All B/R update speculation.

[DrJones]

Next week is when the DCI updates the Banned and Restrict lists, they usually never touch anything in legacy, but I find the speculation fun anyways!

What changes will they do to Legacy and Vintage? Will they unban Earthcraft, or will Tarmogoyf bit the dust? What cheap blue cantrip will be banned in Vintage this time? Does anyone care about the random bannings in the online-only casual formats, which are the only ones updated on a daily basis?

Edit: Didn't have space for Ad Nauseam on that poll. Also Tendrils is missing.
Edit2: And wasteland.


Edit by Dice_Box:

Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) Tweeted:
"It's one of the "pillars of the format" that makes it unique and players tolerate/love. It's like Brainstorm in Legacy. Every saturation metric we could ever invent would point to it being banned, but people love it. Transgressive stuff needs a place to live."

https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/...188588544?s=17

[TheRock]

Tezz control has been much more silent in Vintage since Thirst hit the rail, so nothing else will get restricted.

Nothing should change in Legacy either, but I wouldn't be surprised if Goof or Top/CB found the exit either. Anything that Wizards says right now has no merit due to the stunts they've pulled in the last few months.

[Mark Sun]

Tezz control has been much more silent in Vintage since Thirst hit the rail, so nothing else will get restricted.

Nothing should change in Legacy either, but I wouldn't be surprised if Goof or Top/CB found the exit either. Anything that Wizards says right now has no merit due to the stunts they've pulled in the last few months.

Goyf won't be banned, see the Wizards article introducing FTV: Exiled (someone help us out and link?).

Top/CB can be played around. Yes, it creates a pretty sick lock, but unless it suddenly starts dominating the format (which it's not), it won't be touched.

[TheRock]

Goyf won't be banned, see the Wizards article introducing FTV: Exiled (someone help us out and link?).

I understand exactly what you're saying, but this is the same Wizards that unrestricted Gush and said that M10 will be 50% new cards and the same Wizards that rigged a poll...

I wouldn't be surprised anymore. This game moves at a fast pace and changes just happen.

[nitewolf9]

Nothing needs to change as far as banning anything, so I hope Wizards doesn't act stupidly.

I wouldn't mind shaking things up a bit and pulling some stuff off of the banned list. It's really kinda sad to look at it because it shows you exactly how much Wizards cares about Legacy. I suppose that it makes perfect sense though. It seems things are actually slowly getting better for eternal formats.

[tsabo_tavoc]

I am very pleased to see Brainstorm as the first candidate.

I was skeptical about banning it when 2 Eva Green top8ed GP: Chicago, however, the deck somehow failed to continue the impetus. Banning Brainstorm could balance the color pie, weaken combo and let more mid range decks shoring up.

[undone]

Top is the only bannable card. The next closest is brainstorm, aside from those nothing in the format is bannable. the obvious candidates can still come off but will not (land tax, and co)

Vintage will be unchanged.

Standard unchanged.

Extended unchanged.

4,000,023 changes to irrelivant formats

Legacy Unchanged.

Thats my predictions.

[DrJones]

I have a theory about that.

For every set, the members of R&D (former pro-tour players) at Wizards have a fixed number of points to distribute for each color. The absolutely best cards are worth 5 points and the worst ones are worth 0.5. For some dumb reason, they tend to polarize blue so that it gets absolute bombs of crazy power level at rare, and absolute junk that no one plays at common. Then, they call the set balanced.

That explains why blue rares always tend to cost so much compared with the rares in other colors.

[Digital Devil]

WTF??? I mean, why didn't you put Nourishing Shoal on that list? It seriously needs to be banned. The whole Germany is begging for the banhammer! I mean, it is format warping, and certainly unhealthy. Why shouldn't it get the axe??? Also, both Lich/Nefarious Lich need to be banned. I'd rather witness nuclear winter than playing in a Lich-infested format.

P.S. C'mon, men, take that seriously. 3 months ago, nothing changed. In these 3 months, nothing broken has been released. Why should the Legacy ban-list be modified?

[FoolofaTook]

They won't do it but Brainstorm is the most broken card in the format. It's the only way to easily draw 3 cards and keep all of them at little or no cost with no conditionality attached to play. It's the linchpin of big blue - still the most dominant effect in the meta, without which most blue decks would have to rethink their early game plan.

