All B/R update speculation.

[DragoFireheart]

Plenty of people argued quite vehemently against banning Jace or Skullclamp in Standard. Even after GP: Columbus, people argued that people should "quit whining" and "adapt" to a Hulk-Flash meta.

People can objectively be wrong.

What objective criteria do you want to use to determine bannings?

That's sorta what I wanted to discuss with you.

"I don't like Brainstorm because it allows broken plays" is poor reasoning for a card to be banned.
"I don't like Brainstorm because many decks use it" is also poor reasoning but comes a little bit closer to a way of measuring whether a card should be banned or not.
"I don't like Brainstorm because all of the top decks use it" is closer, but there exist staples. Said card could be a staple and not something that is warping the format.
"I don't like Brainstorm because it's present in the Top 16 in 90% of the decks" is a little closer.
"I don't like Brainstorm because the same 1-3 decks use it in the Top 16 while the only other non-brainstorm decks are anti-brainstorm decks" is also a little closer.

The concept of banning something because its representation is either itself or anti-deck is not a new concept. Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Street Fighter come to mind as other games where a single powerful character was banned because everyone was playing the same character. Even if you want to argue that the threshold of ban worthy is subjective, the concept of something being overused and stifling the game is not.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You're supposing there's an objective basis for saying something is stifling the game. Some people think a game where your deck starts off with 4 Brainstorm, 4 Force of Will as a matter of course is fine. To others, maybe Elder Land Wurm being below the power curve is evidence of a warped meta.

One can only have an opinion on what would make the game more interesting and move towards there, but it will never not be just an opinion.

[DragoFireheart]

You're supposing there's an objective basis for saying something is stifling the game. Some people think a game where your deck starts off with 4 Brainstorm, 4 Force of Will as a matter of course is fine. To others, maybe Elder Land Wurm being below the power curve is evidence of a warped meta.

One can only have an opinion on what would make the game more interesting and move towards there, but it will never not be just an opinion.

Of course people have opinions on what will make the game interesting or uninteresting. The trick is to not use opinions as the basis for determining whether a card is warping the format or not. Whether someone agrees or disagrees that the Top 16 all being the same deck due to a key card is not format stifling isn't the point. The moment someone has to decide that the best way to fight a DTB is to either play the near-exact same deck or a deck designed specifically to fight it as the only two choices, no amount of opinions will change the fact that said format is clearly warped. Just because someone could have an opinion that the format isn't warped does not make it so.

[btm10]

I don't know what you mean by "flags," it sets a clear condition. It just has no connection to the actual purpose of the banned list, which is to manage the format. It is a self-referential and thus useless and incestuous purpose. The banned list's purpose cannot be for it to exist in given state X, without regard for any other function.

I never suggested that the banned list's sole purpose was to be in state X. I stated that it should be as short as possible and that all other things being equal, a shorter list is a better list because if a card may be played legally then the only thing stopping it from being played is that it's too weak. I don't think that even you and others who are calling for Brainstorm's ban want the DCI to start deciding that card X should be viable for reasons X, Y, and Z, and so we need to ban cards A, B, and C to make it so. Arguing that a B/R list larger than the shortest possible list is implicitly arguing that a format with a fully top-down, DCI engineered "balance" is superior to one that develops as much as possible from the bottom up with only the most egregious cards banned.

The meta being healthy or not should be the basis for changing the banned list, with banning and unbanning cards being equally viable means to alter the format; but there's no clear reason given why the format needs to be changed when it's healthy. The opposite should pretty clearly be the case.

See above for why I argue that theoretically justifiable unbannings are desirable when the format is healthy. You may reject the sort of meta I find desirable, but you cannot deny that it's the way to achieve what I believe is the healthiest format.

Not at all. The burden is on those who argue to change the banned list to explain why changes should be made. "People want to play card X" might be part of that argument, although pretty clearly not a sufficient part.

This, to my knowledge, is incorrect. The DCI has not (again, to my knowledge) articulated this position. They have, however, explicitly stated that minimizing list length is a goal. I quote Erik Lauer at length from the December 2010 announcement:

The DCI has made efforts to control the size of the banned & restricted lists, especially for eternal formats where banned cards never rotate out of the format. Standard, Extended, and Scars of Mirrodin Block Constructed each have no banned cards. The current Legacy banned list is shorter than the Legacy banned list when the format first debuted in its current form in 2004, and is equal in size to the shortest such list ever. Several thousand cards have been added to the format since then, and the percentage of the format that is on the banned list has plummeted. The current Vintage banned & restricted lists total to fewer cards than the lists had 10 years ago. Again, the percentage of the format that is on the banned list has fallen, to an all time low. While these lists may grow in the future, they have not been growing recently.

This is a nonsensical distinction. Bannings and unbannings are flip sides of the same coin. If a card being in a meta makes it healthier- a necessary precondition if we are also to assume that a card can make a meta less healthy- then it follows that adding a card can make a meta more healthy, as removing a card can make it less healthy. It has been argued pretty compellingly that Survival, or Mind Twist, or even Mishra's Workshop coupled with a ban of Trinisphere, could make the metagame more interesting and diverse, as it is pretty easy to argue that for instance, banning Force of Will, or banning Thalia, or banning Wasteland would be negative for the format.

