All B/R update speculation.

[FoolofaTook]

Wizards doesn't ban things based off hard data, you're not going to find a "magic number."

I think everyone needs to understand this:
Wizards does not consider Brainstorm an archetype.
Ergo, Wizards does not feel any one archetype is over preforming.
Conclusion: do nothing.

I get that people feel one way or another. Your feelings are irrelevant, Wizards feels that the format is healthy because no one deck is over-preforming.

Let me break it down more simply:
Is Brainstorm overpowered? Probably.
Is it a problem? Maybe.
Does Wizards feel like it is enough to make a banning? No, because it isn't an archetype and Wizards has only ever banned archetype defining cards.

What archetype did Mental Misstep define?

[H]

What archetype did Mental Misstep define?

OK, nit-pick lodged, I wasn't playing Legacy when Misstep was legal.

[testing32]

OK, nit-pick lodged, I wasn't playing Legacy when Misstep was legal.

To get you up to speed, it was a healthier format than we have now. You could play goblins, hivemind, stoneblade, NO/Rug, maverick and one drop zoo.

Edit: and when they banned it they said the format was becoming too blue.

[H]

To get you up to speed, it was a healthier format than we have now. You could play goblins, hivemind, stoneblade, NO/Rug, maverick and one drop zoo.

Edit: and when they banned it they said the format was becoming too blue.

Their reason was garbage. It was simply because it was a mistake, the incorrect approach to attempt to "slow down" the format. I doubt they felt like admitting that in wide release.

I'm definitely missing something though, why is that "healthier" than the meta we have now? Now you can play 3-4 different Delver decks, 2 different Stoneblade decks, Miracles, Death and Taxes, Sneak and Show and Elves.

Shit, apparently, you can also play Landstill, MUD, Storm, and who the hell knows what else. You can probably play (almost) anything you want if you just know how to really play it well.

[testing32]

Their reason was garbage. It was simply because it was a mistake, the incorrect approach to attempt to "slow down" the format. I doubt they felt like admitting that in wide release.

I'm definitely missing something though, why is that "healthier" than the meta we have now? Now you can play 3-4 different Delver decks, 2 different Stoneblade decks, Miracles, Death and Taxes, Sneak and Show and Elves.

Shit, apparently, you can also play Landstill, MUD, Storm, and who the hell knows what else. You can probably play (almost) anything you want if you just know how to really play it well.

Actually, they said that they hoped mental misstep would help fight brainstorm but it had the opposite effect. It's the first in a long list of cards printed and failed to combat brainstorm.

You realize that D&T was the 3rd most represented deck on day 2 and it got absolutely crushed on Sunday, by the blue decks, with no copies making it to the top 16, right?

Edit: yeah, you can play a ton of decks in any format if you don't care about losing a lot.

[FoolofaTook]

Their reason was garbage. It was simply because it was a mistake, the incorrect approach to attempt to "slow down" the format. I doubt they felt like admitting that in wide release.

I'm definitely missing something though, why is that "healthier" than the meta we have now? Now you can play 3-4 different Delver decks, 2 different Stoneblade decks, Miracles, Death and Taxes, Sneak and Show and Elves.

Shit, apparently, you can also play Landstill, MUD, Storm, and who the hell knows what else. You can probably play (almost) anything you want if you just know how to really play it well.

The MUD player got very lucky to survive 15 rounds. The rest of the top 8 used Brainstorm to decrease variability. We don't know what a meta absent Brainstorm would look like but the odds are pretty good more people would be willing to play something other than blue, given the slight increase in variability for blue lists.

If you don't understand that Brainstorm is the best card in the format by a wide margin then I don't really know what to say. I can point at the top 8 (again) and tell you to just "look at the bones, man, look at the bones!" but you probably still won't get what I'm saying.

[H]

I guess being 13-2 means you are losing a lot? Sure, Brainstorm gives you cumulative advantage that will be borne out in a 15 round event. That means Death and Taxes is unplayable?

[menace13]

Spiders would casually switch to an all grain diet in that case

Or continue eating flies and larvae of other indigenous species. Said the spider to the fly ;p

I guess being 13-2 means you are losing a lot? Sure, Brainstorm gives you cumulative advantage that will be borne out in a 15 round event. That means Death and Taxes is unplayable?

You realize that D&T was the 3rd most represented deck on day 2 and it got absolutely crushed on Sunday, by the blue decks, with no copies making it to the top 16, right?

