Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Don't you think it's kind of dramatic to suggest that the fate of an entire format rests on one card?Originally Posted by JanoschEausH
If they ban Brainstorm one of a zillion other 1cc or 2cc blue cantrips will become next best and take it's place.
No other cantrips offers the same mix of card selection and card filtering though. do you know how shitty storm would be if you couldnt brainstorm to swap lands for other stuff to get hellbent, or how awkward control would be without the ability to protect 4-drops/counters from discard etc. Brainstorm, alongside Wasteland, and Force of Will, at least, are pretty much pillars of the format.
I'd be interested what other pillars do we have. (If the pillars thing is even real.) Goyf? Maybe back in 2010.
Uhm, got it: Delver.
Storm is 3% of the meta right now according to mtgtop8.com. Hard to see how doing anything at all to them has a major impact on the meta.
4-drops and counters get protected by counters. Brainstorm to hide a card from discard is the single factor that most invalidates discard as a playable archetype.
Look, Brainstorm is the every card. It does so many different things that you either play it or you play Elves, Burn or D&T at this point. That's not a healthy card in the meta. It shouldn't be available if it's an auto-include in most top 8 lists. That's exactly the type of card that WotC has always claimed they'd ban if it presented itself. Well, it's presented itself.
Just look at all the mechanics that are broken by Brainstorm.
Top of the deck (Delver, Miracles)
Shuffle effects (fetches, SFM)
Filling the graveyard (Delve, Goyf)
Spell triggers (Pyromancer, prowess, storm)
Discard defense
Whenever Wizards explores this kind of design space, Brainstorm will always be the best companion card. Treasure Cruise is ridiculous, but it's possible that both it and Brainstorm are broken.
The thing invalidating discard as an archetype is the fact that it's actively terrible. Pox has been around as an archetype for ages and has never generated more than a niche following or token performances despite being more oppressive than a pure discard deck. This happens because it has no way of pressing the positional advantage it generates, and by the time you change the deck enough to capitalize on your disruption, you're playing BUG, Deadguy, Jund, or Junk.
As for this being an opportunity to ban Brainstorm, the only way you could conclude that the metagame shifts coinciding with the legality of Khans are cause to ban Brainstorm instead of Treasure Cruise is if you already had it out for Brainstorm. I'm opposed to bans in all but the most egregious circumstances on the principle that the banned list should be as small as possible while still differentiating Legacy for Vintage and Modern and having the format not fall apart from brokenness, but Treasure Cruise is severely broken, and my opinion hardens the more I'm playtesting for GP NJ. So many blue-deck matches come down to who resolves Cruise more, and the sudden surge in UR Delver is almost completely attributable to how good Cruise is at fueling Young Pyromancer and Monastery Swiftspear. The fact that it powers up the other blue archetypes is just icing on the cake.
I never liked Delver and wouldn't mind it being banned, so I can use my Flying Men again! However I seriously doubt it's ban worthy though.
Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:
No the thing invalidating black as a core is pretty much brainstorm. Thoughtseize is a very strong card, and Cabal therapy too. If you weren't certain to whiff against blue decks 50% of the times, you'd see much more black around.
No one is arguing for discard as the strategy of a deck, but as the supporting pillar, much like FoW + Daze are the supporting pillar of every blue strat that allow it to be good against everything.
Fixed that for you!
I don't know how many people have actualy noticed but lately the core of blue decks isn't anymore 4 Brainstorm, 4 Force of Will. 3-4 Ponder is now in every blue deck too. This format is getting pretty damn stale when about 12-16 cards overlap in 70% of the meta...
Certainly Brainstorm is the most bannable card among those followed by Ponder.
Something will have to happen eventually. The alternative would be to print cheap draw hate cards.
Something like Notion Thief, Chains of Meph. , Spirit of the Labyrinth on steroids. Maybe an artifact for in the mold of Relic of Progenitus.
Relic of Card Draw Hate (1)
T - When target player draws a card that is not the first on his turn, he draws no card instead.
1 - Sacrifice Relic, target player can't draw cards this turn besides the first card. Draw a card.
Maybe add a static clause to it "players can't draw cards on their opponents turn" with some additional wording to prevent abusing otherwise symmetrical effects like Wheel of Fortune.
The problem with this idea is that to save a single card you'd hose what blue does in the normal course of business, which is to cantrip and draw extra cards.
Much better just to get rid of the card that is most abusive in that circumstance. It's not Treasure Cruise, because we already had 60-70% Brainstorm penetration before Treasure Cruise was printed. It's Brainstorm. That's what feeds the 60-70% blue meta in the final tables.
I think hosing blue card draw is better than banning stuff.
