All B/R update speculation.

[dragonwisdom]

show and tell drawbacks
First you lose a card when casting it.
Second you pay 3 mana. 3rd the opponent has the opportunity to play a card to.

We need to unban cards, not ban them.

[Kich867]

LOL Thanks. The best part about legacy is no matter what they do with the banned list next week, there will always be another pile of broken a player like myself can oops their way into the top 8 with.

Banning cards is dangerous and should not be jumped into before the people actually playing the game have a chance to hate it out and adapt themselves.

I believe this to be untrue. As you weed out decks that have no interaction with the opponent you'll come to a point where the only viable decks are decks that are hyper-interactive.

I'm really not a fan of devolving magic down to a slightly less exciting version of "Go Fish".

I've heard enough players say that Caw-Blade standard was their most fun playing magic; that when you pit two decks who focus heavily on interacting with the opponent against each other you get to see who the better player is.

I believe this comes down to a more obvious divide, not between the casual and hardcore magic player, because that's clearly not the case, but between the players who want to win and the players who want to be good at the game. And consequently win because you are the better player.

Between decks that interact heavily with each other, I find matchups to be relatively even, I don't believe there any many complete blow-outs in the DTB section, maybe slightly favorable here and there but with strong play and good decision making you can always come out on top barring bullshit draws on your/their side.

Show and tell is a rather ridiculous card concept that only gets worse as time goes on, prior to rise of eldrazi this wasn't a huge issue, but they're printing about 1 Juggernaut style creature per block right now and the deck is just gaining strength. Once most of the non-interactive decks have passed I think Magic will be in a really great spot where playskill greatly outweighs deck choice when considering win chance.

[DragoFireheart]

I don't think there is anything with non-interactive decks like Storm and Dredge since they have to devote most of their main board to their combo and fighting them can be easy enough with proper sideboard cards.

The problem is when you get a combo deck as effective as the former but with as much protection/filter as a control deck.

[Kich867]

show and tell drawbacks
First you lose a card when casting it.
Second you pay 3 mana. 3rd the opponent has the opportunity to play a card to.

We need to unban cards, not ban them.

This is a gross oversimplification. When your opponent drops Emrakul, the Aeons Torn for 3 mana and your best option is something like Tarmogoyf you fundamentally cannot win that game. You can't attack because your creature dies, you can't put more than 6 permanents on the board and it wouldn't even matter anyways.

Banning cards is fine and obviously the correct choice given problems. I'd rather see a format saturated with decks that interact heavily with each other than decks that attempt to completely avoid interaction with the opponent. If you don't want to play with the person and try to solve your combo puzzle to win, you can always just pick up a Rubik's Cube. It's pretty much the same thing but a little more rewarding and a little less expensive.

I don't think there is anything with non-interactive decks like Storm and Dredge since they have to devote most of their main board to their combo and fighting them can be easy enough with proper sideboard cards.

The problem is when you get a combo deck as effective as the former but with as much protection/filter as a control deck.

Exactly, I mean I'm not the -hugest- fan of those decks either but at least Storm is genuinely difficult to play well and is prone to disruption and Dredge is still very swingy / fightable. Shitting out a tentacle monster that you have absolutely no chance of stopping on turn 1-2 isn't that exciting.

[Koby]

Mav is easy, RUG isn't as easy as people say. Learning to mulligan is key.

I have the opposite experience. RUG runs out of counters easily. Mav has staying power with clock + Karakas.

[millerd33]

It seems most of the top decks have the tools already in place or can sideboard cards that make show n tell not an auto win. (maybe a more skilled pilot would not have the same troubles I do)

A clock from rug with force and daze pierce behind it make picking the correct spot to try and force through your combo much harder. It's hard to win early counter wars when your the one trying to cast the first spell.

A clock from maverick with pridemage, thalia, karakas.

even any cabal therapy/thoughtseize deck makes setting things up much harder.

[Kich867]

It seems most of the top decks have the tools already in place or can sideboard cards that make show n tell not an auto win. (maybe a more skilled pilot would not have the same troubles I do)

A clock from rug with force and daze pierce behind it make picking the correct spot to try and force through your combo much harder. It's hard to win early counter wars when your the one trying to cast the first spell.

