All B/R update speculation.

[prateta]

everybody has access to any color without penalty

Being exposed to: wasteland, price of progress, blood moon, back to basics etc... means no penalty for you? Why is it so that any deck wants to play as few duals as possible?

[Barook]

No irony, I am more on board wit this than the Brainstorm arguments. Hearing the people complain about how it enables sloppy keeps due to free mulligans, but hyper greedy mana base gets a free pass? If we want to talk a long hard look at our beloved format, then it better be a long, hard look. The arguments for color balance are pretty weak when everybody has access to any color without penalty. But then someone steps in and says that what we're all about right? But then that's not good enough. We don't have "pillars" like Vintage.

A format without fetchlands, but with Wasteland still being a thing, would greatly reduce the format diversity.

Are mana bases to good in Legacy? Certainly, but making fetchlands go away would do more harm than it would do good.

[testing32]

Is having an aggro deck tier 1/1.5 too much to ask?

[Arsenal]

So what is an acceptable amount of blue, Barook/Arsenal/IBA? How many Brainstorm/Delver/TNN could we see in t8/t16 that would allow you to not disrupt my otherwise peaceful enjoyment of The Source? I'm sure we will all work to accommodate you so long as you stop screaming like a 5-year-old in the middle of wal-mart.

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For me personally, Jan-Oct 2013 was pretty damn healthy and balanced (Jund #3, Maverick #7 during that stretch). Obviously there were even more balanced metas before then, but for the most recent example that I can think of, going back to a pre-TNN meta would be fine.

[PirateKing]

A format without fetchlands, but with Wasteland still being a thing, would greatly reduce the format diversity.

Are mana bases to good in Legacy? Certainly, but making fetchlands go away would do more harm than it would do good.

First let us define "good" and "harm" and then we can know what each of us are talking about.

Being exposed to: wasteland, price of progress, blood moon, back to basics etc... means no penalty for you? Why is it so that any deck wants to play as few duals as possible?

And it is possible we play in different metas, Wasteland is played, yes. Blood Moon in Painters and some 1.5 decks, sure. But Back to Basics? Price of Progress is a Burn card, and that's the thing that's going to bring all the three color deck to their knees?

[prateta]

And it is possible we play in different metas, Wasteland is played, yes. Blood Moon in Painters and some 1.5 decks, sure. But Back to Basics? Price of Progress is a Burn card, and that's the thing that's going to bring all the three color deck to their knees?

I just gave you some examples. Back to basics is played in some UWs and Miracles AFAIK. Have seen it on SCG Open and even at my LGS. From above listed Price of Progress is obviously played the least, it just came to my mind. Maybe there are more cards that are exploiting dual heavy manabases, I just don't know them / can't remember them. But aside of PoP all other three I mentioned need to be considered when building (or just playing) a deck nowadays. My point was - yes, thanks to fetches and duals you can access any mana you want, but it is definitely not without penalty as you wrote.

[Barook]

First let us define "good" and "harm" and then we can know what each of us are talking about.

Good: Less decks with greedy mana bases, Brainstorm is less broken
Harm: A significantly less diverse metagame because alot of decks would just plain go extinct. This isn't Modern where you can afford to play shitty durdle lands because Wasteland exists. I like a diverse metagame, hence why I'm so up in arms against the current blue dominance because forcing players into blue to be competitive does not contribute to a "real" diverse metagame. U/x/x Delver and UW/x Stoneblade variants all day long isn't diversity, it's just plain boring.

[Arsenal]

I personally like as little card and color overlap as possible, while still being relatively competitive.

[Dzra]

And preying on BS is impossible since good BS hate does not exist. Spirit of the Labyrinth has several shortcomings, CotV forces you into running a deck with suboptimal card choices, REB/Pyroblast trade 1-for-1 at best, etc. - if we had good BS hate that gets the job done, people would actually run it en masse. Thalia making BS cost doesn't stop it in the slightest.

That's silly. The reason BS-specific hate doesn't work is because Brainstorm is not such a problem card/strategy that it deserves explicit resources to be fought over. In contrast to Spirit, Thalia does see so much play not because it is better at hating Brainstorm but because it does more than just attempt to hate Brainstorm. If there was a Bear that read "Players cannot cast the card Brainstorm," it would see exactly zero play. The only reason Spirit is even in contention for playability is because it has potential splash damage elsewhere.

Are mana bases too good in Legacy? Certainly, but making fetchlands go away would do more harm than it would do good.

I agree with you that banning fetchlands would do much more harm than good, but I would disagree that Legacy mana bases are too greedy. This is obviously a relative term and I find that the balance between Stifle/Wasteland/Blood Moon and multicolored mana bases is quite enjoyable and interactive.

For me personally, Jan-Oct 2013 was pretty damn healthy and balanced (Jund #3, Maverick #7 during that stretch). Obviously there were even more balanced metas before then, but for the most recent example that I can think of, going back to a pre-TNN meta would be fine.

I would still rather see True-Name Nemesis errata'd, but I wouldn't be sad if it were banned.

[PirateKing]

U/x/x Delver and UW/x Stoneblade variants all day long isn't diversity, it's just plain boring.

I agree, very boring. You think the problems with these decks is the use of Brainstorm. I think the problems lay elsewhere (hint it's in the deck names)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I strongly suspect that no one can actually lay out abstract and reasonable-sounding criteria for banning that wouldn't cover Brainstorm at the current time.

