Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I've actually decided to tweet this instead.
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Painter is more of a prison deck that has a combo win condition in it. Also, neither it nor Dredge are particularly strong.
But even in those decks that don't run Brainstorm, how does a Brainstorm ban strengthen them? Let's stop and take notes on it.
The primary situation in which Brainstorm would matter in cases like this is, of course, the classic "Brainstorm into Force of Will." If it's simply a case of finding regular hate (say, a Rest In Peace against Dredge), then Preordain works just as well because it digs as much as Brainstorm does.
But for the Brainstorm into Force of Will no longer being possible to actually matter in those matchups, you need to have a Blue mana open and a Brainstorm in hand and no Force of Will in hand and a Force of Will on the top three cards of your library and the requisite Blue card to pitch. These are unlikely to all be simultaneously true.
So I really do not see the claim that Brainstorm's banning would make combo decks overrun the format to be true.
There is a difference between the strength of the deck, and how well is is positioned in the current Metagame.
Dredge is an extremly strong deck, but it has a major weakness, and the current meta is set up to exploit that weakness due to other cards (ie: Dig) having the same vulnerability.
This is why things like a BS ban are risky, it would shake up the meta-game and we have no way to tell what suddenly becomes well positioned that was horribly positioned beforehand.
No,l lets go back and re-read what I said, as you clearly did not. My exact words were "Painter, Dredge and Elves would be unaffected" I made 0 claims that they would get stronger.
though if these decks power level is not affected, but the rest of the metagame is weakened, then their strength in the metagame would be increased by default.
It does not work a well in the rest of the game, and there is more then just finding the piece of hate, as well BS is better at finding Hate and the cards to protect and play it, since it can move up to 3 cards into your hand, while pre-ordain only moves 1.
umm, no that is not the only scenario.
It is the only turn 1 scenario, but there are also lines of play like T2 : Bs, pull fetch, Ponder, pre-emptively looking for that FoW you will need. while finding other cards thanks to BS swapping cards rather then drawing 1.
It would depend on how hard control decks are hit, but weakening the decks combo looses to will almost certainly INCREASE the % of the metagame that is combo decks, and that creates a chance for it to overrun the format.
If the combo decks match win rates go up by even 1% that could start affecting the top 8's of major tournaments, and since it is established that the majority of the player base is just copying the decks that win this could easily snowball into combo dominating.
How a ban affects the metagame depends on how strongly the decks using the banned card are affected by it. Delver decks and miracles would be hit worse then anything else by a BS ban.
Was really hoping Dig to be banned. It makes discard even worse than Brainstorm and thats some super legendary status tier achievement.
I don't think this argument holds for a few reasons.
First, your conflating all combo with stack-based combo, the kind Blue decks traditionally police via countermagic, as most other decks have little-to-no interactive ability. Many combo-decks aren't stack-based like Storm or Derp&Tell, but use the graveyard or the in-play-zone to drop their win-cons, locations that many more decks are capable of interacting with.
There's really good grave-hate that's been printed lately, some possibly maindeckable choices (DRS, Scooze) and backbreaking sideboard cards (RiP, Cage), and it wouldn't surprise me if Battle for Zendikar brings a few more pieces as a counter to any Standard/Modern Delve shenanigans.
And combos that happen on the battlefield are generally susceptible to removal or can be beaten out with "prison" cards/decks, especially if they have to win via the combat phase.
Second, a Brainstorm ban also hurts those stack-based combo decks quite a bit. Sculpting winning hands and fighting through disruption would be a lot more difficult without the head of the cantrip cartel. Storm might have to retune a bit, be alittle slower or less resilient. Derp&Tell might be downright unplayable (good riddance).
Third, Brainstorm (along with DTT) makes discard and other hand disruption generally bad, locking out a potential second policeman of combo strategies. Anyone who plays Modern or who played in the last days of "big" 1.X knows that discard can be extremely effective at disrupting combo decks, giving non-Blue strategies favorable matchups against that broad archetype. Reminder: Jund decks were able to beat combo in 1.X that had access to Ponder, Preordain, fast rituals, and threatened T3-T4 kills. I really think it's rather evident that Brainstorm (and now DTT) are what push discard to the fringes of the meta, rather than the forefront, where can serve as another bulwark against combo.
