All B/R update speculation.

[btm10]

Then you obviously haven't been reading this thread at all. And even if it was true, is having more competitive non-blue decks able to sit with the big boys something we should actively try to suppress? Why should everything be blue-based?

I have been reading the thread, I'm just going beyond the "format warping" and "unfun" arguments to what (I'm guessing) motivates them. Admittedly, I might be wrong.

I don't think we should suppress non-blue decks, but I don't think we should be encouraging them by unnecessarily banning blue cards, either. One thing I completely agree with the DCI on is that having as short a banned list as possible is and should be a high priority, and that's going to trump a lot of other considerations. Hence why I'm more inclined to argue for unbanned Survival and Mental Misstep to give TNN competition than I am to argue for a TNN ban. We can unban all the Mind Twists and Earthcrafts in the world, but without serious power unbanned, you're going to get situations like we have now.

[Barook]

If you're concerned about Brainstorm, there's a currently-banned, 1-mana counterspell that any deck can run.

Yeah, Mental Misstep helps fighting blue deck to keep their numbers in check - oh wait, it fucking doesn't, it leads to even more blue dominance.

Mental Misstep is banned.

Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.

Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.

Emphasis mine

@Secretly.A.Bee: What draws people into Legacy is it being the best constructed format and playing with old favorites. Saying people only play Legacy because of Brainstorm is a vast overstatement. There's a difference between liking a card and playing it because you have to due to its powerlevel - see how much TNN is hated across the board, yet many people run it despite hating its guts. Brainstorm had a meta percentage of about 50% in the year 2011. Now we have numbers where it makes up to 70% of the current meta. I seriously doubt that there was an influx of new Legacy players that who said "I'll start to play Legacy because I fucking love Brainstorm!" that lead to this increase.

So, what went wrong to lead to this meta of blue dominance? Various things:

1. Delver was released at the end of 2011. Suddenly, blue exploded in popularity. Coincidence? I think not. And while being way more manageable than the other cards I'm going to mention, it doesn't change the fact that it remains one of the scourges of the format. Playing against a double Delver draw on the play with disruption? Good luck surviving that!

2. Wizards catering to this guy:



Griselbrand (and to a lesser extend, Omniscience + Enter the Infinite) broke S&T, making it the most brainless strategy (yes, worse than Burn) and one of the most unfun cards of the format while suppressing a good chunk of "shitty" decks, too.

3. Enter True-Name Nemesis. Sure, Legacy can adept to various things due to its vast card pool. But it becomes more and more clear that even Legacy doesn't have enough tools to handle this PoS properly, leading to another increase in blue because most combo decks run blue, anti-TNN decks like BUG Delver and Miracles run blue or they just run TNN themselves.

These are the problems that lead to this mess. How can it be solved?

1. Ban TNN. This goes without saying. It warps the current meta so much around it that it's ridiculous.

2. Ban S&T along the road somewhere - not now, but the sooner, the better. Sure, it hits Reanimator's sideboard strategy and Turbo Lands as splash damage, but hey, we can't have everything. Survival wasn't banned because of fair decks, either.

3. While Delver is an overpowered PoS, I doubt it's ban-worthy since it dies to pretty much every removal in the format. A few additional, cheap, uncounterable removal spells to handle it better would be nice, though.

[DragoFireheart]

Here, lets make everyone happy:

Ban TNN
Ban SnT
Ban Brainstorm
Unban Survival of the Fittest
Unban Mystical Tutor

[nedleeds]

Unban Black Vise
Unban Survival
Unban Earthcrap
Unban Mind Twist

wait 2 BR cycles ...

see if Brainstorm x 4 still enjoys 90% saturation (I predict it probably would as it's vastly superior to any of the above) ...

[Secretly.A.Bee]

@Secretly.A.Bee: What draws people into Legacy is it being the best constructed format and playing with old favorites. Saying people only play Legacy because of Brainstorm is a vast overstatement. There's a difference between liking a card and playing it because you have to due to its powerlevel - see how much TNN is hated across the board, yet many people run it despite hating its guts. Brainstorm had a meta percentage of about 50% in the year 2011. Now we have numbers where it makes up to 70% of the current meta. I seriously doubt that there was an influx of new Legacy players that who said "I'll start to play Legacy because I fucking love Brainstorm!" that lead to this increase.

