All B/R update speculation.

[menace13]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er

[Nielsie]

The only advantage of Jar is that it doesn't give your opponent a fresh hand to untap with, but 5 mana for a symmetrical draw is still bad for combo. It would be busted for MUD and 12-post however.

But would it be a problem if MUD and 12 post got to play with this? These decks are now so inconsistant because of their draws and topdecks. Memory Jar would fix this. Many times people who oppose a Brainstorm ban give the argument that the best solution is to provide more card advantage and filtering for the other colors. Memory Jar is doing exactly this but within very strict deck constraints.

Furthermore, it's not like there isn't a 7/7 lifelink draw 7 flying demon being cast consistently for only 3 mana... So the 'draw 7' instruction on Memeroy Jar shouldn't be the only reason for banning it.

[Barook]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er

There are still ~30% nonblue decks left. Wizards are sure working hard to eliminate the rest, too. The average count of blue decks each years since Delver is only increasing.

[btm10]

Who cares? What is the most that can happen if TC stays? The format cant get anymore fucking blue-er

The (implicit) argument about Cruise being banworthy while Brainstorm isn't is that the blueness of the format isn't a problem (for the record, I don't think it is, but that's a separate discussion), but reducing the tempo/midrange matchup and tempo and midrange mirrors to a Treasure Cruise arms race is a problem. In principle, I agree with this, but I'm not convinced that it will come to pass yet.

[HSCK]

There are still ~30% nonblue decks left. Wizards are sure working hard to eliminate the rest, too. The average count of blue decks each years since Delver is only increasing.

Your stats continue to be nonsensical and seemingly drawn from nowhere.

I think it's hilarious that so many of the users that thought TC wouldn't be that good are on the ban train. It's absurdly powerful.

[dog_koko]

I can't believe what I am reading!!! I expected this in Modern players but in Legacy ones...

You are crying Wizards to ban a good card instead of trying to "hate" it. I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

I know this card is really good but a magic player can break this

[Zombie]

"good card"

[Lemnear]

But would it be a problem if MUD and 12 post got to play with this? These decks are now so inconsistant because of their draws and topdecks. Memory Jar would fix this. Many times people who oppose a Brainstorm ban give the argument that the best solution is to provide more card advantage and filtering for the other colors. Memory Jar is doing exactly this but within very strict deck constraints.

Furthermore, it's not like there isn't a 7/7 lifelink draw 7 flying demon being cast consistently for only 3 mana... So the 'draw 7' instruction on Memeroy Jar shouldn't be the only reason for banning it.

What constraints? They are already running a manabase which gets absurd within 3-4 turns if not immediately molested by landdestruction. There is no adjustment to be made to run Jar. SDT + Jar would just make these decks pretty consistant, Having no color-restriction, 5+ mana by turn 5 and drawing 8 cards per turn makes any non-combo deck without wastelands near unplayable. Jar gets around the natural weakness of those decks which is running out of handcards pretty fast and going into a shabby topdeck-mode.

You miss that S&T is a two-card combo, while Jar is just a single, colorless card which fits naturally into their manabase.

Brainstorm is not card advantage but card quality. After resolving Brainstorm, you do not have more card in hand (no card advantage) but better card in hand (card quality).

Alex B. disagrees ;)

[FoolofaTook]

If the meta turns into Elves, UR Delver and Miracles with the other 2 of the top 8 slots being filled by a rotation of blue lists with the occasional Burn or other tight non-blue list it's hard to see where WotC goes with the ban train.

If UR Delver is getting two top 8 slots consistently and Miracles is getting 2 and 1 or 2 other blue lists are getting a slot it's hard to ban Treasure Cruise off of that. WotC has clearly indicated at this point that they have little interest in banning Brainstorm, so maybe they just let things ride.

If UR Delver is getting 4 top 8 slots, which is very unlikely to happen, then it becomes easier to see Treasure Cruise getting banned. That would be the Survival of the Fittest decision all over again.

If there are 28-32 Brainstorms in most top 8's and UR Delver is not heavily over represented, well that's where the meta has been occasionally in the past and it'll be interesting to see if WotC thinks anything has changed.

I think Elves is going to save blue spells from the ban cycle in January/February. What happens after that is anybody's guess and probably depends at least partly on the broken card in the next set.

[nedleeds]

I can't believe what I am reading!!! I expected this in Modern players but in Legacy ones...

You are crying Wizards to ban a good card instead of trying to "hate" it. I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

I know this card is really good but a magic player can break this

Can't you just brainstorm, draw more gas and shuffle the dead cruise away and win anyway? Without Brainstorm Cruise will be far less consistent <obv>. Brainstorm is enabling all this idiocy because it's hopelessly overpowered.

[nedleeds]

I think it's hilarious that so many of the users that thought TC wouldn't be that good are on the ban train. It's absurdly powerful.

Yet Brainstorm still crushes it in usage. Wow ... Brainstorm must be more than absurdly powerful. Plaid?

[Dice_Box]

[Barook]

Can't you just brainstorm, draw more gas and shuffle the dead cruise away and win anyway? Without Brainstorm Cruise will be far less consistent <obv>. Brainstorm is enabling all this idiocy because it's hopelessly overpowered.

Brainstorm is easier to use.

