No
Yes
While I think Brainstorm benefits from Snappy, StP and Lightning Bolt gain more from that interaction throughout the course of the game. This doesn't necessarily do anything "broken" either, and gives control more tools compared to Aggro and even Aggro-control. As much as flashing back Brainstorm is neat, I'm sure many have noticed that the play is not the best use for Snappy.Originally Posted by Philipp2293
Oddly enough, right now Zoo is a good choice for the metagame (if it could ever figure out how to beat the combo decks...).
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
True that, I might have formulated it wrong, maybe it should read Snapcaster + cheap removal/counter/or brainstorm.
Still I'm not happy to see decreasing viability if you look at the field in whole. Mind I usually crush my U.deck oponents with maverick, but I'd be much happier to see a more diversified field even if it comes at the cost of my pet deck being weakened. I think something has to happen sooner or latter, but I dare not point the finger at what exactly.
That's the best argument I've seen for not banning Brainstorm.
I guess the only thing to consider is the long term health/growth of Legacy. Is Brainstorm/Snapcaster going to lead to fewer Legacy players? I think the jury is still out on that. Concentrating all the power in blue only exacerbates the issue of limited supply.
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
The supply of Legacy is unrelated to blue. It's related to the supply of Legacy cards i.e. duals/FoW/Wasteland. Even FoW these days don't hold a candle against other rising cards like LED, Natural Order, Tarmogoyf (Thanks Modern). If you can argue that blue is causing high demand for cards to be played in a blue-shell therefore driving prices up, then you would need more sources than to just state such a statement. I believe that the market isn't simply "because of the dominance of blue therefore cards are expensive". It's like the Vintage player saying MUD/Workshop is expensive because MUD is popularly played to STOP BLUE v.s. just MUD is expensive because the cards played in MUD are in high demand but short supply.
I would also imagine that most people would be uninterested in the format if Brainstorm was out, and at least this poll proves that the general "the Source" community would still like to keep Brainstorm around, at least a little longer. Whether the Source is the definitive community is up to debate, but for most parts, the history of the format has always been ingrained here, despite what SCG would like to sculpt their own interpretation of the format and their Legacy community (which isn't a bad thing to do from a community/business standpoint).
Decks that I care about:
Steel Stompy
UWx Landstill
Dreadstalker
DDFT (10% practice)
Mangara on MWS? You must be masochistic. -kiblast
Brainstorm exacerbates the supply issues because it forces people in to blue. If that's the case, every blue dual becomes more important than non-blue duals. This is already obviously true, but gets worse the more homogenous the format becomes. If the format is Brainstorm + 56 cards, the limitation is blue duals.
Right now, people still think they can play non-Brainstorm decks. That's why you see Maverick and Deadguy, etc... What happens when those people figure out that it's just better to add blue? Now they need blue duals. Now the price of blue duals goes up.
Until we get to the point where if you want to compete, you need blue duals. Otherwise you have to play sub-par decks that are at a severe disadvantage from the start.
Sound like any other formats you know? Vintage? Standard with Jace? Replace blue duals with Power and you've got Vintage. Replace blue duals with Jace and you've got Standard. How did/are those formats doing?
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
These are valid points, but if you think the removal of Brainstorm from the format will significantly reduce the demand for blue duals, I suspect you're in for a surprise. Even without Brainstorm, blue will remain the strongest color in the format by a wide margin.
At most you're going to see a slight drop in demand for the blue duals that go into various combo decks, because they'd be the most hurt by Brainstorm's removal from the format. It would be a drop in the bucket though, because combo isn't very widely played as it is.
The blue-based aggro control decks that are tearing up tournaments right now are likely to remain the top tier decks in a Brainstorm-less format, because they're more easily able to substitute in other cantrips for it than combo or pure control.
Then again, you might see a huge drop in demand for blue duals when a bunch of people sell off their collections and quit the game entirely because they can't play Brainstorm in Legacy anymore. I'm not one of them, but it seems like there are a lot of them out there.