I never said only. Also, doubt all you want but several friends of mine have started playing legacy because they realized the powerful connection of their Zendikar fetches that they were previously looking to sell and the Ice Age common. It was strong enough of a pull for them, I encourage you to open your mind to the possibility that you may be incorrect.

Here, lets make everyone happy:

Ban TNN
Ban SnT
Ban Brainstorm
Unban Survival of the Fittest
Unban Mystical Tutor

Dumb. You can't ban TNN if you are going to unban SotF, that's madness (pun intended). Mystical Tutor is imo arguably better than Vampiric Tutor and will never be unbanned.

Banning Brainstorm will make a few people happy, a lot of people unhappy, a few people very angry, and a few people will quit.

I'm not on board with banning S&T, but I am on board with banning Griselbrand. The card has cool flavor but realistically overall it breaks anything it has any kind of synergy with.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[btm10]

Yeah, Mental Misstep helps fighting blue deck to keep their numbers in check - oh wait, it fucking doesn't, it leads to even more blue dominance.


Emphasis mine.

I never said that it would make blue worse or lower its meta penetration. I said that if you're that concerned about Brainstorm, then unbanning MM is a better solution than banning Brainstorm. I think blue's meta penetration is inevitable in Legacy short of bannings on a combo winter scale.

[HammafistRoob]

Did I really just read that Mystical Tutor is better than Vampiric?

No, that can't be possible, damn I need to get my eyes checked.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Here, lets make everyone happy:

Ban TNN
Ban SnT
Ban Brainstorm
Unban Survival of the Fittest
Unban Mystical Tutor

Two steps forward, several large steps back

[Wilkin]

As a "card selection" spell, Ponder is more powerful than Brainstorm even with a shuffle effect, and far more powerful when you don't have a fetch or something else.

What Brainstorm is, and what makes it much more powerful and ubiquitous than Ponder, is a card replacement spell, turning dead or weak cards into stronger ones. It is a de facto second, in-game mulligan, only without the Paris penalty.


And yes, Brainstorm is far better for combo than it is for other decks; not only do combo decks have more generally dead cards (duplicate Sneak Attacks or Emrakuls, too many Infernal Tutors, etc.,) but Brainstorm is the most effective answer to discard, which otherwise would be more powerful against combo in particular.

There's no reasonable doubt that if Brainstorm were to be banned, combo would lose relative strength in the meta.

Ok, I agree that banning Brainstorm would probably hurt combo more than control. My issue with that scenario is that good for the meta? IMHO, because Delver.dec is everywhere combo is already hurting. It will further shift the meta to tempo and midrange decks.

I can see the reasoning behind banning Brainstorm but I personally wouldn't. And this is coming from someone who rarely plays blue. I'd rather they get rid of True-Name Nemesis. A very non-interactive card, but not only that, to me anyway it really affects the other decks I may try. eg. I've tried MUD before but suddenly a turn 2 or 3 Wurmcoil can't do much facing an opposing TNN. Luckily for me the deck I play with is black so I have plenty of options for TNN but right now meta is basically play TNN, ignore TNN (combo, miracles etc.) or play heavy amount of board wipe, sac effects.

[Dragonslayer_90]

87,5% of the topdecks is dangerously close to "every deck runs Brainstorm" (you will never reach a true 100%), especially when the last deck of the Top 8 is the most anti-blue deck in the format which runs a bunch of Blasts MD.

And Ponder isn't even close to the level of Brainstorm. It's sorcery speed, only draws 1 instead of 3 new cards, can't hide cards from discard and doesn't enable Delver, Miracles and Cascade.

Sure, FoW gets a bit worse with Brainstorm gone, but discard gets way better.

I still think the first step should be the removal of TNN since it's pushing out non-blue non-combo decks out of the format, hence leading to this warped Anti-TNN meta.

I stand corrected on the Mental Misstep point and thank IBA for that. However, my point on ubiquity still stands. You cannot just look at brainstorm in isolation and say this is the problem card because it's in most of the Top 8 decks so it should therefore be banned. As I think we both agree, TNN is the reason for such a high percentage of Brainstorm in the Top 8 and is thus the real offender that should be banned.