A card should be banned when it hinders format diversity to the point where the only competitive decks either play said card or revolve around specifically preying on said card.

Sooooooooooooooo you're basically just going to abdicate this point then I guess?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

So what is an acceptable amount of blue, Barook/Arsenal/IBA? How many Brainstorm/Delver/TNN could we see in t8/t16 that would allow you to not disrupt my otherwise peaceful enjoyment of The Source? I'm sure we will all work to accommodate you so long as you stop screaming like a 5-year-old in the middle of wal-mart.

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No more than 2/3 of the winning lists over time should contain a specific color.

If being exposed to ideas you dislike disrupts your harmony so much, you should probably just avoid discussion forums. I'm sure somehow we will recover from the loss of your presence.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I posit that if you created a bunch of non-Blue-based 3 and 4 color decks (i.e, they just splash blue for Brainstorm or something like that) Painter would run very nearly the same maindeck.

Finn ran Death and Taxes for years before they printed cards that made it somewhat competitive, but is this a bragging point? If their maindeck REBs and Pyroblasts weren't insanely effective against the format, the deck would perform a lot worse, is that seriously in dispute?

[Technics]

Sooooooooooooooo you're basically just going to abdicate this point then I guess?

A card should be banned whenever Wizards randomly decides it should be banned on whatever criteria they decide is justifiable this week.

See:
Mystical Tutor - No 1cc tutors (except Entomb, Worldy, Enlightened)
Survival - Banned due to repeatable tutoring, and general high profile player bitching.
Mental Misstep - Banned due to prevalence
Flash - Banned because it put things into play for cheap, however Show and Tell (which puts more than protean hulk into play) is cool.
Time Vault - Banned because it "violates the intended printings" however LED still sees play.


Also of note, these are the ONLY cards banned since the format split. Is brainstorm on power level with the mentioned cards? (actual question). Maybe it's the same as Mystical, but I still think that was a bad ban.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I agree, very boring. You think the problems with these decks is the use of Brainstorm. I think the problems lay elsewhere (hint it's in the deck names)

So the top decks when Skullclamp was in Type 2 were Raffinity, Elf and Nail, and Goblin-Bidding.

Of course, blue's dominance is attributable to multiple good cards existing that are either in the color or easy to splash for. If you are asking what single card most pushes blue over the other colors, it is pretty clearly Brainstorm though. There's arguments for banning other cards instead, but it'd require multiple non-BS bannings to affect a meaningful change in the format's color composition I think.

[TsumiBand]

Obviously a card should be banned when it shows up in a demonstrably infinite number of decks.

That's just common sense.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

A card should be banned whenever Wizards randomly decides it should be banned on whatever criteria they decide is justifiable this week.

See:
Mystical Tutor - No 1cc tutors (except Entomb, Worldy, Enlightened)
Survival - Banned due to repeatable tutoring, and general high profile player bitching.
Mental Misstep - Banned due to prevalence
Flash - Banned because it put things into play for cheap, however Show and Tell (which puts more than protean hulk into play) is cool.
Time Vault - Banned because it "violates the intended printings" however LED still sees play.

Time Vault and Flash are actually just insanely OP without errata.

I mean I guess I agree that Wizards is a bit random and contradictory on this shit though, ain't no one defending Mystical Tutor's banning. Not that I would unban it at this point, already too much blue.

[apple713]

There are no competitive mono-Black decks for a reason. Bob is good, but is CA rather than card quality and comes with the restriction "must play low-costing spells." I didn't mention Infernal Tutor because it is only run in Blue decks. I agree that Red and White could use a lot of help, but in my opinion Black is still one of the worse off. Regardless, it might be easier to look at enablers from a strategic standpoint rather than a color standpoint. Creating more creature-type or creating card-type specific engines might be an interesting way to catapult some new decks into being.

Sensei's Divining Top is a good example; it's somewhat mysterious why it doesn't see more penetration. Perhaps the effect of simply filtering cards is not powerful enough when compared to tutors like Stoneforge Mystic, Imperial Recruiter, and Green Sun's Zenith.

Mono black decks dont exist because of their complete inability to deal with artifacts and enchantments. Thats the only reason.

If abrupt decay was BB instead of GB mono black would be a force to be reconed with in legacy

[Barook]

I agree, very boring. You think the problems with these decks is the use of Brainstorm. I think the problems lay elsewhere (hint it's in the deck names)

Brainstorm is just the symptom of Wizards various fuck-ups which started to accumulate over the years and with their inaction to deal with it, but it has gotten only worse and worse since ever since Innistrad.

Blue already has the best spells, so it shouldn't have the best beaters, too. TNN was a huge mistake that should be corrected asap with a ban. End of story. Delver is almost as cancerous (which also happens to make Brainstorm better), but at least it has more ways to deal with it.

Utility casters like Snapcaster Mage are fine (even if it would have been more appropriate in red), but stuff that breaks the color pie and makes blue better is just plain annoying. While not broken in any way or form, I'd love to hear why blue needed hand disruption, slapped on an efficient 3/1 flyer, while Maro whines and bitches about Chaos Warp.

@Technics: Flash was banned because it allowed for a ridiculous number of early kills with a high consistency and loads of protection.
Time Vault + Voltaic Key is a 2-card 4 mana "I win" combo, not because of oracle/printed text semantics.

[DragoFireheart]

Hey guys, Brainstorm was fine before Delver and TNN got printed.

Hey guys, Survival of the Fittest was fine before Vengevine and Necrotic Ooze got printed.