:D

[testing32]

I guess being 13-2 means you are losing a lot? Sure, Brainstorm gives you cumulative advantage that will be borne out in a 15 round event. That means Death and Taxes is unplayable?

..........

You need to stop focusing on outliers. Nothing is unplayable if you like playing a suboptimal deck.

[FoolofaTook]

I guess being 13-2 means you are losing a lot? Sure, Brainstorm gives you cumulative advantage that will be borne out in a 15 round event. That means Death and Taxes is unplayable?

Death and Taxes was the 3rd most common archetype to make day two but none of them made the top 16. 14 lists that included Brainstorm made the top 16.

That's what I'm talking about.

[H]

Brainstorm is obviously the best card in Legacy. You are not getting my point. Wizards doesn't feel it's a problem though, so you are basically pissing into the wind.

[jafar]

The problem here is a bit complex, let me explain my 2 cents

The problem of legacy is his Speed. Often you are dead before t3 - t4 for casting your beloved Supreme Verdict.

In a perfect world, Delver should be black, TNN White, and tarmo's casting cost GG. Just sayin.

Brainstorm is the evil? Nope at all. BS brings "need for skill" in the format and for a game this is simply a good thing.

A cantrip can't let you win, a stupid card instead yes.

If you are using your BS for finding a S&T, wich one is the stupid card?

To sum up: ban Delver and S&T, they are really unfun, it should be enough.

In any case, it's a game.

Peace

Bye

[FoolofaTook]

Brainstorm is obviously the best card in Legacy. You are not getting my point. Wizards doesn't feel it's a problem though, so you are basically pissing into the wind.

Unfortunately, for WotC, the reek of hypocrisy on things like Mental Misstep and Brainstorm is beginning to become quite strong. If they choose not to ban Brainstorm the odds are pretty good they'll have a hard time ever banning anything again. It's hard to imagine anything else they could reasonably print at this point that will reach 70%+ penetration in the meta.

I think they almost have to ban Brainstorm now that they've treated us to GP Brainstorm. If the brilliant plan was to print Treasure Cruise as a common so they could ban it instead the top 8 kind of screwed them. Not a Treasure Cruise top 8.

[FoolofaTook]

The problem here is a bit complex, let me explain my 2 cents

The problem of legacy is his Speed. Often you are dead before t3 - t4 for casting your beloved Supreme Verdict.

In a perfect world, Delver should be black, TNN White, and tarmo's casting cost GG. Just sayin.

Brainstorm is the evil? Nope at all. BS brings "need for skill" in the format and for a game this is simply a good thing.

A cantrip can't let you wins, a stupid card instead yes.

If you are using your BS for finding a S&T, wich one is the stupid card?

To sum up: ban Delver and S&T, they are really unfun, it should be enough.

In any case, it's a game.

Peace

Bye

Obviously, banning about 30 cards would make Brainstorm much fairer. That's kind of a crappy way to go though. That's the "ban all the great creatures instead of Survival of the Fittest" approach.

[testing32]

Unfortunately, for WotC, the reek of hypocrisy on things like Mental Misstep and Brainstorm is beginning to become quite strong. If they choose not to ban Brainstorm the odds are pretty good they'll have a hard time ever banning anything again. It's hard to imagine anything else they could reasonably print at this point that will reach 70%+ penetration in the meta.

I think they almost have to ban Brainstorm now that they've treated us to GP Brainstorm. If the brilliant plan was to print Treasure Cruise as a common so they could ban it instead the top 8 kind of screwed them. Not a Treasure Cruise top 8.

I agree with this. You can't leave BS and ban something else without looking like you are completely out of touch.

Banning TC won't fix the problem either. Miracle decks were already running 2 pyroblasts main before it was ever printed.

[H]

Unfortunately, for WotC, the reek of hypocrisy on things like Mental Misstep and Brainstorm is beginning to become quite strong. If they choose not to ban Brainstorm the odds are pretty good they'll have a hard time ever banning anything again.

Of course they are hypocritical, recall their "rationale" when they banned Mystical Tutor. They had no data at all, their reasoning was essentially, "aww, shucks guys this card makes me feel bad." It actually turned out to be a good idea in retrospect, since Miracles, etc. came along, but I'm not sure they did it with that much foresight.

Wizards doesn't need any real reason to ban something. One day, someone over there will play an actual Legacy tournament, realize what is going on, complain, and something will happen.

