Legacy is doomed. SCG jumping on board the "Ban Brainstorm" wagon. :(

[Syaoran]

As far as I can see:

The argument to ban brainstorm is that it shows up everywhere, in just about every blue deck.

By this logic, shouldn't we also be banned swords, and just about every deck running white runs them?

(I can't think of a card in one of the other colors that if you're in that color, you run that card.)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

-More evidence that IBA doesn't read posts and is more concerned with trolling.

I can't help it if you admit someone is right and then turn around and continue using the argument they just disproved.

Also, responding to me through other people is still responding to me, fuck-knuckles.

I have never played a merfolk list that wasn't consistent, you are either building it wrong or playing it wrong.

Man what's awesome is late game Vials, Dazes and Cursecatchers.

No.

Merfolk is not consistent. In fact even in the early game it's incredibly inconsistent, games play completely different based on whether you drew turn 1 Vial or not for one thing.

There are so many decks that are much more consistent than Merfolk.

[GGoober]

In a void, on a one to one comparison yes, all those cards are equaly powerful. But that's not the case. So everything else you said makes no diference when we talk about decks/archetypes and not cards by themselves.

Also, your comparison "Aether Vial against permission" vs. "Brainstorm AGAINST THE WHOLE FORMAT" made me smirk.

I did that intentionally to make a point: Vial beats blue very easily. Brainstorm has an edge against most non-Brainstorm deck but the "brainstorm against the world" issue isn't clearly seen when non-brainstorm decks can still perform and put out numbers. All the while, no one is seeming to enjoy or attempt to play a deck with Vial (or Maverick) to beat blue (which happens to pack the 'all-powerful-brainstorm')

[Adan]

I just think people have the wrong approach. What I said is that Brainstorm is a kind of engine that is making decks consistent. And the playability of these decks are also very dependant on Brainstorm.

The majority of archetypes (combo, aggrocontrol and control) profit from it (EXCEPT for fcuking Jack-Elgin-"I can only with if the match would be 75 minutes"-mono nonblue controlpiles).
However, the real format-warping events were:

1) Printing of Misstep, hyping Blue
2) Ban of Misstep, making people go "Fuck yeah, no one's gonna Misstep my Entomb/Sensei's Divining Top anymore" -> renaissance of ANT, DDay, Reanimator which all happen to play Brainstorm
3) Printing of Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets, making Control-strategies better and Delver being a very nice addition to Canadian Threshold which has always been a very solid deck.

I don't see this having anything to do with Brainstorm at all. I was already faceplaming when they banned Survival of the Fittest because the real reason why Survival was overpowered was Vengevine. Survival has been existent for such a long time and got the axe just because Vengevine made it overpowered. All the Survival decks before have been strong, yes, but not overpowered. They were a solid and fair contender.
I just think banning Brainstorm is the wrong approach and would damage the format needlessly.

[UnderwaterGuy]

As far as I can see:

The argument to ban brainstorm is that it shows up everywhere, in just about every blue deck.

By this logic, shouldn't we also be banned swords, and just about every deck running white runs them?

(I can't think of a card in one of the other colors that if you're in that color, you run that card.)

Lightning Bolt probably meets the same criteria. I bet Lightning Bolt is in every non-combo red deck played and the current RUG decks splash red exclusively for that card.

Just because a card is the best at what it does doesn't mean it should be banned. There will always be a best removal/filter/creature/etc card.

[Vacrix]

Cards like Brainstorm put more emphasis on the fact that Legacy players like playing Legacy because they feel more empowered by their choices and a certain amount of consistency. Remember, Brainstorm finds cards like Ad Nauseum that makes people pissed off that they lost to an overpowered, storm easy-button rather than a complex battle of choices we know as Magic. Ultimately, Brainstorm is merely an excellent enabler, but its not the problem. I mean, IS there a problem? The metagame is relatively healthy. I find that when WotC tries to force change on Legacy it creates more problems. Mental Misstep is a perfect example. I'm sure they knew the implications that card would have on the Legacy metagame and yet... they were wrong because it got banned. Thats even worse than covering up the mistake of Ad Nauseum by banning Mystical Tutor.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

However, 80% blue decks in tournaments is not a "balanced" format (Yes, I'm aware that the percentage at the most recent SCG wasn't that high).

