All B/R update speculation.

[Matsu]

You can't ban Griselbrand because:

I have to disagree

You kill one archetype and make another one way worse

No, Reanimator won't survive a Griselbrand ban. It would be playable like others tier 3 / fringe decks, but thats it. Reanimator is not a Toolbox Creature deck, it's an all in resource based combo that needs to win the game once its spells resolves, the way it does it is by drawing 14 cards with Griselbrand. Even silver bullets like Elesh Norn or Iona aren't good enough to win the game, even in the matchups where they are good.
Banning Griselbrand is not like banning DRS or Probe. Griselbrand is a combo piece in a A+B combo deck. You will kill the combo and you will make the whole archetype a lot worse.

It is not true, Reanimator was playable long time before Grizzlybrand was printed. It might reduce the all in BR version and might reinforce the UB version played ages ago. You just reanimate a big boy and have Counterspell backup for removals. The biggest hit and also why Grizzly brand is broken is Ape&Show. Reanimator has to bin his crits, when S&S just put it into play then draw 14 cards, and put Emi into play. I you do not have countermagic it is not so easy to combat a S&S.

There are zero datas supporting a Griselbrand ban

Reanimator won exactly zero decent sized tournaments, neither online where its over rapresented or in paper.
It barely top8.
Saying players are bored of playing it is obviously wrong, I found a lot of popular decks boring. A lot of people love to win, if it was the best deck it would be easily over played and it would place tons of results. Thats not the case.
You are trying to make one card banned , a card that no one play, in a deck that barely see plays and hardly make any results. Why even trying outside your personal biased opinion? Flat Earth stuff to me.

Again I will have to disagree I stick a picture, this is just the last month. You can check it yourself by having a look at the link, remember that WotC do not realease all the data. To not solve the format, or something like that


https://www.mtgstocks.com/prints/509

You make Fair Blue strategies even better

Reanimator has a really good game 1 against those decks. They must play something in their sideboard to fix the matchup. By killing Reanimator you are freeing up the sideboard slots of those decks, making them better.

That is not true, by fair blue decks I understand the Xerox archetype. Which always have 4 Fow, and depends on Flavour Daze or the new Fow and according to mtggolfish they mostly play 3 to 4 copies of surgical extraction. Which is also useful against other decks not only strict Graveyard decks, I have seen people side in SE against Lands, 4cLoam, Storm, Dredge and Miracles.

You make other combo decks worse

There are currently 7 combo decks with over a 2% meta share on mtgtop8.

Depths, Reanimator, Show and Tell, Dredge, Elves , Storm and Infect.

While Reanimator is usually considered a combo deck killer, so it seems counter-intuitive saying that other combo decks will get worse, you need to keep in mind that if you ban Griselbrand, fair strategies will now have more slots to play their Plague Engineer, or even narrow silver bullets like Alpine Moon or Canonist, making the life of those decks even worse (that arent well positioned in the current meta already).
The few % points you get from not facing Reanimator anymore wouldnt make up for it.

The only deck that really gets better here is Dredge, losing a bad matchup, less graveyard hate around, fringe deck that is barely played, another non interactive deck that is unfun to play against, more resilient to Surgical Extraction and that can still turn 1 kill you pretty often, especially now with the London Mulligan

.

Reanimator will not die, dont worry. I do not think people will start to put more cards in their decks to combat combo if the biggest thread will be banned. They will still use SE to fight against depths, reanimator, dredge, storm, for the rest there is bolt, StP and wasteland, all those cards are very present in the format and mosty in the main deck not side.

You make aggro strategies a lot better but they are housed by cards like Plague Engineer, Wrenn and Six and Terminus

Yeah thats the whole point of the banning. I doubt that you want to ban Griselbrand to make fair blue strategies better, you are banning it to make non blue fair strategies a better and easier life, sadly the number 1 enemy of those decks isnt Griselbrand, but cards largely played in FAIR BLUE decks, like Plague Engineer that completely wrecks tribals, or Terminus, or Wrenn and Six that makes Death and Taxes and decks with X/1 creatures a lot worse. Those are the oppressive cards.

