All B/R update speculation.

[Barook]

Then take the aforementioned Delver shell with Delver, Wasteland, and Daze in addition to those three cards. That's 2620 cards or ~18.90% of the meta with cards in the Delver shell.

I still have no idea what you're getting at with those numbers.

UR Delver might run less Dazes and Wastelands, but according to the data you provided, there are 31.6% Delver decks (292/(4*231)) (since pretty much any Delver shell runs 4 Delvers).

[iGrok]

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..

One thing that I think might be getting lost in the focus on penetration is that, because blue can filter through it's cards so well, decks which look similar can be vastly different. So even if brainstorm is in 95% of blue decks, all it does is find the card that you actually want. Whether a deck plays delver and pyromancer, or stoneforge and TNN and snapcaster, or counter-top, or Adnausem... The decks all share 4 brainstorm 4 ponder, but they all play very differently. The "blue shell" (though I dislike that term) really only makes whatever you're trying to do more consistent.

Every deck in legacy has to find a balance between consistency and raw power. Burn takes consistency to the max, and notably isn't blue, nor is Elves!, another very redundant deck. Jund is on the opposite end of the spectrum - every card is a great play. Every card actively disrupts your opponent (thoughtsieze, hymn, wasteland, decay), provides a clock (goyf, Bob, bbe) or both (PFire, DRS, Scooze). The problem is having efficiency that is made more efficient by being more consistent. Cards like Delver and Young Pyromancer do this. The slmost dangerous synergy in legacy is that Delver and YP are each made more efficient by the same thing. Compare to Counterbalance, Top, and Miracle cards - certainly one of the most consistent combinations in legacy. But Countertop isn't efficient, which is why there are so many jokes about Miracles mirrors in the draw bracket.

As a different example, look at the difference between ANT, SI, TES, and High Tide. Each of these decks is a storm deck. Each deck has a different spot on the consistency-efficiency gradient. SI is really fast, but lacks the consistency of ANT or TES. High Tide, meanwhile, is the most consistent - given enough time, it will win - but it can't go off before turn 3, and often waits for turn 4 or more.

But what I'm really getting at is that Delver makes all the controls in your deck say, "In addition to pondering, deal 1 damage to target player", since each catnip you play increases delver flip chance, and 3 power plus evasion is better than a 200% increase in card power.

[Barook]

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..

We have data, but it's alot of work. Take this post as a grain of salt:

Here are the last 10 scg opens while mental misstep was legal.

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/3015#38988
11 Sep 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 6/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2603#32546
21 Aug 2011
MM: 25/32
Brainstorm: 28/32
Blue decks: 7/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2534#31291
14 Aug 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 5/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2288#27559
31 Jul 2011
MM: 16/32
Brainstorm: 12/32
Blue decks: 4/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2174#26038
24 Jul 2011
MM: 27/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 6/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/2059#24356
18 Jul 2011
MM: 14/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 3/8 (that Zoo deck on #1 isn't really blue, but ran Misstep, so 4 MM decks)

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1694#19182
26 Jun 2011
MM: 20/32
Brainstorm: 16/32
Blue decks: 5/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1482#16366
12 Jun 2011
MM: 23/32
Brainstorm: 24/32
Blue decks: 8/8

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1358#15016
5 Jun 2011
MM: 28/32
Brainstorm: 26/32
Blue decks: 8/8


http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/1149#12925
22 May 2011
MM: 24/32
Brainstorm: 20/32
Blue decks: 6/8

[EpicLevelCommoner]

I still have no idea what you're getting at with those numbers.

UR Delver might run less Dazes and Wastelands, but according to the data you provided, there are 31.6% Delver decks (292/(4*231)) (since pretty much any Delver shell runs 4 Delvers).

I'm on your side: I agree that a Delver ban would be the best way to go about banning or unbanning anything.

Also, it would be 60*231 actually: 60 cards (at least) per list times 231 decks that placed giving me the 13860 total cards ran. Granted, I could be misinterpreting the data.

Thanks for that, actually. That helps make sense of the scope of the 'issue'. I'd be grateful if you'd be willing to compare and constrast this to the banning of Mental Misstep for penetration in decks, if there's data that goes back that far..

There probably is, just have to hope they didn't archive it (which tcdecks.net seems to have done) . . . gonna see if they relay the data, preferably in a public forum such as this.

---

... manners what are those.

