All B/R update speculation.

[H]

So many words when you could have stopped here: A format's identity is an idealistic argument. You are saying "this is how the ideal Legacy looks like" and then pretending your a realist. Man do I love banned list chat.

I think this is a fairly disingenuous reading of what he meant though.

The "Realist" position here is the pragmatic one. The one that sees what cards are legal and works with them to play the game.

The "Idealist" position here is the idealistic one. The one that does not accept what cards are legal, won't play because the game is not up the their standards.

This isn't an actual Realism vs. Idealism debate, in the more technical philosophical operationalized terms. Because Legacy is no more "real" by that metric than money. If we could debate Moral Realism, we certainly could debate if Legacy is Real, or constructed.

That is hardly the point at hand though.

I certainly am not telling people who are idealistic to not be. I'm not telling anyone that they should be pragmatic. In fact, often, pragmatism is pretty gross. But, here, in this case, I see the value. I think that is what Mr. Safety is getting at, that the pragmatic view has value, because you get to play the game. If you don't want to, then don't.

The real point, I think, is that almost everyone is something of an Idealist. But, here, the case is being made that an extreme, fevenent idealism simply does not serve the practical aim of actually playing the game. We are all idealists in some way, but we can also just enjoy things for what they are, knowing that different doesn't always mean better.

[H]

While I do agree with everything H typed I just gotta say please give those poor commas a break!

Hey, give me a break, I'm stupid and I type like it too!

[Mr. Safety]

So many words when you could have stopped here: A format's identity is an idealistic argument. You are saying "this is how the ideal Legacy looks like" and then pretending your a realist. Man do I love banned list chat.

I completely disagree. A format's identity is shaped by what's legal, not what 'ought' to be legal. It's not an idealistic argument at all. I have made no claims on how Legacy 'ought' to look like, only what it 'is', and challenging others who are making 'ought' arguments.

[Mr. Safety]

I certainly am not telling people who are idealistic to not be. I'm not telling anyone that they should be pragmatic. In fact, often, pragmatism is pretty gross. But, here, in this case, I see the value. I think that is what Mr. Safety is getting at, that the pragmatic view has value, because you get to play the game. If you don't want to, then don't.

The real point, I think, is that almost everyone is something of an Idealist. But, here, the case is being made that an extreme, fevenent idealism simply does not serve the practical aim of actually playing the game. We are all idealists in some way, but we can also just enjoy things for what they are, knowing that different doesn't always mean better.

This is exactly what I meant to say. Thanks for clarifying.

EDIT: I could dream all day of what a Brainstorm-less format could be, or I could play the game in a somewhat less desirable state (if that were how I felt) with Brainstorm. I choose the latter. I'm not saying you have to, far from it.

If you dare, follow this link:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?v...x=0&ajaxhist=0

[Ronald Deuce]

Unrelated question: Is there a good reason Wizards doesn't use "suspensions" or temporary bans aside from the fluctuations they would produce in card pricing?

[H]

Unrelated question: Is there a good reason Wizards doesn't use "suspensions" or temporary bans aside from the fluctuations they would produce in card pricing?

I don't think there is a particularly good reason. They've actually done it in Arena, IIRC for Historic. But maybe the answer is just a lack of wanting to constantly reevaluate things?

[non-inflammable]

If Brainstorm were a sorcery instead of an instant it wouldn't be nearly the problem the idealist make it out to be.

Brainstorm has hit every metric MTG has used to justify banning a card, yet it persist.

i would be 100% behind a sorcery errata...

remember before the stack, there was the batch, interrupts and mana sources?

[Michael Keller]

i would be 100% behind a sorcery errata...

remember before the stack, there was the batch, interrupts and mana sources?

"As a fast-effect..." lol The good old days.

[Fox]

Was pretty funny commentary from an Eternal Weekend where a guy tries to use Mystical Tutor to find a Tolarian b/c he didn’t know Mana Source was a card type. It’s important to continue to call things by their true names: Mono/Poly/Continuous Artifact, Interrupt/Mana Source, and local/global enchantment. These terms should never have gone away imo, they made perfect sense.