Besides, Treasure Cruise isn't even out a month yet. There are still enough people who think that TC isn't the real deal. Its numbers are going to explode after GP Brainstorm.

[Star|Scream]

Yet Brainstorm still crushes it in usage. Wow ... Brainstorm must be more than absurdly powerful. Plaid?

Yeah, but brainstorm is the most skill-intensive card in Legacy.

Wouldn't you rather be playing Modern?

[Michael Keller]

You can't realistically cast a Treasure Cruise until turn three on average, turn two if you have a sick draw. Since you're basically using every single card in your graveyard as a colorless mana source, a turn three "draw three" spell isn't that attractive. However, what is attractive is its cost to actually play once you incidentally have seven cards in your graveyard. In some sort of way, it is like Ancestral Visions in that you're firing it off after four turns with an initial T1 investment of a single blue mana as opposed to a single blue investment on turn three or four. But an Ancestral Recall it isn't, because you're just not firing the card off on turn one after dumping a hand full of free mana. Not even close.

Cruise, on the other hand, forces you to play cards out of your hand and fill the graveyard quickly in order to cast it for a single blue mana on (generally) the third or fourth turn.

All of this aside, Treasure Cruise will never be banned unless an unholy amount of people play it and it becomes degenerate, which it really isn't. Brainstorm is by far a more powerful card and that's been played in who knows how many decks over the last nineteen years. Cruise is a powerful spell, but IMO it's not anywhere close to being considered ban-worthy. Not before a spell that costs three mana (2U) and adds fifteen mana to your mana pool.

[DLifshitz]

I am a U/R player and you don't know how bad is TC once your opponent has countered the first one, you have a TC in your hand, no cards in GY and you have to play on topdeck... nice!!!

This is the worst-case scenario that doesn't come up very often. It's pretty easy to dodge Daze and even Spell Pierce when you're casting TC for 1 blue. And extra TCs can be pitched or filtered away. I'm not saying anything should be banned (yet), just that TC is not exactly easy to stop/hate out.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Counterspell and Envelop are barely played so countering TC rarely happens unless it is Force of Will in which case you 2 for 1 your opponent so that is fine usually..

Anyway if something gets the Axe it should not be TC since there are more powerful blue cards.

[btm10]

Anyway if something gets the Axe it should not be TC since there are more powerful blue cards.

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

[Gheizen64]

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

You're just arguing semantics. I can say that TC isn't nowhere as good as ancestral becaues of ten thousands reasons, and the same can be said about BS. But the truth is that both cards do a pretty good ancestral impression, and i think data will support BS being closer to Ancestral than TC (aka played in more decks, better correlation between n°played and placement etc...). You can play that bet if you want, but the truth is that all the fabled "BS" answers like Chains or SoL are effective against TC and not against BS just because TC can't be used first 2-3 turns of the game, leaving you time to deploy your proactive answers.

But the truth is that BS support crowd will never admit that the card is way too close to recall to be considered fair and they'll hide forever under the "it's other cards", "it's skill intensive", "you can play modern if you don't like it". Arguments and data just aren't liked around here i guess, better to disregard them and put your faith in the blue church of broken cards.
Meanwhile Twist, Vise, Desire and Survival are still banned.

[Gheizen64]

This is why no one takes the ban Brainstorm crowd seriously. The goal of the banned list isn't to balance the colors, it isn't to make your shitty pet deck good, and it isn't to make the format rock-paper-scissors. It's to prevent any single strategy from becoming dominant (cf., Flash), to keep excessively swingy cards, obviously broken cards, and some powerful engines out of the format (Balance, Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Necropotence), and to maintain the format at an acceptable speed without consistent, good, turn 1 decks (artifact mana, Demonic, Vampiric, and Mystical Tutors, Tinker again).

As much as some people want Brainstorm to be part of the first or second groups, it's not; no deck has Brainstorm as its primary strategy, and a single resolved Brainstorm isn't anywhere near the power level of a single resolved Ancestral, Balance, or Tinker. While Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage, its restriction was essentially the cost of having Gush unrestricted, something that isn't really on the table for Legacy as far as we know, and I think that's a far more reasonable and even interesting discussion than the one we're having now.

HSCK has done great work showing that the format has been more diverse over the last 11 months than it was over the year preceding them; the complaint that Brainstrom kills format diversity is objectively untrue unless you define diversity as "nonblue creature-based strategies that aren't Elves, Jund, or Death and Taxes."

Cruise is a whole different question than Brainstorm, and someone may eventually be able to make an argument that it falls within category #2.

You're just arguing semantics. I can say that TC isn't nowhere as good as ancestral becaues of ten thousands reasons, and the same can be said about BS. But the truth is that both cards do a pretty good ancestral impression, and i think data will support BS being closer to Ancestral than TC (aka played in more decks, better correlation between n°played and placement etc...). You can play that bet if you want, but the truth is that all the fabled "BS" answers like Chains or SoL are effective against TC and not against BS just because TC can't be used first 2-3 turns of the game, leaving you time to deploy your proactive answers. This mean you actually have a chance to fight TC, unlike BS which is often free Mulligan T2.

BS support crowd will never admit that the card is way too close to recall to be considered fair and they'll hide forever under the "it's the other cards and not BS", "it's skill intensive", "you can play modern if you don't like it".
Meanwhile Twist, Vise, Desire and Survival are still banned.