I think it's not really murky at all what would come of a BS (and DTT) ban; we'd have a much more interesting meta, at least for a few months. Beats the current staleness.
Those who are complaining are those who are taken out of their comfort zone, and their followers (who can't think for themselves or are just friends).
The Dig Through time metagame is a rich metagame, enabling to get out of the Shardless/Miracle Diptych. Certainly, Elves has become unplayable, but we have now Dig through time decks (that offer some variety of decks - Grixis, UWR, Omnishow), strong non blue archetypes, like lands.
This metagame is quite enjoyable. I wish the metagame could change more, to make legacy more competitive (like banning CB for 4 months, then BS, then something else, just to be able to to craft over the metagame) but just going backwards and banning dtt would be boring.
Jemand musste Joseph K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.
Storm is in pretty good shape against blue in general and Brainstorm + DTT in particular with all their "discard and other hand disruption" being "generally bad".
This leads me to two possible conclusions: Either your argument is simply not true at all and/or non-storm players plain suck using their discard efficiently against blue decks and combo decks in general.
"Variety" is a hyperbole for a bunch decks which run 30+ cards overlap (lands colors aside) as th.eir core and the only "variety" comes from the question if they kill you with Delver, Pyromancer, SFM, TNN or Emrakul
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Not really, pre khans miracles was even more dominant because no (fair) blue deck had a positive MU against it, now grixis can at least have a 50/50 MU and omni is kinda scary.
Maverik top tier metagame was like the worst legacy had in a long time, that deck was literally a no brainer, just slamming big threats each turn and no fair deck had a chance to compete, and the MU vs combo was not that bad considering GSZ for hate and flusterstorm sideboard.
If you ban brainstorm you hit super hard on blue controls and aggrocontrols, no brainstorm combo deck would improve a lot, and probably non blue decks would just suck in that environment.
I played dredge in tournaments and i had good results even in the cruise metagame, i think you dont understant the sick raw power of the deck if you say it's just bad, for example non blue deck literally cant deal with dredge at all most of the times, even having your rip in hand you will be signing the slips before you can tap 2 mana.
Sure the metagame can adapt to dredge, but you could play belcher, elves and a lot more.
Basicly if you hit the blue hard enought you get another shitty format like modern because no deck can deal with combo by just having catch-all hate (aka Force of Will) and go for specific hate will not solve the problem at all.
"You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"
He's looking at it from a fair decks point of view, not from a Storm point of view. He's right that discard gets invalidated by brainstorm and DTT, as means for a fair deck to disrupt combo. You can't compare it with the function of discard in Storm (usually protection instead of hate), and I suppose a Stormplayer usually goes off before a DTT can resolve.
No blue deck, except literally every BUG deck. And several non-blue decks like Jund. Dig is what pushed Miracles over the top.
If you can't beat a typical Storm player with Hymn + a reasonable clock, then I don't know what to say. If they Brainstom to hide cards it's likely even better because now they lose their next two draw steps and likely can't kill you until they draw more cards (broadly) and more specifically of whatever you hit.
Maverick had 2 or 3 toolboxes, depending on how you built it, and without discard and counters its plan against combo and control was very reactive. You had to anticipate your opponent's plays in order to be able to disrupt them. You really had to understand both your own deck and your opponent's. I don't think it was easier to pilot than D&T or Blade Control, for example.
Clearly you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Noctalor wins most ignorant poster award. What are you even going an about Maverick? Nothing yousaid about the deck was true at all. It is a pretty difficult deck to play and there actually felt like there was a real meta there. Maverick beat rug, rug beat fast combo, combo beat maverick (sometimes). Then there were meta predators like Nic Fit which beat Maverick and RUG but had a very poor combo match up. And stone blade was still the classic 50/50 deck. And of course there was still show and derp, but it wasn't absurd at all because even the fair decks had access to stuff like Karakas. Brainstorm was still at a high % but it wasn't like it is now where you are simply gimping yourself by not running the cantrip cartel
From memory, I could beat Maverick with Goblins given a fast start or drawing the corresponding sideboard options. Goblins is a fair deck yes?
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