Number of decks that are in the SCG deck database as top 16ing at an SCG Open since Innistrad became legal: 80.

Number of those running Brainstorm: 50 (62.5%)

+
7 Merfolk
2 Dredge
1 Affinity

So, 75% running blue. 80% isn't much of an exaggeration.

Looking at the top 8, 28 of the 40 are running Brainstorm, 4 are Fish, and 1 Dredge, making it 82.5%.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Wait, what?

Have you ever actually played Maverick against combo decks? You fear Belcher. That's pretty much it.

Is this like in the philosophical sense, in the same sense that a warrior shouldn't fear death or something?

Because you certainly lose to other combo decks.

[dahcmai]

I just thought of something, when's the next banned restricted announcement anyway? Isn't it like in January or June or some such? It's going to be a while before anything comes out of all that.

Let them cry. It makes me chuckle.

[dahcmai]

I wish they would get out of this "power creep" mode of theirs. I could care less if we had a pile of sets with underpowered cards like Homelands as long as it was fun as hell to draft, play sealed, and have in constructed. Who wouldn't like that? It would feel crappy, but if it works, it's still fun. Ravnica was notably one of the funnest sets ever to play with and it was far from the most overpowered set.

[death]

December 20.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

December?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Cards like Brainstorm put more emphasis on the fact that Legacy players like playing Legacy because they feel more empowered by their choices and a certain amount of consistency. Remember, Brainstorm finds cards like Ad Nauseum that makes people pissed off that they lost to an overpowered, storm easy-button rather than a complex battle of choices we know as Magic. Ultimately, Brainstorm is merely an excellent enabler, but its not the problem. I mean, IS there a problem? The metagame is relatively healthy. I find that when WotC tries to force change on Legacy it creates more problems. Mental Misstep is a perfect example. I'm sure they knew the implications that card would have on the Legacy metagame and yet... they were wrong because it got banned. Thats even worse than covering up the mistake of Ad Nauseum by banning Mystical Tutor.

One of the stupider things Adam Barnello has ever said was in his article where he said that Steve Sadin's Hulk-Flash list, with Bobs and Counterbalances, the one built by Moreno, was the best deck in the room. I mean besides the obvious confirmation bias (it won, therefore it must be best- even if some things, like Sylvan Safekeeper over Benevolent Bodyguard, absolutely made no sense), it was dumb because Hulk-Flash could be built so many different ways. I played a Rock-ish build of Hulk-Flash to 69th place aiming at all the Fish deck in the field. I played against and saw a lot of different versions of the same deck, from Hulk-Thresh to Hulk-Still to BUG Hulk and more straightup combo lists like I had first touted, the Force/Unmask based list I smashed Hanni Fish with when he was claiming the deck couldn't lose to Hulk-Flash.

I had a lot of fun at that tournament. There was a lot of room still to explore in that deck, and the Pacts hadn't even come out yet. The combo was so compact and so flexible that it could have been built a lot of other ways too.

But I never thought that they shouldn't ban one of the combo pieces. At the end of the day, that may look like a lot of diversity to the people playing variants of the same deck, and there may be a lot of legitimate skilltesting lines of play, but like this past Summer when Standard was Cawblade variant vs. Cawblade variant, to most people it rank of stagnation. Tweaks of one deck is not the same thing as having a diverse metagame.

Legacy isn't that bad, but there's been an increasing tendency over the years for Legacy decks to be three color palette swaps of each other, with the same few staples of each color substituting in and blue usually being the central color tying the other two together. And I don't see that tendency going down with Snapcaster and especially Delver. And the biggest suspect in this trend is the most ubiquitous and powerful card, which is far and away Brainstorm.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I wish they would get out of this "power creep" mode of theirs. I could care less if we had a pile of sets with underpowered cards like Homelands as long as it was fun as hell to draft, play sealed, and have in constructed. Who wouldn't like that? It would feel crappy, but if it works, it's still fun. Ravnica was notably one of the funnest sets ever to play with and it was far from the most overpowered set.

Agree with this quite a bit actually.

[Rizso]

IMO its pretty facisnating that every block sense shards have totally changed legacy as a format.