A clock from maverick with pridemage, thalia, karakas.

even any cabal therapy/thoughtseize deck makes setting things up much harder.

Yes, I suppose having an opening hand of Force + blue card + daze + pierce + some creature + 2 land might be hard to deal with.

In fact, can we just surmise that, against any deck while playing any deck, when facing a god-hand it is often hard to set things up?

In reality though, one discard spell rarely hoses your entire game play and loses you the game and you pack just as much or more counter magic / protection than control decks do. Maverick being able to tutor karakas is probably the worst thing you have to encounter and that requires them having either it or a knight in hand and that should only happen about half the time; sneak and tell has sideboard options here.

[DragoFireheart]

Exactly, I mean I'm not the -hugest- fan of those decks either but at least Storm is genuinely difficult to play well and is prone to disruption and Dredge is still very swingy / fightable. Shitting out a tentacle monster that you have absolutely no chance of stopping on turn 1-2 isn't that exciting.

Traditionally, combo-control decks are always the final result of the meta before a card gets banned. Almost always they were U/X/x or some variation of colors.

Flash? It was combo and control, U/x
Mystical Tutor? Reanimator was U/B combo control. (even if you disagree with the banning)
Survival of the Fittest? Typically combo/control with some aggro. U/G/w or U/G
Mental Misstep? Blade Control used it, but there was also No RUG, which was combo/control/aggro in U/R/G colors.

[rxavage]

I have the opposite experience. RUG runs out of counters easily. Mav has staying power with clock + Karakas.

I wish it was the opposite because everyone plays RUG around here, Mav was flavour of the week a while. The RUG decks around here run just as many counters as I do. I personally have an exact 50/50 matchup so far. My losses often come when I have to mull to 5 or less usually. I have a feeling the Mav players are a little better where you are or I've just been lucky.

[joemauer]

I have a feeling the Mav players are a little better where you are or I've just been lucky.

You must not know who Koby is.

[rxavage]

You must not know who Koby is.

You and Dragofireheart must be the same person.

[Koby]

I wish it was the opposite because everyone plays RUG around here, Mav was flavour of the week a while. The RUG decks around here run just as many counters as I do. I personally have an exact 50/50 matchup so far. My losses often come when I have to mull to 5 or less usually. I have a feeling the Mav players are a little better where you are or I've just been lucky.

What I mean, is that when Show & Tell resolves against RUG, I know I'm winning. When I cast it against Maverick, I'm almost certain they will have Knight or sandbagged Karakas. Resolving the Show & Tell in the latter matchup is risky compared to RUG. RUG can be beat by overloading their counters (easily done, considering Sneak Show's better filtering and threat density). Maverick you just have to get lucky, or dig for Sneak Attack. It gets worse as Maverick adapts by running more ways to find Karakas and playing more of them to begin with.

EDIT: by no means is it a cakewalk. It's about 60/40 Game 1, and slightly worse post-board due to the potential for more counters and Gilded Drake. Blood Moon is a nice trump however.

[Tacosnape]

So after a lot of consideration, I might be on the ban Brainstorm bandwagon. Not that I think Brainstorm's the actual problem with Legacy. The problem with Legacy is that the whole format is blue.

It keeps picking up one amazing card after another. Blue has the best creatures in Legacy. It has the best protection packages. It has the best draw. The sad part is that Blue's become so strong that I don't think banning any one card will actually change things. And unbannings of any significant card won't change things either - To win in Legacy, you just find a strategy and then plug it into a shell backed up by Countermagic.

In theory, Cavern of Souls should change this. But thus far it hasn't. This is largely the fault of Show and Tell / Reanimator, who care very little about the dudes you drop and just win. On the other end, Delver's just too fast sometimes. Or UW Control has a Jace or Temporal Mastery to screw with you.

Took 2nd in a tournament tonight playing UW. Lost to Faeries. We each only dropped one game - Faeries player dropped one to RUG Delver, and I dropped one to Storm Combo. Plain and simple though, Blue is just stupid right now. And I don't know that it's something that can easily be fixed.