I admit, I was in the wrong for responding in such a way. However, in my (admittedly pitiful) defense, debating with someone begins to become frustrating when they begin to make baseless claims such as how the format would be better without Force of Will (which may or not also suggest that mono-U is not only in High Tide and OmniTell, that mono-B is not present in the form of Traditional Pox, that Swamp -> Dark Ritual -> Trinisphere on the play happens often enough to be an issue for Storm decks, that MUD hasn't been using a similar strategy in the form of Ancient Tomb -> Grim Monolith -> Trinisphere, and that while hate does exist for various combo decks, it is often too slow and/or too narrow to combat all varieties like Force of Will does).

[Barook]

Also, it would be 60*231 actually: 60 cards (at least) per list times 231 decks that placed giving me the 13860 total cards ran. Granted, I could be misinterpreting the data.

For what purpose? You can't run more than 4 Delvers and each Delver list runs the maximum of 4 copies.

mtgGoldfish has the same "dominance" stuff, but I fail to see the reason behind that.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Force of Will eliminates entire archetypes by itself. It creates an incremental meta in which players are afraid to make big investments early because a multi-card investment that is forced at the end is game over.




Not when they're on the draw and I ritual out a Trinisphere they're not. Not when I Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach or Sinkhole they're not. Heavily black lists are suppressed dramatically by the blue shell. Turn 1 Thoughtseize that hits nothing of value due to Brainstorm is a deflater. Watching the blue shell recover position quickly via cantrips is another deflater. Watching the mix of power cards that the blue shell incorporates and finds with great celerity even in the face of disruption out-value the cards available in a disruption heavy scheme is another deflater. This is why mono-black is not a thing in Legacy, whereas mono-red, mono-white and mono-blue all have a place at the table. Even mono-green gets there in the form of elves.

Ditch Brainstorm and Force of Will and mono-black will have a place at the table again. Black with small splashes will also show up. Combo can't stand lists in that general archetype.

All I took out of this is you use dark ritual to cast trinisphere

[EpicLevelCommoner]

For what purpose? You can't run more than 4 Delvers and each Delver list runs the maximum of 4 copies.

mtgGoldfish has the same "dominance" stuff, but I fail to see the reason behind that.

Because you don't just play with a single playset, you play with any number of different cards that total up to at least 60 per deck. Also, the fact that the more cards that two lists have in common the more similar they'll play (to the point where if it's the same 60 cards, they'll play very much the same), hence why I'm not focusing on just Delver or Brainstorm in my arguments, but also the cards that are used in conjunction with those.

Like I said, a single card cannot be oppressive unless A) it has a high penetration and B) the shell it demands composes a considerable portion of the decks it is ran in.

---

You think that's frustrating? Try being around on this forum for 8 years and see so many discussion shitted by 10-post kids that think they're cool calling other peoples names. Or having people repeatedly call you retarded and then bail when you call them out on it. The Black Vise discussion was literally a stream of insults toward me, accusations i was "evidently" skewing my results because "it wasn't possible i had to be this stupid and bad" and the mods did nothing back then, only a couple posters, and in the end i was interested only in proofs so i didn't care as much but that shit was so seriously annoying. Similar patterns were observed on the Survival topic where everyone was good at talking shit but no one actually wrote a single list to prove their point, and obviously no one ever bothered testing anything because conjectures obviously best kind of proofs.

So yeah, unless they're going personal at you, just don't go there. Or use the ignore list, it can make the forum so much more readable.

Fair enough: though I can't say I'll use the ignore list (doesn't actually help a discussion if you just ignore everyone that makes a bad argument), I will refrain from lashing out in the future.

@ FoolafaTook: I'm sorry for being an asshat.

[FoolofaTook]

All I took out of this is you use dark ritual to cast trinisphere

It would be a common play in a post-Force of Will meta. You can discard other rituals to things like Liliana and Smallpox after you've set up your lock.

A lot of things are counter-intuitive until you see them in play.

[Dice_Box]

The issue with taking Force from the format though is that you in effect cut the Police funding. The reason we don't have cards like Beltcher and Glimpse on the ban list is because Force stops them from taking over. I just don't feel like anyone has to this point made a reasonable argument to the effect that the format would be better without Force and from my point of view, not liking it is not a reasonable argument. If is was, SnT would have vanished long ago and Bridge along with it.

[btm10]

It would be a common play in a post-Force of Will meta. You can discard other rituals to things like Liliana and Smallpox after you've set up your lock.

I highly doubt this, as it's a pretty awful line in the abstract, even without getting 1-for-1'ed by Force (or 2-for-1'ed by any other counter or artifact removal spell). Decks like Pox aren't weak because Force ruins them - Force frequently plays into their discard heavy game plan - but they're weak because eventually their opponents will draw out of being resource strapped and the Pox decks are even lighter on threats than Delver decks. Blue decks are certainly the best at reassembling because of Ponder and Brainstorm, but Jund (to chose just one example) is also good because of Bob and Sylvan Library or even just DRS and Punishing Fire. When your goal is to start a topdeck war it's important to be able to win it, and Pox just can't do that consistently.