My statement neither holds nor implies that there is some nebulous distinction between a banning and an unbanning beyond the obvious effect on card playability. The distinction is between when it is appropriate to call for a banning/restriction and when it is appropriate to call for an unbanning/unrestriction. If as the DCI has stated, a shorter banned list is desirable, then stable, healthy metas are the ideal setting for unbannings because the card's effect on the meta will be clear. My position would also say that it is desirable if a card is unbanned as an alternative to banning another card (i.e., to be a foil to a card that would otherwise warrant banning). Unfortunately, it will be harder to tell if the recently unbanned card is problematic in that case. But this is a corner-case that to my knowledge has never happened. This leaves unhealthy metas as the only ones in which a banning or restriction is desirable action. As such, my position is wholly internally consistent and consistent with stated DCI policy. To put it in the terms you prefer, unbanning a card is positive even if it has no effect on the decks/strategies played. It is good simply because the card is legal, and is only bad if the card creates an unhealthy environment. Similarly, a ban or restriction is intrinsically negative but that negativity may be offset if the banned or restricted card was truly a problem. You may dislike the implications of this position, but that's a different question.

People can objectively be wrong.



That's sorta what I wanted to discuss with you.

"I don't like Brainstorm because it allows broken plays" is poor reasoning for a card to be banned.
"I don't like Brainstorm because many decks use it" is also poor reasoning but comes a little bit closer to a way of measuring whether a card should be banned or not.
"I don't like Brainstorm because all of the top decks use it" is closer, but there exist staples. Said card could be a staple and not something that is warping the format.
"I don't like Brainstorm because it's present in the Top 16 in 90% of the decks" is a little closer.
"I don't like Brainstorm because the same 1-3 decks use it in the Top 16 while the only other non-brainstorm decks are anti-brainstorm decks" is also a little closer.

The concept of banning something because its representation is either itself or anti-deck is not a new concept. Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Street Fighter come to mind as other games where a single powerful character was banned because everyone was playing the same character. Even if you want to argue that the threshold of ban worthy is subjective, the concept of something being overused and stifling the game is not.

If we're going for additional objective criteria, this is a pretty good starting point for discussion. Without being able to argue evidence against criteria, it becomes this endless philosophical argument about what constitutes format health whenever a banning is suggested. I don't doubt for a second that the DCI has objective criteria it uses.

[Dzra]

You have clearly not spent a lot of time actually playing against competent High Tide players.

Quite the contrary. I'm not really sure what High Tide players you've been playing against, but I've played the MU quite a bit (as Miracles and as Stoneblade) and against very good players. Piercing/REBing a Brainstorm is such a hit-and-miss reckless play against High Tide. I understand the fact that you need to defend your stance that Brainstorm is the scariest card in everyone's deck, but unless you have upwards of 5 or 6 one mana counters in your hand then using them wastefully isn't likely to win you the game against a skilled pilot.

I've been playing it recently, it's an interesting format. I'm planning on going to the Richmond GP. I like that the different decks are actually different.

I'm not exactly going to tell you to just go play Modern; however, you do realize that the majority of Legacy players prefer Legacy and dislike Modern, yes? The defining difference is that Modern is a format that bans cards because of their power level, not because of their oppression. If we're banning cards in Legacy solely based on power level then we have a long line of contenders with Brainstorm right near the top. However, that isn't what Legacy is about. Until you can prove to anyone that Brainstorm is an oppressive card like Survival or Flash was rather than merely another staple like Force of Will and Wasteland then you have no argument other than your current stance of "I wish Legacy were more like Modern."

[Barook]

I'm not exactly going to tell you to just go play Modern; however, you do realize that the majority of Legacy players prefer Legacy and dislike Modern, yes? The defining difference is that Modern is a format that bans cards because of their power level, not because of their oppression. If we're banning cards in Legacy solely based on power level then we have a long line of contenders with Brainstorm right near the top. However, that isn't what Legacy is about.

Modern is Wizards' try to actively shape the format to their liking, including their "no combo kills before T4" rule. The lack of proper disruption just adds to the problem. Both Legacy and Modern would benefit alot if they printed more cheap quality disruption in other colors.

Until you can prove to anyone that Brainstorm is an oppressive card like Survival or Flash was rather than merely another staple like Force of Will and Wasteland then you have no argument other than your current stance of "I wish Legacy were more like Modern."

Define "oppressive". The official reason why Mental Misstep was banned because it forced a "too blue" format and thus taking away diversity.

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong (with data) - but isn't the format even more blue now than during the MM era?

I'm repeating myself - while Brainstorm is way above the power curve of the format, it's just a symptom of the various fuck-ups Wizards printed since Innistrad.

As noble as the goal of the DCI might be keep the banned list as short as possible, I don't think it's practical that it can always stay the same size (or decrease) with an ever increasing card pool as long as they add more problems like Delver, S&T fodder and TNN to the pool instead of more solutions (like AD, RiP) to powerful cards.