[ahg113]

Was pretty funny commentary from an Eternal Weekend where a guy tries to use Mystical Tutor to find a Tolarian b/c he didn’t know Mana Source was a card type. It’s important to continue to call things by their true names: Mono/Poly/Continuous Artifact, Interrupt/Mana Source, and local/global enchantment. These terms should never have gone away imo, they made perfect sense.

During my college years I became a super duper casual player. Then got out of the game until about Mirrodin Besieged etc. Fast forward to Tumble Magnet and I tap someone's whatever, thinking I was going to turn it off, and low & behold, a judge call later, that's not a thing anymore. (All those damn years of Icy Manipulator wrecking havoc are a thing of the past.) I was full of the disappoint. Mogg Fanatic, Yavimaya Elder, how I miss your great deal damage stack sac effects for profit.

[BirdsOfParadise]

Sorry for making this long. I wanted to sum up thoughts. I promise I tried to make it readable.

It’s not possible to mathematically prove that anything ought to be banned, and it’s not possible to define what Legacy ought to be in a way that’s universally agreed on. Putting that burden of proof on someone, in this context, is asking them to go jump in a lake.

To me it’s as plain as day that Brainstorm was better off banned seven to ten years ago, and I’ll make my case. When you’re reading it, please understand that all I’ve got — all WotC has ever had — is common sense and rough heuristics, not formal logic.

I’ll start with Vintage, the format whose mission is to encompass all of Magic. Even the most unbalanced cards, mostly early design mistakes, are legal to play (lol at Lurrus). There’s a trade-off: Allowing these unbalanced cards to remain legal, even if they’re restricted to one copy per deck, permanently focuses the format on these early design mistakes, since WotC intends to never again print cards unbalanced enough to compete with them. Vintage will forever be focused on blue decks and (as long as Workshop and Bazaar are unrestricted) artifact decks and graveyard decks. The cost of being able to play with every card is that if a player wants to have a shot at winning with any other kind of deck, Vintage is not for them.

Legacy was split off from Vintage. Its mission is to be very similar to Vintage in this one respect: it encompasses 99.99% of Magic. But it also has a mission to escape the sway of the unbalanced cards that define Vintage. The 0.01% chunk that’s missing from Legacy is the unbalanced cards, which are banned, not restricted, as a sacrifice for the sake of format diversity. Legacy is designed to avoid the fate of being permanently defined by a narrow bunch of unbalanced cards.

Some strategies will always rise to the top. There will be winners and losers. The promise of Legacy is not that you can play just absolutely anything and expect to win.

The promise of Legacy is that if you compare it to Vintage, you should be able to say, “This Legacy thing is a lot more diverse at the most competitive level.” (The noncompetitive levels don’t matter: You can run anything in any format if you don’t mind getting crushed.)

Legacy, to its credit, has fulfilled a great deal of its promise. I could rattle off more strategies with a fighting chance of winning a Legacy tournament than I could for Vintage. But “a fighting chance” is a nice way of saying “not a good chance.” While Legacy far outstrips Vintage in terms of strategies with a fighting chance, it doesn’t do much better in terms of strategies with a good chance.

Vintage has blue (a handful of substrategies with a great deal of overlap), Workshop, and Dredge stuff (??). Legacy has blue (a handful of substrategies with a great deal of overlap), Chalice (??), Depths (??), and Vial stuff (????). The difference between blue and the next best thing is actually bigger in Legacy than in Vintage (where Workshop is sometimes on equal footing with blue).

You may not like me grouping “blue” together like this, and you’d be right that there are some big differences within “blue.” But from a years-long perspective, the same gang of troublemakers are at it again and again. It’s fair to say “blue” is always the best Legacy archetype in a way that it would be unfair to say that “red” is an archetype encompassing Mono-Red Prison and Mono-Red Burn and Mono-Red Goblins. Those decks are really different.

So, Legacy largely but incompletely delivers on its promise. It’s not hard to spot the ringleader card in the archetype that’s always the best. It’s not hard to see that the ringleader card is bannable.

