All B/R update speculation.

[FoolofaTook]

It's not the shell: the shell itself has existed for quite some time and hasn't been truly oppressive (perhaps not the right word: ubiquitous?) until the release of Delver. Also, it's not cost-efficient threats that can be used with the blue shell, as Goyf and Mongoose have proven before Delver's existence. It is simply a combination of the following traits Delver possesses. 1) It has a 3/2 body for 1 CMC making it inefficient, yet necessary to remove early on. 2) It has evasion, which means most legacy viable creatures can't even block with it to buy time or force an overextension. 3) Most importantly, it is blue itself, making it much less awkward to have multiples in hand when combined with the blue shell.

1 isn't an issue in legacy other than you can't just durdle forever and hope to win: you have to answer it. 3 isn't exactly an issue either, although it's color identity is mechanically incorrect. 2 is the key issue: without a good way to buy time against a flipped Delver, it'll take over the game if you let it.

Having said that, I wouldn't be opposed to a 'fixed' version that had Islandwalk instead of Flying.

It's not Delver. It's the shell. Top 8: 4 blue aggro control, 2 blue control, 2 others. Top 51 at round 14: 23 blue aggro control, 8 blue control, 6 blue combo, 14 lists not playing Brainstorm and Force of Will.

The problem is that the shell absorbs all the best cards and then sorts them out for the players. It's a consistency and force multiplier (no pun intended) for the cards that are most powerful already.

Banning Delver will not fundamentally change the face of Legacy. The blue shell will just move on to the next best weapon and wait for WotC to make another (calculated?) mistake.

[Norm]

The format is totally fine, we should only be looking to unban cards IMO.

[Megadeus]

7 Brainstorm Decks and a chalice deck in the top 8 is proof that the format is "fine" right?

[FoolofaTook]

7 Brainstorm Decks and a chalice deck in the top 8 is proof that the format is "fine" right?

7 Brainstorm lists and an anti-Brainstorm list. It's the perfect top 8 to make the case that Brainstorm needs to be banned. That more anti-Brainstorm lists didn't make the late tables is kind of perfect also. Even when you know you want to hate on Brainstorm it's not easy to get through that meta.

[Nielsie]

I have some questions about Brainstorm's power level:
- where do you draw the line in power level banning? In other words: why is Ancestral banned but Brainstorm is not?
- Imagine a world in where there was no Brainstorm. Suppose Wizards creates today a card with exactly Brainstorm's effect: how much would it have to cost? One blue or more?

[FoolofaTook]

I have some questions about Brainstorm's power level:
- where do you draw the line in power level banning? In other words: why is Ancestral banned but Brainstorm is not?
- Imagine a world in where there was no Brainstorm. Suppose Wizards creates today a card with exactly Brainstorm's effect: how much would it have to cost? One blue or more?

You draw the line when a card is so good that it's ubiquitous in the competitive pool. When everybody is either playing it or playing against it.

Brainstorm is probably just good at .

[gainsay]

Brainstorm has defined legacy for as long as there has been a legacy. People were saying the same thing about tarmogoyf when unrelated decks were only splashing for goyf and people were maindecking Mind Harness to play against it.

[Star|Scream]

Brainstorm has defined legacy for as long as there has been a legacy. People were saying the same thing about tarmogoyf when unrelated decks were only splashing for goyf and people were maindecking Mind Harness to play against it.

He's right, you know.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

It's not Delver. It's the shell. Top 8: 4 blue aggro control, 2 blue control, 2 others. Top 51 at round 14: 23 blue aggro control, 8 blue control, 6 blue combo, 14 lists not playing Brainstorm and Force of Will.

The problem is that the shell absorbs all the best cards and then sorts them out for the players. It's a consistency and force multiplier (no pun intended) for the cards that are most powerful already.

Banning Delver will not fundamentally change the face of Legacy. The blue shell will just move on to the next best weapon and wait for WotC to make another (calculated?) mistake.

The next weapon is either phantasmal bear or nimble mongoose if they run green, and neither have the evasion that Delver has.

Also, I could argue that the majority of top decks at Round 14 were blue tempo decks proves that Delver is indeed the main culprit, but I wont since as someone said before a 4000 person tournament is bound to going to be extremely succeptible to variance.

Im not arguing against change, nor am I arguing against hat the problem lies within the blue shell. But to say that the blue shell is the problem as a whole is rather extreme, considering that the format was rather healthy when prior to Innistrad.