[Megadeus]

Did I really just read that Mystical Tutor is better than Vampiric?

No, that can't be possible, damn I need to get my eyes checked.

Can we start a twitter trend?

#UnbanVampiricTutor

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I stand corrected on the Mental Misstep point and thank IBA for that. However, my point on ubiquity still stands. You cannot just look at brainstorm in isolation and say this is the problem card because it's in most of the Top 8 decks so it should therefore be banned. As I think we both agree, TNN is the reason for such a high percentage of Brainstorm in the Top 8 and is thus the real offender that should be banned.

We don't agree. I examine the numbers at some length here.

I think TNN has been one of a number of cards printed in recent years that have pushed blue-based decks, but it is not on the face of the data the worst offender (although it is arguably the most un-fun one,) and all of these decks share a common core of Brainstorm + Force. And there seems to be a pretty clear consensus that Force isn't the problem.

It is just barely an exaggeration to say that 90% of the winning decks run Brainstorm, and that number does not seem anomalous to this time period from the data, but part of a strong and long-running trend; and if anything the data suggests that Brainstorm decks remain underplayed at "only" 86%.

The only reasonable argument against banning either Brainstorm or, in a desperate attempt to avoid that, several other blue cards at once, is that you are simply okay with having blue being required to play the format.

[testing32]

We don't agree. I examine the numbers at some length here.

I think TNN has been one of a number of cards printed in recent years that have pushed blue-based decks, but it is not on the face of the data the worst offender (although it is arguably the most un-fun one,) and all of these decks share a common core of Brainstorm + Force. And there seems to be a pretty clear consensus that Force isn't the problem.

It is just barely an exaggeration to say that 90% of the winning decks run Brainstorm, and that number does not seem anomalous to this time period from the data, but part of a strong and long-running trend; and if anything the data suggests that Brainstorm decks remain underplayed at "only" 86%.

The only reasonable argument against banning either Brainstorm or, in a desperate attempt to avoid that, several other blue cards at once, is that you are simply okay with having blue being required to play the format.

I agree with this. The format was still overwhelmingly blue before TNN was printed but TNN has clearly made things worse.

It seems pretty clear to me though that the format is not healthy and doing nothing with the B&R list was a mistake.

[Nielsie]

I feel like Legacy is evolving into the attrocity that is Modern.

Many people hate Modern because of all the bans. But I don't think the bans are Modern's problem, the real problem is the meta-game. Did you ever play in a modern GP or big tournament? Everywhere you look it's the same decks. When I look at the current meta-game in Legacy and big events like GP Paris than I fear we are evolving into exactly the same boring bullshit.

[Dice_Box]

As much as I see your point, I like Modern. It's great to play some of the most broken decks on a Tuesday night, where I play Elves or Painter and then on a Wednesday play something a lot more calm and relaxed. Or it was before they arbitrarily banned my Rock deck.

I think part of the appeal on Modern is that it's not really all that complicated. At lest not from a Legacy and Vintage players point of view. So you can play some really relaxing games there

[Arsenal]

I feel like Legacy is evolving into the attrocity that is Modern.

Many people hate Modern because of all the bans. But I don't think the bans are Modern's problem, the real problem is the meta-game. Did you ever play in a modern GP or big tournament? Everywhere you look it's the same decks. When I look at the current meta-game in Legacy and big events like GP Paris than I fear we are evolving into exactly the same boring bullshit.

As both a competitive Legacy and Modern player, you're both right and wrong.

While Modern does have a lot of "the same decks", you have to keep a couple things in mind:

First, Modern's cardpool is much, much smaller than Legacy's. Even if you didn't factor in the Banned list, a rational person would be able to theorize that Legacy will have more decks than Modern because Legacy has access to a much, much larger cardpool to construct various decks from. Considering the relatively small size of Modern's cardpool, I'm actually happy with the number of competitive decks Modern has.