[Dzra]

Define "oppressive". The official reason why Mental Misstep was banned because it forced a "too blue" format and thus taking away diversity.

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.

Mental Misstep was a bit of a special case. They designed Mental Misstep for the purpose of making the format less Blue. I know... who could have ever thought that that was a good idea... but the point of the above statement is that they realized that Mental Misstep not only didn't make Blue less dominant but actually made Blue much, much stronger. It isn't that Legacy was "too Blue;" it is that their solution actually made the situation worse.

Correct me if I'm wrong (with data) - but isn't the format even more blue now than during the MM era?

I'm not quite sure about the numbers now compared to when Mental Misstep was legal, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of Blue decks today was up. That hardly can be laid at Brainstorm's feet though. One of the big factors that likely contributes to Blue's higher dominance today is True-Name Nemesis. Just prior to Nemesis, Death and Taxes and Jund were both huge contenders in the format. While those decks are still putting up some numbers, they suffer a lot from the presence of True-Name Nemesis. Attacking Brainstorm simply because Blue is dominant and Brainstorm is a (powerful) Blue card is imprecise and unhelpful.

(The other big factor being that as more pros and semi-pros pick up the format, there will be a higher penetration of decks allowing the pilot to outplay their opponent. Many of these decks are Blue.)

[DragoFireheart]

As noble as the goal of the DCI might be keep the banned list as short as possible, I don't think it's practical that it can always stay the same size (or decrease) with an ever increasing card pool as long as they add more problems like Delver, S&T fodder and TNN to the pool instead of more solutions (like AD, RiP) to powerful cards.

While we have 0 control over WotC being utterly stupid in what they print, I am seeing a pattern here:

All of the "good stuff" is blue, while all of the answers are "non-blue".

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I never suggested that the banned list's sole purpose was to be in state X. I stated that it should be as short as possible and that all other things being equal, a shorter list is a better list because if a card may be played legally then the only thing stopping it from being played is that it's too weak.

This doesn't follow. Why is that a reason that the list should be as short as possible? Neglecting of course that the shortest possible list is, "no cards are banned."

I suppose we might even include Un- and promo cards like Gifts given at that point.

But this is of course nonsense. A card doesn't contribute positively to a format just by existing. I don't suppose it matters at all whether Sorrow's Path is banned or not.

I don't think that even you and others who are calling for Brainstorm's ban want the DCI to start deciding that card X should be viable for reasons X, Y, and Z, and so we need to ban cards A, B, and C to make it so.

Basing this reasoning on specific cards is probably not ideal, but there is some precedence for this; this has been their largely started policy guiding Vintage bannings for instance.

Arguing that a B/R list larger than the shortest possible list is implicitly arguing that a format with a fully top-down, DCI engineered "balance" is superior to one that develops as much as possible from the bottom up with only the most egregious cards banned.

This is truly obtuse logic. The best possible format is that which is the best possible; basing a format's superiority or inferiority based on the method of design is getting everything quite backwards.

See above for why I argue that theoretically justifiable unbannings are desirable when the format is healthy. You may reject the sort of meta I find desirable, but you cannot deny that it's the way to achieve what I believe is the healthiest format.

I deny that this is even a coherent argument, in fact.

This, to my knowledge, is incorrect. The DCI has not (again, to my knowledge) articulated this position. They have, however, explicitly stated that minimizing list lenght is a goal. I quote Erik Lauer at length from the December 2010 announcement:

Wizards may desire, or say that they desire a short list to satisfy some aesthetic purpose or the complaints of players; but this is not the function of a banned list (or indeed the same logic would argue that it should not exist at all.)

The purpose of a banned list is... what? To improve the format. Towards what end? If there's no other frame of reference you get nonsense like this, "The banned list is equal to the shortest ever," as if that means anything; a simple self-referential loop where the banned list is the measurement for its own success. An absurdity.

My statement neither holds nor implies that there is some nebulous distinction between a banning and an unbanning beyond the obvious effect on card playability. The distinction is between when it is appropriate to call for a banning/restriction and when it is appropriate to call for an unbanning/unrestriction.

That's a pretty big distinction, albeit an artificial and arbitrary one.

If as the DCI has stated, a shorter banned list is desirable

That's not what was said. It was implied that their keeping the banned list was good, but not that shortening the list was a goal in and of itself. While a silly statement to start with, you're implying meaning that isn't there.

then stable, healthy metas are the ideal setting for unbannings because the card's effect on the meta will be clear.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Why will the impact be clear just because the current meta is (in this theoretical scenario) diverse and healthy?

As such, my position is wholly internally consistent and consistent with stated DCI policy. To put it in the terms you prefer, unbanning a card is positive even if it has no effect on the decks/strategies played. It is good simply because the card is legal, and is only bad if the card creates an unhealthy environment. Similarly, a ban or restriction is intrinsically negative but that negativity may be offset if the banned or restricted card was truly a problem. You may dislike the implications of this position, but that's a different question.

Internal consistency isn't much of a bar. And no, it's not. Wizards may say at some point that they want to keep the banned list as short as possible, but since the banned list exists this is obviously not true. They clearly are motivated by some other factors in their management of the format. They might choose to keep the list at its current length to curtail complaints, but that's a completely arbitrary metric.