[Darkenslight]

The next weapon is either phantasmal bear or nimble mongoose if they run green, and neither have the evasion that Delver has.

Also, I could argue that the majority of top decks at Round 14 were blue tempo decks proves that Delver is indeed the main culprit, but I wont since as someone said before a 4000 person tournament is bound to going to be extremely succeptible to variance.

Im not arguing against change, nor am I arguing against hat the problem lies within the blue shell. But to say that the blue shell is the problem as a whole is rather extreme, considering that the format was rather healthy when prior to Innistrad.

It's a problem, for sure, and the largest eliminator of variance (the reason for banning SotF that I linked earlier) is Brainstorm. You ban BS and Delver and the format becomes more susceptible to blind variance. IS the Blue shell still strong? Yes, because of Force of Will. But I accept Force where I don't accept BS anymore because BS is essentially the beating-heart of a lot of decks ranging the whoel gamut of archetypes that play a core of around 20-25 cards (8 Delta/Strand/Tarn/Rainforest, 4 Force, 4 BS, 4-9 Blue lands) Delver is also a problem (IMO, it's in the wrong color and should be Red) because it slots so easily into a Blue Shell tempo deck. But I think I'm hating on bs a little too much, so I'll bow out for now unless someone responds directly.

[FoolofaTook]

It's a problem, for sure, and the largest eliminator of variance (the reason for banning SotF that I linked earlier) is Brainstorm. You ban BS and Delver and the format becomes more susceptible to blind variance. IS the Blue shell still strong? Yes, because of Force of Will. But I accept Force where I don't accept BS anymore because BS is essentially the beating-heart of a lot of decks ranging the whoel gamut of archetypes that play a core of around 20-25 cards (8 Delta/Strand/Tarn/Rainforest, 4 Force, 4 BS, 4-9 Blue lands) Delver is also a problem (IMO, it's in the wrong color and should be Red) because it slots so easily into a Blue Shell tempo deck. But I think I'm hating on bs a little too much, so I'll bow out for now unless someone responds directly.

If Delver was red it would still be a much bigger problem in the blue shell than in a red shell.

Where are Young Pyromancer and Monastery Swiftspear doing most of their damage? In the consistent blue shell that supports them best.

The only way Delver would be working as you suggest would be if it was red and it read "At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. You may reveal that card. If a red instant or sorcery card is revealed this way, transform Delver of Secrets."

[mikeshimoji]

So, are you suggesting banning a handful of creatures and never printing another creature that can cost-efficiently be shoe-horned into blue as a beater?

Because I don't see any other way to handle the vise-lock that the blue shell has on the format right now. Even then Miracles would just become the best list by a mile if you did that since it's the blue shell lists with good creatures that do the most to suppress it right now in commonly played matchups.

You have to weaken the shell, maybe significantly with more than one core card ban, to put us in a meta where choice becomes real again.

Think about it: you can't make a rule for cost efficient creatures that they have to have double non-blue color in the casting cost in order to be printed. Even if you did that Abrupt Decay is a major part of BUG and it has double non-blue casting cost.

It's the shell. It's like a gigantic vampire squid eating the face off of Magic on a daily basis.

I guess as a d and t/maverick player, I never found the shell to be oppressive. I was ok with them getting card quality, shuffling much while I deploy my threats. Miracles has answers in gaddock teeg, but tnn was just impossible to beat since I can't block effectively. I know d and t does better, but still is lights out when tnn holds a weapon. Narrow viewpoint I know, but the creatures seem so out of place/color that I do get frustrated I admit. My 2 cents.

[AznSeal]

to change the topic up a bit, everyone is saying how elves is basically 4x tinker, 4x tolarian, 4x ancestral recall in green. So, what are the odds of Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle getting the banhammer?

[FoolofaTook]

to change the topic up a bit, everyone is saying how elves is basically 4x tinker, 4x tolarian, 4x ancestral recall in green. So, what are the odds of Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle getting the banhammer?

As soon as Elves begins placing half the lists at the top of tournaments on a consistent basis the Survival of the Fittest argument begins to apply. The question is which card would get the ban in that unlikely event?

Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order both play in other lists than Elves and so they're the cards most likely to get banned if Elves suddenly makes a move to the top. There would be splash damage for them from other lists also randomly top-8ing.

[FoolofaTook]

I guess as a d and t/maverick player, I never found the shell to be oppressive. I was ok with them getting card quality, shuffling much while I deploy my threats. Miracles has answers in gaddock teeg, but tnn was just impossible to beat since I can't block effectively. I know d and t does better, but still is lights out when tnn holds a weapon. Narrow viewpoint I know, but the creatures seem so out of place/color that I do get frustrated I admit. My 2 cents.

