All B/R update speculation.

[btm10]

Possibly more combo, but my hypothesis is that the decks delver pushed out (Jund, deadguy) come back in a big way. No way to know for certain though

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

[Nuke is Good]

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

This. That and when burn became really popular due to Mr. Pyrostatic Pillar on a stick was released shoved Jund out of the equation. Jund is showing up a response to people bringing Maverick/DnT to counter the TC packing decks at my local meta.

[iGrok]

I'm pretty sure that Jund was pushed about by Combo, specifically by Show and Tell and Reanimator strategies. Jund has a fantastic Delver matchup.

I should clarify: I don't think Jund is necessarily bad against delver, but I think delver shifted the metagame in a way that was detrimental to Jund. Discard isn't great vs delver, which leads you to play less of it (because delver is popular enough that you need to change your maindeck a bit for it), and less discard makes you worse against combo. Reanimator is definitely a tough matchup though.

[FoolofaTook]

I think Jund got pushed out because of the rise of BUG (including Delver). BUG tries to do a lot of the same things Jund tries to do but it has the blue shell incorporated for consistency. I think both Jund and BUG have gotten damaged by the latest twists and turns in the meta but Jund was already in trouble before Treasure Cruise was printed.

[aluisiocsantos]

Im pretty sure matches such as delver and bug were cases in which Jund shined through and through. I play the deck since the beginning of last year, when Jund was the balls. The deck suffered a first strike with TNN, but in this epoch every single deck and their mother felt the dimensional shift it caused, and it stayed more or less still great post adjustment (golgari charms, toxic deluges, or more sac effects).

BURN however was always a mess for jund, because it auto loses to POP. Minor releases made life harder, but still not as much as TNN did: Young Pyromancer made subpar decks such as UR Delver before this time actually pretty great, giving extra threats for Punishing Fire.. plus still getting killed by burn spells. Mono red burn itself got the before mentioned, walking Pyrostactic Pillar, which certainly made more people play the deck.

Treasure Cruise however is again that dimensional shifter: Every blue deck made space for the card. MONO R Burn decks made space for the card. Suddenly great matchups for Jund such as Delver decks aren't as great because as someone mentioned, discard started getting less effective - hym nto tourach empowers Delve ability - so the strenght of card advantage Jund relies on is fading and fading away.

UR DELVER, the format offender, a deck which generates insane value and resilient to disruption: one color finishers (delver), value making with pyromancer, or rather, wasting junds firepower of p.fire. and to top it off, our discards will just result in a quicker Tom Cruise.

The result? The jund player in the NJersey GP ran chains of mephistopheles mainboard, along with just 2 bobs. In the brazil tourney of last weekend, the jund player won the finals vs UR Delver by packing 4 maindeck pyroblasts. Or take the 4color loam who won BOM9 with 4 chalices and no 1cmc spells.

Actually the result is the same as before, when TNN came out. You have three choices:
-Play a deck with TNN (now Treasure Cruise)
-Play a deck that fights against it (mainboard Chains/Pyroblasts/Chalice)
-Play a deck that doesn't care for it, aka, combo.

[cogitoergosum]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.

[eays]

I find it absolutely comical every time some person totes brainstorm as the pinnacle of all things skill in legacy. This is a self-agrandizing mentality held by those who love and play the card in legacy, and a common fallacy held by those who don't have much experience with the format other than watching SCG coverage.

In reality, for all but the most novice legacy players, the correct play with brainstorm is almost always obvious, and the flexibility of the card makes it pretty much good no matter what situation you find yourself in.

There are plenty of decks that don't use brainstorm that require just as much format knowledge and are just as difficult to pilot correctly as the most challenging brainstorm decks, and that are far more skill instensive to play than the most basic and prevalent brainstorm decks.

The format would be just as skill testing with or without the card. I'm not necessarily advocating for it's banning but I just want people to understand that "makes format require more l33t skillZ" is not a valid arguement in brainstorm's favor.

[trolliver]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.

Would you mind post that article?

My first post btw... :D

[Dice_Box]

Would you mind post that article?

My first post btw... :D

It's behind SCG's pay wall, so no.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Maybe we should just ban blue. Just all blue gone.

[FoolofaTook]

Maybe we should just ban blue. Just all blue gone.

So, WotC will not do this by any means because it is not in their nature and it would outrage a significant portion of the player base but...

4x Preordain
4x Portent
4x Impulse

4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
1x Counterspell

Is still better than what 90% of the fair lists in Legacy can field as their shell. You can still create a pretty wicked best cards list in a bunch of different directions from that basis, and you can replace 4 of the cantrips or 4 of the counters with 4x Stifle as another option.

We just don't realize how completely overpowered the blue shell is because we're used to it. So many people play it or a close relative of it that when non-blue fair lists see play the question generally is "why did you bring that knife to a gun fight?"