Anyway, your argument here, internally consistent or not, is rubbish. The non-existence of a chess piece called the barrister that always moves two to the left doesn't impoverish the game of chess. It's non existence and its existence and subsequent removal are, as far as the game is concerned, equal. A game is not improved by adding many irrelevant options, nor is it worsened by removing shitty and counterproductive options (from a strategy viewpoint.)

A game exists as a whole entity. Its value cannot be determined based on the piecemeal availability of one particular element which, if it would never have been printed, its absence you would assuredly not notice.

If we're going for additional objective criteria, this is a pretty good starting point for discussion. Without being able to argue evidence against criteria, it becomes this endless philosophical argument about what constitutes format health whenever a banning is suggested. I don't doubt for a second that the DCI has objective criteria it uses.

I find this pretty amusing since I am the only person at all who has provided any objective data.

But as far as the idea of objective banning criteria, rubbish.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Mental Misstep was a bit of a special case. They designed Mental Misstep for the purpose of making the format less Blue. I know... who could have ever thought that that was a good idea... but the point of the above statement is that they realized that Mental Misstep not only didn't make Blue less dominant but actually made Blue much, much stronger. It isn't that Legacy was "too Blue;" it is that their solution actually made the situation worse.

This doesn't even begin to make sense. If Wizards decided to make a 66% blue format 50% blue, and wound up making it 75% blue, and thought that was a problem, then it doesn't follow in any way that 85% blue isn't a problem just because they didn't make the attempt to reduce blue this time. Either blue dominance is a problem or it isn't.

I'm not quite sure about the numbers now compared to when Mental Misstep was legal

Repeating on a theme I hit on a couple of years ago, let's examine the performance of individual cards within the top 16 of large events for which we have data. For this I am using SCG opens since TNN became legal at the beginning of November, and the two Legacy GPs since (with the GPs counting double to reflect larger size.) I would have included the BoM data if it were available but their site sucks.

(If you want the tl;dr skip to the last chart)

Consistent with the data from last time, Brainstorm and Force continue to be both ubiquitous and highly performing at every level of the tournament data. It might be easy to gloss over but the combination bears dwelling on; usually the more popular a strategy is, the more you would expect diminishing returns as people prepare counters to that strategy. This is in fact a large part of what drives the change in the metagame, as many decks come and go (the data bears witness to the dramatic death of Maverick and Death and Taxes as relevant contenders, for instance.)

It won't let me post the excel sheet because this forum sucks but here's a snapshot of the raw data:



Here's how it breaks down in graph form, showing step by step advancement of each card from top 16 to wins:















Note: I included Karakas in colorless, because, land, and it could be run in any color deck; but it is probably has a 1:1 correlation with white decks and should be included as a white card. Well, I'm not fixing the data now, it's almost 7 am. Modify your perceptions of the colorless/white balance as it suits you.



And finally, averaging together the performance of all measured cards without weighting for field presence (so Brainstorm and Stifle affect performance equally):



Some take aways from the data:

- Red is the least played but best performing secondary color, although for reasons already mentioned with more of a red presence this might change as you get diminishing returns.

- TNN has probably had an extensive impact on the meta, but is not actually the primary beneficiary of this change, being an underperformer compared to most blue cards. Goyf has certainly suffered for its presence, and green as a whole.

- Wasteland continues to be probably drastically overplayed, the hype over Deathrite isn't really justified, Clique is actually a better performing three drop than TNN probably reflecting combo's presence, and Loam and P-Fire should see more play.

- Once-greats or at least promising cards that showed up too little to compile reliable data include Elspeth, KotR, Faithless Looting, Young Pyromance, B-Wish, pretty obviously Geist, Goblin Lackey.

And ultimately:

It shouldn't be surprising, because the data just confirms what most people should already know: Blue is dominant as a presence in the format, and still underplayed relative to its performance. What this means is that the primary reason blue isn't more played is probably just people refusing to play blue.

No particular engine or kill condition can be reasonably blamed for blue's dominance, although Delver seems like its most efficient kill condition. Blue simply has an arsenal of very efficient cards in every role at the moment. But at the core of these decks is the combination of Brainstorm and Force of Will, and very few people would suggest that Force of Will is a problem in the format.

There is no reason to believe that blue's ongoing and ever-increasing dominance over the format would be significantly checked by the banning of any single other card rather than Brainstorm, so if you think a format where the metagame is entirely blue-based into perpetuity is bad, you should be advocating either a banning of Brainstorm or a comprehensive banning of a number of problematic blue cards, probably something like Delver, TNN, SnT at a minimum.

That hardly can be laid at Brainstorm's feet though. One of the big factors that likely contributes to Blue's higher dominance today is True-Name Nemesis. Just prior to Nemesis, Death and Taxes and Jund were both huge contenders in the format. While those decks are still putting up some numbers, they suffer a lot from the presence of True-Name Nemesis. Attacking Brainstorm simply because Blue is dominant and Brainstorm is a (powerful) Blue card is imprecise and unhelpful.

