All B/R update speculation.

[caiomarcos]

Okay, can you get serious or give up? Bargain > Griselbrand in this deck as well... Don't waste your time though I'm done arguing with someone who is trying to convince everyone Griselbrand needs to be banned because of comparisons to Bargain and can't get the fuck out of Urza's Block Type 2 when assessing the power level of Bargain.

Well, I wouldn't expect anyhting else then Bargain being better in a Bargain deck then Griselbrand. If Griselbrand was better then Bargain in a deck called Exhume BARGAIN then we wouldn't be discussing anything here.

The point with this list was to show that your requirements to compare both cards - them being interchangeable in any given list - is stupid.

Also, we do not have too many examples of Bargain decks, do we? There were Exhume Bargain, Sabre Bargain, Replenish Bargain, Turnabout Bargain... anything else? Therefore, you insisting on having an interchangeable list makes even less sense.
There is vintage but then yes, we can't compare those.

Enchantments are so much easier to remove then creatures that it is not even funny. Creatures have this mystical status in Magic that we have a R instant destroy target artifact, we have G instant destroy target enchantment amongst MANY other instant, cheap options while for creatures we are stuck with StP, a very good option indeed, but almost the only one.

[CorpT]

[QUOTE=Kich867;657013]

Refer to my previous post, we can't possibly keep going in circles like this. It's not that Griselbrand is easy to deal with or even realistically possible to deal with, it's that cheating him into play can sometimes be dealt with. They can't always have a perfect hand. Recent results show that the decks that run Griselbrand are actually pretty good and can make it pretty far.

That's not true though. Vapor Snag, Path to Exile and Karakas are all very good answers. Even if they draw.

People are too often looking at the deck this card is in and not the card itself, which doesn't make any sense. A card's power level is independent of the deck that runs it and can only be amplified by that deck.

That's just ridiculous and flies in the face of real world results. If this was the case, everyone would just play the biggest, fattest cards they could regardless of cost. But that's not what happens. You have to look at everything. The card, the deck, the meta, the hate, etc... Otherwise, everyone would start saying that Omniscience should be banned.

[CorpT]

Can we all please stop with the shitty 3 word sentence posts? It actually -feels- socially awkward reading it and bleeds of basementism. It's embarrassing to the forum to see how many retarded witty-one-liner-gotcha's have populated the last few pages of this thread.

But hey, zingers! Got 'em!

..

And, to be clear, Frenchy-man's post to me implies that he wants Survival to be unbanned because of the same reasons you are arguing that G-Brand shouldn't be banned. It seems ironic that you're hassling him about it.

What would be cool is if he could say that clearly instead of being ambiguous. Look, more than three words.

[ddt15]

Are you still going on about Grissy? Griselbrand doesn't have nowhere near enough top 8's to consider a ban. In fact, he hardly seems to make top 8 at all.

Maverick is in decline, and RUG is dominating more than ever.

Goblins are making a big comeback and Merfolk probably soon too with the new M13 lord.

In short the format is healthy, RUG is on top right now but may have big problems with the revival of Vial based decks.

[Kich867]

That's not true though. Vapor Snag, Path to Exile and Karakas are all very good answers. Even if they draw.

Apologies, I forgot about the dominating answers that are Vapor Snag and Path to Exile . And that's the problem. I alluded to it with the Scavenging Ooze comment but forgot to elaborate on it. Griselbrand, and to an extent Sneak and Show in general, forces you to run hate specifically for him. When staring at a 2 day event, or a massive massive tournament, you can honestly tell me you'd put 3-4 Vapor Snag's in your sideboard just to deal with Griselbrand? They're sub-optimal answers that have narrow applications against anything else and aren't flexible enough to run in a sideboard / aren't good enough to run in the main deck, so you're left eating it to the face and just hoping you don't run into it.