Or, maybe not and we'll just have to deal. Or play Vintage, that's what I do when I get tired of Legacy.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Brainstorm is obviously the best card in Legacy. You are not getting my point. Wizards doesn't feel it's a problem though, so you are basically pissing into the wind.

And yet WotC has made mistakes as well (Storm, Dredge, Affinity), so although they have a much greater impact than we as players do concerning bans etc, they also are not necessarily right when they do or do not make a ban etc.

Having said that, removing Brainstorm is a much trickier issue. Force of Will is a necessary evil to keep glass cannon combo in check, yet without Brainstorm those matchups become more luck-based, increasing the odds that a non blue non combo deck has to face a combo deck, which doesnt bode well for the non blue non combo deck.

As far as the consistency argument goes, Elves! has proven that green has tools to be consistent, whether thats GSZ, NO, Sylvan Library, Survival, etc. Its just they have no tools fast enough for the glass cannon combo decks.

Not to mention that the better combo decks are consistent, via cantrips (various storm; various show and tell) or redundancy (Dredge, Elves!)

EDIT: Sort of hastily posted this without making a point ... my bad. Anyhow, the problem is not Brainstorm, but the combination of Delver, Wasteland, and Daze. Get rid of Delver, and the other two become a lot more manageable.

[jafar]

Obviously, banning about 30 cards would make Brainstorm much fairer. That's kind of a crappy way to go though. That's the "ban all the great creatures instead of Survival of the Fittest" approach.

IMHO banning survival was a wrong move.

The stupid card there was vengevine.

At the moment survival is a quite hateable, fun and skill intensive card. They could easily unban it.

[wonderPreaux]

I think that is sad.

Legacy - the format where you can play with almost 20,000 different cards but if you want to win you get to play with about 50 cards. And if you want to brew you have about 20 cards to work with (you are playing blue and you are running force so there go about 20) and you can pick maybe 1 more color because you are playing red for pyroblast as well.

Of the 20,000 available cards, playing to win means you ignore around ~99% of them anyway because the rest are terrible comparatively. Playing to win means you use the very best tools available to you, regardless of your personal preference to a particular set of them. The idea that "card x should be banned so that I could win with card y instead" is idiotic, there's always going to be a top of the heap that invalidate things below it. How many creatures just stopped being relevant in the face of Tarmogoyf? How many card advantage engines are left collecting dust now that Jace exists? You'll never be in a position where a large amount of the Legacy cardpool is legitimately relevant for competitive play, outside of being a functional stand-in for a better card, just because we only play 60 cards in a deck and opportunity cost is a thing.

This is why I brought up the comparison to fetches and duals, a lot of the arguments people use to point to Brainstorm for bans are pretty arbitrary and, as Lemnear mentioned, are more about striking at combo, control and U midrange while preserving BGx/Wx/Bx midrange. When you ban a powerful card because you want other cards to be powerful instead, you're pretty much just designing a list on personal preference. If you don't like "the Brainstorm format", there are other formats without it, that don't have such a polarizingly powerful cardpool.

Also, I'm getting pretty sick of people claiming that every time there's a non-blue deck that tops it's "just an outlier". EVERYONE who tops is an outlier, they were particularly skillful, lucky, etc. to make it there. Remember, the top16 of a 4200+ player event represents LESS THAN .4% OF THE ENTRANTS. You have to have some kind of x-factor at that point because with that huge a sample size, there's a good chance that more than a few competitors similar to you exist. EVERYONE at that top table had to be at least a little lucky to get there, or else they couldn't have prevailed against all the similar players to them. Of all the UR Delver players at that event, how many made it to the top 16? of all the MUD or Elf players, how many got in? Only 16 people can make the top 16, only 8 can make the top 8, when you've got a sample size of hundreds or thousands, you've got to have some help from variance no matter what you're playing. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Brainstorm players missed the top cut, don't you worry. When you choose to ignore evidence that non-Blue decks top, you're just engaging in confirmation bias, you're not being "insightful". Now, if you're unsatisfied with the number of non-blue decks that top, go innovate something non-blue or accept that certain cards are just more viable than others. The answer is never going to be "jam the same Goblin/Jund list you've been playing for years whilst complaining".

[rlesko]

I thought this was an important tournament concerning the future of Treasure Cruise, but from the looks of the top 16, it won't be banned (for now).