All B/R update speculation.

[mlschuma]

Cards like Snapcaster, Delver, Treasure Cruise and the miracles mechanic are balanced by design. Combining these cards with Brainstorm and Ponder however, is what makes them unfair. DCI can ban every new card that pushes blue dominance, but that would prevent us from playing with new toys thus make the format stagnant.

It's really not that hard to let Brainstorm and Ponder go. Blue won't suddenly become the worst color without these 2 cards. Think of

• Accumulated Knowledge
• Ideas Unbound
• Impulse
• Long-Term Plans
• Omen
• Peer Through Depths
• Serum Visions
• Spy Network
• Strategic Planning
• Telling Time
• Uncovered Clues

Out of all those cards printed after Invasion none, except Serum Visions, had even a negligible impact on their respective Standard formats. The cards printed before Invasion that had any sort of saturation, all existed in a different epoch of Magic's history. I don't think it's useful to exchange the identity of the format for a bunch of garbage that couldn't crack a Standard 60. Long-Term Plans? That'll be useful at 3 mana staring down a Delver. Strategic Planning? Glad I get to replace my one-mana, common instant/sorcery with a two-mana, P3K rare. At least Impulse and Peer Through Depths lets you dig deeper than 3 at instant. But they still have bigger drawbacks than current cards with the added expense of extra mana. Thus, the couldn't cut it for Standard.

We should just ban Lightning Bolt, because red will still have Volcanic Hammer and Hammer of Bogardan to keep it competitive. Let's ban Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach, because Black has Distress and Mind Rot, which are basically the same thing! Or, we can just ban good spells in all the colors until we're just jamming creatures into each other like every other format.

[FoolofaTook]

Impulse will be just fine in Legacy. It's a 4 card dig at instant speed and the Legacy cards it is digging for aren't Standard cannon fodder.

You cannot compare any Standard with Legacy in terms of the impact of cards that dig and select because Legacy has so many power cards that can win you the game if you get them at the right time. EoT Impulse for Show and Tell will kill somebody very predictably. EoT Impulse for a Show and Tell target, same thing.

BTW, if Lightning Bolt ever hits a consistent 70% penetration at the top tables it should be banned from Legacy.

[btm10]

Out of all those cards printed after Invasion none, except Serum Visions, had even a negligible impact on their respective Standard formats. The cards printed before Invasion that had any sort of saturation, all existed in a different epoch of Magic's history.

Impulse was from a different epoch, but it was a pretty popular card in its Standard environment if I recall correctly. I know it was in Forbiddian and some other mono blue lists.

Well, I can't help that people are lazy. It also seems handy and simple to say: "strategic diversity" and drop the mic, as if somehow that dichotomy (which I am not sure is any more real than "color diversity") is the end-all, but people do it.

I think the difference between color diversity and strategic diversity, to the extent that either is a useful concept, is that with strategic diversity you can point to the decks in the format and, regardless of color (or even big chunks of their decklists) say "look, they're doing operationally similar things, but acheiving victory differently", whereas this isn't necessarily the case for color diversity.

I think of strategic diversity like cooking - two people can use the same unit operations like chopping, frying, etc. and come out with totally different dishes at the end. The concern I have with color diversity as it's usually discussed here is that there's a good chance that if we aask for and get color diversity, we enable people to play MUD and all 5 colors but they end up playing artifacts and all 5 colors in very similar ways.

[H]

My point is: both color at strategic diversity are both very arbitrary. In what way can you point to a fact that either is valid or more valid than the other? It's just an opinion.

[Lemnear]

My point is: both color at strategic diversity are both very arbitrary. In what way can you point to a fact that either is valid or more valid than the other? It's just an opinion.

The status quo at least gives an idea what WotCs take is. What irks me is how people want to achieve a Balance between colors without blending Them into each other and ergo removing their Identity. I would be very interrested in suggestions other than nerfing blue down to 2/3cc cantrips or giving other colors Blues card selection level on top of the respective colors existing advantages over blue

[btm10]

My point is: both color at strategic diversity are both very arbitrary. In what way can you point to a fact that either is valid or more valid than the other? It's just an opinion.

Of course these are opinions. The whole debate is about how people think the format should be.

[Dice_Box]

Scry is now a global mechanic, I see no reason you can not push it in Commander or Conspiracy style products for Eternal formats. A one drop Magma Jet that only did one damage would be far from useless. The only fear I would have would be the common issue of "If it's good enough for you, it's good enough to be borrowed by Blue". I.E. Tarmogoyf being the best Blue creature issue again.