Here are some typical criteria for a bannable card:
It’s ubiquitous at the highest level of competition.
It’s cheap to cast.
It greatly reduces variance.
The best way to counter it is to use it and then tune your deck to face other decks using it.
It doesn’t have a meaningful deckbuilding cost.
We have enough observations to be sure of what we’re seeing.

Brainstorm also partially meets this criterion:
Provides card advantage (not quite, but it’s the ultimate virtual card advantage)

It’s often repeated that Brainstorm is bannable by every metric. I grant that the card requires decision making, but so do Demonic Tutor and Survival of the Fittest and really any other card, if you think hard enough about the correct play.

If you just like playing Brainstorm and would be sad if it were banned, I have no argument. I’m not here to tell you what you ought to like.

Tl;dr ban Brainstorm to upgrade the number of decks with not just a fighting chance, but a good chance, in accordance with the point of Legacy. If it doesn’t work, just unban it again. And do this seven to ten years ago.

[Wrath of Pie]

Interestingly enough, if Brainstorm were banned seven to ten years ago, that probably means that Ponder and Preordain never get printed and that Serum Visions likely would be banned in Modern.

EDIT: Ponder still gets printed, but Preordain possibly not.

[ahg113]

Sorry for making this long. I wanted to sum up thoughts. I promise I tried to make it readable.

[sarcasm]tl, dr[/sarcasm]

Tl;dr ban Brainstorm to upgrade the number of decks with not just a fighting chance, but a good chance, in accordance with the point of Legacy. If it doesn’t work, just unban it again. And do this seven to ten years ago.

I <3 this post.

[H]

Tl;dr ban Brainstorm to upgrade the number of decks with not just a fighting chance, but a good chance, in accordance with the point of Legacy. If it doesn’t work, just unban it again. And do this seven to ten years ago.

The question though is, even if I agree with you (and I generally do) the window of 7-10 years ago is well and gone now. So, while your post shows good hindsight, the issue lies in the present, looking to the future. The inaction is as defining as the action taken by Wizards, if not more so.

So, what do we do now? Frankly, I think Legacy just is 4x Brainstorm + Fetches now. That isn't for everyone and I don't claim that everyone should like it. If it is not for you, then it just isn't. At this point though, it is almost like playing Vintage and hating Moxes. I mean, sure, you could. You could even demand they be banned and have a valid case. Except it just isn't going to happen.

[Cire]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...lpuff_st_place

Post ban challenge

Companion count:

Yorion: 8
Gyruda: 3
Jegantha: 2

[Purple Blood]

Honest question: if they banned Brainstorm would the meta change all that much?

Four Brainstorms becomes four Preordains. The decks running Brainstorm will lose a few % points to the non Brainstorm decks. However, being that most decks are Brainstorm decks, overall you will see no major change to the win rates and therefore likely no shift in the meta.

Maybe I'm underestimating the downgrade of Brainstorm to Preordain?

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Honest question: if they banned Brainstorm would the meta change all that much?

Four Brainstorms becomes four Preordains. The decks running Brainstorm will lose a few % points to the non Brainstorm decks. However, being that most decks are Brainstorm decks, overall you will see no major change to the win rates and therefore likely no shift in the meta.

Maybe I'm underestimating the downgrade of Brainstorm to Preordain?

Then ban ponder too.

[non-inflammable]

You could even demand they (moxes) be banned and have a valid case.

conflate much? what ONE card in vintage could be a comparison to BS?

I don't play vintage anymore, but when I did (type1), I hated mirror universe (mana burn during your untap phase, really!?!)
It's apples to oranges since mirror universe just ended the game but BS just incentivizes blue stew in legacy.

[Purple Blood]

Then ban ponder too.

Or just play Modern if that's the format you want.

[jmlima]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...lpuff_st_place

Post ban challenge

Companion count:

Yorion: 8
Gyruda: 3
Jegantha: 2

Also, Uro and Oko present in 50% of the decks. Delver, that terrible formidable weapon reduced to 9% of the decks...