Again I will have to disagree, how D&T, Maverick, Zoo, Robots, Eldrazi on turn 1 or 2 can combat Sire of sanity, Iona, Grave titan with zombies, consecrated Sphinx, Elesh, etc… when they mostly play 4xStP. Hmm it they have it, good for you. You just gain 6/7 life to reanimate another dude

Graveyard strategies are the most easily hateble

Graveyard hate is by far the most efficient kind of hate. We have zero cmc colorless cards that can be played in any deck. Almost all the cards , from surgical Extraction to Leyline of the void can be played regardless of your deck composition and they are turn 0 interactions.

Agreed, but you do not use those cards against S&S

You are messing with the Aggro/Combo/Control equilibrium

By banning combo pieces/engines you are messing with some stuff that would probably lead to a worse and narrow metagame.
New efficient combo engines rarely gets printed, while fair strategies gets new toys every expansion. If you make combo worse a lot of good players will just switch to some fair blue deck until something new will get printed, probably never.

We have plenty of efficient combo engines in Legacy that are not as broken as Grizzlybrand. Yawgmoth Bargain is an example. Banning broken cards that you can easily cheat with Reanimation effects, sneak attach, S&T, Omni… might lead to unbanning of cards like Earthcraft, Survival or even Oath.
Slowing the format by removing a couple of cards does not mean the rock, paper, scissor equilibrium will be disrupted (it already is disrupted with Delver everywhere, best aggro crit ever printed). This might open the way to decks that need to establish an engine to win, like Storm decks, elves, infect, etc… or other weird decks. Thanks to that the format will become more interesting and will attract more people. But unfortunately this is not what WotC want. They want all the formats apart Standard, maybe Modern to be suspended between death and life. So they can make money selling new products.

And I will agree with Porcupine Tree, yes, Grizzlybrand and BS should go. I am not sure about Depths, it can be explosive, but I do not know if this is so broken to be banned.

[Deirex85]

We have plenty of efficient combo engines in Legacy that are not as broken as Grizzlybrand. Yawgmoth Bargain is an example.

Bargain is banned and also not the best comparison to Griselbrand despite doing similar things.

[Jax-]

I have to disagree


It is not true, Reanimator was playable long time before Grizzlybrand was printed. It might reduce the all in BR version and might reinforce the UB version played ages ago. You just reanimate a big boy and have Counterspell backup for removals. The biggest hit and also why Grizzly brand is broken is Ape&Show. Reanimator has to bin his crits, when S&S just put it into play then draw 14 cards, and put Emi into pay. I you do not have countermagic it is not so easy to combat a S&S.

No. Playable is completely different from tier 1/2. Nic Fit is playable. Reanimator without Griselbrand, like I said, would be a tier 3 deck at best. You cant play 2012 Reanimator in the current meta and pretend to put up results, dont be' silly.

Again I will have to disagree I stick a picture, this is just the last month. You can check it yourself by having a look at the link, remember that WotC do not realease all the data. To not solve the format, or something like that


https://www.mtgstocks.com/prints/509

Sorry but this completely make your whole post a pile of crap (no offence). The first 5 results in your link are MTGO 5-0s. Any deck will regulary get at least 1 of those every single week. Link me any 50+ players tournament where Reanimator won. Guess what? You can't. You are not even aware of how those kind of sites are working and from where they are taking their stats.

That is not true, by fair blue decks I understand the Xerox archetype. Which always have 4 Fow, and depends on Flavour Daze or the new Fow and according to mtggolfish they mostly play 3 to 4 copies of surgical extraction. Which is also useful against other decks not only strict Graveyard decks, I have seen people side in SE against Lands, 4cLoam, Storm, Dredge and Miracles.

Thats very true. Reanimator easily beat countermagic by just going into cleanup phase and discard Griselbrand, they now have 8 discards + 12 animate effects to fight your countermagic. Reanimator is heavily favored vs any fair blue deck game 1.
No, no one play 4 surgical extractions in their fair blue deck, I dont know where are you taking those numbers, will to share a link? They also usually play some numbers of Cage and Tormods that are obviously not that much needed if the best graveyard based combo deck is bad.


