Blue needs a Nerf

i'm not spamming or anything, but blue really needs a nerf in legacy. its almost to the point that if you are not running blue, you are not playing competitively. of course you cannot ban cards like FOW because thats basically keeps combo in check.

blue just needs a simple ban to diversify the meta. something thats not overpowered but useful. wont destroy blue in any way, but would weaken it to match the other colors.

that card is brainstorm.

Capitalization is required on these boards. Please use it. Thanks. -zilla

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Originally Posted by bracer028

blue just needs a simple ban to diversify the meta.

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I thought the meta was already diverse.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Some day people are going to grow testicles and just put Mental Misstep in non-blue decks, and then everyone can be happy.

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Blue does not need a nerf. New decks just need to emerge rather than old decks adjusting their strategy and thus becoming inferior versions of themselves.

Seriously... Misstep have been legal how long?

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Originally Posted by bracer028

of course you cannot ban cards like FOW because thats basically keeps combo in check.

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Actually FOW basically keeps the entire format in check, by making every non-blue deck suboptimal.

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Originally Posted by bracer028

that card is brainstorm.

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This is some real discussion. I think many more people will join the rank after High Tide will have won the GP.

They need to BAN anyone who even thinks of banning Brainstorm.

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Originally Posted by Fsk

Actually FOW basically keeps the entire format in check, by making every non-blue deck suboptimal.

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You don't know what you're talking about. FOW actually enables non-blue strategies who would otherwise be totally overrun by a combo-heavy meta.

For what it's worth I haven't played non-FOW combo in months.

This old discussion again?
Force of Will holds Combo Decks away from overtaking the Meta.
Force of Will provides card disadvantage and lifeloss.
Non-FoW/Blue Decks like Zoo, Dredge, GW Aggro and more are competitive.

And please don't call Mental Misstep "unfair". It is a situational card. It is good, but not over the top "omg needs to be banned"-like. I like it, i play it, but its far away from beeing imbalanced.
Anyone who says that decks are dead because of Mental Misstep or Force of Will has not played Magic long or good enough.

Just my 2 cents.

Its way better to print new cards that actually nerf blue decks then ban card. Its not only in legacy blue needs nerf in. Its quite the same in standard where jace decks rules the world :P Mean when was the last time in scg open when there was less then 50% jace decks in the top 8...

Maybe they could print a card that's good against combo and gives a slice of blue's color pie away to anyone who wants it.

Maybe something like a free counter, only instead of owning an island or ditching a blue card you just pay life. Hey, that sounds pretty good in Zoo and Goblins.

I am actually enraged by the lack of gumption Legacy players exhibit. I mean blue has a lot of really good cards that you actually need blue to play, but they just printed a really good card you definitely don't need blue to play. I don't think MM is an auto-four-of in every deck, but the fact that people are bemoaning the dominance of blue and not even trying to stuff it into other decks is pathetic.

The only deck with brainstorms that is widely played is Team America. It's not even pure blue. Merfolk is blue but doesn't play brainstorms. And Landstill is not popular in every meta. I don't understand where all this concern is coming from. Is it because the OP has lost too many games against Team America?

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Originally Posted by Rizso

Its way better to print new cards that actually nerf blue decks then ban card. Its not only in legacy blue needs nerf in. Its quite the same in standard where jace decks rules the world :P Mean when was the last time in scg open when there was less then 50% jace decks in the top 8...

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i knew there would be lots of hate in this thread when i talked about blue being overpowered to any other colors.

i'm not talking about a whole ban on FOW or anything. I actually like FOW in the legacy scene. What im' really discussing is that they just need something to make blue somewhat of a less desired color to play.

It seems like its always a BLUE/splash of another color to be a competitive deck. Same discussion of how jace is dominating standard. almost no deck who wants to get a top 8 finish don't have jace.

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Originally Posted by Nicol Bolas

The only deck with brainstorms that is widely played is Team America. It's not even pure blue. Merfolk is blue but doesn't play brainstorms. And Landstill is not popular in every meta. I don't understand where all this concern is coming from. Is it because the OP has lost too many games against Team America?

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thats irrelevant whether i have lost to team america. I cannot ask for a whole ban on things like FOW, Daze, spell snare, jace. I'm saying just one card to make blue less desired to play...that would be brainstorm.

It would not obliterate the color, but it would weaken it SLIGHTLY where you won't all together not play the color anymore.

They could push for some really harsh red anti blue cards, Not just pyroblasts where blue decks splash red just to counter blue spells..

Something like this Burn spell

Die Jace die! 3R
Instant
If your opponent has played a blue spell this turn, you may remove a red card from your hand instead of paying die Jace Die! mana cost.
Cant Be countered by spells or abilties
Deals 5 damage to each opponents, then if alternative cost was payed you draw 2 cards.