Also, Force doesn't stop most blue decks from running classic UU Counterspell, but Daze and Spell Pierce do. Daze forces answers to be either extremely cheap (StP, Bolt) or uncounterable (Abrupt Decay), and Pierce is cheaper, so it's better as defense against Bolt and StP once Daze is dead and at winning a counterwar over haymakers like Jace, Cruise, or Dig. Counterspell is superior in control/midrange matchups, but as long as Delver is the threat of choice from the aggro decks, Counterspell is going to be too slow except as a 1-2 of in midrange/control strategies.

[FoolofaTook]

I highly doubt this, as it's a pretty awful line in the abstract, even without getting 1-for-1'ed by Force (or 2-for-1'ed by any other counter or artifact removal spell). Decks like Pox aren't weak because Force ruins them - Force frequently plays into their discard heavy game plan - but they're weak because eventually their opponents will draw out of being resource strapped and the Pox decks are even lighter on threats than Delver decks.

It's not just Pox lists, it's Black Suicide, BW Suicide, BG Suicide, etc. The blue shell recovers too well to be disrupted and defeated as a strategy. The only lists that actually manage to defeat blue by doing this are other blue shells, like RUG Tempo and extremely focused taxing strategies with lots of redundant threats like D&T. When the blue shell is 60% of the overall meta as it is now black basically rolls over and dies.

The day 1 undefeateds at GP NJ played exactly 600 spells among 16 lists. There were 26.5 black spells among the 600 (counting DRS and Abrupt Decay as half a black spell for consistency. There were 275 blue spells among the 16 lists. That's something like a 10-1 ratio of blue over black and it is precisely because blue invalidates most of what black tries to do. There were 70 artifact spells among the 600. There were only 255 non-blue colored spells represented.

In the top 8 there were 21 black spells, all in the ANT list which also had 15 blue spells. There were 163 blue spells in that top 8, only 8 to 1 this time.

And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.

Also, Force doesn't stop most blue decks from running classic UU Counterspell, but Daze and Spell Pierce do. Daze forces answers to be either extremely cheap (StP, Bolt) or uncounterable (Abrupt Decay), and Pierce is cheaper, so it's better as defense against Bolt and StP once Daze is dead and at winning a counterwar over haymakers like Jace, Cruise, or Dig. Counterspell is superior in control/midrange matchups, but as long as Delver is the threat of choice from the aggro decks, Counterspell is going to be too slow except as a 1-2 of in midrange/control strategies.

In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?

[Dice_Box]

There really isn't one. Foil is the worst free counter I can think of, next best thing is Counterspell.

Not that I would have much invested in a post Force format. I would not be sticking around. I would just move to Vintage full time. I really don't see how banning it could be healthy.

[FoolofaTook]

There really isn't one. Foil is the worst free counter I can think of, next best thing is Counterspell.

Not that I would have much invested in a post Force format. I would not be sticking around. I would just move to Vintage full time. I really don't see how banning it could be healthy.

When you saw that meta in play you'd stick around to play in it.

Even if the best Storm combo list has a 30% chance to have a T1 kill in hand, they're only on the play half the time. Some times games come down to who goes first. Not a lot of the time but it happens. It's not a Chess match. It's a game of chance.

[Dice_Box]

I would not stay, because if you ban Force you have to start banning all the degenerate combo cards too. Beltcher, ETW, Glimpse, Tendrils and Dread Return have to go right away. From there, you only move up an ever increasing list as the format becomes a race to the fastest kills. If all I have to worry about is Daze, you can bet the format would become something nasty.

Why do you want to see Force banned? Do you honestly think that the format would be better without it? If so, how do you think the format improves with the removal of this card?

[FoolofaTook]

I would not stay, because if you ban Force you have to start banning all the degenerate combo cards too. Beltcher, ETW, Glimpse, Tendrils and Dread Return have to go right away. From there, you only move up an ever increasing list as the format becomes a race to the fastest kills. If all I have to worry about is Daze, you can bet the format would become something nasty.

Why do you want to see Force banned? Do you honestly think that the format would be better without it? If so, how do you think the format improves with the removal of this card?

I think the format improves with a move away from the blue shell as the dominant organizing structure that dictates what works and what doesn't.

Combo and aggro don't organize the way the blue shell does. There are many different ways to disrupt early game strategies but all of them are inferior to having or bluffing a free counter. Add in the ability of the blue shell to sort out the variables in it's own strategy and it becomes just too good to ignore, which is why most competitive players play it.

