No
Yes
Well, that was exceptionally rude. I guess since you have 6k posts your message stays and mine gets deleted, but that's fine, I'm not pouring my heart and soul into this conversation. If you actually do want to discuss Brainstorm I would appreciate if you could speak a little more respectfully, and a little less emotionally.
I don't think Legacy is Vintage, that is an unfounded suggestion, which I am surprised by. I don't play Vintage, actually. So I don't really have much of anything to say about it.
Brainstorm is not ban worthy material. It doesn't create an oppressive engine wherein decks lose to it if they don't prepare for it. Brainstorm doesn't severely weaken any one strategy to the point not being viable. Also, as has been said earlier, 3/4s of Source members polled want to play with Brainstorm. The community at large enjoys using the card and it does nothing degenerate. Brainstorm gets as much play as it does because it is easy to splash, and is good with Fetchlands. Legacy can comfortably support 3 color manabases, even with Wasteland. Blue is an excellent support color in Legacy, and Brainstorm is one of the reasons why.
What criteria does the card meet for banning beyond it is heavily played?
If you say that you don't want to have a conversation with me, and then you keep addressing me, it sends kind of a mixed signal and makes you think you really do want to have a conversation, you just want to have an indignant huff while having it.
And that's something I'm not particularly interested in.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Alright, sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I actually do want to talk about this I was just taken aback initially at your first response. I really don't think Brainstorm should be banned, it's an idea I really don't like, but I am interested in hearing why we think Legacy would be better off that way.
Anywho, I'm not a troll. I'm just new here... this topic interests me.
Originally Posted by snappingbowls | ಠ_ಠ
Okay. Well as I mentioned, not being new here at all and having devoted a metric fuck ton of time and energy into building and developing the format since we thought a 35-man turnout was a big deal, I just amn't going to take kindly to anything along the lines "go play Modern if you don't want to play Brainstorm" or the like.
Let's start over though.
Legacy's five color identity is and has been, I'm fully convinced, one of the reasons for its success. When we first started playing and promoting 1.5, and then Legacy, it was a red-headed step child of a format, Vintage's annoying brother. Vintage at the time was fairly popular; probably still clear fourth in the Constructed formats behind Extended and Block, but reasonably played enough; but it didn't ever get too far off the ground because the (very reasonably grounded) perceptions were that a) It was too expensive, and b) You had to play Force of Will or combo to have a chance at winning.
So while it had the pull on people who liked playing with Brainstorms and combo decks, it was very limited in its potential growth (the expense issue is another serious threat to Legacy but I'll leave that aside for now, as we all know the solution- break the reserve list- and Wizards is just balking at it.)
The discussion about color balance and what's inevitable necessitates at this point a brief recap of the format's history.
Back when I got into 1.5, the best deck was probably BUG-Dragon, but close behind were UW Landstill, Food Chain Goblins, and Welder-MUD. Many of the other NoVA players and I started going up to tournaments and started developing other decks; Alix Hatfield won the first trip up with Duck Hunt, U/B Landstill; Matt Elgin, along with Jesse Hatfield and Zach Tartell were developing Solitaire Enchantress, the core of which is still pretty much followed to this day but was a radical departure from the Enchantress lists people were running previously. I moved pretty quickly through some bad decks before trying to develop Parfait, quickly rejecting Land Tax as shit and building a list around Skullclamp using soldier cards, DoJ and Raise the Alarm mainly, the latter of which killed a lot of aggro creatures at the time. Godzilla also somehow managed to get people to play a Troll Ascetic based aggro deck called ZillaStompy with Rancors and other silly things. It was particularly good against Landstill, since the deck ran Mana Drains and Nevinyrral's Disk over Wrath of God, due to the existence of Dragon and Mud in the meta, and thus had no real answers to a Troll on board. Another deck being developed mostly by Colin Chilbert was ATS, or Angry Tradewind Survival, a RUG Survival deck using the aforementioned Anger and Tradewind Rider to achieve lock positions on the board, especially with Seedborn Muse. Kevin Garvey also had a pretty sweet Berserk-based four color zoo list using the best creatures available at that time; Serendib Efreets, Kird Apes, Isamarus, Troll Ascetics and Wild Mongrels.