Holy shit I did not stay up til 7 am compiling the data for you assholes to just chuckle-fuck your way through the thread saying, "Hrmm, but maybe Brainstorm isn't the culprit, how can we know, how can anyone know anything hrm hrm hrm."

(The other big factor being that as more pros and semi-pros pick up the format, there will be a higher penetration of decks allowing the pilot to outplay their opponent. Many of these decks are Blue.)

Is this the scenario where Sneak and Show is a skill testing deck and Elves is for dummies

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Quite the contrary. I'm not really sure what High Tide players you've been playing against, but I've played the MU quite a bit (as Miracles and as Stoneblade) and against very good players. Piercing/REBing a Brainstorm is such a hit-and-miss reckless play against High Tide. I understand the fact that you need to defend your stance that Brainstorm is the scariest card in everyone's deck, but unless you have upwards of 5 or 6 one mana counters in your hand then using them wastefully isn't likely to win you the game against a skilled pilot.

As far as I know, 100% of the players ever to get 9th with High Tide at a Legacy GP.

I've played against every iteration of High Tide with a wide range of decks since the format started. You want to do things to stop them setting up if you can. The deck is set up to be able to fight through quite a lot of hate the turn it goes off.

I'm not exactly going to tell you to just go play Modern; however, you do realize that the majority of Legacy players prefer Legacy and dislike Modern, yes? The defining difference is that Modern is a format that bans cards because of their power level, not because of their oppression. If we're banning cards in Legacy solely based on power level then we have a long line of contenders with Brainstorm right near the top. However, that isn't what Legacy is about. Until you can prove to anyone that Brainstorm is an oppressive card like Survival or Flash was rather than merely another staple like Force of Will and Wasteland then you have no argument other than your current stance of "I wish Legacy were more like Modern."

So yes, you are going to tell me to go play Modern.

I've played Legacy since before it was Legacy. Enough to actually not suffer under the delusion that every deck looking like minor palette swaps of each other isn't the fucking definition of Legacy.

As for proving...


Well, I put up numbers. What the fuck are you doing except running your mouth?

[btm10]

Well, I put up numbers. What the fuck are you doing except running your mouth?

Your numbers don't show anything that's going to change an opinion on this matter. The people arguing against banning Brainstorm are arguing that ubiquity is not a bannable offense. If it were Force would be equally bannable, and no one wants that. Once you dispense with ubiquity as a reason for banning, you have to actually consider why it's ok for everyone to be playing Force, but to have them playing Brainstorm alongside Force is a problem. Obviously, Force helps restrain combo and that's good, but don't pretend that a card is bannable because it's widely, or even universally played, because there's a huge, glaring exception in your own numbers. If you left Force stay because it keeps combo from dominating the format, why isn't Brainstorm's role of keeping control, tempo, and combo consistent and supporting tight lists that don't have to mulligan as much equally valuable?

This doesn't follow. Why is that a reason that the list should be as short as possible? Neglecting of course that the shortest possible list is, "no cards are banned."

I suppose we might even include Un- and promo cards like Gifts given at that point.

But this is of course nonsense. A card doesn't contribute positively to a format just by existing. I don't suppose it matters at all whether Sorrow's Path is banned or not.

Basing this reasoning on specific cards is probably not ideal, but there is some precedence for this; this has been their largely started policy guiding Vintage bannings for instance...Wizards may desire, or say that they desire a short list to satisfy some aesthetic purpose or the complaints of players; but this is not the function of a banned list (or indeed the same logic would argue that it should not exist at all.)
... It was implied that their keeping the banned list was good, but not that shortening the list was a goal in and of itself. While a silly statement to start with, you're implying meaning that isn't there.

This criticism is just horribly misguided, and completely neglects that all discussions of B/R changes take place in the context of defined formats. The discussion we're having takes place in the context of Legacy so I'm implicitly accepting that the total pool of cards printed contains some cards that meet my stated criterion for banning, which is that the format is better off without them because they're simply too egregiously broken to be allowed in to suggest otherwise is just arguing in bad faith. That being said, the fact that Sorrow's Path is unbanned still allows me to take it to a Legacy event as part of a deck if I so choose. It in no way harms the format for me to do this. Furthermore, if Wizards were to print a card that has a favorable interaction with Sorrow's Path and that card made its way into competitive decks, then having Sorrow's Path banned would be bad for the format because a competitive deck would have been needlessly weakened.

Of course, the Sorrow's Path example is just a distraction from the real benefits of a policy favoring a parsimonious banned/restricted list. The greatest benefit comes in situations like the ones in Vintage you refer to above. The best example in this case is Trinisphere. At the time, many players were calling for Workshop's restriction either in addition to or instead of Trinisphere's. The DCI, wisely, chose only to restrict Trinisphere because weakening or slowing Workshop decks would've led to combo becoming unsuitably powerful. Had parsimony not been a guiding principle, there would've been no reason to not just restrict Workshop as well as enough combo pieces to make combo equal in power to when unrestricted Workshop kept it at a healthy level. The desire to remove the fewest possible cards from the format has always been something guiding B/R policy, and the fact that you chose to ignore what Wizards' themselves have written about it baffles me.

