Well, that's one way to make Discard decent again. I've actually kind of missed those decks in a way, but I'd miss Brainstorm. I'd be pretty annoyed mostly since it would boil down to whiners winning more than being a matter of game swinging overpowered broken cards .
(off topic)Originally Posted by caiomarcos
When has Legacy ever "settled down and found a resting point"? Every set in recent memory has had enough Legacy cards to alter the meta.
Scars brought us Mental Misstep and Green Sun's Zenith.
Zendikar block had Punishing Fire, Jace, Stoneforge Mystic, Emrakul, and Vengevine.
Alara block made Bant aggro and Naya Zoo from basically nothing. It also made ANT and NO/Pro into real decks.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor made Merfolk, Faeries, and Painter.
Legacy always moves.
Last edited by BooleanLobster; 11-08-2011 at 03:31 AM. Reason: -1 weak evidence, +1 strong evidence
Efficient market theory, when a coherent argument fails.
It may happen, Drago, that in your world people make only the best possible decisions, but this is not the world the rest of us inhabit.
Other two pillars, God what is this 1995.Yep, didn't read my posts. Let me help you out:
1) There is nothing wrong with whining, but whining about the wrong aspects is bad. Brainstorm isn't too powerful, aggro decks are simply not powerful enough compared to the other two pillars. At this point, it's either Zoo, Maverick or something Rogue.
Look, PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: THE IDEA THAT MAGIC DECKS BREAK INTO AGGRO/CONTROL/COMBO AND THAT THESE DECKS HAVE A SIMPLE RPS RELATIONSHIP IS AN OUTDATED THEORY THAT MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID WHEN YOU REPEAT IT BECAUSE OF HOW INCREDIBLY OVER SIMPLISTIC AND FLATOUT WRONG IT IS.
Also,
Don't care.2) I wouldn't quit magic but I'd certainly stop playing Legacy
Christ, what, are you serious? I mean they've printed plenty of good cards, anything not very narrow and linear gets stuffed into a Brainstorm deck and anything that is narrow and linear or color intensive just doesn't get played.After seeing what happened to Modern, I'd rather less bannings and more printings of cards to help offset the balance.
This is true because control decks are the ones that often draw multiples of the wrong card that become useless together, and has to assemble pieces, whereas combo decks can just draw into wait no sorry I'm getting this mixed up aren't I.3) While brainstorm alone isn't holding back combo decks, losing brainstorm would certainly weaken control decks far more than combo decks.
I mean blue decks right now are generally running either a fast clock + Wasteland + Daze maybe Stifle, or they're running Counterbalance.Combo decks want the cantrip effects, but the card quality of Brainstorm is far more important for control decks to help maintain control while also help keeping mana open for counters. Blue based combo decks typically run Daze/Spell Pierce/FoW so they don't need to keep mana open. Slower control decks want hard counters since conditional mana counters are bad later game so they usually won't run cards like Daze.
Combo can't survive in Legacy because people really like playing blue.
I think people don't understand why combo decks run Ponder/Preordain and non-combo blue decks often don't and why this doesn't actually mean that the loss of Brainstorm hurts combo less.See above. Those decks wouldn't lose much from Brainstorm compared to control decks that want a instant speed cantrip that provides excellent quality. Blue-combo decks don't mind tapping out to search for their game winning card because they are likely to kill you faster than you will them.
Combo decks generally run more cantrips because they really, really need to be able to get their combo together to not die. Control decks, tempo decks, aggro-control, whatever we call the vague mashup of Brainstorm and Snapcasters and various off-color spells that makes up half of the decks in Legacy at the moment, they don't need as much consistency fixing. They run Brainstorm because it's ridiculous. They can afford to cut other fixers if they want because they don't pull as much weight.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Reading TheInfamousBearAssassin talking about banning Brainstorm is like reading Dr. Jones and his anti Force of Will crusade(s).
Neither of those are likely to happen, Legacy was always blue friendly format.
Oddly enough, if you have SCG Premium, you should read Ari's Article about this very phenomenon. The premise is summed up in these words: "When was the last time you saw an actually NEW aggro list? You know, where people changed things and adapted to the metagame more than just some sideboard slots?" And he goes on to then advocate Brainstorm in Merfolk.
Just something to think about.
Delver and Snapcaster is nowhere the powerlvl in standard as it is in legacy obviously, swords, paths and brainstorms that pushes them. White is still the dominating force in standard while red is still the underdog just like in every other formats. Red is that poor kid that is bullied and being an outsider and cant get into the group with the coolkids.
Assigning a greater probability to a statement that goes against the available evidence providing only tautological reasoning isn't really going to convince anyone.
Back on topic. Brainstorm is powerful. Correct. Broken. Possibly. One of the cards that make people play legacy. Quite likely.
Other cards in the previous category include e.g. dual lands, FoW, LeD, Vial. They used to include Sotf, too.
All these cards are in some sense broken. Legacy is basically a broken format, but it's fun also because of that. If you ban all of the broken cards, many people are going to quit the format. Not because blue or combo or whatever other archetype is nerfed, but because the format would become less and less appealing to them.
Banning one of the format staples is always going to hurt the format in some way, even when it's necessary. Think about SotF: along with the dominating combo archetype, we lost an enormous variety of different decks, interactions and possibility, which is a pity.
I don't know if I would quit in case they ban brainstorm. For sure I would not rage quit based on some honorable stance about my love for the card. I would still try the new format, and probably find it less interesting than before. If my interest goes below a certain threshold I would find something more interesting to do.