Maverick has Orzhov Pontiff and vials though, right? Maybe I have my lists mixed up.

[Lemnear]

to change the topic up a bit, everyone is saying how elves is basically 4x tinker, 4x tolarian, 4x ancestral recall, 4 demonic tutor in green. So, what are the odds of Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle getting the banhammer?

Fixed.

To the question: marginal, as Elves sure has very powerful equivalents of banned blue cards, but also requires quite some playskill to profit from these. For me, it's a perfect example that powerful cards are fine if there's no auto-pilot attached to profit from them. It's the exact opposite of Delver + Treasure Cruise which are auto-pilot cards in a blue cantrip-shell or SneakAttack/Show&Tell/Griselbrand/Emrakul which is a monkey-level memory-game for executing their combo.

Edit: The first card to ban in Elves is Gaea's Cradle, if WotC ever decides, that the deck is too good or they print an auto-pilot option to ride the shell to victory

Edit 2: ...like a Wirewood Symbiote with an Elf-subtype .... lol

[mikeshimoji]

Maverick has Orzhov Pontiff and vials though, right? Maybe I have my lists mixed up.

I guess there are vial mavs out there, but I played with zenith. Pontiff is unfortunately too narrow and it becomes useless once tnn is attached or hit once with jitte. It also can't be searched with zenith so it is quite luck based to find him at the appropriate time.

Other -1-1 are also narrow and often times get countered, thus protecting tnn.

[FoolofaTook]

Fixed.

To the question: marginal, as Elves sure has very powerful equivalents of banned blue cards, but also requires quite some playskill to profit from these. For me, it's a perfect example that powerful cards are fine if there's no auto-pilot attached to profit from them. It's the exact opposite of Delver + Treasure Cruise which are auto-pilot cards in a blue cantrip-shell or SneakAttack/Show&Tell/Griselbrand/Emrakul which is a monkey-level memory-game for executing their combo.

The blue cantrip shell is almost auto-pilot status. It takes real mistakes both in mulling and play to avoid having the blue shell straighten things out for you.

What was interesting to me about the GP was Einherjer and the 4 Ponder Miracles list. Miracles was one of those lists that seemed somewhat out of touch with the full blue shell, since it didn't play Ponder (much) and was so heavily white. Now we see the 12 blue spells in Miracles and of course they are great together as always.

I get why blue players don't want to rock the boat. It's really nice to have your favored play style with so many built in advantages against non-blue lists. I don't get why those players don't see the overall effect though of a stagnant meta that is pretty much dominated over and over again by blue aggro control and control. It doesn't really matter if the creatures and kill devices change periodically, which they do, if it's the same shell and play patterns leading to those kills over and over again.

If this was a question of red burn and aggro control dominating every major event nobody would have a problem with figuring out what was causing red to be over-powered and banning it.

With the blue shell people have so much invested in their cards that they can't see it. When you spend $1000's of dollars to assemble the mana base to play blue the notion that it might get nerfed is just too much to deal with.

[HSCK]

The blue cantrip shell is almost auto-pilot status. It takes real mistakes both in mulling and play to avoid having the blue shell straighten things out for you.

What was interesting to me about the GP was Einherjer and the 4 Ponder Miracles list. Miracles was one of those lists that seemed somewhat out of touch with the full blue shell, since it didn't play Ponder (much) and was so heavily white. Now we see the 12 blue spells in Miracles and of course they are great together as always.

I get why blue players don't want to rock the boat. It's really nice to have your favored play style with so many built in advantages against non-blue lists. I don't get why those players don't see the overall effect though of a stagnant meta that is pretty much dominated over and over again by blue aggro control and control. It doesn't really matter if the creatures and kill devices change periodically, which they do, if it's the same shell and play patterns leading to those kills over and over again.

If this was a question of red burn and aggro control dominating every major event nobody would have a problem with figuring out what was causing red to be over-powered and banning it.

With the blue shell people have so much invested in their cards that they can't see it. When you spend $1000's of dollars to assemble the mana base to play blue the notion that it might get nerfed is just too much to deal with.

Ding ding ding for, "blue is auto-pilot.....but not those other colors." I have no idea where this notion that, "well if it wasn't blue it'd be banned" comes from at all.

[nedleeds]

See: survival for your premier example.