If it were my R&D, I'd ban Delver and Show and Tell, and see where the format landed. And if it stayed blue, bye Brainstorm. Otherwise, I'mma start playing some kind of a real format.

[Vacrix]

Well they could always fix that by printing new stuff instead. For example..

(cards name) 1U
Creature
Discard ~: Return target creature to its owners hand.
1/3
Uncommon

Kinda like Faerie Macabre, but since its an activated ability, you can play it through Iona as well, etc. That would help the format against SnT. With Fauna Shaman in play as well, it wouldn't be hard to tutor this guy up even if your opponent has a creature in play.

Also.. I really think they need to print something like Rootmaze to punish decks that run heavy fetches.

(card name) G
Enchantment
Non-basic lands come into play tapped.
Cycling: Untap a land your opponent controls.


Also... I feel like part of the problem right now is that mono-black isn't a deck any more. Perhaps it needs a little boost in power. Discard would hamper the control archetype a little more and add some balance. It already has decent disruption options against combo decks, even SnT. It just needs a few decent beaters, something black curious lacks. I mean in terms of power, why does red get a conditional 4/3 for 1, blue gets a 3/2 flying for U, green gets a 3/3 for G, but black gets like a shitty 4/3 for BB? Come on guys...

Seriously, I think black should get something like..

(card name) B
Creature
As long as there are 2 or more creatures in all graveyards, ~ gets +2/+2.
Whenever you play a non-basic land, sacrifice ~.
1/1
U

Black needs a good conditional one drop beater for black aggro to be really good again. This guy doesn't look too OP as he's still conditional, Ooze still exists, and he prevents you from playing non-basics. I'd say if they want to make it rare, give it deathtouch, or make it +3/+3, a 2/2, and cost it at BB or something so that only mono-black wants to play it.

Granted, those cards might be overpowered.. but if they aren't going to ban stuff they might as well get a little more creative with their design ideas and open up some new possibilities for fringe decks to become more competitive. Black aggro is one of them.

[Kich867]

I feel that they could do a much better job at defining what black does and what black is supposed to do, both as a color and flavorwise. They've certainly moved in the right direction with avacyn restored, Black Cat is a beautifully designed card, Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger, etc.

I'd be fine with Show And Tell decks if wizards printed hyper efficient methods to dealing with them and punishing the opponent for using them, something like:

B or 1B creature:
Sacrifice Guy
If <name> is sacrificed, your opponent sacrifices a creature and loses life equal to it's casting cost.
0/1

Which I feel would both be flavorful for black in that it's effect is only useful in a card disadvantageous way while simultaneously doing something useful. Something like Altar's Reap, Bone Splinters, Liliana, Innocent Blood type effects, or in this case Annihilator 6.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yeah the problem is not that BS is broken it's that all the other colors have fundamental flaws that are shored up by splashing blue. No other color can interact with the stack in any meaningful way and pretty much every bomb have been 1X which makes it beyond simple to splash for blue every time.

Cards like Knight, GSZ, Pridemage, Teeg, Thalia have been steps in the right direction. We need more of that. Cards that are playable and not easily splashable in a blue shell. Most of the perceived problems with the current meta could be solved with new cards instead of banning BS which is like putting a band-aid on a crack in concrete.

IMO...

White should get a Force of Will like card that gives target player shroud until EOT.

White should get a hatebear that says something like "Whenever a creature enters play if it was not cast from hand exile it unless it's controller pays X where X is it's casting cost"

Black should get a duress that only hits sorcs and instants and has split second.

Red should get a werewolf that is
R "When an opponent plays their third spell of this turn flip ~this~" 1/1
/flipside/ "Whenever an opponent plays a spell ~this~ deals 2 damage to that player." 3/3

Green should get a GOOD hoser for counterspells targeting creatures (there are roughly 100000 ways to do this).

For starters anyways.

[Vacrix]

Yeah the problem is not that BS is broken it's that all the other colors have fundamental flaws that are shored up by splashing blue. No other color can interact with the stack in any meaningful way and pretty much every bomb have been 1X which makes it beyond simple to splash for blue every time.