.

Reanimator will not die, dont worry. I do not think people will start to put more cards in their decks to combat combo if the biggest thread will be banned. They will still use SE to fight against depths, reanimator, dredge, storm, for the rest there is bolt, StP and wasteland, all those cards are very present in the format and mosty in the main deck not side.

Yes it will die. Its not already good enough to put up results and will completely die if Griselbrand is banned. Im ready to bet my money on this statement. Are you? Reanimator is not the biggest threat. Depths is by far the most played and best placed combo right now. Are you even playing regulary or just speculating/living in the past?

Again I will have to disagree, how D&T, Maverick, Zoo, Robots, Eldrazi on turn 1 or 2 can combat Sire of sanity, Iona, Grave titan with zombies, consecrated Sphinx, Elesh, etc… when they mostly play 4xStP. Hmm it they have it, good for you. You just gain 6/7 life to reanimate another dude

Swords to Plowshares, Karakas and Leyline of the Void. I think you are trolling at this point and never ever played the matchup before. Reanimate another dude? Yeah definetely trolling.

We have plenty of efficient combo engines in Legacy that are not as broken as Grizzlybrand. Yawgmoth Bargain is an example. Banning broken cards that you can easily cheat with Reanimation effects, sneak attach, S&T, Omni… might lead to unbanning of cards like Earthcraft, Survival or even Oath.
Slowing the format by removing a couple of cards does not mean the rock, paper, scissor equilibrium will be disrupted (it already is disrupted with Delver everywhere, best aggro crit ever printed). This might open the way to decks that need to establish an engine to win, like Storm decks, elves, infect, etc… or other weird decks. Thanks to that the format will become more interesting and will attract more people. But unfortunately this is not what WotC want. They want all the formats apart Standard, maybe Modern to be suspended between death and life. So they can make money selling new products.

And I will agree with Porcupine Tree, yes, Grizzlybrand and BS should go. I am not sure about Depths, it can be explosive, but I do not know if this is so broken to be banned.

Yeah definetely trolling. Bargain is banned, Storm is borderline good, depends on the week, Elves and Infect are definetely worse with Wrenn and Six and Plague Engineer around.

You are saying that the format is not attractive because a deck, that is barely played, push people away from it.

Do you even play Legacy?

[Matsu]

Bargain is banned and also not the best comparison to Griselbrand despite doing similar things.

Exactly, i did it on purpose.




When you compare the two cards, Bargain has a stronger effect and has a downside of skip your draw. Grizzly is Bargain without the skip draw, legs, flying and lifelink. I my opinion Bargains is weaker compared to Grizzlybrand so why it is banned ?

[Deirex85]

Apologies, the way your wrote your sentence made it appear as if Bargain was legal.



Bargain also costs less, is generally harder to remove once it hits the battlefield and allows you to draw cards one at a time.

They would be used in completely different decks and although they both let you draw cards for life the way the cards are put in to play and used is completely different.

Therefore they are not a good comparison.

[H]

When you compare the two cards, Bargain has a stronger effect and has a downside of skip your draw. Grizzly is Bargain without the skip draw, legs, flying and lifelink. I my opinion Bargains is weaker compared to Grizzlybrand so why it is banned ?

Oh boy, we are really going to do all this over again?

Yawgmoth's Bargain is Banned for "the same reason" as Earthcraft is. That is, there is no "contemporary" reason for it. There likely never will be, because it is extremely unlikely Bargain will ever be Unbanned. It's Banned because it always was, it's not going to get Unbanned, because no one who makes that decision seems to see any point in doing so.

If you imagine that the B&R List will ever be something predicated on rationally articulated argumentation, well, you will be waiting forever. And on page 2,000+ of this thread, the same tired arguments will still be going on, and on, and on.

So, why is Griselbrand not Banned? Because it never was. It has always been legal since it's printing, it's never crossed whatever "threshold" the people who make those decisions see it as and so it will continue to be so, until the time it is not. What time will that be? Probably never, it's just a dumb thing that exists and likely always will. It's part of what Legacy is, a format predicated on certain dumbly powerful cards. Some of those cards are more or less dumb than others. But just being dumb isn't the criteria for Banning, thank God. Or else we'd all just being playing Grizzly_Bears.dec.