An even greater problem exists when looking at Sneak and Show as a deck in general: while you can run those cards to specifically hate out Griselbrand, they do nothing in the face of Emrakul, Karakas is the only thing that actually answers both. I heard some non-white decks were actually running it just to help deal with him. It's by far the best answer to the deck, but it's unrealistic to ask every deck to run 3 or 4 of them or have ways to tutor it.

That's just ridiculous and flies in the face of real world results. If this was the case, everyone would just play the biggest, fattest cards they could regardless of cost. But that's not what happens. You have to look at everything. The card, the deck, the meta, the hate, etc... Otherwise, everyone would start saying that Omniscience should be banned.

Isn't that what reanimator and sneak and show do? My assertion wasn't actually incorrect I think you're just thinking about it too hard. Emrakul is pretty much the best creature ever printed. He's hard to actually get into play, so people find ways around that, but you can't really ignore the fact that he's a flying 15/15 who can give you an extra turn and can't be hit by spot removal and nukes the opposition when he swings.

There's a ton of absurdly powerful cards that people don't play, and they don't play them because there's something better. Sneak and Show found the 2 best creatures to ever exist (which was previously Progenitus and Emrakul, note that when a new best creature was printed they simply shifted that) and play them for very little mana.

[Kich867]

Are you still going on about Grissy? Griselbrand doesn't have nowhere near enough top 8's to consider a ban. In fact, he hardly seems to make top 8 at all.

Reanimator and Sneak and Show not having top 8's is more due to the ability to hate the decks out / their own inconsistencies. Griselbrand has no impact on the deck's ability to work until he is on the table.

[CorpT]

Apologies, I forgot about the dominating answers that are Vapor Snag and Path to Exile . And that's the problem. I alluded to it with the Scavenging Ooze comment but forgot to elaborate on it. Griselbrand, and to an extent Sneak and Show in general, forces you to run hate specifically for him. When staring at a 2 day event, or a massive massive tournament, you can honestly tell me you'd put 3-4 Vapor Snag's in your sideboard just to deal with Griselbrand? They're sub-optimal answers that have narrow applications against anything else and aren't flexible enough to run in a sideboard / aren't good enough to run in the main deck, so you're left eating it to the face and just hoping you don't run into it.

Nah. No one would do that.

Isn't that what reanimator and sneak and show do? My assertion wasn't actually incorrect I think you're just thinking about it too hard. Emrakul is pretty much the best creature ever printed. He's hard to actually get into play, so people find ways around that, but you can't really ignore the fact that he's a flying 15/15 who can give you an extra turn and can't be hit by spot removal and nukes the opposition when he swings.

There's a ton of absurdly powerful cards that people don't play, and they don't play them because there's something better. Sneak and Show found the 2 best creatures to ever exist (which was previously Progenitus and Emrakul, note that when a new best creature was printed they simply shifted that) and play them for very little mana.

Again, why isn't this dominating? If people know how to hate it out, why not just let that deal with it? Otherwise, you'd just keep banning the best fatty out there until people stopped playing fatties. What's the point?

[CorpT]

Reanimator and Sneak and Show not having top 8's is more due to the ability to hate the decks out / their own inconsistencies. Griselbrand has no impact on the deck's ability to work until he is on the table.

It's almost like it has a drawback and not just a free win....

[joemauer]

What would be cool is if he could say that clearly instead of being ambiguous. Look, more than three words.

Those crazy french men!

Everyone's argument to keep Show & Tell + Griselbrand in the format is that there are lots of answers to stop it. Fair enough. Survival of the Fittest had lots of answers but it got banned! Here is where the B & R list is horribly mismanaged.

So why ban SotF and not the new bargain combo? Both broken. Both easy to answer. Is it because one dominated some Starcitygames tourneys and the other did not? It seems the latter is not dominating because people are taking it serious and packing some answers. This is what the europeans did for SotF that we did not do.

What is the DCI's stance on banning cards in Legacy? It is so absurdly vague and intentionally mysterious.