I guess that I don't want to see people priced out of competitive Legacy. It's already close to that, but gets worse when power is concentrated. It's what happened to Jace-Standard. If you couldn't afford 4x Jace, you couldn't play Standard. I don't want to see Legacy ruined like that. I don't think that banning Brainstorm would necessarily lower the price substantially for Blue duals, but it would at least allow other colors to be competitive.
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
My sentiments exactly.
Plus, legacy can easily contain Brainstorm. Part of the reason this format is so appealing is is depth. Which also means that it has strong ability to auto-regulate itself.
If anything, cards should come off the ban list.
I really think WotC should leave this format alone for the most part.
TL;DR Don't touch my fucking Brainstorms.
Banning cards to reduce the initial price barrier for a format is not something we should want to do.
Magic, like any other hobby, costs money. If you can't afford to break into the format, then save some money, make some mise trades and bide your time. We shouldn't be banning any cards to make the format more accessible, as elitist as that sounds, I just don't think the trade off is worth it.
The question of how to make Legacy more affordable is one that is a whole discussion unto itself, but I don't think it starts with banning Brainstorm.
Listen closely as I tell you this, kid: You don't know shit about shit and pull up your damn pants.
As much as I love wading through the steaming ignorance of the feculent internet hordes, I really wish people would stop posting things like this.
I don't particularly want to play with a Brainstorm-less format. Then again I don't particularly want to play with a Survival-less format, or for that matter, I suppose there's no given reason I should want to play with a Flash-less format.
What I do want to play is Legacy. Legacy is not Vintage. Legacy is and always has been a five color format. If you think Legacy is Vintage and all your arguments are constructed around that foolish supposition, then sure, the prospect of every deck running Brainstorm might elicit a shrug.
But your woeful ignorance is your own lookout. Legacy and 1.5 have never been such a format; excepting, I suppose, the busted era of Hulk-Flash which was a mistake lasting all of one month. So claims of inevitability and "this is what Legacy is" just show your own lack of knowledge, they don't amount to an actual argument.
Flames removed. Cut it the fuck out, Grumpypants. -zilla
No.You should go check on Wizard's website the different factors they consider when banning something. Popularity and usage alone aren't factors. Dominance (ie - high usage of a card in an oppressive and dominating strategy) and elimination or considerable lessening of one of the three main deck archetypes are reasons to remove a card from any format. Brainstorm does none of these things, looking at the situation critically, there is no reason to ban it.
From the article on Skullclamp (I know it's been a while but really) being banned.
Even more relevant:Let's talk about Standard first. Skullclamp was banned in Standard, frankly, because it was everywhere. Every competitive deck either had four in the main deck, had four in the sideboard, or was built to try and defend against it. And there were a lot more successful decks in the first two categories than in the third. Such representation is completely unhealthy for the format. Your deck has to either have Skullclamps, or have Skullclamp in its crosshairs—a definitive case of a card “warping the metagame.”
Look, if you want to have a serious adult conversation and not look like you're just trolling, you honestly can't say things like, "There's no reason to talk about banning Brainstorm." It requires either gross dishonesty or gross incompetence at the game to say something like that. You may not think it should be banned, but it is obviously the most powerful card in Legacy by a wide margin and there are obviously a lot of real arguments based on the past criteria for bannings that can be applied to Brainstorm's case.Brainstorm has been under scrutiny as one of the most powerfully efficient cards in the format for many years, and has long teetered on the edge of restriction. For one mana, at instant speed, it fuels an unacceptable level of consistency and searching to dig out whatever is needed at the time, and it is particularly powerful in combination with the many shuffling effects in the format. Arguably the most efficient unrestricted card in Vintage prior to the June 1 announcement, it is stronger than many of the cards that have been restricted over the years instead of Brainstorm.
Furthermore, while Brainstorm is good in many decks, it is particularly powerful in combo decks. For one mana it finds combo elements that might have been as far as three turns away, while putting unneeded duplicate combo elements back on top of the deck. These decks often win before having to redraw those cards, or shuffle them away with effects like Onslaught's fetch lands. Restricting cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Merchant Scroll may also allow other cards to stay off the restricted list in the future now that they are harder to find so quickly.
