All B/R update speculation.

[FoolofaTook]

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.

Belcher is a truly terrible list in the current meta. It fizzles on it's own and it loses to Force of Will and to Wasteland if the draw doesn't let them go off right away. Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou and sayonara.

So if your point is that Belcher might be a bit scary in a format without Force of Will, well a lot of lists are scary in a format *with* Force of Will and most of them play... Force of Will.

BTW, there's a simple solution to the blue shell. Ban Brainstorm and announce that Force of Will is on the watch list. See what happens. If Force of Will is still in a high percentage of winning lists it gets the axe next time around.

[Meekrab]

Annnd a deck with 12 Plains just went 12-0 and hardly dropped a game all day.

[Megadeus]

I guess 24 Brainstorm in the top 8 is evidence that blue is on the down swing.

[iGrok]

Belcher is a truly terrible list in the current meta. It fizzles on it's own and it loses to Force of Will and to Wasteland if the draw doesn't let them go off right away. Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou and sayonara.

Force Dark Ritual and Waste the Bayou

Belcher

Dark Ritual ... Bayou

I'm sorry... what?

Have... Have you ever seen a belcher deck?

[Megadeus]

I mean... SI is a thing. It's not a good thing... But I guess it's a thing that exists in the realm of magic the gathering

[sjmcc13]

I'm sorry... what?

Have... Have you ever seen a belcher deck?

Some builds of Spanish Inquisition runs belcher and bayou, But that deck is not Belcher.

Belcher normally runs just taiga, 0 Dark Rituals, and does not really care about Wasteland.
Hereiis a link to a recent belcher list for reference : http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=8143&d=246907&f=LE

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So, the idea is to ban Force so that there are more turn1 DRit->Trinisphere.
Dat format.

[Lemnear]

T1 Dark Ritual into Trinisphere is just stupid if you can drop a Sol Land and play Thorn of Amethyst/Chalice of the Void/Sphere of Resistance instead to harass storm.

I can't believe we are even talking about FoW here. Imo it's pretty clear that Disrupting Shoal would be the best card to prevent T1 combos on the draw, as you still have plenty of 1cc spells to Pitch within the cantrip-shell like BS/Ponder/Delver, Daze/SCM/Counterspell/Shoal for 2cc, TNN/Clique for 3cc just as an example

[menace13]

I guess 24 Brainstorm in the top 8 is evidence that blue is on the down swing.

It's all good as long as one or two non blue decks can top.

[testing32]

It's all good as long as one or two non blue decks can top.

So, everything is fine until it's 16/16 BS?

If this was a little league game they would have stopped the beating already and discontinue the printing of all non-island basics.

[FoolofaTook]

Sorry, haven't actually played against Belcher since 2010 and the 2-land variant was the one I was seeing in tourney's at that point. They'd Land Grant for Bayou as the black source to power the rituals when that was the direction they went. Force on a ritual and waste on a Bayou was game over for them. That's one of the reasons the list stopped getting played.

The list without black does seem more consistent but it has no turn 1 disruption. The 2 land lists always played Duress as a playset.

[FoolofaTook]

So, everything is fine until it's 16/16 BS?

If this was a little league game they would have stopped the beating already and discontinue the printing of all non-island basics.

Yeah, that's the point. If you have a meta where 60% of the lists are blue shell and 40% are everything else and then the blue shell is consistently taking 6 to 8 top 8 slots, well that's no meta at all. That's just 40% of the crowd confused about what they should be playing at the start.

Everybody complains about the price of getting into Legacy with good lists. Those prices are as high as they are because so few cards are playable in competitive lists. $250 blue duals and $60 Savannahs is part of the problem. The fact that all the rare blue staples are very expensive compared to the other color counterparts is part of that. The fact that Legends rare lands are very expensive due to the way they interact with the few lists able to compete with the blue shell is part of that.

Anybody can build a bad cheap Legacy list but there's no incentive to do that.

If there were 200 Legacy staples that saw wide play prices on those staples would go up some but prices on the few that see play now would drop dramatically.

This is where WotC has the vision problem. They see Legacy as some kind of victory lap that doesn't produce a lot of sales for them but that testifies to Magic's staying power over time. If they instead saw Legacy as a format to feed cards to regularly in each set they'd be in a much better position than they are now.

Why do the blue dual lands cost so much? Because they power the broken cards lists. Because they're scarce.

If WotC was regularly feeding cards into the Legacy pool that didn't play well with the duals they'd make more sales off of stores opening boxes to find those cards to sell as singles. They'd get many more people interested in legacy. They'd grow the player base significantly as the barrier to entry to effective Legacy play became much lower.