Anyway, this meta mostly got swept aside when the banned and restricted lists got separated. A lot of artifact mana that had been banned due to Type 1 restriction was now legal and some people tried to make Tendrils work in the format, but it was incredibly janky and inconsistent at this point in time.The format was dominated early on by UW Landstill, with Survival decks, including the new Red-Green Survival Advantage, somewhere behind. Goblin Sligh gave way to Vial Goblins, and the format was defined for a good long while by those two decks. For a while during this period "Rabid Wombat," the cycling-heavy monowhite control deck I built that has apparently gone down in history as the Bandage deck, was legitimately a very good meta call as it crushed both Landstill and Goblins hard, one of the few decks in the meta to do so, and they made up a huge proportion of the field relative to any single deck today; probably 50% between them or more.
There was also David Gearhart's Solidarity deck, instant-speed Reset based High Tide. It rolled both Landstill and Wombat but had problems racing Vial Goblins consistently, being resilient but not particularly fast by modern combo standards.
During this time Zilla got people to play another deck he had been working on prior to the bannings, basically White Weenie running Ancient Tomb and Chrome Mox for mana acceleration, along with cards like Silver Knight, Tithe, Equipment, Mother of Runes, Isamaru and based on an earlier Hatfield deck, Weathered Wayfarer; this was the first iteration of Angel Stompy and the origin of the shift over time from the original definition of Stompy, the 9-land variants, to the modern terminology where it denotes a midrange deck running Ancient Tombs and City of Traitors.
More important than everything else in the long term, during this period the first viable blue-based aggro-control strategy in Legacy was being developed by the Hatfields, Ian MacInnes and others; originally called Not-Quite-Gro, Thresh decks running Werebear and Nimble Mongoose enjoyed a lot of success at Philly and afterwards, and theretofore unheard of cards like Daze and Portent enjoyed a lot of success; with Thresh decks usually going UGx, white for StP and Mystic Enforcer, red for Bolt, Fire/Ice and Fledgling Dragon, and black for Ghastly Demise, Duress and Possessed Aven and/or Benthic Djinn out of the mirror.
Facing an ever burgeoning diversity of threats, Landstill declined in popularity as aggro-control strategies grew. Vial Goblins still remained the most powerful and popular deck in the format by most measures, with Thresh variants right behind, followed by Survival decks and Angel Stompy, up until the Hulk-Flash debacle at GP Columbus. Hulk-Flash also overshadowed the arrival of CRET Belcher, the first really promising fast combo deck in Legacy, at least in that meta. However, Flash was no sooner banned than Future Sight came out, and along with it two creatures that would help redefine the format; Tombstalker, of course, was a huge deal, but much more importantly, Tarmogoyf created a wall that was first thrown into Threshold and then, pretty quickly, most other decks, that Goblins had incredible difficulty getting through.
Due to personal reasons my intimacy with the format drops off at about this point, but I caught the peripherary of Counter-Top dominance and the rise of Merfolk, played a little bit when Mystical Tutor was needlessly banned. Legacy also experienced a noticeable uptick in popularity over this period; I suppose then it's more understandable that newer players who jumped in during this time might think that blue being dominant is the only way that Legacy can look, but it's a warped view of things. Taken over the course of its history, blue's rise to its current level of dominance has been unsteady and anything but inevitable, but it's certainly become significantly more powerful in the past couple of years than it ever had been in the regular stream of Legacy history.
I would also be leery of polls. People have a huge status quo bias and are easily swayed by a simple change in wording. I suspect that we would see a double digit performance gap, if not a complete inversion, if the question were changed from, "Do you want Brainstorm banned in Legacy?" to "Would Legacy be better off without Brainstorm?" Even at the height of its absurdity there were people crying out against banning Skullclamp in Type 2, or Flash in Legacy, or more recently again in Type 2, Jace and SFM. A lot of those were people who were convinced their pet decks beat the recognized top strategy, most of them wrong. When Raffinity was running Type 2 everybody "beat it" on paper but kept mysteriously losing in practice.