Shardsblock: Noble/KotR/Elspeth/progenitus takes new decks to new hights!
Zendicarblock: More Fetch, Spell Pierce, Stoneforge, Jace, emrakul etc
Scarsblock: New swords, Batterskull, Surgical Extraction, Mental Misstep, Dismember you name it. Loads more!
Innistradblock: even with just 1 set!!! there is 2 cards that is finding its way into decks in a card pool as old as magic itself!

[UnderwaterGuy]

IMO its pretty facisnating that every block sense shards have totally changed legacy as a format.

Shardsblock: Noble/KotR/Elspeth/progenitus takes new decks to new hights!
Zendicarblock: More Fetch, Spell Pierce, Stoneforge, Jace, emrakul etc
Scarsblock: New swords, Batterskull, Surgical Extraction, Mental Misstep, Dismember you name it. Loads more!
Innistradblock: even with just 1 set!!! there is 2 cards that is finding its way into decks in a card pool as old as magic itself!

Yes but that isn't necessarily a good thing. I think it's terrible.

The new cards are dramatically changing the format because they are so ludicrously better than older cards. Alara was the worst offender but it's frustrating that new cards are so much stronger.

A lot of people I know that played a long time ago get disheartened or don't want to play against even casual decks that use decent new cards just because a halfway decent modern deck will stomp a similarly designed old deck.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

Blue definitely needs some de-powering; it's getting too good and it has too much of the color pie on account of Wizards making a lot of mistakes over time. They can't unprint cards, so the only recourse is to ban them. Brainstorm seems like a great candidate to ban, seeing as it gives Blue decks the exclusive ability to blunt the effects of variance in hands/draws and opponents using discard effects; powerful things that no other color has access to. Blue already has exclusive access to free countermagic, and can often do other color's jobs better than them, making it, like the pie, SOOOOOO GOOD. Something needs to go, and I personally don't want to see SI go to Tier 0 SSSSSSSS-Rank overnight (i.e. don't ax free counters) and banning Clique, Snappy, Delver, and a bunch of other's to balance out Blue's slice of the color-pie....just plain silly. so Brainstorm it is.

However...the effect that Brainstorm has should stay in Legacy. It's fun, iconic, and really a pillar of play. That's why, in M2013, Wizards should make a functional reprint...in Red. It still allows people to play with a card they enjoy, just not as easily with all the other best things in the format, and gives the fun of Brainstorm to non-Blue players as well. Win win.

[sligh16]

Blue definitely needs some de-powering; it's getting too good and it has too much of the color pie on account of Wizards making a lot of mistakes over time. They can't unprint cards, so the only recourse is to ban them. Brainstorm seems like a great candidate to ban, seeing as it gives Blue decks the exclusive ability to blunt the effects of variance in hands/draws and opponents using discard effects; powerful things that no other color has access to. Blue already has exclusive access to free countermagic, and can often do other color's jobs better than them, making it, like the pie, SOOOOOO GOOD. Something needs to go, and I personally don't want to see SI go to Tier 0 SSSSSSSS-Rank overnight (i.e. don't ax free counters) and banning Clique, Snappy, Delver, and a bunch of other's to balance out Blue's slice of the color-pie....just plain silly. so Brainstorm it is.

However...the effect that Brainstorm has should stay in Legacy. It's fun, iconic, and really a pillar of play. That's why, in M2013, Wizards should make a functional reprint...in Red. It still allows people to play with a card they enjoy, just not as easily with all the other best things in the format, and gives the fun of Brainstorm to non-Blue players as well. Win win.

Wizards already did that. They reprinted Brainstorm in a stick, It's called Jace TMS. It's still really good, but not as warping as Brainstorm.

[troopatroop]

losing brainstorm wouldn't negatively affect blue-combo decks like Reanimator/NO RUG/.

Oh Rly?! If Brainstorm is gone NoRuG is stuck with Prog. You'll need a discard affect if you draw a Fatty. It's a blow to those decks, for sure.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Oh Rly?! If Brainstorm is gone NoRuG is stuck with Prog. You'll need a discard affect if you draw a Fatty. It's a blow to those decks, for sure.

The obvious solution, of course, is to run another cantrip instead of Brainstorm (Ponder or Serum Visions, depending on what you're already running), and then either just rely on Clique or add a slot for either a second Progenitus or another large green creature. Or you can retool and go for Intuition and Gigapede. Or whatever. It would be rough, but still perfectly manageable.