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm pretty sure a group of decks that share 24 or so nonland cards, all pursue the same strategy (tempo) and have a standardized set-up for the remaining unshared cards (4-8 removal, 6-8 other threats, 4-8 assorted disruption depending on color) are quite easily categorized as an archetype. Call it "Uxx tempo" if you so desire, but you'll notice that every "Uxx tempo" deck shares a playset of one particular creature in addition to the classic "blue tempo shell" of FOW, Daze, and a bunch of cantrips. The only "blue-based archetype" that has Delver in it is tempo. Therefore, calling Uxx tempo "Delver" for short is perfectly reasonable, in the same way that calling a bunch of different decks that have similar cores but all win with cards that have a particular mechanic "Storm" is.

This is pretty correct.

I find it absolutely comical every time some person totes brainstorm as the pinnacle of all things skill in legacy. This is a self-agrandizing mentality held by those who love and play the card in legacy, and a common fallacy held by those who don't have much experience with the format other than watching SCG coverage.

In reality, for all but the most novice legacy players, the correct play with brainstorm is almost always obvious, and the flexibility of the card makes it pretty much good no matter what situation you find yourself in.

There are plenty of decks that don't use brainstorm that require just as much format knowledge and are just as difficult to pilot correctly as the most challenging brainstorm decks, and that are far more skill instensive to play than the most basic and prevalent brainstorm decks.

The format would be just as skill testing with or without the card. I'm not necessarily advocating for it's banning but I just want people to understand that "makes format require more l33t skillZ" is not a valid arguement in brainstorm's favor.

And this one is also true.

[Fatal]

4x Preordain
4x Portent
4x Impulse

4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
1x Counterspell

Its false diffrence is that most counter posted here are conditional which is Huge difference, without brainstorm you can't shuffle them back to deck when you don't need them.

Brainstorm + FoW + TC - aren't conditional, enable reshuffle unwanted conditional counters, and doesn't loses tempo and refill card disadvantage from FoW by TC simple.

[FoolofaTook]

Its false diffrence is that most counter posted here are conditional which is Huge difference, without brainstorm you can't shuffle them back to deck when you don't need them.

Brainstorm + FoW + TC - aren't conditional, enable reshuffle unwanted conditional counters, and doesn't loses tempo and refill card disadvantage from FoW by TC simple.

The point though is that the 8 to 12 cantrips listed would still be more consistent than anything out of blue is capable of except in a mono-colored list in which almost all the cards do similar things. Even then the blue cantrips would be better at fixing the bad initial draws in lists that run 18-23 lands which is about 90% of the meta.

1 land hands with great basic functionality are a feature of blue and occasionally something like Burn or Elves. They're a disaster for everybody else and even at 23 lands you have a 23%+ chance of getting an unusable hand just from the land composition (0,1,5,6,7 lands in the initial 7).

[Meekrab]

I have to agree with Chapin's article today, mind twist and black vise need unbanning. They bonus as new toys to use against BS/ TC decks. I think wizards should do this come the next announcement, and then wait to see how things shake out a little longer before deciding on treasure cruise.

Twist and Vise are barely even Legacy playables, imo.

Mind Twist is fairly symmetrical early in the game (You're using Dark Rituals to Mind Twist me instead of win the game? Sweet!) and would only be played as a late game bomb in... nothing? Maybe UBx Delver that really wants to beat Miracles? But Miracles plays off Divining Top as much as off their hand, so that doesn't even really help.

Black Vise is basically two Lightning Bolts if its in your opening hand and nothing after that, so big deal Burn gets a little better and Gitaxian Probe a little worse, maybe. Most likely scenario is almost nobody plays it.

If those cards were printed tomorrow they wouldn't be banned.

[Lord Seth]

Twist and Vise are barely even Legacy playables, imo.

Mind Twist is fairly symmetrical early in the game (You're using Dark Rituals to Mind Twist me instead of win the game? Sweet!) and would only be played as a late game bomb in... nothing? Maybe UBx Delver that really wants to beat Miracles? But Miracles plays off Divining Top as much as off their hand, so that doesn't even really help.

Mind Twist might be good in Elves or Metalworker. Likely not gamebreaking, though.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

If I'm generating substantial mana to play Mind Twist for epic value in elves, why isn't mind twist literally anything else?

[Megadeus]

If I'm generating substantial mana to play Mind Twist for epic value in elves, why isn't mind twist literally anything else?

Like natural order or green sun for hoof

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Or banefire

[apple713]

Mind Twist might be good in Elves or Metalworker. Likely not gamebreaking, though.

idk, T2 Mind twist for 3, when you are still on t1 is pretty good...

i could use it in a deck I'm working on now. t1 bayou, gsz -> dryad arbor. t2 ancient tomb -> mind twist / Natural order / GSZ