All B/R update speculation.

People should be arguing for a top (among other cards) unban, not a DRS ban. When miracles was top dog with top, the vast majority of top 8s had like 1-2 miracles and 1 delver and then 1-2 random Thalia or combo deck. It was pretty balanced. The 4 miracles legacy GP top 8 was an anomaly, not the norm. I mean sure, the root of the problem is how consistent the contrip cartel is, but if we accept that the blue cantrips are here to stay, I think the format would be better with both top and DRS unbanned than both banned.

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Originally Posted by AznSeal

People should be arguing for a top (among other cards) unban, not a DRS ban. When miracles was top dog with top, the vast majority of top 8s had like 1-2 miracles and 1 delver and then 1-2 random Thalia or combo deck. It was pretty balanced. The 4 miracles legacy GP top 8 was an anomaly, not the norm. I mean sure, the root of the problem is how consistent the contrip cartel is, but if we accept that the blue cantrips are here to stay, I think the format would be better with both top and DRS unbanned than both banned.

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I know that, you know that, we all know that here on the source because the average player on here is infinitely better at the game than some random. However, wizards doesn’t know that, and we can be 100% certain of that fact based on some of the cards on the banned list still being banned. It would not surprise me in the slightest if that ‘ban top’ street sign that was outside their building was at least 50% of the reason they ended up banning it last year.

What would these Top-8s look like if Brainstorm were banned?

Coverage of the GP was not only painful because of rather poor, well, coverage, but (what felt like) having to see at least one Deathrite Shaman in play at any given point gets kind of boring after a while. I realize that Brainstorm is in more decks, but at least once it’s resolved it’s gone. Deathrite Shaman stays and forces us as viewers watch the slow count down by two from 20.

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Originally Posted by MGB

What would these Top-8s look like if Brainstorm were banned?

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https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/be...5a4d65aab9.gif

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Originally Posted by MGB

What would these Top-8s look like if Brainstorm were banned?

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From my biased position pro-top, I still think if we substitute top for brainstorm it would look very very interesting as blue still gets ponder and probe but can’t hide shit for free. Too bad we’ll never get a meta like that ever though.

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Originally Posted by maharis

This is incredibly difficult to do. Anything that only costs 1 or 2 mana, especially of one color, can be easily splashed in a blue deck, even without Deathrite. (See Tarmogoyf). Anything that costs more than that and is color-intensive is simply not efficient enough to compete with the 0-1 cmc soup that's glued together by card velocity and selection from the cantrips.

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Demonic Cantrip
Sorcery, B
Draw two cards, lose two life.
~this~ can't be cast unless you control a basic Swamp.

There's a template for you, regardless of playability in the format. I could come up with more ideas, but we have another thread for that.

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Originally Posted by AznSeal

People should be arguing for a top (among other cards) unban, not a DRS ban. When miracles was top dog with top, the vast majority of top 8s had like 1-2 miracles and 1 delver and then 1-2 random Thalia or combo deck. It was pretty balanced. The 4 miracles legacy GP top 8 was an anomaly, not the norm. I mean sure, the root of the problem is how consistent the contrip cartel is, but if we accept that the blue cantrips are here to stay, I think the format would be better with both top and DRS unbanned than both banned.

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Let's forget how Miracles was the top deck for three years straight (it could even fight decks that were later banned for the top position), shall we? Miracles getting hit with the ban hammer was absolutely justified. It just hit SDT because it was the core card of the deck AND caused time issues because one slow chucklefuck is enough to hold up the entire tournament. Even if it sucks that other decks were hit hard by the colleteral damage.

DRS should have been banned at the same time as SDT because the outcome was predictable, yet here we are.

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Originally Posted by Kap'n Cook

From my biased position pro-top, I still think if we substitute top for brainstorm it would look very very interesting as blue still gets ponder and probe but can’t hide shit for free. Too bad we’ll never get a meta like that ever though.

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The format in general would be better without Brainstorm, Probe and Ponder. Both Vintage and Modern eventually came to the conclusion that Ponder and Probe are too good and that Preordain is still good enough as a cantrip. Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage and was never printed in Modern. Yet somehow you can still jam 4x Brainstorm/Ponder/Probes in Legacy because the guy in charge doesn't give a shit about Legacy.