Cards like Knight, GSZ, Pridemage, Teeg, Thalia have been steps in the right direction. We need more of that. Cards that are playable and not easily splashable in a blue shell. Most of the perceived problems with the current meta could be solved with new cards instead of banning BS which is like putting a band-aid on a crack in concrete.

IMO...

White should get a Force of Will like card that gives target player shroud until EOT.

White should get a hatebear that says something like "Whenever a creature enters play if it was not cast from hand exile it unless it's controller pays X where X is it's casting cost"

Black should get a duress that only hits sorcs and instants and has split second.

Red should get a werewolf that is
R "When an opponent plays their third spell of this turn flip ~this~" 1/1
/flipside/ "Whenever an opponent plays a spell ~this~ deals 2 damage to that player." 3/3

Green should get a GOOD hoser for counterspells targeting creatures (there are roughly 100000 ways to do this).

For starters anyways.

Yeah I definitely agree. One way to go is to shrink the card pool to make the existing card pool more balanced. The other way is to expand it, which happens naturally anyway. Its not like its that hard for wizards to make a few changes that would affect legacy. They already do it to some extent but they've been focusing on all the wrong things lately. Delver, Snapcaster, Jace, etc. really? Blue wasn't already good enough?

Another card black could really use right now, is a good method of getting rid of shitty topdecks of discard spells in the mid-late game when it doesn't need them. For example... perhaps this:

(card name) 2B
Creature
Discard a non-land card: You lose life equal to its casting cost. Draw a card.
Whenever a player discards a card, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
1/1

Doesn't seem like combo could abuse this at all but it would be pretty strong in black aggro.. kinda like black's version of Ooze.

I feel that they could do a much better job at defining what black does and what black is supposed to do, both as a color and flavorwise. They've certainly moved in the right direction with avacyn restored, Black Cat is a beautifully designed card, Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger, etc.

I'd be fine with Show And Tell decks if wizards printed hyper efficient methods to dealing with them and punishing the opponent for using them, something like:

B or 1B creature:
Sacrifice Guy
If <name> is sacrificed, your opponent sacrifices a creature and loses life equal to it's casting cost.
0/1

Which I feel would both be flavorful for black in that it's effect is only useful in a card disadvantageous way while simultaneously doing something useful. Something like Altar's Reap, Bone Splinters, Liliana, Innocent Blood type effects, or in this case Annihilator 6.

Unfortunately, I feel like SnT would still be able to recover from taking 15 damage. Its better against Griselbrand because they take 8 and lose 7 if they draw 7 cards, but 7 cards is still enough to potentially get something good going for you.

[Tao]

(card name) G
Enchantment
Non-basic lands come into play tapped.

I would love that card. Would be cool for standard and modern, too. Don't give it cycling though, it is probably already too good as it is.

[Einherjer]

What's the problem guys? Do we have to go through the "Ban-Brainstorm"-Thingie once again? Didn't we do that 8492 times already? Yeah, Legacy-players tend to cry about things shortly before a new announcement. But...it always ends with ban Brainstorm. This is a competitive format, no childs-game. If you cannot play your Mono-B-Aggro, that's fine for me. If you want to kick blue in the ass - build a deck featuring AetherVial/CavernofSouls. I really do not care if you cannot play your pet-deck. At the moment there are 3 ways of playing a competitive deck:
1) 4 FoW 4 Brainstorm.dec
2) Maverick
3) 12-Dredgers.dec
You might disagree but atleast before the printing of Terminus/EntreattheAngels this was a true fact. Who boycotted Legacy? Who sold all his cards? Who didn't go to tournaments? Noone? Why? Because we love Legacy the way it is. If I get blown out by an Emrakul T1. Fine! That's it. Up to game 2. I do not listen to complains if I tempo out an opponent or control him for 20 minutes. That's the friggen game.

I could say the meta is healthy, which may be wrong. But Ill say:

The current meta is Legacy!

It's blue, it's unfair and it's competitive. Deal with it.

[I am the brainwasher]

I would love that card. Would be cool for standard and modern, too. Don't give it cycling though, it is probably already too good as it is.

Root Maze is in fact a decent card, even without that restriction.