Second, Modern has almost no card overlap now, so while you may be facing "the same decks", you'll face distinctly different decks each round. Tron is distinctly different from UWR which is distinctly different from Affinity which is distinctly different from Twin Exarch, etc. In Legacy, you may face three SFM-TNN cousins (Patriot, Blade Control, DeathBlade) in your first three rounds, then RUG Delver and BUG Delver in your next two. There's far more card overlap (and overlap in strategies as a result) in Legacy, which results in a bland experience sometimes.

[Lord Seth]

I feel like Legacy is evolving into the attrocity that is Modern.

Many people hate Modern because of all the bans. But I don't think the bans are Modern's problem, the real problem is the meta-game. Did you ever play in a modern GP or big tournament? Everywhere you look it's the same decks. When I look at the current meta-game in Legacy and big events like GP Paris than I fear we are evolving into exactly the same boring bullshit.

Are you insinuating that at any point, Legacy wasn't also "the same decks"? Because Legacy, like every format in the game, is, and has always been like that, with the same decks doing well over and over. Over time, maybe what the decks were have changed, but there has always been "the same decks" doing well at tournaments.

You can perhaps try to claim that this list of "the same decks" was larger for Legacy, but a big part of that is the card pool, as well as the fact that there's more big Legacy tournaments than big Modern tournaments (thanks to SCG), so there's more room for a bigger list.

[Barook]

I feel like Legacy is evolving into the attrocity that is Modern.

Many people hate Modern because of all the bans.

People hate the Modern bans because they ban every even remotely interesting card because Wizards can't be arsed to (re)print decent disruption, resulting in new bans every few months. And quite a few of those bans were fucking stupid, see: Wild Nacatl and Bitterblossom

The last time something was banned in Legacy was 2.5 years with Mental Misstep. Wizards sure isn't trigger-happy here.

I agree with Arsenal - many decks share the same core, especially in blue.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think it's obviously specious to use the word "trigger-happy" to refer to the idea of banning Brainstorm. Brainstorm is approaching 90% lock on winning decks. That's not an anomalous data point but the persistent trend in the data from dozens of large tournaments.

The only card I can think of that Wizards has banned in any format since I've been playing competitively that might have approached that kind of percentage is Skullclamp in Standard. In every other card, yes, even Mental Misstep, Survival, and Flash in Legacy, the banned card was not nearly as ubiquitous as Brainstorm is now.

It's true that several different decks rely on Brainstorm as a core component. It's not a nonsensical position to argue that maybe every deck in Legacy just should be required to run a playset of Brainstorms.

But if you're not arguing for Brainstorm being banned, or some other set of cards to try and end the absurd over-dominance of blue in the meta, then de facto you are arguing for the universality of Brainstorms in every deck, whether you recognize it or not.

[Nielsie]

Yes, I agree that the limited selection of decks in modern has a lot to do with the available cardpool. I guess what I try to say is that I have always enjoyed the much more varied meta-game that legacy had to offer. But this varied meta-game is slowly fading away because one color is reigning supreme and there isn't a lot of alternatives for this color anymore. This is making the meta-game becoming stale, just like Modern's.

One of the biggest differences in the meta-games of Legacy and Modern has always been that small represented decks in Legacy still had a big chance in winning a big tournament as long as the pilot knew his deck. Because of this you would have many people opting out of the bigger netdecks and showing up with their pet-decks. I feel that since TNN appeared, more and more people have abandoned their little pet-decks because they knew they would make no chance at winning. Sure some people will still try, but more and more people are giving up and joining the blue masses. Be it to play with or against TNN. After all that is at the moment were you have to be if you want to win.

About card overlap in Modern. I don't completely agree or disagree with this, but you do have the BGx decks that all shared the same core. Ok, with the Shaman ban maybe these decks will change but before they all played around the same core cards. Furthermore there are many different Tron decks, they don't all play out the same but there sure is some overlap in cards. Same for Splinter Twin and UWx control that share kind of a same control element. Many decks in modern also play out the same strategy. Splinter, scapeshift and UWx all share a same control game, they just differ in how they defined their win-condition.

I realy hope something gets done to revert this staleness. I was never attracted to legacy because of Brainstorm (I am one of those psycho's not wanting to play blue, I mainly play MUD and DnT), but I was attracted to it because of the varied meta-game and the possibilities given to small represented decks.

I hope this make sense :)