[MMogg]

They won't do it but Brainstorm is the most broken card in the format. It's the only way to easily draw 3 cards and keep all of them at little or no cost with no conditionality attached to play. It's the linchpin of big blue - still the most dominant effect in the meta, without which most blue decks would have to rethink their early game plan.

That being said, solid and broken are two entirely different things. Brainstorm helps blue stay in the game, searching for answers to aggressive decks, but that is not to say that Brainstorm shifts the game (necessarily) in your favour like Ancestral Recall or Fact or Fiction do with their sheer card adavantage. Brainstorm is a solid workhorse, and therefore ubiquitous, but I'd never call it "broken".

[Malchar]

The most bannable cards right now are Sensei's Divining Top and Lion's Eye Diamond:

Sensei's Divining Top is the crux combos with Counterbalance and fetchlands. Also, it is very time consuming and shows up in many decks. It is bordering on being a reusable Brainstorm that requires no colored mana. I would be a little surprised to actually see it banned, but it is probably the closest of any other cards.

Lion's Eye Diamond suffers from looking a lot like a card that is already banned - Black Lotus. It is also rather confusing from a rules perspective. Further, it makes every speedy combo deck a lot faster and frequently winds up operating like a regular Black Lotus for those decks. However, since it has been around for so long, I do not actually see it being banned now. If anything, combo has been on the downhill since Counterbalance showed up even with Ad Nauseum.

As for notable cards that I do not think are bannable...

Counterbalance would not be used without Sensei's Divining Top. Even with a ton of Brainstorms, there is no way to abuse Counterbalance to the point of it being banned. If anything in this combo gets the axe, it will be Sensei's Divining Top.

Tarmogoyf is a vanilla fatty. If anything, it functions to stifle other cards that are much more degenerate by putting a clock on the opponent. Besides, the real gem of the modern "new blue" deck is Counterbalance, not Tarmogoyf.

[FoolofaTook]

That being said, solid and broken are two entirely different things. Brainstorm helps blue stay in the game, searching for answers to aggressive decks, but that is not to say that Brainstorm shifts the game (necessarily) in your favour like Ancestral Recall or Fact or Fiction do with their sheer card adavantage. Brainstorm is a solid workhorse, and therefore ubiquitous, but I'd never call it "broken".

I have never resolved a Brainstorm in which I had much trouble deciding what to put back on top. There are always two weaker cards than everything else in your hand if you have a shuffle effect, and really you only have to have 1 card that is clearly weaker than the rest for many of Brainstorm's applications.

There are many times when I have resolved a Brainstorm and essentially won the game as a result, although sometimes it takes a few turns for that to play out. 3 cards for 1 mana at instant speed is broken no matter how you look at it, and for almost all intents and purposes that is what Brainstorm represents in most of the decks that play it.

I played with Ancestral Recall in almost every deck I played back in the single meta. Even as a one-of it was a back-breaking card when it showed up. Having 4 Brainstorm in a deck is much, much more powerful than having a singleton Ancestral Recall. It is a virtual guarantee that at some point during the game you will suddenly come upon the wealth of 3 fresh cards to refresh your hand as you shuffle away the trash that has built up there in the process.

In a blue deck that often keeps a small number of silver bullets that might or might not be appropriate against a given opponent it is even more powerful because it gives you the chance to swap a dead silver bullet in your hand for a replacement at just the point that that dead card might have begun to really hurt you.

[MMogg]

I have never resolved a Brainstorm in which I had much trouble deciding what to put back on top. There are always two weaker cards than everything else in your hand if you have a shuffle effect, and really you only have to have 1 card that is clearly weaker than the rest for many of Brainstorm's applications.

There are many times when I have resolved a Brainstorm and essentially won the game as a result, although sometimes it takes a few turns for that to play out. 3 cards for 1 mana at instant speed is broken no matter how you look at it, and for almost all intents and purposes that is what Brainstorm represents in most of the decks that play it.

I played with Ancestral Recall in almost every deck I played back in the single meta. Even as a one-of it was a back-breaking card when it showed up. Having 4 Brainstorm in a deck is much, much more powerful than having a singleton Ancestral Recall. It is a virtual guarantee that at some point during the game you will suddenly come upon the wealth of 3 fresh cards to refresh your hand as you shuffle away the trash that has built up there in the process.

