Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
It's strange to be no longer the only one pointing to the fact, that the set of cards enabling all the shenanigans with Ponder, Brainstorm, DRS, Jace, SDT, etc are the obvious targets, if people are pissed of about Legacys card-quality engines. However, pointing at it is pretty pointless, as the anti-Brainstorm camp doesn't want to lose THEIR card-quality engines and perfect 3/4 color manabases in order to bitchslap the whole cantrip galore. They just want to see Brainstorm banned to eliminate certain decks from the format, create a further streamlining as a result and then end up bitching about how good Ponder/Preordain/SDT + Fetchlands are in a post-Brainstorm metagame.
I see it the same way as Robert: Legacy is far the point where "color" and its identity matter at all. No one is forced to make any tradeoffs in terms of color if 3- to 4-color decks are pretty much the status quo and you can splash anything anywhere thanks to Fetchlands, Duals and cardselelction. As long as a every mana source gives you access to 2+ colors, we don't need to talk about blue, black, red, green or white decks/cards anymore.
We also don't need to talk about the annoying topic of percentage of card X in the format, bitching about the numbers of Misstep, Survival and Brainstorm as justification for a ban, if it comes from hypocrits who don't want to talk about the 90%+ standard of Fetchlands at the dame time. Its pretty obvious for every non-troll, that penetration alone isn't a gauge for a bad format.
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"Fetchlands are broken, they can be played in every single deck that uses any colour of mana, irrespective of archetype or game plan.
Brainstorm and DRS? Nope, they're totally fine, not an issue there at all."
And you wonder why why no one takes this argument seriously.
This. All of this.
My point was that T1 Brainstorm rarely translates into the end of the game. Or if it does, more often than not it does in the same way that T1 DRS, T1 Chalice, or T1 Thoughtseize does; it puts you ahead of your opponent, sometimes by a wide margin. That's what it's there for. It's worth pointing out that those cards are significantly more aggravating to face than Brainstorm is, and at least two are either easier to cast or on par with Brainstorm.
Regarding Ancestral, it's a card that genuinely does translate into T1 wins very often. And yes, it's both a utility card and (likely) the third-strongest card ever printed (behind Contract and Lotus). With that said, the card's power (lol) isn't the only reason it's banned. But if you want to argue that a) the sole reason that Ancestral is banned is its power, and b) the raw power of Brainstorm makes it bannable for the same reason, I disagree. My point wasn't that utility cards by definition shouldn't be banned; it was that people are up in arms over cards that are boons to the format for their utility and the deckbuilding space they create when those cards aren't the aggravating, "overpowered" things that KO people. Ancestral is pretty close to being the latter, utility card or not.
As an aside, saying that a card has been part of the format since the beginning and thus doesn't deserve a ban is a valid argument, and Recall doesn't meet that criterion. I wasn't calling for any unbans.
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100% disagree with you. I don't have a pet card. I am not bitch-slapping anyone. You saying, "eliminate certain decks from the format" is a distraction.
Deathrite is a PITA just like TNN. However, they (DS & TNN) are not an instant response (BS) to almost every single card in magic.
Brainstorm as an instant is broken in Legacy. That is my entire argument against Brainstorm.
You are free to show me a top tier S&T, Miracles, Tempo list without the option to exchange dead cards in hand with fresh ones.
I have no idea on what kitchen table you play, if people around you use Brainstorm mainly to respond to spells, rather than playing it in their own main phase to optimize their hand & mana. If Brainstorm was a Sorcery, it would fix/change nothing.
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To a point, I do. That said, I'm not interested in defending every card that's currently Legacy legal, either, though I personally don't like bans on principle.
What I like about Legacy is that it gives old cards (like Brainstorm) a chance to shine outside of what became Vintage. I wouldn't be surprised if this sentiment (at least partially) drove the creation of the format. Assuming the precept that Brainstorm is too strong a card for Legacy (I don't think this, but for the sake of argument), I feel like the problem is less that Brainstorm is too powerful for the format and more that cards printed since the inception of the format either have increased the power of Brainstorm or have failed to answer it; when they have, the repercussions have been detrimental to the format. That may—ipso facto—be an argument against Brainstorm. But Wizards has a long track record of making foreseeable errors in design and of trying to put a lid (bans or blanket-hosing) on its errors rather than design proper work-arounds or, frankly, do its job the first time around. The format's also older than many of the cards that I've seen indicted on this thread and elsewhere (rightly or wrongly), which I feel indicates that the problem is with the output, not the input.
My general experience with bans is that they're bad for players and bad for the game. I've gotten screwed out of Modern thrice, and I have no interest in getting into it again. That doesn't excuse Wizards's slipshod design, though; I think it's a fundamental problem that they'll design Standard superstars that are transparently gimmicky and convoluted yet unplayable and that they'll design cards that an idiot could tell would cause problems (in part, this is what separates Legacy from Vintage, though I think they can be excused for not knowing how the game would function before it hit the shelves in '93).
I also think that the degree to which sleeping dogs have lay is pertinent to the discussion. Banning something after so long a time without any immediate stimulus hurts players.
I hope that cleared some stuff up, and I'd be glad to discuss it further. Didn't mean to talk your ear off!
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It's in the way Lemnear suggest to play Brainstorm, see the bold part. Makes sense, but is in my opinion not always the case when playing a Brainstorm-deck. The best Brainstorm is cast whenever it's needed.
The statement was twofold.
First of all the mainphase Brainstorm more common than the react-to-spell-Brainstorm in tournaments. Second, and thats even more important, if it was a Sorcery, people would still play it as a 4-off in any deck possible because the effect is still amazing as a Sorcery as we can see on Jace the Mindsculptor.
To claim that Brainstorm powerlevel is tied to "responding to spells" is just absurd, given that Ponder is a format staple and no one makes a fuzz about the fact that Ponder can't hide cards from discard. You sleeve up Brainstorm for the cardselelction and not as anti-discard-tool, ergo the card would see no less play if it was a sorcery.
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Ok. I disagree. I feel like if a card is causing issues in the format, be it Birds of Paradise or Jace, Vryn's Prodigy it should be removed.
I feel like the way you wrote your post your argument is less about age and more about your thoughts on the card being argued. That's fair, but I am over debating the finer points of Brainstorm myself so I will leave the rest of your comment be.
I see we're going off the deep end into conspiracy theories as to why people would want brainstorm banned.
Not like years of statistics have seen cards banned for much less, and no matter brainstorm is the only cantrips of the three "good" ones that allow you to reshuffle 2 cards from your hand away , making you virtually draw 3 and dodge discard at instant speed.
Ancestral is balanced because it only fuel decks and reduce variance guys. Where do you draw the line?
Fixed that for you. Banning fetches would be a big change, but lets not get out of hand here.
Bigger changes that occurred after the creation of formats are:
Requiring sleeves
Mythic Rares
Foil Cards
Adding the stack, removing interrupts (Moo!)
Removing combat damage stack (Boo!)
REL levels
New Mulligan rule
No trading allowed limited
Removal of power level errata
Global warming is accepted by the scientific community at large
No worries! I guess another way to put it is that the format is what it is, it's gotten to where it is through decades of printings and card interactions, and problems usually arise from synergy between cards more than they do from singular cards (obviously, there are exceptions). So if a set drops, and it's got a card in it that busts older cards in combination, I'd rather see the newer one go than the old.
Of course, that's no way to sell packs, so something tells me that philosophy won't catch on. A man can dream.
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