Finally, the function of the banned list is to maintain format balance. The fact that Wizards'/the DCI have explicitly stated that shortening the list is a good thing suggests that they want the most cards possible to be legal in Eternal formats without making them unplayable. They may be too conservative in their pace of unbanning for my taste, but I'm going to take Laur at his word when he says that shorter lists are desirable. You may find the perspective on shortening the lists "silly", but I'm hardly putting words in his mouth.

This is truly obtuse logic. The best possible format is that which is the best possible; basing a format's superiority or inferiority based on the method of design is getting everything quite backwards.

Well shucks. I never realized that the best possible format was the best possible format! Everything's so clear now!

I deny that this is even a coherent argument, in fact.

You can do that, but you'd be wrong.

The purpose of a banned list is... what? To improve the format. Towards what end? If there's no other frame of reference you get nonsense like this, "The banned list is equal to the shortest ever," as if that means anything; a simple self-referential loop where the banned list is the measurement for its own success. An absurdity.

That's a pretty big distinction, albeit an artificial and arbitrary one.

What would a plausible, "natural", and non-arbitrary condition be? Because clearly "it's widely played" isn't enough.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Why will the impact be clear just because the current meta is (in this theoretical scenario) diverse and healthy?

If the impact of a card were so negative as to warrant re-banning, the meta effects would be clearly traceable to the card's unbanning in a format that was healthy and diverse prior to the unbanning. This is basically the argument behind banning TNN ("we had a healthy, diverse pre-TNN meta, and TNN decks are ruining it for everyone/spoiling diversity/whatever"), but it's applied to a new printing rather than an unbanning.

Wizards may say at some point that they want to keep the banned list as short as possible, but since the banned list exists this is obviously not true. They clearly are motivated by some other factors in their management of the format. They might choose to keep the list at its current length to curtail complaints, but that's a completely arbitrary metric.

This statement is just bizarre. The existence of the list implies that they want more than the minimum number of cards on it? They want to ban some cards just for shits? The banned and restricted lists exist to fix their mistakes in making cards that are either too powerful or that have excessively powerful interactions that are unforeseen because they don't playtest Legacy or Vintage. The fact that they only ban cards when their hand is basically forced, as well as dozens of written statements from the DCI and Wizards' over the years attest to the fact that they try to avoid bannings/restrictions when at all possible.

Anyway, your argument here, internally consistent or not, is rubbish. The non-existence of a chess piece called the barrister that always moves two to the left doesn't impoverish the game of chess. It's non existence and its existence and subsequent removal are, as far as the game is concerned, equal. A game is not improved by adding many irrelevant options, nor is it worsened by removing shitty and counterproductive options (from a strategy viewpoint.)

A game exists as a whole entity. Its value cannot be determined based on the piecemeal availability of one particular element which, if it would never have been printed, its absence you would assuredly not notice.

The problem with your analogy is that because the DCI isn't going to ban anything it doesn't have to ban, weak cards aren't at risk of banning in the first place. We aren't talking about playing without a fictitious chess piece of limited utility, we're talking about playing without knights. While removing the knight would certainly make strategies that were foiled by knights stronger, those strategies would only be good in a game with less strategic depth and fewer ways to outplay your opponent. In the case of Brainstorm, you may let Maverick or something similar come back, but why would anyone play that deck when they could play UWR or BUG Delver?

[JPoJohnson]

I don't see how these pride battles about e-peen are productive at all.

[testing32]

I don't see how these pride battles about e-peen are productive at all.

You're in the B&R thread on a forum for a hobby game and you're looking for something productive? It's all pointless and opinion based. I thought the whole point was to be an unproductive, entertaining time sink.

[DragoFireheart]

You're in the B&R thread on a forum for a hobby game and you're looking for something productive? It's all pointless and opinion based. I thought the whole point was to be an unproductive, entertaining time sink.

Which is why IBA is better than most of you: the entertainment value is priceless.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

There's many reasons for my superiority.

Your numbers don't show anything that's going to change an opinion on this matter. The people arguing against banning Brainstorm are arguing that ubiquity is not a bannable offense. If it were Force would be equally bannable, and no one wants that. Once you dispense with ubiquity as a reason for banning, you have to actually consider why it's ok for everyone to be playing Force, but to have them playing Brainstorm alongside Force is a problem. Obviously, Force helps restrain combo and that's good, but don't pretend that a card is bannable because it's widely, or even universally played, because there's a huge, glaring exception in your own numbers. If you left Force stay because it keeps combo from dominating the format, why isn't Brainstorm's role of keeping control, tempo, and combo consistent and supporting tight lists that don't have to mulligan as much equally valuable?

We don't dispense with ubiquity. Brainstorm is actually slightly more ubiquitous than Force, but it's true enough that they're both well over the historic banning threshold in formats (usually well shy of 50%.)

What we posit is that Force of Will provides a particular service to the format that grants it a stay of execution; in this case, neutering the existence of Turn 1 combo.