They're going to have to knock the blue shell off it's pedestal to make that work. It's ok to have it as a player in the meta but not as the only player that really matters. That's what WotC needs to do.

If they think Standard and Draft are enough to keep Magic growing they're nuts. People play in one or two standards in high school and college and then they move on for the most part because the other formats are just too expensive to consider. Maybe they draft now and then to feed their casual card collection but mostly they move on. WotC needs to find a way to smooth the path into eternal for people who get tired of Standard and want to play a bigger game.

[ShiftyKapree]

Sorry, haven't actually played against Belcher since 2010 and the 2-land variant was the one I was seeing in tourney's at that point. They'd Land Grant for Bayou as the black source to power the rituals when that was the direction they went. Force on a ritual and waste on a Bayou was game over for them. That's one of the reasons the list stopped getting played.

The list without black does seem more consistent but it has no turn 1 disruption. The 2 land lists always played Duress as a playset.

You clearly don't play enough legacy, the deck is rather consistent with ETW and Belcher in the deck. As far as the format goes I think with Treasure Cruise being printed we're seeing more decks we haven't seen in awhile rise up again such as omni show, maverick, and storm decks return to the meta in a more prevalent force. Which I am glad to see these return.

[Dice_Box]

The removal of such things increase speed. The deck is faster than the one you are describing because everything is either gas or ways to get gas. The deck has no disruption because it plays the numbers. It's a gamble every time you sleeve it.

Without Force, that would be the best deck in the format. Because all you would need to play around would be soft counters and while Spell Piece can hurt, it's not the end of the world for a skilled pilot of Beltcher.

I am thinking you did not quite understand what we all meant when we told you Force does a service for the format. Yes, it's a pain, but it's a part of life and while I hate to play against it, I rather lose a spell here and there over playing a round that consists of playing 3 turns total 3 times in a row.

Edit:
Price is not a reason to kill cards in the format. While I sympathise with you, I can not agree that the issue is all about the cost of Blue Duals. After all, non Blue decks like DnT and Elves have seen quite the rise in costs and now match UR Delver in cost.

[Meekrab]

If they think Standard and Draft are enough to keep Magic growing they're nuts. People play in one or two standards in high school and college and then they move on for the most part because the other formats are just too expensive to consider. Maybe they draft now and then to feed their casual card collection but mostly they move on. WotC needs to find a way to smooth the path into eternal for people who get tired of Standard and want to play a bigger game.

They have, it's called Modern. WotC has stated before that they do not and have no plans to design cards for Legacy/Vintage.

If you're sick of FoW and Brainstorm, there's a format for you already.

[gainsay]

saying "if you don't like it go to modern" is a bad argument. I disagree with FoW/Brainstorm bans as well, but the idea that bans can't improve a format and if you want to see improving formats you should go to modern is silly.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Funny thing how FoW somehow became a problem. In fact I see it quite the opposite, I playit to stop problems. Like, you know... that turn1 Trinisphere that stops and wins the game right here. Or Belcher. Or anything else.
Banning FoW is like "don't play Swords (or Bolt or Terror or Pillage), it's unjust as it kills my Sengir (or Birds or Erhnam or Outpost)" mantra I heard back in the days. Yeah, it sucks to spend mana or other resources to have your dude/land/spell killed or countered, but that's the game. And Force is pretty ineffective in countering spells, look, it needs another card to properly function. (Counterspells as a whole suck, there are what, three-four of them used in the whole Eternal?) So if the people really wish just to look at their collectible pictures or cuddle with their decks, fine, but once they wish to actually play the game, they should expect at least some interaction and some opponent's attempts to stop the gameplan/wincons. Which is where FoW excels. Thus it's played. Easy as that.

[btm10]

saying "if you don't like it go to modern" is a bad argument. I disagree with FoW/Brainstorm bans as well, but the idea that bans can't improve a format and if you want to see improving formats you should go to modern is silly.

I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy. People who want Modern-like features should play Modern, because Legacy clearly isn't something they enjoy at this point.

[gainsay]

I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy.

I agree with you here. My point is that bans sometimes make sense in legacy to make the format of legacy better. Playing modern isn't an argument in the sphere of making legacy better.

[Michael Keller]

They have, it's called Modern. WotC has stated before that they do not and have no plans to design cards for Legacy/Vintage.

If you're sick of FoW and Brainstorm, there's a format for you already.

They don't have to design cards for Legacy and Vintage because they're already legal for both formats when released anyhow. Obviously Wizards isn't going to design something for Legacy and Vintage specifically because the legal card pool never rotates; it's always the same until a new set is released. Most of the time cards just happen to be good in Legacy or Vintage inadvertently, which is fine. We already have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from.