The question is if we recognize that Legacy needs non-blue decks to be viable (it does) and if they aren't (they might not be), what are we going to do about it if we can't ban Brainstorm? I'd be willing to axe Delver instead, but I doubt very much that Wizards would.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
@IBA: Holy shit that was an epic post! Just curious, why would you ban Delver? It's never been on my radar as being too good... it just beats down, sometimes not even all that well. I think you'd need something a little bit more ridiculous to ban a creature e.g. Goblin Recruiter, Hermit Druid, etc. I don't think it's a given that it would weaken Blue appreciably either since there are Blue decks that don't want him and Thresh decks can just go back to Nimble Mongoose which is better in some instances anyway.
"We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war."
Well, if they ban delver that's two bans from the two newest sets in Legacy. So they probably don't want to look like total scrubs again. Reading through your post this seemed to be the most relevant to banning to Brainstorm, I think many of the "blue" decks that play Brainstorm are three colors, and Brainstorm is the reason to splash blue. I don't think that it being splashable combined with its power level is reason enough to deserve it being removed the format.
As you outlined in your format history, meta games shift and decks change, often enough without outside intervention.
This situation will just keep happening until R&D starts testing the Eternal formats.
"I'm willing to imagine a TES where Past in Flames replaces Ill-Gotten Gains entirely, and we just don't play Diminishing Returns." - me, 29/09/2011
Founding member of Team Scrubbad: Legacy Legends
Okay, so cards like Delver and Misstep were probably easily to moderately avoidable with a little testing, but how much work are you expecting R&D to put into testing interactions in formats with as many cards as the Eternal ones? I'm not saying that we should necessarily give them a pass (especially given how glaring egregious both of the aforementioned appear at first glance anyway), but at the same time I can see the rationalization from the other side for why testing Eternal formats may not seem feasible. Also...Wizards admits that that they missed Caw-Blade and Splinter Twin Combo in Standard, a format with a very small selection of choices (compared to the Eternal formats), and a format they *do* test. If this doesn't imply that the number of choices that are available at any given time for even smaller formats is high enough that testing to catch bad interactions is somehow not feasible, I'd have to say I believe R&D's mistakes in the past blocks were inevitable even in a situation where they tested Misstep/Delver in Legacy, since it would imply that the people testing these interactions are wearing blinders and only seeing what they want to see.
They didn't have to test Delver, i guessed the card was absurd the moment i saw it. Do WotC only have retards in their development team? Snapcaster was more debatable (i wouldn't have EVER printed it in blue, but whatever) but Delver was clearly a better Nacatl, zzz.
@IBA: Great post, you've talked me around from "No ban" to "I don't know enough to say."
As IBA said, if non-blue decks just aren't good enough, getting rid of Brainstorm seems like the least obtrusive way possible to deal with it. It doesn't eliminate any strategies or stop any of the colors from doing what they were doing already. It's a simple step to simply make every blue deck marginally less good (and the fact that almost every blue deck runs it, while not a justification for banning, should mean everyone has already considered it).
As already mentioned, this is only relevant if blue decks are too good, but I'm surprised at how that doesn't seem to be the conversation. I like playing blue-based decks too, people: I just like playing them best when they're good, not dominant.
No content to add this thread, but reading the phrase "Gush is an inherently fair card" made me laugh. Ah Vintage. How I miss thee.
I think this is the crux of the issue. I'm not a blue hater; 2 of my 3 favorite decks pack 4x Brainstorm. However, I believe that when you have Blue as dominant as it is and you have Brainstorm widely recognized as THE most powerful card in Legacy, that a ban does at least have to be a consideration.
Most agree that diversity is what defines a healthy format. I think the Rock-Paper-Scissors aspect of Control > Combo > Aggro > Control type of grid lock is a key component of it. As mentioned before, Blue simply has answers to everything, which no other color can claim. I think if the other colors had more answers, it'd be better for the format (sort of like how any color has multiple choices for GY hate).
Blue has always been the best against Combo, followed by Black with its discard suite, and white a distant 3rd. I think it'd be cool to have G,W,R have a little more game against combo. Ethersworn Canonist and Gaddock Teeg are in the ball park, but WotC should add to it. Perhaps a colorless land w/ a Rule of Law effect or something. The trap spells are also an interesting mechanic, but unfortunately, blue got the best one.
There should also be better ways to fight control. Defense Grid is in the spirit, but it will always be at best a SB card. Vexing Shusher and Boseiju, Who Shelters All are also good attempts by R&D, but more needs to be done. I think it's time to bring back the Split Second mechanic, too. Ironically, on a personal note, it's Brainstorm that allows me to MD 1-2 REBs in Sneak-Show!