[Lemnear]

Scry is now a global mechanic, I see no reason you can not push it in Commander or Conspiracy style products for Eternal formats. A one drop Magma Jet that only did one damage would be far from useless. The only fear I would have would be the common issue of "If it's good enough for you, it's good enough to be borrowed by Blue". I.E. Tarmogoyf being the best Blue creature issue again.

You can bet it would. Any card with a single mana cost or 1X cost is doomed to be adapted unless it has an iffy rules Text restriction towards your manabase, gameplan or Manipulation.

Edit: Thinking of it, I guess WotC should push Hellbent which is a totally anti-blue keyword

[Dice_Box]

Save for Miracles, a deck that in the late game almost always plays off the top of its library.

[Lemnear]

Save for Miracles, a deck that in the late game almost always plays off the Sensei's Divining Top of its library.

Fixed ;)

[Pastorofmuppets]

You can bet it would. Any card with a single mana cost or 1X cost is doomed to be adapted unless it has an iffy rules Text restriction towards your manabase, gameplan or Manipulation.

Edit: Thinking of it, I guess WotC should push Hellbent which is a totally anti-blue keyword

I'd give my left arm for a Shock with Hellbent-Scry n.

[death]

Out of all those cards printed after Invasion none, except Serum Visions, had even a negligible impact on their respective Standard formats. The cards printed before Invasion that had any sort of saturation, all existed in a different epoch of Magic's history. I don't think it's useful to exchange the identity of the format for a bunch of garbage that couldn't crack a Standard 60. Long-Term Plans? That'll be useful at 3 mana staring down a Delver. Strategic Planning? Glad I get to replace my one-mana, common instant/sorcery with a two-mana, P3K rare. At least Impulse and Peer Through Depths lets you dig deeper than 3 at instant. But they still have bigger drawbacks than current cards with the added expense of extra mana. Thus, the couldn't cut it for Standard.

We should just ban Lightning Bolt, because red will still have Volcanic Hammer and Hammer of Bogardan to keep it competitive. Let's ban Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach, because Black has Distress and Mind Rot, which are basically the same thing! Or, we can just ban good spells in all the colors until we're just jamming creatures into each other like every other format.

- Although not nearly as powerful as Brainstorm and Ponder, about half of those has seen sucesses in Type 1/1.X. Telling Time was a used in U/R Dragonstorm and U/R Pyromancer's Swath decks.

- Nobody said Lightning Bolt or Thoughtseize is a problem. There is no need to level the playing field in the creature removal or disruption department. But taking Brainstorm and Ponder off the blue shell will level the competitiveness of every deck.

- Before you compare cards to Brainstorm, a card regarded as poorman's Ancestral Recall prior to Treasure Cruise, you need to have an understanding of what power level means. I suggest you begin reading this article: Defining "Power".

Combining these cards with Brainstorm and Ponder however, is what makes them unfair.

- I have to give you some credit since Lightning Bolt and Thoughtseize have synergies with Snapcaster Mage.

[mikeshimoji]

I thought wizards identified the colors as strategic diversity? Isn't red supposed to be direct damage, speed and aggressive? Blue is supposed to lack good creatures, slower and controlish? Maybe that's why people are upset. Blue gets to be strategically diverse, good creatures, aggro (fish), controlish, deck selection, and all the above. Just a thot.

[The Doctor]

Question to those who think Brainstorm is oppressing Legacy: have you been trying to get it banned for the last ten years? Has Legacy been chained for the entirety of its existence? Have you considered the possibility that maybe blue is omnipresent not because of one card...but because of 5-10 of them? Brainstorm is going to be the most common blue card because it fits in the most archetypes, but that doesn't mean that Brainstorm itself is the card that is making the format this blue (evidence: half of Legacy's history). Maybe it's a bad idea to print the best one drop beater in blue and tack on evasion. Perhaps it is problematic to make a mini Progenitus for three mana. Sometimes making a gigantic Yugimon monster with no cheat into play drawback that wins the game 90% of the time can backfire. It may not be a great idea to make a potential Ancestral Recall with the restriction of utilizing the graveyard for cost reduction...because graveyard and cost reduction have never gone badly, right? Blue gets the best consistency tools...so what? How about starting off by removing cards that blue SHOULDN'T have? If ten years from now, a series of stupid black cards completely outside of black's color slice leads to a 70% Thoughtseize meta, do you cry out for a Thoughtseize ban or do you question the stupidity of those printings?