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Originally Posted by Barook

Let's forget how Miracles was the top deck for three years straight (it could even fight decks that were later banned for the top position), shall we? Miracles getting hit with the ban hammer was absolutely justified. It just hit SDT because it was the core card of the deck AND caused time issues because one slow chucklefuck is enough to hold up the entire tournament. Even if it sucks that other decks were hit hard by the colleteral damage.

DRS should have been banned at the same time as SDT because the outcome was predictable, yet here we are.


The format in general would be better without Brainstorm, Probe and Ponder. Both Vintage and Modern eventually came to the conclusion that Ponder and Probe are too good and that Preordain is still good enough as a cantrip. Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage and was never printed in Modern. Yet somehow you can still jam 4x Brainstorm/Ponder/Probes in Legacy because the guy in charge doesn't give a shit about Legacy.

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This. Probe is banned in Modern/Restricted in vintage. Ponder is banned in modern/restricted in vintage. Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage. Neither of those formats are mired by ridiculous number of just 8+ cantrip decks (for multiple other reasons), but you know what format is? The one where all of these busted fucking pieces of shit are legal.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

...but you know what format is? The one where all of these busted fucking pieces of shit are legal.

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Just play a different format and be happy.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

This. Probe is banned in Modern/Restricted in vintage. Ponder is banned in modern/restricted in vintage. Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage. Neither of those formats are mired by ridiculous number of just 8+ cantrip decks (for multiple other reasons), but you know what format is? The one where all of these busted fucking pieces of shit are legal.

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And yet despite this the number of maindeck Pyroblasts in Vintage is still higher. Should we ban Thirst for Knowledge too?

I didn't play mtg at the time, but I seem to recall people saying that a lot of people quit playing Vintage when Brainstorm was restricted
A lot of people just enjoy playing the card Brainstorm.
It sounds scary to think that we're all playing a format with 'busted fucking pieces of shit', I guess Vintage must be unplayable then if the power 9 is allowed

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Originally Posted by ScottW

Just play a different format and be happy.

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If nothing changes with the next 1-2 B&R updates, that might just happen for me.

Or more likely quit Magic all together, as there aren't any other magic formats that interest me judging from what I see on streams.

Life's too short to be bored.

why isn't goblin recruiter unbanned? we have decks that can kill one turn 1or 2. unban recruiter already.

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Originally Posted by ScottW

Just play a different format and be happy.

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Seriously, at some point you have to realize that while you may not like that legacy is about blue cantrips, but most of us are just fine with it. You don't accomplish anything by derailing every attempt at reasonable discussion with your fever dream that's both never happening and would piss off 75% fo the player base. I realized a similar thing with modern a few years ago; I didn't like what modern was about but most people were enjoying the format, so I stopped complaining and played other formats. Play another format, play chalice and chains and punish the people with 12 cantrips, or have a banned list discussion about things that might actually happen.

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Originally Posted by phg22

Seriously, at some point you have to realize that while you may not like that legacy is about blue cantrips, but most of us are just fine with it. You don't accomplish anything by derailing every attempt at reasonable discussion with your fever dream that's both never happening and would piss off 75% fo the player base. I realized a similar thing with modern a few years ago; I didn't like what modern was about but most people were enjoying the format, so I stopped complaining and played other formats. Play another format, play chalice and chains and punish the people with 12 cantrips, or have a banned list discussion about things that might actually happen.

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The 'they will never ban Brainstorm' argument is just as unfounded though or has there ever been such an official statement from Wizards? The ban of Top was completely unexpected also and the card was considered a pillar of the format as well so I wouldn't write it off that one day we will finally see BS and its companions banned.

It's not even about the fact that the format is all about blue cantrips. It's that anytime a card come close to being as played as those blue cantrips, it get banned. SotF being legal would've solved miracle having no playable predators, but instead we banned top and kept all the cantrips so we lost a unique sinergy-based top deck for just another shit pile of good cards. And this with miracle at 20% of the format and all the delver variants only slightly behind. Currently the UBRg piles/delver are at how much? 30%? But just watch DRS get banned so we can get another U-cantrip-allgoodstuff with the best cheap non-U cards in it deck as the top of the format.