I piss in your pool
Goblin 2/2 2R
Protection white and blue
When IPIUP enters battlefield, IPIYP deals 1 damage to each opponent for each permanent he or she controlls that can produce a blue or white mana.
At the beginning of each of your oppnents upkeep, IPIYP deals 1 damage to that player for each permanent he or she controlls that can produce a blue or white mana.

Name would ofc not be does :P

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They could push for some really harsh red anti blue cards, Not just pyroblasts where blue decks splash red just to counter blue spells..

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Why do they have to red?

Well lots of color based hosers against blue exist:
Thrun, the last troll
Choke
Boil
REB/Pyroblast
spinal villain
seedtime
etc.

Of couse they're of varying quality...but if you want to be beat blue sideboard cards for that exist...if you don't mind them being a bit narrow.

That aside I would hate a ban on brainstorm it's probably my favorite spell and it makes people cry who use it in non force decks like TES/ANT. Although you are at least looking in the right direction when it comes to why blue is good: cheap draw filters for consistency and digging for answers.

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Originally Posted by rogue.nine

Why do they have to red?

Well lots of color based hosers against blue exist:
Thrun, the last troll
Choke
Boil
REB/Pyroblast
spinal villain
seedtime
etc.

Of couse they're of varying quality...but if you want to be beat blue sideboard cards for that exist...if you don't mind them being a bit narrow.

That aside I would hate a ban on brainstorm it's probably my favorite spell and it makes people cry who use it in non force decks like TES/ANT. Although you are at least looking in the right direction when it comes to why blue is good: cheap draw filters for consistency and digging for answers.

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Thoes card arent really as harsh as they should when blue is dominating every format.

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Originally Posted by Julian23

You don't know what you're talking about. FOW actually enables non-blue strategies who would otherwise be totally overrun by a combo-heavy meta.

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I may be wrong but i definitelly know what i am talking about. There are enough hate cards to keep combo in check but with FOW being so much more versatile there is no point playing them.
Sure you can play non-blue strategies and pray for good pairings but you could just play a blue-based deck instead and do well against anything.

If you dont want to have the best chance of winning in legacy, you have to play fow. Most people are ok with this, thinking that fow somehow prevent some hypothetical all-combo format but others think that the card is just too good and destroy the balance of the format.

Brainstorm, Jace, and Force are nice, but I'd much rather play a non-blue aggro or midrange deck against them than against TES. Force is a very fair card in a straight up slug-fest; look at the last match they're covering where AJ Sacher sided them out against Team Italia. That's the right move against some dude running Hymns and other attrition cards; you'd rather just have removal.

I think one of the factors that is responsible for the monthly "Blue needs a BAN" magazine is that most players havent recognized that it is not just challenging to play against blue decks, but is also quite difficult to actually play all sort of blue decks.
Both positions are heavily underestimated and so the more unsatisfied complains, which is most of the times the non-blue-player.
It takes a rather high ammount of testing and getting to know opposing decks to pilot BOTH blue and non-blue. Many very good articles exist which describe that exact "problem" which is omnipresent in nearly each format and could simply be solved:
Know.Your.Deck.And.Play.It.Well.

It is incredibly skillful to turn a game into someones favour regardless which deck plays against eachother as long as both pilots mastered their deck (well, most of the time).
I would go that far that 7 out of 10 players actually dont know how to play THEIR OWN (aka copy_paste) deck correct. It is tempting to say that the color of blue involves a lot more thinking and is in terms of beeing a complicated deck far above than nearly all sort of Aggro-decks, but thats not really true. Just because your playing Zoo or Goblins you arent playing a dumb deck. Combat math, calculation, sideboard/mulligan-decisions and the ability to mindgame and turn games around due to unusual plays do exist and this is true for these decks as much as for every other deck (when not more important). Tapping dudes to the win is not easy when you reached the point as a player that you understood that it isnt about just tapping mana and curving out all the time. Beeing constantly successful with aggressive decks, playing blue or not, is hard work and if you arent willing to invest that much effort dont try to compensate your lack of skill with unreasonable longing for banning cards like Force of Will or Brainstorm.
Use your energy to advance your plays and understanding your deck as well as how you could grind out all sort of blue decks.

PS: Says the dude that is playing Dredge and Burn recently... .

Simply to say, if I play against group of kids who can build up only some boros agro decks its like this:

"Dont play stasis, its boring"
*Stasis removed*
"Dont play Teferi, its too strong"
*Teferi removed*

and when it was over it was like

"Dont play good blue cards, dont play blue at all, because we dont play blue and we dont like to play against blue".

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

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Originally Posted by rukcus

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

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nah...rock based decks with strong discard has no problems with blue decks.

i was just looking at the top decks in the louisville GP and realized almost all decks had a variation of blue.