Show & Tell and Griselbrand are both cards that meet the criteria to be banned, shown by past bannings. So the DCI should either take some more cards off the list(not just Land Tax that everyone knew should have came off years ago) or add these two to it. Perhaps if the DCI went card by card on the B & R and justified the banning of each of them while explaining the absent of other cards(tutors, show and tell, etc.) then everyone would understand where they were coming from.

It has become more and more apparent that the DCI is really a giant group of idiots that probably play more Yugio than Legacy format Magic.

[Awaclus]

Refer to my previous post, we can't possibly keep going in circles like this. It's not that Griselbrand is easy to deal with or even realistically possible to deal with, it's that cheating him into play can sometimes be dealt with. They can't always have a perfect hand. Recent results show that the decks that run Griselbrand are actually pretty good and can make it pretty far.

Sneak and Show / Reanimator are decks that are intensely hated out and/or have some consistency issues. Sneak and Show occasionally just collapses on itself. But this is independent of Griselbrand.

People are too often looking at the deck this card is in and not the card itself, which doesn't make any sense. A card's power level is independent of the deck that runs it and can only be amplified by that deck. Griselbrand is an absurdly overpowered card outside of the decks that run him and gets even better when you play him for 1, 2, or 3 mana. The decks that run him may not be despite that because the deck itself's power level is only as good as it's ability to put Griselbrand into play. Sneak and Show is very all-in and after it casts Show and Tell or Sneak Attack they likely can muster up a Force of Will or if they were patient a FOW and a Spell Pierce. Some decks can actually deal with that relatively easily: depending on the turn you might be able to just pierce it, daze it, and pay for pierce on your own. They often blow their hand on it. That has nothing to do with Griselbrand though, Gbrand doesn't influence that outcome, right?

Same with reanimator. It's hated out. Sometimes it just can't get there because of a Scavenging Ooze or something. But Griselbrand has no influence on that situation. Him being in the deck doesn't elevate the deck to a dominating performance: only when he's actually on the table.

You see we have these cards that hate out strategies, but Griselbrand isn't a strategy, he's an enabler and a win condition simultaneously. In the event he does resolve, stopping him is nearly impossible. The only moderately good "answer" is karakas, which delays him, but really doesn't because he drew 7 in response. It's also unlikely to even run into your karakas unless you're Death and Taxes; Maverick would need, at best, turn 3 to be able to fetch it and use it, which is probably your best bet. However, drawing 7 to, in Reanimator's case: discard your xyz fatties / entomb/exhume more out and in Sneak and Show's case: drop sneak attack and overwhelm karakas.

So I mean is that clear enough of an explanation as to why I feel that he should be banned? That he is extremely overpowered, but the decks that run him aren't, and irrespective of the deck he's in, Griselbrand is just too powerful of a creature to exist? Like a lot of people are pointing to tournament results and yada yada--I don't really care about that, that isn't what is important, it's objectively analyzing this card and recognizing that at it's core it's way too fucking good and it's only a matter of time until someone finds a way to more realistically abuse him that doesn't kill themselves doing it, is very consistent, and/or isn't symmetrical.

Why would you do that?

If the card isn't doing anything bad for the health of Legacy metagame, why ban it? Legacy ban list isn't a list of powerful cards, it's a list of cards that are bad for the format.

[Gheizen64]

Why would you do that?

If the card isn't doing anything bad for the health of Legacy metagame, why ban it? Legacy ban list isn't a list of powerful cards, it's a list of cards that are bad for the format.

No? There were so many cards that were bad for the format on it, like illusionary mask, Mind over Matter, Dream Halls, Grim Monolith, Metalworker, Land Tax, Time Spiral, man i can't understand how they are all legal nowadays.

Tip: the banned list is nothing like you suggest. The banned list is largely made from the merge of old extended and legacy lists, and then some random choices that the DCI made based on their complete inability to understand the fundamentals of the game.