Brainstorm's service of being generically good all the time in every deck, by contrast, is not actually desirable. The contrast is evident in that some decks will side out Force of Will against a lot of matchups; or even, on rare occasion, keep some copies in the board to start with. You don't see people boarding out Brainstorm, by comparison. Not even if the opponent is running Spirit of the Labyrinth.

This criticism is just horribly misguided, and completely neglects that all discussions of B/R changes take place in the context of defined formats. The discussion we're having takes place in the context of Legacy so I'm implicitly accepting that the total pool of cards printed contains some cards that meet my stated criterion for banning, which is that the format is better off without them

Oh, so you do agree that the purpose of the banned list is to improve the format. Then what are we arguing about?

because they're simply too egregiously broken to be allowed in

What an odd modifier. What do you mean by it?

Of course, the Sorrow's Path example is just a distraction from the real benefits of a policy favoring a parsimonious banned/restricted list. The greatest benefit comes in situations like the ones in Vintage you refer to above. The best example in this case is Trinisphere. At the time, many players were calling for Workshop's restriction either in addition to or instead of Trinisphere's. The DCI, wisely, chose only to restrict Trinisphere because weakening or slowing Workshop decks would've led to combo becoming unsuitably powerful. Had parsimony not been a guiding principle, there would've been no reason to not just restrict Workshop as well as enough combo pieces to make combo equal in power to when unrestricted Workshop kept it at a healthy level. The desire to remove the fewest possible cards from the format has always been something guiding B/R policy, and the fact that you chose to ignore what Wizards' themselves have written about it baffles me.

You've completely contradicted yourself here. If banning Workshop in addition to Trinisphere would have been bad for the format, then that is the reason it should not have happened. You yourself as much as say so, or you would have argued; "Trying to keep the list as short as possible is a good guiding principle. For instance, when Mishra's Workshop wasn't banned in Vintage, the list remained one shorter."

Nonsensical of course but isn't that the point? The goal of the banned list is to improve play in the format remaining, not anything related intrinsically to itself.

At best maybe you mean to argue that reluctance to ban cards is a good accompanying principle because it tends to lead to better results than it would otherwise, but this is a very different creature from saying that a short list is a goal in and of itself.

Well shucks. I never realized that the best possible format was the best possible format! Everything's so clear now!

I'm glad this has been embiggening.

What would a plausible, "natural", and non-arbitrary condition be? Because clearly "it's widely played" isn't enough.

Ah, see, now we're regressing. Because it makes the format worse, obviously.

This statement is just bizarre. The existence of the list implies that they want more than the minimum number of cards on it? They want to ban some cards just for shits?

You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the minimum number of banned cards is greater than 0 for any reason.

The banned and restricted lists exist to fix their mistakes in making cards that are either too powerful or that have excessively powerful interactions that are unforeseen because they don't playtest Legacy or Vintage. The fact that they only ban cards when their hand is basically forced, as well as dozens of written statements from the DCI and Wizards' over the years attest to the fact that they try to avoid bannings/restrictions when at all possible.

Laziness or fear of action by basic definition cannot be a guiding principle. The fact that they avoid utilizing their tool for improving the format doesn't mean that its purpose is avoidance, anymore than the purpose of an unused stairmaster is to sit in the closet while you continue to get fat.

The problem with your analogy is that because the DCI isn't going to ban anything it doesn't have to ban, weak cards aren't at risk of banning in the first place. We aren't talking about playing without a fictitious chess piece of limited utility, we're talking about playing without knights. While removing the knight would certainly make strategies that were foiled by knights stronger, those strategies would only be good in a game with less strategic depth and fewer ways to outplay your opponent. In the case of Brainstorm, you may let Maverick or something similar come back, but why would anyone play that deck when they could play UWR or BUG Delver?

It's pretty clearly silly to pretend that Maverick has less strategic depth and decision trees and WUR or Bug Delver, it's just worse in the meta.

It's also pretty silly to act as if we couldn't come up with too-good chess pieces. The barrister might not be any good, but the chancellor of the exchequer can switch positions with any other piece you own on the board and then immediately move one space in any direction; and every time it takes an opposing piece you can replenish one of your defeated pieces anywhere on your half of the board. How powerful! How interesting! How many decisions to make!

Yet chess is not worse off for not having a particular piece that negates the existence of every other piece.

[TsumiBand]

As long as both players get the same pieces in the same amounts, and they do not go overboard in their range of motion or require something foolish like multiple captures to remove, Chess players will always be more or less 'as balanced' as they are today.

Where the Chess analogy falls apart is when White's back row is fundamentally less powerful than Black's. If Black starts with extra Queens while White only has one - there's your problem.

Likewise if Black's pieces somehow just had more range than White's - pawns/a king that could always move as many as 2 squares - this would express the balancing issues present in Magic more appropriately.

This is a tough 1-to-1 conversion to make when talking about spells, which is why I tend to shy away from it if we aren't talking about dual lands. IMHO - one would need to establish each color's queens, rooks, etc.. internally, and then review each color's line up side-by-side.