As for aggro, there's always answers. If the above changes cause aggro to uptick in popularity, it should self adjust with more MD answers in builds, as needed.
Anyway, in the mean time, removing Brainstorm from the format for a while might not be a bad thing, even though I would miss it too.
Agree with most of that, but that Rock Paper Scissors analogy is terrible. That is NOT what makes formats fun. Formats are fun when you can pick up a deck and have a reasonable shot at winning against anything. Rock autolosing to Paper isn't fun, what's fun is having a chance to interact and play a tight, well-fought game.
Brainstorm certainly does promote this, but only against people who also have Brainstorms. Otherwise it's just an "Oh shit" button that your opponent doesn't have.
It's good to see notable players like GerryT and Caleb Durward take advantage of the blue metagame with decks like NicFit and Maverick at the SCG Invitational. That's real metagaming.
For me it's a proof that blue is still beatable if you adapt to the metagame. Legacy isn't a format where you play your pet deck through years anymore. Like Standard and now Modern you have to react to the Legacy-Metagame because of it's relevance as a real tournament format. You have to be flexible with your deck choice and we all know it's difficult for players with a limited card pool to switch decks through different tournaments. I agree that this matter of fact isn't that healthy for Legacy overall but due to the limited availability of Legacy relevant cards it's unfortunately inevitable in some way.
I think this is one of the main reason why players complain about blue (and Brainstorm seems to be scapegoat right now).
(I hope my english is not that bad and you get my point, thanks :) )
Well put sir. Very true.
I'm not certain banning Brainstorm is necessarily the right conclusion, you could just as easily argue that banning Lion's Eye Diamond (which in all fairness is degenerate) and eliminating aggro's worst match up would bring aggro back to the fore front of the metagame and as a result diminish the necessity and presence of blue in the format. Aggro-Loam, Goblins, Affinity and Zoo still push blue's shit in, so it's not as if there isn't a solution to blue it's whether or not the solutions for blue have an inherent metagame restraint holding them back from doing their job.
Of the top 8 players at the Invitational, I know what Gerry Thompson (GWr Maverick), Caleb Durward (Nic Fit), Reid Duke (Pox), and Alex Bertoncini (Bant Stoneblade, presumably with 1 Snapcaster and 17 total blue spells based on previous decklists) were running during the Legacy portion. Not sure about the other 4 guys.
Brainstorm was always a great card (the best card in the format post-Survival), and blue still remains the most powerful color in the deck, but the printing of Snapcaster didn't suddenly render other colors unviable. More like SCG netdeckers just jammed Snapcaster Mage in every deck they could; compare that with GP Amsterdam, where Snapcaster hardly made a dent in the top 8.
Sure, awesome, let's ban a pillar of the format OTHER than Brainstorm, great idea. It's an even better idea because this pillar has NEVER dominated the format, and never will unless they ban Force of Will, which we all know is never happening. If we just REMOVE combo from the format completely, that will solve all our problems, right? What the fuck logic are you using here?*
Not to mention that the aggro decks you listed actually have a hard time with some blue decks nowadays, due to how OP blue has become. Try beating Canadian Threshold with Aggro Loam when they drop turn 1 Delver and then Daze/Snare/FOW your first three spells and Stifle a Wasteland. Likewise, trying beating U/W Snapcaster/Stoneforge with Goblins or Zoo when they start flashing back STPs and PTEs while beating your face in with Batterskull - good luck.
*In case anyone of questionable mental ability assumes I actually support a ban on LED, that is incorrect. I would actually quit Legacy if such a thing occurred.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
How about don't play Aggro Loam? Honestly, deck is barely tier 3. Sorry that Stoneblade is a bad MU for Zoo? Seriously, all this buzz surrounding Snapcaster neutralizing aggro is beyond ridiculous - its the flavour of the month, its brand new and people want to play it. Really... Snapcaster is good but FAR from unbeatable.
LED won't get banned. If it does, and people quit over it, I can only facepalm that people would cry that hard over not being able to play degenerate combo anymore.
I would not want to see LED banned at this point. It would be the death of most combo decks and less variety is never a good thing. I'd rather new stuff was printed rather than banning stuff.
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