[Kich867]

Why would you do that?

If the card isn't doing anything bad for the health of Legacy metagame, why ban it? Legacy ban list isn't a list of powerful cards, it's a list of cards that are bad for the format.

And I posit that Griselbrand is bad for the format for reasons I've already listed. I'm not advocating banning Emrakul, or Progenitus, or Iona, or any other pretty hard to deal with big dumb creature to bring out / reanimate.

As I pointed out in my thought experiment I posted previously: if there was a card that had no answer and won you the game upon resolution, but could only fit into the hardest, most complicated deck that has ever been constructed to play, I would advocate the banning of that card despite it having poor performance given the deck's difficulty to play.

I am also not a fan of cards that are both win conditions and enablers. In history, cards that are banned are generally enablers and they leave the win conditions alone. Griselbrand is both.

It's almost like it has a drawback and not just a free win....

I thought we went over this already.

[rxavage]

Is claiming that the DCI and WotC are incompetent a real argument for bannings? I see a lot of projecting in this thread.

[Vacrix]

Editted for truth. Jizzlebrand creates a much more hilarious set of names.

I just saw someone suggested playing Jizzlebrand in Maverick!

Therefore, inspired by an all-time classic signature on The Source:

We got Jizzlebranimator, Show and Jizzlegrams and Jizzlestorm.
It probably won't end until we have decks like Jizzle Stax, Jizzbelcher, Jizzlebrantress, Vial Jizzlings, Jizzstill, Jizz from the Loam, Jizz N' Stomp, Jizz-Pox, Confinement with Jizz, 8-Land Jizzlestomp, some deck built to abuse Jizzlebrand/Mirror Gallery/Soul Foundry/Mind over Matter/Cadaverous Bloom, and the Dave Gearhart classic, Jizzidarity.
And Jizzorid, The Epic Jizz, 42land4Jizz.dec, Jizzle Game and Ill-Gotten-Jizz-all-over-your-face-with-Lion's-Eye-Diamond.

Also, whats this nonsense about Griselbrand being better than Y. Bargain? NONSENSE!! Y. Bargain is leagues better.

First, with Grizzy you don't have to play all the spells in the same turn. What i mean is that you can play T1 Entomb, T2 reanimation spell, and if the second is countered, you can just play another reanimation spell. With rituals it's harder. To play out Bargain you need 2 rituals + Bargain (or 1 with threshold), and bargain itself is a spell. That mean that when Bargain is countered you need a lot to start again. When a reanimation spell is countered, you need only another reanimation spell. It's a far less intensive mana investment. If you include orim's chant to dodge permission, it's a 3-4 cards, 7 mana investment. If you include free counterspells, again, it's a lot more card compared to what a Reanimator deck need to play its grizzy.

I guess you don't recall the deck known as Trix. Nothing requires you to win on that turn if you cannot for whatever reason; you simply draw enough cards to remove whatever is stopping you and pass to the next turn (at a safe life total) if you have to and then just win because your draw engine doesn't go away like it does with Ad Nauseam. Also, you'd probably build the deck with SnT anyway so Emrakul would be an option. It only has to be a 3-4 card 7 mana investment if you don't know what you're doing. If this concept were true, TES would see virtually no play at all given that everything you are talking about applies to Ad Nauseam, costing only 1 less mana. Goblin Charbelcher, costing the exact same amount of mana, but without protection. Also, in this case, its one kind of hate compared to another. Reanimation spells are counterable AND the creature can get removed before you have a chance to bring it into play. Storm decks don't have this problem.

Second, Bargain is easier to hate out, just because it attack you from simply one angle. A needle stop Bargain completely cold, while it still leave a 7/7 lifelinker in the case of Grizzy. No, actually, it doesn't simply stop bargain, it stop bargain AND you skip your draw step. I would have nightmares playing Bargain off a SnT and seeing revoker on the other side of the table. That's game right there. Sure, you can point at graveyard hate and say how it is pretty cheap. I can point at the fact that Reanimator play way more permission and control cards that any storm list, and the fact that Thalia/CotV are far harder to win against when you're on storm. All in all, i still think Bargain would be easier to hate than a Grizzy (especially when you consider SnT decks and reanimator both as Grizzy decks and not just reanimator).