Know what would've weakened miracle and all the U-piles at the same time? What would've made a lot of other decks if only slightly more competitive and the format more balanced? Banning the right card ages ago. Keeping SotF and top in the format. Unbanning other garbage still on the banlist. But nooooo

I dream of a format with tempo based decks, midrange-combo SotF and green based decks, miracle countertop, combo-prison lands, aggro-prison in DnT and Tomb decks, and a whole slew of T2 decks behind.

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Originally Posted by Gheizen64

I dream of a format with tempo based decks, midrange-combo SotF and green based decks, miracle countertop, combo-prison lands, aggro-prison in DnT and Tomb decks, and a whole slew of T2 decks behind.

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So you basically dream about 2012 (+ SotF)?

Lol @ Erdvermampfa. Do you even have any other posts here than Brainstorm bashing?

I honestly have moved heavily away from the format. It's just a bad format right now. It makes me sad to do because I enjoy much of the player base, but I have had little desire to go play this terrible format and I know many people in our area that are literally just making up their own formats just so they can play with each other because they don't want to play legacy anymore. Between the format being miserable and the prices still soaring the format should be dead soon which sucks, but it's time.

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Originally Posted by Cave

Yeah, the question is how can you practically stop blue structural advantages from providing the best shell of the format. You ban brainstorm, ponder, preordain and gitaxian probe? Sounds nonsense. The format's beauty resides in playing powerful cards and being able to look for them when you need'em. Question is, how can you balance that?

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You mostly can't, because cantripping at 1 mana is not an investment and Xerox is just the best way to build decks, period. Hell, even Pauper is slowly but surely Xeroxifying - people are even playing Brainstorm in a small capacity due to Ash Barrens, even if it's mostly an Augur of Bolas and Preordain show thus far. But eg. Skred Delver runs 17 cantrips (4 Augur, 4 Faerie Miscreant, 4 Preordain, 3 Ponder, 2 Brainstorm). Boros Monarch, the format's take on a Shardless/Jund-esque value deck is close to being a Xerox deck too - 22 cards that replace themselves. As predicted by Rich Shay's take of Xerox Mentor decks in Vintage, the non-Xerox decks that survive in Pauper are either:

1. Fast, and win before the blue decks recover from the tiny tempo losses incurred by cantripping.
1.1. Monogreen Stompy with Burning-Tree Emissary for explosiveness
1.2. Tireless Tribe+Inside Out combo decks, which are Xerox decks themselves to begin with.
2. Decks that go over the top in a way low-curve Xerox decks have a hard time dealing with:
2.1. Tron decks that go over the top with raw draw into facemelt-sized Rolling Thunders, Capsize locks and increasingly by recurring fogs into milling the fairer decks out.
2.2. Elves decks that go over the top.
2.3. UB Control decks running Gurmag Angler since Pauper's mana means Grixis Delver probably won't be a thing.

This is important because one argument for cantrips has been that they're only as good as the cards they find. In Pauper, the threats suck. And it's turning into Xeroxland, live before our eyes. I like cantrips as much as anyone else but at some point multiple formats and years of history have to be allowed to say something. That something is that cantrips are a fundamentally broken concept.

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Originally Posted by Erdvermampfa

The 'they will never ban Brainstorm' argument is just as unfounded though or has there ever been such an official statement from Wizards? The ban of Top was completely unexpected also and the card was considered a pillar of the format as well so I wouldn't write it off that one day we will finally see BS and its companions banned.

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I doubt they're ever going to explicitly make a statement "Brainstorm will always be legal in Legacy no matter what".

But their actions make clear that they're not ever going to ban it. Vintage is now the "you can play four Workshops and we'll restrict every artifact ever printed if that's what it takes" format. Legacy is the "you can play four Brainstorms and we'll ban literally every other card except basic Island if that's what it takes" format.

So Legacy banlist discussions, if they're to be at all practical or realistic, must be discussions of "how do we build the best possible four-Brainstorm format".