse aggro/control deck than Delver against much of the field due to the requirement of having several threats which cost 2+ mana, as opposed to one young pyro/true-name/angler/delver and free disruption (with cantrips to tie it all together, sure, but those were played alongside werebear and nimble mongoose) Delver was printed in 2012 and thresh became the best deck, since then Delver has remained aggro/control king.Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
Zoo died to batterskull, 2011, and terminus, 2012.
Goblins is still played, and has the same problems as always - loses to fast combo decks, which have become more powerful due to new printings (griselbrand, 2012, and past in flames, 2011).
The rock - fair point here, whilst people still play jund, it is essentially worse pile because of leovold, jace, countermagic and of course, cantrips. The rock probably died when they printed shardless agent in 2012, which fell out of popularity last year.
Most of these decks were killed by new printings, not just because brainstorm exists.
Also - how is a Thalia deck not a 'fair' deck? Thalia encourages you to play a creature deck and punishes cantrips and combo decks. Is this just because it's not a vanilla zoo creature or it wasn't printed in Alpha like lord of atlantis?
Because you are making a nutshell argument, undermining the fact that Wasteland/AetherVial/Port/GhostQuarter/etc aim at the opponent never getting a foot on the ground while you keep cheating manacosts.Quote:
Originally Posted by FGCmtg
Sure, but goblins and merfolk have played all of those cards (minus ghost quarter in the case of merfolk afaik, goblins has played gq), and those were two of the 'fair' decks mentioned in the original post, so I don't see those as distinguishing factors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
This fair/unfair metric is bollocks by default.Quote:
Originally Posted by FGCmtg
Every decks aim is to minimalize the opponents options to interact with your win condition, no matter if its discard, counter, landdestruction, Prison elements, swarming, hexproof, whatever. If your opponent has no answers to your wincon, he loses. Just that simple.
Sure, so why doesn't Thalia count as a card that is played in non brainstorm decks which aren't combo based is my question. I think there is far too much reminiscing about a time where legacy was a different game to play, where the cards played, and specifically creatures played, were from a different age of magic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Those cards have been outclassed. The port/waste/vial deck is no longer goblins, it's dnt. The blue aggro/control daze/fow deck is no longer merfolk, it's delver. This is due to new printings, not brainstorm existing in the format.
@fgcMVP: I think you're points are right (except on thalia) but you're omitting important details. Primarily that brainstorm and to a lesser extent other cantrips are enabling the cards you mentioned like delver and terminus. Both are modern legal but hardly oppressive...arguably even bad in the format.Quote:
Originally Posted by FGCmtg
Merfolk: Yeah I despise delver...which you know obviously. Notable exception though is when it's played in a transformational sb, then it's of course sweet*. Banning either brainstorm or ponder+preordain would make delver much worse. It wouldn't be obvious anymore to run it over mongoose or goyf right?
Zoo: Batterskull isn't helpful but it wasn't a death blow either. They had lots of ways of getting rid of stoneforge and then winning before batterskull dropped. Banning brainstorm would end terminus I imagine, not sure if ponder+preordain would do the trick?
Goblins: Combo isn't the issue, 2011 was about the time I did well with goblins at a few upstate NY larger events and I don't remember ever beating a mystical tutor deck or led dredge. Non combo decks including counter top used to be much better matchups. Similar story here in a hit to cantrips would hurt terminus/mentor/delver.
Rock: Yeah, again a hit to cantrips make the cards you mentioned worse, especially leovold.
Really? Thalia is definitely a prison card, it's a thorn/sphere card on legs. It combines with other cards like wasteland and prelate to stop players from playing the game.
I suppose I just don't care about banning the cantrips, and I spend a lot of time working out how to beat the metagame as it currently stands, because that's what the game is at the moment.Quote:
Originally Posted by kinda
So, a summary, yes brainstorm makes terminus much better, it doesn't really make delver that much better and it'd still be better than merfolk. I suppose the main reason I don't want to ban brainstorm is because banning brainstorm makes force of will decks less viable/significantly worse, which means a large part of the format devolves into br reanimator mirrors, which sounds like hell to me. It's still better to play most things over tarmogoyf, as angler and young pyro would still be much better cards that don't have a negative value proposition when matched up against fatal push.
What do you think is stopping goblins from being t1? It has favourable matchups vs pile, miracles and delver. It loses to all the combo decks more often than not, I would say your sample size is v small.
Yes Thalia is a prison card, designed to punish cantrip decks and combo, which are a part of the format, because vanilla creatures are bad. See you later ;)
There is no doubt about it, however it's a natural phenomenon, as language and definitions within the game are passed down over player generations and most players who entered the format/game within the era of MaRos NewWorldOrder, don't even know the decks, cards and powerlevel which formed mentioned definitions in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by FGCmtg
To some extend we can be thankful that todays format isnt looking like the one 12 years plus ago, on the other hand we have to question if the stoneage criterias/language isn't a relic of the past as well. There are still plenty of people around who call DnT an aggro deck based on running mainly creatures or call Burn a combo deck because of the lack of beforementioned card type. The fair/unfair discussion is just an outstandingly cringeworthy leftover in my opinion, implying that there are ACTUALLY decks playable which do not actively try to prevent the opponent from playing their deck as they planned.