"Ancestral Recall draws cards and Tidings draws cards. QED anyone who wants Ancestral Recall to stay banned must want to ban Tidings too. What a whiner!"It is a really common thought that stuff is banned because of how popular it is or how easy it is to throw into decks. This just isn't the case, or else we'd be discussing Dark Confidant or Stoneforge Mystic getting the axe (not comparing these cards to Brainstorm, but they fit your outline for banning a card)
Come back to me if you want to have an actual conversation and not engage in craven dishonesty. Showing a healthy respect for the rules of logic would help too.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Vintage is theoretically a deeper card pool. Why then is it less diverse?
Because a few broken cards crowd out all the room and all other strategies. Legacy has thrived because that's not the case, there is room for a wide diversity of strategies. But that needn't always be so! Without a willingness to ever ban cards, or even discuss banning cards, it will inevitably be the case that the format devolves into a very shallow metagame.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I guess if all your frames of reference are internal Vintage might seem diverse.
Decks without Brainstorm.I personally believe that legacy is extremely diverse right now and tons of different strategies are viable. I would like to know what decks are being pushed out by brainstorm.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I think there's a significant distinction to be made between Skullclamp and Brainstorm. In a format where there are 4 Skullclamps in every deck, the first person to resolve Skullclamp typically wins the game. In a format where there's 4 Brainstorm in every deck, the first person to cast Brainstorm is probably not very good at Magic.
As for the reasoning behind Brainstorm's banning in Vintage, I think the following line is extremely relevant: "Furthermore, while Brainstorm is good in many decks, it is particularly powerful in combo decks."
Historically, Vintage has had a real problem with combo decks being dominant to the point of oppressiveness. Banning Brainstorm in that environment makes perfect sense. In Legacy, combo isn't any kind of a problem at all, so banning Brainstorm there seems to make a whole lot less sense.
I really want to hymn to tourach someone without them brainstorming in response. That's my dream. I have no idea if brainstorm should be banned or not, but I would be super happy if it happened.
People have different thresholds for different strategies. If combo were anywhere near as good and represented as blue aggro-control decks atm, no one would be questioning bannings. And similarly if CawBlade had been as dominant as it was in T2 earlier and been a combo deck or a very linear aggro deck instead of a control deck, it might have gotten taken apart three months earlier.
Now what is peoples' threshold for blue aggro-control in Legacy? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet it's less than 100%.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Also neither of these is true. Resolving Skullclamp first didn't necessarily mean anything because it didn't make games revolve around speed at all; quite the opposite in most cases.
And a first turn Brainstorm is fine if you have a fetchland and a turn 2 play, people need to get over the idea of trying to maximize every single Brainstorm at the expense of maximizing your mana development.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
It's certainly not 100%, but I think that peoples' threshold for aggro-control, which is highly interactive and skill testing for both players, is much much higher than it is for combo, which is extremely uninteractive and mostly skill testing for only one player.
Clearly the threshold for blue-based aggro-control in this format is very high, because 3 out of 4 Legacy players are relatively happy with the current state of things.
You don't know what you are talking about you troll
And a lot of people are top 8ing all sorts of events without brainstorm, like merfolk.
A founding member of Team Bluff the Lotus - Bringing the crazy from Bob's Baseball Dugout
In Legacy?And a lot of people are top 8ing all sorts of events without brainstorm, like merfolk.
First off a blue anti-blue deck is hardly an argument for the health and diversity of the format; and secondly it's not doing very well and hasn't won any major tournaments lately. I mean if peoples' goal is top make top 8 and not to win, maybe the format is fine, but if they actually want to pull off the prize you really have to have a good reason not to play Brainstorm. And most people just think they do.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Until they start flashbacking their shit with Snapcaster? Hymn is totally worthless against decks with 4 S. Mages
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