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Originally Posted by rukcus

There is a card printed, that punishes players playing Brainstorm and Jace's +0 ability:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/146.jpg

There's also 8 Red blasts in the format. Blue lately is pretty weak to Burn strategies. However, Burn is pretty bad most of the time against everything else.

This seems like this month's rant thread about how "My pet deck isn't good enough to beat the IT deck".

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Wow so good, a conditional lightning bolt that's dead against non-brainstorm non-jace decks.

No seriously, Runeflare sucks donkey balls. If i wanted to hate out blue i'd rather run carpet of flowers or smth of that level.

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Originally Posted by Gheizen64

Wow so good, a conditional lightning bolt that's dead against non-brainstorm non-jace decks.

No seriously, Runeflare sucks donkey balls. If i wanted to hate out blue i'd rather run carpet of flowers or smth of that level.

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You're wrong. Runeflare trap can deal 7 damage for R, which is devastating. Ad Nauseam decks cast Brainstorm sometimes.

We all can agree that any deck playing blue is attempting to use the strengths of Brainstorm, Force of Will, and Mental Misstep together. Merfolk is the outlyer because it's an aggro deck, but all the others will play those cards for sure.

Simple strategies that attack multiple resources, like hand, or lands, or together like Pox are good against these decks. Devastating Dreams in Aggro Loam, or a resolved Seismic Assault with an active Loam can demand control against these decks, but it needs to pack enough disruption.

Imagine a deck like Aggro Loam with Raven's Crime to beat the control decks, and Devastating dreams to beat the aggro decks.

The big 3 blue cards aren't going anywhere, nor will they banned any time soon. Stop complaining and build to beat that strategy. Goblins is not going to continue to perform if it never adapts.

I'm not saying anything needs to be banned, but have you guys played against these control decks? How can goblins "adapt" or anything adapt? They counter all your plays starting with turn 1, sitting back doing nothing but countering and dropping standstill.. even on an empty board with no factories. I play merfolk and if they counter your turn 1 vial, you lose the game. So I have no idea how any other deck that plays creatures can resolve anything. Every deck needs heavy discard? This doesn't even include the peace keepers, wraths, deeds etc (pick one card) that all they have to do is protect... Then drop Jace and its over.

I find this very interesting and look forward to see how/if the meta can adapt.

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Originally Posted by SlopeeJ

How can goblins "adapt"

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By playing Mental Misstep itself.

If you can't beat them, join them

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Originally Posted by Nidd

By playing Mental Misstep itself.

If you can't beat them, join them

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that's just wrong in a goblin deck

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Originally Posted by bracer028

that's just wrong in a goblin deck

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No, it's wrong to play bad lists.

Nothing is "just wrong"

"just wrong" is ignorance

+dollars for me. Maverick with Thrun and Blurred Mongoose is definitely a blue players bad day. Play blue please, it makes it easier to get moolah. I'm so loving this landstill craze right now with players who aren't used to reacting to meta changes and just play straight up lists.

The Hatfields and David Price all make day 2. With Zoo.

A bunch of great players could have played misstep or batterskull today decided there isn't anything better to do in this meta than playing cat tribal.

You guys are being really short sighted. Mental Misstep doesn't change as much as people think it does. The main thing it did was make people THINK that blue was stronger and decks with lots of one drops were weaker which means more people playing blue and less people playing fast aggro decks. What people will soon find out though, is that adding 4x Mental Missteps to a deck that used to not be favorable to Zoo and Goblins does not make that deck favorable to Zoo and Goblins by default. Last year at this time the best decks were probably UG Madness and Ub Merfolk and only one person knew it for each deck, I think we will learn a lot again this year and I expect the top 16 to look different than any recent SCG top 16. Mental Misstep is a strong card indeed, but saying that now that it came out Blue beats Zoo and Gobs is a joke.

Nobody said Zoo or Midrange aggro couldnt beat blue deck. I would say it is quite a fair fight depending on the builds. But those aggro decks are just underdog to combo. You can do well with Zoo if you got good pairings but you could do as well with blue-based deck without luck involved. The only reason to choose Zoo over Merfolk is because you expect a lot of Merfolk hate or no combo at all. But most of the time you should just pick blue-based deck because these are good against everything (and one of the reason is fow beeing too versatile/good).

FoW actually tends to be sided out in a lot of matchups, so this is not really the overpowered blue card. What really makes blue seemingly unfair is all of the card draw and filtering, enabling a far more consistent strategy by not being at the mercy of the topdeck.

This topic needs more Thrun, the Last Troll. Seriously, why haven't more people tested him? He is controls worse nightmare.

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Originally Posted by wcm8

FoW actually tends to be sided out in a lot of matchups

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That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

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Originally Posted by DragoFireheart

This topic needs more Thrun, the Last Troll. Seriously, why haven't more people tested him? He is controls worse nightmare.

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I'm sorry, Your comments are devolving at a steady pace. For the same cost, cast a Jace. Control hates that too. You think this is news?