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People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
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You are right, I stand corrected. If Wizards keep up the good work - playable cards are always good - we will never see a settled down format. With that we could follow two logics: wait and hope for a change that weakens blue and Brainstorm or realize that no matter what Wizards releases blue will forever be the dominating color, like it always have been. Now, if it stays as dominant as it is today (in my view, much more than other times) something should be done.
"Want all, lose all."
Yes, well, Ari's been drinking the kool aid too. He's been head over heels for Brainstorm for a while.
I'd say Maverick is pretty new. I mean, we're talking all of about 8 months old? And Lewis Laskin's Green and Taxes and Brian Fischer/Jason Jaco's Junk and Taxes although those you could classify more as midrange than true aggro. Burn's made quite the comeback recently, making a couple of T8's on the Open circuit.
Don't get me wrong, I'd agree with Ari's point that people are too tentative when it comes to playing with their listings in the face of a changing metagame, but that doesn't mean NO innovation goes on.
To be fair, Merfolk didn't want the card previously. Just recently other decks are changing from beating Merfolk via grinding it and using their late game Daze/Vial draws as a way to out CA them instead of the old plan of "I'm going to play a Moat".
Honestly, it's obvious Brainstorm is by far the single most powerful card in the format, with the only real competitors being Entomb + LED. The power level and format dominance exists for a ban, it's just a matter of whether it actually makes the format better to do so. Yes, you have a million different Brainstorm decks, but they are all fairly unique. Reminds me of Remand when that card was in Standard. Some huge percent of the meta played it and it was obnoxiously good, but the decks were all completely different (Flare, Tron, Magnivore, UW aggro, Sea Stompy).
I think there was a valid argument when Misstep was still around as there really wasn't a significant difference between any of them (all sort of mid-range decks with Jace protection, it was just choose your removal and cheap threats). Now, the set of Stifle-Daze-Snapcaster-Jace-Spell Snare-Countertop pulls decks in enough different directions that this isn't true. Can Thresh plays out way differently than WU which plays out way differently than CB top etc. There's an actual metagame, non-blue decks DO exist (happens the good players are overly biased to blue to begin with, doubly skewing results). I wouldn't ban Brainstorm now, but it definitely shouldn't just be off the table moving forward.
Acima de nós só DEUS...
Don't drag me into this!!! ;)
@Ari_Lax,
So basically I was ahead of the curve with me suggesting Merfolk playing Brainstorm?!
Founder of Team R&D: Go beyond Synergy and enter poetry
So, Merfolk is not using Brainstorm but is going to, real soon, unless Brainstorm gets emergency banned.
Is that how it is now?
Oh dear god, I sure hope Wizards saves us all from brainstorming fish before its too late.
Seriously, relax. This is Legacy, not Modern. We have weays to deal with things like to many blue decks.
GW Maverick (still underplayed in the US), Junk/Rock, Burn, Lands, even monored Goblins. All of these decks eat blue for breakfast, including Merfolk with or without cantrips.
This post made me LOL so hard.... seriously.
Founder of Team R&D: Go beyond Synergy and enter poetry
I believe brainstorm and snapcaster should be banned... for all the obvious reasons, the problem seems to be that people dont want to try out a format without it, and if wizards find out to be a mistake banning those cards they can unban them...
Acima de nós só DEUS...
This looks rather improbable, at least in short time.
Team Stimato Ezio: You're off the team!
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
-Kierkegaard
-Nevermind the fact that part of my post wasn't aimed at you (which only further shows you don't read) but a quick glance at your post confirms you're just a waste of my time. Don't bother responding to my posts further in this topic because I won't even bother reading them until you want to drop your pride and admit you were wrong.
-Pretty much this. There is quite a lot of love for brainstorm and even if banning it didn't harshly impact the format, it would piss off a great deal of the Legacy player base I'm guessing. People may jump ship if they see WotC starting to handle Legacy in the same way they handled Modern. If people truly feel that blue is getting too much love then WotC should print solid cards in the other colors for people to use.
-It's hard to have innovation in a non-rotating format. Outside of new cards being printed or old cards being rediscovered (Peacekeeper to fight SotF for example), there is only so much you can do with Legacy.
Apparently you don't understand how important it is for Storm to turn shit cards into good cards. By definition, combo decks need to assemble a specific combination of cards at any particular time, and other cards are not good at that particular time. A card that allows you to exchange the cards you don't need to cards that immediately win you the game is absurd. This is why Brainstorm is stronger in combo than it is in many blue decks.
Imagine you're playing TES. Your hand is Infernal Tutor, Brainstorm, and some Chrome Moxen (a shit hand). You Brainstorm into LED, Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, put 2 moxen back on top, and win immediately. No other cantrip does that. Another scenario I encounter commonly. I'm playing Spiral Tide and cast Time Spiral. My post-Spiral hand is crappy and mostly lands. I cast Brainstorm and draw into three business spells, putting back two lands. All of a sudden my hand is sauce and I win, due to the virtual card advantage I gain by ditching shit cards that aren't relevant to my combo at that point in time. Again, no other cantrip does that. That's not even mentioning Doomsday shenanigans - that deck is probably not playable at all without BS as it figures prominently in so many piles.
If this post doesn't make complete sense to you, go play combo for a while. I'm aware that you have a huge boner for blue control, but to think that combo would not be weaker because of a Brainstorm ban is just plain retarded.
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That is too harsh, like I said a page back: Snapcaster Mage should be the one to go, if ever, not Brainstorm.
Bingo...
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
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