[LOLWut]

It they are all silent, how do you know?

Let me make a poll and let's find out.

[H]

Let me make a poll and let's find out.

If they vote, they would no longer be silent, so you can't possibly prove your statement to be factual in the manner you seek.

[LOLWut]

If they vote, they would no longer be silent, so you can't possibly prove your statement to be factual in the manner you seek.

Silent majority is defined as

any group of people who are not outspoken and who are considered to constitute a majority

with vocalizations--on a message board for instance--constituting outspokenness, and voting (often anonymous and/or without comment) is actually the precise manner in which the presence of a silent majority has historically been proven.

[H]

Silent majority is defined as with vocalizations--on a message board for instance--constituting outspokenness, and voting (often anonymous and/or without comment) is actually the precise manner in which the presence of a silent majority has historically been proven.

Stacking assumptions into a concept does not make the end result less of an assumption, it only makes it a collection of assumptions.

You've already assumed that, one, the majority is silent.

Two, that this silent majority would vote.

Three, that the nature of the vote actually reaches this so called "silent majority."

Four, that any respondent of the vote is representative of the whole and not of a subcategory of the whole, which could be called "those who would vote."

Five, that voting is in fact not a violation of the notion of silence.

Six, that notions of silence can only apply to vocalization (and by this, seemly extended to writing as well).

There are likely more, but that is just off the top of my head. Unfortunately, I don't see an appeal to historicism here as being particularly illustrative of how none of the above as assumptions. Nor why we should simply take these assumptions as facts of the matter.

What your poll would more like produce is "what registered users on MTGTheSource.com, who are inclined to vote, would vote for." It would only be a matter of interpretation if that is representative of the whole of Legacy players, not as a matter of facts.

[Mr. Safety]

Stacking assumptions into a concept does not make the end result less of an assumption, it only makes it a collection of assumptions.

You've already assumed that, one, the majority is silent.

Two, that this silent majority would vote.

Three, that the nature of the vote actually reaches this so called "silent majority."

Four, that any respondent of the vote is representative of the whole and not of a subcategory of the whole, which could be called "those who would vote."

Five, that voting is in fact not a violation of the notion of silence.

Six, that notions of silence can only apply to vocalization (and by this, seemly extended to writing as well).

There are likely more, but that is just off the top of my head. Unfortunately, I don't see an appeal to historicism here as being particularly illustrative of how none of the above as assumptions. Nor why we should simply take these assumptions as facts of the matter.

What your poll would more like produce is "what registered users on MTGTheSource.com, who are inclined to vote, would vote for." It would only be a matter of interpretation if that is representative of the whole of Legacy players, not as a matter of facts.

I feel like you need someone to cheer you on, what with your great posts recently.

Therefore, in response to LOLwut, I have found this for you:

[H]

I feel like you need someone to cheer you on, what with your great posts recently.

I am just so tired of the circular nonsense that repeats in the thread every, what, 10-15 pages or so? It's as if we are all goldfish and after one lap of the bowl, we forget how we got there and why. I might be no smarter than a goldfish, but I do have a better memory than that.

Let's try to move the conversation in a new direction, not the same tired ones over and over again. At least, that is what I'd like to think I am trying to do.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

You get that "silent majority" isn't literally comprised of a multitude of mutes right?

[H]

You get that "silent majority" isn't literally comprised of a multitude of mutes right?

When did I say or imply that it would​, in fact, be a "multitude of mutes?"

[Fox]

I think we can all agree that Bargain's being able to infinitely fog the draw step after getting Jace-ult'd is the key difference.

@Jax- you said something about BR Reanimator being anti-combo, but that's not correct. UBx is the anti-combo version, while BR is just there to cheese wins off of Chancellor exploiting first-player advantage into discard into Griselcannon. BR is built to cheese every deck in the same manner, but it's really there to terrorize fair dude decks. While BR may have some decent matchups vs certain types of combo, it generally encourages other combo players to play a combo deck like SnT b/c combo-control is a generally good answer to turbo-linear cheese (Chalice, BR, TurboDepths, etc...).