The fact that Needle stops Bargain means nothing. Sure he can attack under an active Needle. But thats just one kind of hate. You can't look at it in a vacuum. With a single Relic out, Mr. Grizzy can't do jack shit, while my Bargain can draw me 7+ cards and shit all over your cards with glee. Also, it was already mentioned, but you don't skip your draw step if Needle is in play because if its already in play you don't play Bargain, and if Needle comes into play after Bargain hits play then congratulations you've won the Darwin awards this year.

Also, something that you've missed; storm decks that can play Force of Will sounds pretty good. If you can replace Ad Nauseam as an engine with Y. Bargain, you'll potentially have a protection countersuite just as good as Reanimator's. Also, the ability to play SnT, Emrakul, Yawg. Bargain (which you can cast without the enabler, unlike Jizz), Force, Brainstorm..... all in one deck, would cause a serious medical condition in storm players, i.e an erection lasting more than 24 hours.

There isn't any instant speed reanimation so to mention stuff like Thalia and such is a bit unfair considering that Scavenging Ooze was not mentioned as a hard counter to any sort of Reanimation--> Griselbrand strategy. However, points here go to Y. Bargain because its castable via SnT, or rituals in a storm shell... and its going to win turn 1 or turn 2 on the play before those bears come down. That, or you can just Force the bear, Daze the bear, Thoughtseize the bear, etc.

Third, SnT doesn't play as well with Bargain as it does with grizzy. Why? Because in a Bargain/ritual deck SnT would accellerate only bargain, and nothing else (or it would? I don't know, i guess you could play Griselbrand also, but it would be subpar to play Grizz from rits). In reanimator and SnT decks, SnT play grizzly, but also emmy, Iona or the bounce Djinn. SnT isn't anywhere as good in a Bargain deck as it is in a SnT/Reanimator one.

Wrong. Don't think of Y. Bargain as 'Ad Nauseam 2.0'; rather, Ad Nauseam is Y. Bargain 2.0. You could build a deck with Y.Bargain in a multitude of ways. You could run Doomsday, Emrakul, Shelldock Isle, etc. either in the maindeck or the post-board.

Also, think about it... You have an enabler to get Y. Bargain into play for 3.. And then you can ALSO ritual accelerate into Y. Bargain, or just cast it naturally. You cannot do these things with Grizz. Counter the enablers, and he sits in your hand smiling at you with that devilish grin of his.. and thats all he does.

Ad Nauseam does mostly what Bargain do, at an higher average life cost per card, but costing less, at instant speed, and it's harder to hate with a simple needle/revoker. A Bargain deck would probably be a more efficient (less dead cards in the main) but easier to hate Hive Mind deck. It wouldn't break the format any more than Griselbrand did. Imho it would have even less impact. And no, i don't think Necro is comparable to Bargain in legacy. Necro can be played easily on T1, compared to T3/4 of Bargain.

This means Force of Will can be played along side your storm engine. Turn 1 discard/cantrip, turn 2 Bargain Force protection? Every game? Pretty much.

Don't compare it to Hive Mind. Thats far from accurate. Y. Bargain is on color with Dark Ritual, unlike Hive Mind. This deck would be far faster, could run Force of Will. Hell you'll probably also see versions that run both Y. Bargain and Charbelcher. I know I would try to make it work. Its a degenerate card. Griselbrand might be a shitty card to play against because its so damn powerful if it resolves. Its still much easier to stop from resolving and when it does resolve, there are more than plenty of answers for it. People maindeck Scavenging Ooze, Karakas, even Goblins has maindeck Matron-->Stingscourer. Its not like the opponent just folds like they do when your opponent gets up on the table and shits all over your side of the table with Y. Bargain. Also, Gilded Drake is a fantastic answer. I've been playing it for a while now as a sideboard card in various decks. Don't know why it took so long to catch on. There are plenty of other answers as well, not limited to spot removal spells. Removing an enchantment is much more difficult to remove as most decks play spot removal for creatures; enchantments, not so much.