Black graveyard engines (core black ability) have many hate cards and nothing to fight through since WotC still has not managed to print cards that combat gy hate by for example putting exiled cards back into the GY.
The card draw hate they printed so far is just too fragile and in specific colors.
I like hate cards more since that shifts the powerlevel a little towards Jund or Team Italia and other non-blue strategies. Just banning Brainstorm for example would imo just result in the same decks still being on top just not playing Brainstorm.
The fact is that format needs hate cards in the worst way against blue. It's mindboggling to think how much saturation there is in the meta of Brainstorm/Ponder/Force of Will/Treasure Cruise but the hate cards you see that punish those cards in sideboard are very very few (Thalia, Spirit of the Lab, Notion Thief, Chains of M.)...
Also unban Black Vise and Mind Twist god damn it! Black Vise is perfectly reasonable and Mind Twist also and even got worse due to Treasure Cruise basically countering a big mind twist.
Harsh hate cards just make for miserable gameplay. Yay I resolved RIP I wons such skill wow. Is fun cackling once, gets old pretty fast. Then again, people play Show and Tell.
Or think about Dredge.
Banning brainstorm does very little to improve the internal inconsistencies of non-blue decks. Instead of un-mulligans and hiding cards from discard via BS, blue would use the second best cantrip (Preordain?) and still be miles ahead speaking of filtering for CQ and situational solutions. Until other colors get these tools which should be present in the game that wishes to be more than a Random Numbers contest, not much will change.
Inb4 "but blue would absorb those CQ effects" and "color balance doesn't matter". Why would blue absorb anything when it already has its own tools? And if the color balance is unimportant, then why it shouldn't be there?
Ok, blue part of color pie, blah, blah, color of trickeries, wutnot... The color pie is more than blurred in this moment in time, and in fact it maybe ceased to matter long time ago, at least ever since blue has everything.
But I worte this several times before and I'm not going to repeat myself again. The reasons why this situation sucks (be it price of blue duals, etc.) were already listed, moreover I'm starting to dislike how WotC are having fun of the players' base when they repeat the old mistakes (7/7 flying lifelink Yawgmoth's Bargain) and add absurd cards to the pool with a clear reasoning that "they're blue, that's what blue does" while other colors get jackshit so you're either limited to hatedecks, topdeck roulette, blue splash or semi-casual builds; elves will forgive.
Similar cards exist, e.g. Riftsweeper. Their weakness is that it's a hate against hate which is ridiculously crappy.
SotL would have been so much better being a 2/2 with flash
Agree.
Wouldn't the same cantrip mafia blue decks just all then play 4 of these? Furthering the inbreeding. This would be an auto include and would reduce deck building space from the ~48 cards down to ~44 cards.
The card holding all the insane 18 land mana bases, keeping targeted discard in the gutter, and providing unequalled ability to unmulligan almost any hand with a fetchland is brainstorm. It's power level is an order of magnitude higher than Cruise or Ponder, it's saturation is also double. Anyone calling for a Cruise ban and not Brainstorm is delusional or feels ban criteria shouldn't include 'Cards I like'.
#skillintensive #pillaroftheformat #formatstaple #reducesvariance #goplaymodern #everyonewouldquit #somethingnonsensicalaboutvintage
Captain Obvious? Doesn't die to -1/-1 effects like Golgari Charm, Electrickery, Zealous Persecution AND with an additional ability without costing more? It's like saying "damn! SFM would be better if it had shroud!"
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Hand 1 is a keeper since you'll either fill your yard enough to cruise or certainly find Brainstorm with that many Ponders. While you are doing all this you'll surely flip your 3/2 flyer for U.Lets play a minigame. Find the broken card. 4 possible starting hands:
Hand 2 could be a keep on the draw. You'll see another card, and then hopefully get your Island and see 3 or 3+1 random from Ponder. On the play it still might be fine, since you play the cantrip mafia and only have to put like ~18 lands in your deck there's a good chance your Ponder shows you some gas. Maybe it shows you pitch magic and a card to setup Delver and you're fine with just giving that a go. You also have another fetch if the 3rd card on Ponder is poop.
Hand 3 is fucking fantastic since it has Brainstorm and 2 fetches. you get to Ancestral and maybe save an Ancestral for a couple of turns later oh ... and you get a flying 3/2 for U.
Hand 4 is fantastic also you are likely Cruising on the 3rd or 4th turn with a flipped delver.
In order of power
1) Brainstorm
2) Ponder
3) Delver
4) Cruise
Cruise is the biggest brick in your opener, the worst to have multiples of in your opener and is subject to graveyard disruption.
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