[Zombie]

Question to those who think Brainstorm is oppressing Legacy: have you been trying to get it banned for the last ten years? Has Legacy been chained for the entirety of its existence? Have you considered the possibility that maybe blue is omnipresent not because of one card...but because of 5-10 of them? Brainstorm is going to be the most common blue card because it fits in the most archetypes, but that doesn't mean that Brainstorm itself is the card that is making the format this blue (evidence: half of Legacy's history). Maybe it's a bad idea to print the best one drop beater in blue and tack on evasion. Perhaps it is problematic to make a mini Progenitus for three mana. Sometimes making a gigantic Yugimon monster with no cheat into play drawback that wins the game 90% of the time can backfire. It may not be a great idea to make a potential Ancestral Recall with the restriction of utilizing the graveyard for cost reduction...because graveyard and cost reduction have never gone badly, right? Blue gets the best consistency tools...so what? How about starting off by removing cards that blue SHOULDN'T have? If ten years from now, a series of stupid black cards completely outside of black's color slice leads to a 70% Thoughtseize meta, do you cry out for a Thoughtseize ban or do you question the stupidity of those printings?

I don't think Brainstorm is the sole culprit, no. But one color having heads and shoulders above anything best consistency reduction that eliminates a lot of the concern for clunky cards is too much. Even then I'd much rather see the Dumb Team (Grisel, Emrakul, Omni, EtI, maybe Jin-Git), TNN/Council's Judgment, Terminus gone. Doesn't mean Brainstorm is all right, I don't think it is. But it's much more fun and less offensively dumb than the aforementioned cards.

[Tao]

Question to those who think Brainstorm is oppressing Legacy: have you been trying to get it banned for the last ten years? Has Legacy been chained for the entirety of its existence? Have you considered the possibility that maybe blue is omnipresent not because of one card...but because of 5-10 of them? Brainstorm is going to be the most common blue card because it fits in the most archetypes, but that doesn't mean that Brainstorm itself is the card that is making the format this blue (evidence: half of Legacy's history). Maybe it's a bad idea to print the best one drop beater in blue and tack on evasion. Perhaps it is problematic to make a mini Progenitus for three mana. Sometimes making a gigantic Yugimon monster with no cheat into play drawback that wins the game 90% of the time can backfire. It may not be a great idea to make a potential Ancestral Recall with the restriction of utilizing the graveyard for cost reduction...because graveyard and cost reduction have never gone badly, right? Blue gets the best consistency tools...so what? How about starting off by removing cards that blue SHOULDN'T have? If ten years from now, a series of stupid black cards completely outside of black's color slice leads to a 70% Thoughtseize meta, do you cry out for a Thoughtseize ban or do you question the stupidity of those printings?

I have played Legacy since the beginning and I have been arguing for its banning for a couple of years now, I can't tell you exactly since when. But at some point it occurred to me that the problem is not Show and Tell, is not Delver and it is not Counterbalance. The problem is Brainstorm (plus to a lesser degree Ponder) which offers a shell that carries basically any good blue deck to a higher winrate than similar decks of other colors by giving it absurd consistency.

In the long run it really doesn't matter if it is Delver, Counterbalance, Show and Tell or like right now Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise. There will always be some best deck and there will be a big fuss about which card is unfair now but in the end it is the Brainstorm shell that carries these decks.

The problem is that Brainstorm removes drawbacks.

When all the hype was Sneak and Tell people cried for a ban of Show and Tell. But if it didn't have access to Brainstorm, it would have never become such a monstrous deck. Sneak and Tell is the most extreme case. You should end up with double Griselbrand, double Emrakul hands way too often. You should lose far more game simply because you can't find combo pieces or because you can't find enough protection for your combo. It is just the Brainstorm (plus Ponder) shell that allows you to get away with it. But people only see how Show and Tell beats them and so they cry for a ban of this card. The fact that they would win a much higher percentage of times against this deck with less powerful cantrips on the opposing side is not as obvious.

And if you play a Delver deck with 32 1-Mana-cards and 16 lands you should end up getting mana screwed a good amount of time and as the game goes on you should eventually get flooded and fall behind because you didn't use your Mana effectively. And once again Brainstorm remove these drawbacks by finding lands early and later on shuffling the extra lands back in. Delver itself is really not a problem card. Black, Red and White have a plentheora of easy outs to it. Red can just burn it very effectively with either Lightning Bolt or Punishing Fire, White can Swords or Path it and Black has a variety of efficient Edicts (starting with Innocent Blood) that are currently unfortunately unplayed. And then there is Pernicious Deed and a lot of other efficient ways to get rid of an aggressive draw - but these solutions stop being effective if the opposing deck just stays on 2-3 lands and never draws any additional lands for the rest of the game. You could course design a nonblue deck to beat Delver but then you will lose to blue Combo and Control.