[evanmartyr]

Anyone else think it's weird that this thread explodes with commentary right after a B/R change, but for some reason doesn't see much activity at all right before?

And stop comparing a creature that generally uses a specific enabler spell and/or the graveyard to hit play to Yawgmoth's Bargain, you're embarrassing yourselves.

[Gheizen64]

Anyone else think it's weird that this thread explodes with commentary right after a B/R change, but for some reason doesn't see much activity at all right before?

And stop comparing a creature that generally uses a specific enabler spell and/or the graveyard to hit play to Yawgmoth's Bargain, you're embarrassing yourselves.

Nice argument

[joemauer]

Anyone else think it's weird that this thread explodes with commentary right after a B/R change, but for some reason doesn't see much activity at all right before?

And stop comparing a creature that generally uses a specific enabler spell and/or the graveyard to hit play to Yawgmoth's Bargain, you're embarrassing yourselves.

So because Yawgmoth's Bargain doesn't use a specific enabler spell to hit play they are incomparable?
I believe people are comparing the two because they both draw cards for life or perhaps I am incorrect here and embarrassing myself now.

Anyway, historically Necro effects have been bad. This is the primary reason people are a little upset about Griselbrand.

[evanmartyr]

Nice argument

It wasn't an argument, it was me saying the differences are vast and they should be readily apparent to anybody who's actually bothering to read the Source. But here, I'll help people out:

Creatures, that cannot be reasonably hardcast, that are wrecked by the Legend rule, that are target-able, that do not have haste, and that are inflexible in their activated abilities and generally require the graveyard to enter play do not compare to a much cheaper enchantment that is extremely flexible in its activated abilities.

The only upside I can see in using Grizzlebrand as a threat is that you don't have to storm out, you can just draw counterspells and start attacking...but how often is that relevant? How often does your opponent not have removal?

So stop comparing the two. They're not comparable. If anything, compare Grizzlebrand to the previous reanimator target of choice which I guess would have been Jin-Gitaxis? Obviously Grizzlebrand is a step (or three) up, but all the downsides of being a removable creature still apply and are enough to not push reanimator or sneak/show to a dominant position because it's extremely weak to hate.

[evanmartyr]

So because Yawgmoth's Bargain doesn't use a specific enabler spell to hit play they are incomparable?
I believe people are comparing the two because they both draw cards for life or perhaps I am incorrect here and embarrassing myself now.

Anyway, historically Necro effects have been bad. This is the primary reason people are a little upset about Griselbrand.

Certainly that's the reason people are upset, but they don't need to be because Griselbrand is so much worse than Bargain in nearly every aspect.

And yes, that's why people are comparing the two but we shouldn't be, because their differences outweigh their two similarities (cards->life, and both like Show and Tell), and worse, the differences are all extremely relevant in deck construction and ease of hating them out.

[menace13]

There is so much wrong with Grisselbrand and it has nothing to do with drawing cards. Lifelink should have been strictly for Black colors from a Flavor standpoint, I mean it is a drain effect and that isn't really what Holy magic does. Also why call it lifelink when it's draining you. So as we can see it ruins the color pie balance. Speaking of flavor. Also, Why arent there any female Demons? Angels get to be chicks, why not demons? We all know women are evil and If you have a mother, Sister, or Girlfriend you'll know this to be a universal truth. That is what I find wrong with Grisselbrand.

TLDR: It should have been a woman and and Drain Life should only have ever been on Black or white, not both.