In the absence of the fully functional blue shell people would find other answers to common problems, like turn 1 combo and heavy aggro. The meta would become a wider play field that featured more diversity in strategy and solutions. In the presence of the blue shell that's just not possible because the blue shell is the best way to approach the meta right now. The problem is that it is cannibalizing diversity in the process as more and more people make the correct decision that fighting the blue shell is worse than playing the blue shell.

[Dice_Box]

Well, that's your opinion and your welcome to it, just don't hope your going to get to many people agreeing with you here. I mean, people want to see Blue cut down a notch or two, but I think your on your own about Force.

[trollking21]

While force may have a very high penetration in the meta, there is at least a valid reason most people want it. Keeping degenerate combo in check is a valid enough reason. Cutting brainstorm would lower the prevalence of force somewhat and while the player base might bitch and moan I think the format would survive. Banning force I feel could have some negative side effects

[btm10]

It's not just Pox lists, it's Black Suicide, BW Suicide, BG Suicide, etc. The blue shell recovers too well to be disrupted and defeated as a strategy. The only lists that actually manage to defeat blue by doing this are other blue shells, like RUG Tempo and extremely focused taxing strategies with lots of redundant threats like D&T. When the blue shell is 60% of the overall meta as it is now black basically rolls over and dies.

The day 1 undefeateds at GP NJ played exactly 600 spells among 16 lists. There were 26.5 black spells among the 600 (counting DRS and Abrupt Decay as half a black spell for consistency. There were 275 blue spells among the 16 lists. That's something like a 10-1 ratio of blue over black and it is precisely because blue invalidates most of what black tries to do. There were 70 artifact spells among the 600. There were only 255 non-blue colored spells represented.

In the top 8 there were 21 black spells, all in the ANT list which also had 15 blue spells. There were 163 blue spells in that top 8, only 8 to 1 this time.

Even ignoring the fact that counting Decay and DRS as half a spell each is absurd (they don't half-trigger Quirion Dryad or get half-targeted by Lifeforce), what does this prove other than blue being better than the other colors? We already knew that, and it's part of playing Eternal formats. When you play Legacy and/or Vintage, should expect blue to be the best color.

And as to the Dark Ritual for an artifact or enchantment, yeah it would be played much more often than it is now if a person could do that on the play and know for a fact that it was resolving. I'll put a Trinisphere in play turn 1 and be really happy about my odds of beating any opponent at that point. It's going to be turn 3 before they can play Abrupt Decay and if the rest of the strategy is present that's not likely to happen.

The issue isn't that Ritual into a permanent is intrinsically bad, it's that Ritual into Trinisphere is a poor line for any deck that might conceptually want it - either you don't want Ritual (MUD with a black splash), or you get little mileage out of Trinisphere (Pox) before it gets destroyed. Congratulations, you've successfully 2-for-1'ed yourself and gotten a slight tempo edge out of it. I hope you drew your manland or could discard Nether Spirit to hand size before your opponent cast a spell, because if you didn't you probably still lose.

In the absence of Force of Will what's the hard counter for blue in the format?

It's hard to tell, since it would require the banning of, at a minimum, about ten other cards. In the brief hypothetical period where Force is banned and fast mana artifacts, Show and Tell, and Reanimate/Exhume aren't banned, I imagine it would be Disrupting Shoal so some people could not play combo while having a chance to not get blown out.

When you saw that meta in play you'd stick around to play in it.

Even if the best Storm combo list has a 30% chance to have a T1 kill in hand, they're only on the play half the time. Some times games come down to who goes first. Not a lot of the time but it happens. It's not a Chess match. It's a game of chance.

Without Force you realize most combo decks would just trade a big chunk of their preboard disruption for gas, right?

[FoolofaTook]

Without Force you realize most combo decks would just trade a big chunk of their preboard disruption for gas, right?

How much more gas is actually available? Particularly with Brainstorm banned. Storm and most combo depend on being able to sort out their cards in a hurry. A few lists, like Fetchland Tendrils go a bit more controlling but are also slower in the process.

It's not like Storm combo isn't already playing LED, 7 or 8 rituals, Lotus Petals and even the odd Chrome Mox here and there. They can't add much more gas than they already have and with Brainstorm gone they'll be looking for additional ways to sort anyway.

[Dark Ritual]

There's a deck with tons of gas. It's called belcher. Ban force of will and see where belcher goes with that. Ban force and this format's banlist is like modern's where you actually have to ban a ton more cards in addition. Banning force is never going to happen if it does congratulations WotC just successfully killed legacy.