Speaking of blue Control, there is Counterbalance and Terminus. Counterbalance flat out sucks if you have 2 copies of it in hand but no Sensei's Top and Terminus sucks if you draw it into your opening hand. It is Brainstorm that removes the drawback from these cards. You find the Combo and in case you draw unwanted extra copies or in case you draw them at an inconvenient time you can simply shuffle them back. On top of that of course Brainstorm has some insane extra combo potential with both of these cards but that is just the icing on the cake.

And now all the hype is Dig through Time and Treasure Cruise and despite never having played with them due to my leave - feel free to say this entire post is worthless because of it and that this time they are the real deal - I would bet the same holds true. If you cannot simply remove them from your opening hand you will lose games for having two in hand without being able to play them. Once again, they are obviously still extremey powerful cards and would be even without Brainstorm, but they do come with a drawback and Brainstorm negates that drawback.

For your question if Legacy has been chained for the entirety of its existence: to some degree yes because people have not realized its full potential (I have been in a couple discussions with guys who wanted to remove Brainstorm from their blue decks because "it doesn't do anything") but mostly no. Brainstorm always was the most powerful card in the format but some card has to be. Like many people pointed out, you can't just always ban the best card or you end up with no cards. In the beginning it was just the best card but as time went on more and more combos and synergies with Brainstorm were printed: Delver, Counterbalance, a new set of fetchlands for absolutely guaranteed shuffle, Terminus, Entreat the Angels, Dig Through Time, Young Pyromancer, Monestary Swiftspear, Snapcaster Mage, Ad Nauseam and I am sure the list goes on. All these cards have some degree of synergy with Brainstorm from small synergy to full combo potential. And also the combo decks that Brainstorm enables have gotten more powerful. Once upon a time the best thing a Reanimator (or Show and Tell) deck could muster was an Akroma (one without Lifelink and Yawgmoth Bargain sticked up her butthole) and Combo decks had no "5 Mana draw 20 cards" spell.

And last but not least Brainstorm completely negates Black Discard which should besides Counterspells be the second way of containing Combo decks. But against a Combo deck that has access to Brainstorm (and Ponder) pure Discard is absolutely inefficient. One topdecked Brainstorm is usually enough to get the combo player back into the game.

To sum things up, the blue cards that people complain about are pretty good, but they are not unfair. Delver does a lot of damage very fast but it dies to every removal spell, Show and Tell wins the game on the spot but is inconsistent and vulnerable, Counterbalance can lock up a game but without a second combo piece it has very low odds of hitting anything and Treasure Cruise can be an Ancestral Recall but you can also end up with 2 of them stuck in your hand.

[Lemnear]

And last but not least Brainstorm completely negates Black Discard which should besides Counterspells be the second way of containing Combo decks. But against a Combo deck that has access to Brainstorm (and Ponder) pure Discard is absolutely inefficient. One topdecked Brainstorm is usually enough to get the combo player back into the game.

How many times more do we have to comment on that bullshit? If you can't sling discard in an efficient way against combo despite of Brainstorm you might just suck making smart decisions. Every storm deck in existance proves the complete opposite of what you wrote above.

[death]

How many times more do we have to comment on that bullshit? If you can't sling discard in an efficient way against combo despite of Brainstorm you might just suck making smart decisions. Every storm deck in existance proves the complete opposite of what you wrote above.

I'd like to present this case, Exhibit A - Alix Hatfield. Though it's not Brainstorm that directly won him the finals, it's Ponder. I've argued that Ponder is more powerful because of the shuffle effect and it lets you see a 4th card.

SCGNJ Finals, games tied 1-1. At exactly 1:00:00 mark Eli casts a Thoughtseize, Alix Brainstorms and hides High Tide on top. This is the most epic win I've ever seen in Magic history. Watch the penultimate turn, before he could have lost.

I'm enthusiastically co-signing "Because no-one with a brain believes that force is a problem card." and adding "No-one with a brain believes that Ponder is a problem card."

Did you watch? Btw, when I pushed Candelabras in High Tide (read the Old Primer by ergosum) I got mocked. Same thing when I retuned Hive Mind, months before it broke the dailies and people couldn't beat it.

[rlesko]

I honestly didn't watch but using a 4 year old video to prove a point seems....odd. Brainstorm can hide cards, we all know that.

[death]

I honestly didn't watch but using a 4 year old video to prove a point seems....odd. Brainstorm can hide cards, we all know that.

He won on the back of Ponder. On the previous game, he got double Hymned and Thoughtseized and still won with the help of cantrips.

You're missing the point that Brainstorm/Ponder could give free wins, where if it were a non-blue deck the situation is hopeless.