While SnT doesn't have the best of matchups vs BR, it's still passable - what's really important to SnT is that BR is terrorizing all the fair decks such that they [SnT] doesn't have to play against stupid hatebears. This beneficial relationship makes Grand Prix/Eternal Weekend byes that much better for SnT. A quick recap: the more BR there is, the better positioned SnT is for deep tournament runs, particularly with byes.

Now that we've identified BR as a pro-combo deck, you just need to look at Wrenn/Plague Engineer pushing out DnT [most important] and other dude/hatebear deck [less important]. Not only do Wrenn decks have a less than stellar matchup vs SnT, as they've had to cut down on Hymn/SCM spam [highly damaging to SnT's need for 2 cards in hand to go off] to make room for Wrenn and/or Astrolabe...and they've further displaced Hymn with inclusion of Goyf and Decay.

While all this is going on, Spell Snare [maindeck] and BEB [sideboard] have been on the rise in response to Wrenn - this is heavily favors the 3cmc SnT. This is a [BR] Grisel encouraging more [SnT] Grisel pattern. Without any bans [Wrenn/Engi or Chancellor] to the decks propping up SnT's current favorable environment, we should expect SnT to swing back up from tier 1.5 to DTB for the foreseeable future.

UBx Reanimator is the anti-combo version, which would always elect to play against combo over control or aggro, if given the choice. This version is pretty poor at hating out fair decks, and very good at punishing SnT - as far as fair SnT-disliking decks are concerned, UBx Grisel is ultimately a 'good actor.' We can look back to the DTT era [focusing on combo] and see OmniTell pushing out fair decks, and then see the subsequent rise in UBx as a response. The more UBx you would have seen in your LGS back then, the more likely you would have been to finish with better records as a fair dude deck.

Here again BR helps SnT, as Chancellor cheese + discard followup acts as even more copies of Entomb when BR faces UBx. It's not hard to see how playing Leyline of Daze (w/o picking up land) allows BR to keep SnT safe from UBx.

[Rood]

I didn’t mean to open a can of worms with Griselbrand but he was clearly a mistake of a card. I think Entombs another card that should probably be re-banned. They wont ban cantrips in this format because it killed Vintage completely which used to be a pretty played format. People just like Brainstorm

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

When did I say or imply that it would​, in fact, be a "multitude of mutes?"

Your whole post? Over and over against every time you thought you were scoring some points by saying "Nu-uh, if you vote you're silent, check and mate!"

[H]

Your whole post? Over and over against every time you thought you were scoring some points by saying "Nu-uh, if you vote you're silent, check and mate!"

My point was exactly the opposite. The assumption that silence could only apply to voicing (that is, here, writing) and not to a general notion of "expressing" an opinion, of which a vote would be an example, is just that, an assumption.

So, no, I don't think people not expressing an opinion are literally mute. But I also don't just assume people who are apt to be "silent" would vote. In fact, I don't assume they have a definite opinion, because there is no evidence if they do or do not.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

My point was exactly the opposite. The assumption that silence could only apply to voicing (that is, here, writing) and not to a general notion of "expressing" an opinion, of which a vote would be an example, is just that, an assumption.

So, no, I don't think people not expressing an opinion are literally mute. But I also don't just assume people who are apt to be "silent" would vote. In fact, I don't assume they have a definite opinion, because there is no evidence if they do or do not.

If you're going to gaslight us like this at least have the decency to edit your post, lol.

[H]

If you're going to gaslight us like this at least have the decency to edit your post, lol.

Well, if I was not clear, then I apologize, but I said it as best I could at the time.

Also, no, I am not going to edit after the fact, since if I said something stupid, I'll let it stand and deal with it after the fact. It's unclear to me how you read my point as exactly the opposite of what I intended, but then again, I know what I was trying to say, so I have no idea how to read it otherwise.

So, I don't really understand your point, or know how to address it.