In a blue deck that often keeps a small number of silver bullets that might or might not be appropriate against a given opponent it is even more powerful because it gives you the chance to swap a dead silver bullet in your hand for a replacement at just the point that that dead card might have begun to really hurt you.

What you described sounds like a solid card more than a broken card. You know how many games counterspell won me? But does that necessarily mean it's a broken card? A broken card is Ancestral Recall, and you even confirmed what I'm saying: broken cards are back-breaking, game shifting cards. Hence, Ancestral Recall must be restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy, by the sheer nature of its brokenness. It's not debatable because anyone who has played it knows its power. Now, you cannot say the same thing at all about Brainstorm. It doesn't even give you card advantage! In order to maximize what you are saying about Brainstorm (that is, get rid of the chaff), you need to run fetchlands (something decks like MUC would and should not do). I remember pre-fetchland Brainstorm being an ok choice, but I also remember drawing chaff for the next two turns.

Sorry, I'm still unconvinced that Brainstorm is anything more than a really good and efficient – hell, maybe even great – card, but certainly not broken.

Speaking of broken . . . I remember playing against a casual player who didn't believe in the banned and restricted rules, so he played with 4 Demonic Tutor. Upon learning this, I proceeded to play a deck with multiple Library of Alexandria! Holy brokenness! Sorry, just had to share that moment of brokenness. Good times.

[eq.firemind]

Card must not be broken to be banned. Like The Dragon or Goblin Recruiter.

The problem with Brainstorm (my vote) is that it is IMHO just the card that makes blue too powerfull compared to other colors thus making the format too gay .
Also there are lots of other cantrips like Opt or Serum Visions that are unplayable because of Brainstorm (reminds Goyf story).

Second candidate is Top because it's boring to watch people spinning it and because it works with Counterbalance making blue stronger, but unlike Brainstorm, Top is available to all colors and that makes it more balanced than Brainstorm.

[overseer1234]

Well, I for one would like to see some cards come off the banned list,
like:

Land Tax (parfait FTW)

Worldgorger Dragon (seriouslym G4 is the only reason to not unban it, and when something is so bad you have to go to G4 and 5 I don't think it will win or warp the format much)

Metal Worker (seriously, even welder is more powerful for stax and hardly see's play)

Some other irrelevant outdated stuff.

For banning I would like to see CB banned (top can go in anny deck and give's midrange a good amount of consistancy) but cince CB+SDT keeps combo in check I think And nauseam and/or LED would need to get hit by he banhammer since they would go out of controll otherzise

[tsabo_tavoc]

Cards may not be broken to be banned. Like The Dragon or Goblin Recruiter.

Fixed and QFT.

Speaking of brokenness, Sensei's Diving Top, Force of Will and Goblin Lackey rank higher than Brainstorm. Hammering Top would not contribute to the color balance while banning Lackey would strengthen blue. Loads of combo pieces would be banned without FoW.

[ParkerLewis]

Mark Rosewater also said that they wouldn't make random discard anymore, just before the reprint of Hypnotic Specter.

Quote him. I dare you.

I'm 99.999(...)99 % sure he used the same and only reasonable way to say something like that, ie among the lines of : "we're now much more cautious about doing things that way. Of course [for the people that never get what you say if you don't point it out explicitly at least three times] i'm not saying it will never happen again, just that you can expect it to be quite rare".

Also, he even probably said this "about making new cards", not about fan-favorites and all-time classics like Hypnotic Specter, although I'm not as sure of this final point.

[Gheizen64]

I see Top banned, for reason stated before.

Then i see:
Tax
Worker

Off the list. And maybe also Druid. Worker suck, Tax also, and Druid is too slow and vulnerable for the current format. Also, if it were viable i wouldn't mind to see a new combo in the format. Note that also Druid would be so easily hateable that it wouldn't never pose a threat to the format.

[Peter_Rotten]

This thread used to be 3 pages long; however, I just deleted all useless posts, one-line posts, two-line posts, posts that could have been PMs, and generally terri-bad posts.

Now the thread is just a page. Hmmm.