The closest we typically come to this is identifying staple cards, but they aren't typically considered under Chess analogues. No one would take the statement "Tarmogoyf is the Rook of Maverick" seriously, it's more than a little absurd.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

[btm10]

We don't dispense with ubiquity. Brainstorm is actually slightly more ubiquitous than Force, but it's true enough that they're both well over the historic banning threshold in formats (usually well shy of 50%.)

What we posit is that Force of Will provides a particular service to the format that grants it a stay of execution; in this case, neutering the existence of Turn 1 combo.

Brainstorm's service of being generically good all the time in every deck, by contrast, is not actually desirable. The contrast is evident in that some decks will side out Force of Will against a lot of matchups; or even, on rare occasion, keep some copies in the board to start with. You don't see people boarding out Brainstorm, by comparison. Not even if the opponent is running Spirit of the Labyrinth.

A card hasn't been banned for generic goodness since the pre-combo winter era. Even then, Necropotence survived the Black Summer and was still a Tier 1 deck after Strip Mine and Hymn were banned despite having a slightly lower meta penetration than Brainstorm does now.

It's pretty clearly silly to pretend that Maverick has less strategic depth and decision trees and WUR or Bug Delver, it's just worse in the meta.

It's also pretty silly to act as if we couldn't come up with too-good chess pieces. The barrister might not be any good, but the chancellor of the exchequer can switch positions with any other piece you own on the board and then immediately move one space in any direction; and every time it takes an opposing piece you can replenish one of your defeated pieces anywhere on your half of the board. How powerful! How interesting! How many decisions to make!

Yet chess is not worse off for not having a particular piece that negates the existence of every other piece.

It's not silly at all to suggest that Maverick has less strategic depth and decision trees than the Tempo decks, because it does. There might be an argument for Death and Taxes having a comparable depth due to the amount of self- and opponent interaction it has.

I deliberately chose an extant chess piece rather than making an overpowered one up because to make one up would be granting your premise. To suggest that Brainstorm "negates the existence of every other card" or that blue "negates the existence of every other color" is preposterous. The only cards Brainstorm negates are the inferior cantrips like Serum Visions, and blue is going to be widely played no matter what because it is objectively the best color. The increase in Blue's penetration in the post TNN world has, as the meta has adjusted even enriched the format by improving the standing of decks like Lands which benefit from the slower meta. The only unfortunate thing is that decks like Lands and Painter are low penetration because of the cost of Tabernacles and Recruiters. Beyond that, while the remaining non-Elves decks have Blue for Brainstorm and countermagic, the top 8s are strategically diverse, with midrange (Stoneblade/Deathblade), control (BUG, Miracles), and combo (Sneak and Show, ANT) all represented. This is what a healthy eternal metagame looks like.

Without Workshop, Blue will always be the best so long as it has the best attributes. I may not agree with Barook's desire to have TNN banned, but I have no problem his proposal to have Wizards' print stack interaction and library manipulation in other colors. That would almost assuredly enrich the format, simply by giving it more viable cards and strategies. To take a gambit on reducing Blue's penetration by banning Brainstorm is unlikely to work at best because the decks running it will switch (mostly) to Preordain, and (most) combo will add Serum Visions and even though some changes will occur, they are not likely to be larger than swapping the lowest-ranked Blue-based deck in the top 8 for the highest ranked nonblue deck in the top 16. At worst, many of the decks running Brainstorm are hobbled and strategies like tempo are largely replaced by traditional aggro and/or burn, which are certainly the least desirable strategies in any meta.

[Barook]

I may not agree with Barook's desire to have TNN banned, but I have no problem his proposal to have Wizards' print stack interaction and library manipulation in other colors. That would almost assuredly enrich the format, simply by giving it more viable cards and strategies.

That only works if said cards aren't very splashable, otherwise, blue just cherry-picks the best cards and continues to dominate.

Blue can keep being the color with the best filter options, but by no means it should have the best beaters as well. That's why the parity is broken now. TNN, Delver and S&T all represent creatures that are head and shoulders above everything else in the format in terms of power level, with DRS and SFM probably being the only things that can compare to that.

[btm10]

That only works if said cards aren't very splashable, otherwise, blue just cherry-picks the best cards and continues to dominate.

Blue can keep being the color with the best filter options, but by no means it should have the best beaters as well. That's why the parity is broken now. TNN, Delver and S&T all represent creatures that are head and shoulders above everything else in the format in terms of power level, with DRS and SFM probably being the only things that can compare to that.

Making the cards playable but not splashable is a pretty high bar to clear. I guess they could print a cycle of cards that costs WW, BB, RR, GG, UU, and have the nonblue ones do something that's good in Legacy but marginal in other formats and the blue one being some sort of effect that's just sort of "meh" overall like bounce. But I think it's telling that when it comes to color-appropriate stack interaction, Orim's Chant, Silence, and Abeyance are about as good as it gets, and they're essentially unplayed despite being backbreaking if resolved against combo and, particularly in Chant's case, not bad against a lot of other decks. Green is the only color with not-broken card draw/library maipulation that's even comparable to blue's, although at least Sylvan Library sees some play.

I'm not super happy that blue has the best beaters, but I'd still rather wait and see other colors get better stuff before banning anything, especially a creature.