All B/R update speculation.

[Lemnear]

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.

This proves what? That Eli did not shuffle Alix deck in the deciding moment? That Alix just drew a magical, random 3-off in Spiral?

If he did not had Brainstorm to hide High Tide he also could have drawn a random 3-off High Tide (which Eli would have picked instead then) and still win. This video is evidence that, unless Alix draws a 3-outer, the discard would have won the game.

[rlesko]

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.

How is it a "free" win?

[death]

How many aggro, control and combo decks have become nonviable strategies? Are you contented with a meta of BUG Delver, RUG Delver, URW Delver, UR Delver, Miracles, ANT and OmniTell? What do these decks have in common? Well except for Miracles:

-Brainstorm
-Ponder
-Gitaxian Probe
-Treasure Cruise/Preordain

You can't go wrong with the blue shell. If you're not playing this shell then you're probably just better off hiding cards with Brainstorm.

Not a heck of a lot of decks splashing blue for just Brainstorm.

Just remembered this. Why does it always have to be you. Really?

[btm10]

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.

So your point is that sometimes Brainstorm hiding cards from discard is good? No one has disagreed with you on this. What Lemnear and I and others have said is that the existence of Brainstorm doesn't invalidate discard as disruption. Not only is it not always correct to hide cards with Brainstorm, sometimes all the discard wielding player needed was the 2-for-1. Turning Hymn into a 3 card swing, or Duress/Thoughtseize into a targeted Hymn against a weak hand is still good, and cherry-picking examples does nothing to help your point.

Edit: BUG Delver doesn't run Probe, and most lists run fewer than 4 Cruises.

[death]

My point was not about Brainstorm. Do you even read bro?

Brainstorm hiding cards on top was a mere description of what was going on in the match.

Your opponent shuffling the deck or not has no effect on Ponder. I can argue that Eli could have shuffled/cut (he usually did in the match) and still left Time Spiral on top.

The point was to demonstrate Ponder's strength and that it digs 4 cards deep, not to mention shuffle away the dead cards on top.

I honestly didn't watch but using a 4 year old video to prove a point seems....odd.

High Tide and Time Spiral could easily be Show and Tell and Omniscience. The Candelabra could be any cantrip or wish and the outcome would be the same, only OmniTell doesn't lose to variance which can happen with Time Spiral. I'm sure High Tide is still a deck now, but a poor choice in a URx Delver/Burn/Cruise/REB meta.

[btm10]

My point was not about Brainstorm. Do you even read bro?

Your point was about both Brainstorm and Ponder. The Ponder point was both less relevant to the broader discussion and less irritating so I ignored it.

[eays]

Discard is bad right now. I don't care if it's hymn or seize or whatever...as long as cruise decks continue to be top decks (which they always will unless something is done) discard will be an irrelevant strategy. Combo players everywhere continue creaming their pants with what these recent printings are doing to the meta.

[wonderPreaux]

Speaking as someone who's entire Legacy experience is playing storm combo, I can tell you my discard spells are pretty damn valid. If I throw out a Therapy and the opponent Brainstorms in response, it's a Princess-Bride-esque mind game of what is actually threatening and how, and rewards me for matchup knowledge, how I apply known cards, and my awareness of the gamestate. If I come out with Duress and the opponent Brainstorms, the opponent is in the challenged position instead of me, as they are going to lose something no matter what and have to evaluate how close I am to going off if they're control, how best to reach combo if it's a mirror etc. Regardless, I then have to use the knowledge of their revealed hand to make educated determination of what "better" card was protected, and how to proceed from there.

At no point was my discard spell rendered irrelevant, I may have just had to work a little harder to make it optimally effective. Yes, tactically, Brainstorm to protect a card is obviously solid, but has tough implications for the opponent. Neither my opponent nor myself had a decisive victory, we both got the chance to extract value from our cards, though. That seems perfectly reasonable to me, you recognize the interaction and work to exploit it. Brainstorm isn't a cantripping-counterspell for discard.

Also, since you're so adamant about Ponder being ridiculous, I should point out that the same logic applies: discard and Ponder co-exist and the person who worked harder to make their card effective is going to be more successful. Use whether shuffled or not, the matchup, cards in hand, etc and you can put together what they are aiming towards and react accordingly. If you suspect your storm opponent of floating a Tutor on top, you can run out Cabal Therapy calling Dark Ritual instead and then force them into an awkward spot of exposing the Tutor without proper combo pieces, for example. Cantrips are the softest counter to discard because... well, it doesn't counter discard at all, it just sets up a subgame where you commit mana and the use of a card to protect another card, the opposing discard is still resolving and an aware opponent can simply deny you something else now that you've "locked in" your cantrip on what you thought to be important.

tl;dr play the storm mirror a bunch and then tell me discard can't beat cantrips

[FoolofaTook]

Combo is a different case than virtually any other archetype that would use discard. It's very different than aggro with discard or control with discard.

When a combo player probes he's making a threat to end the game. It may be a bluff to gain some time to continue sculpting but there's always the fear that the game will be over in a Lotus Petal - flurry of rituals - tutor of some sort scenario. An opposing player with Brainstorm can't just hide his answers on top of his list because he may never get the chance to draw them again.

When an aggro player casts discard he's just trying to establish a stable game state for his plan for a couple of turns at the end of which he will probably be very far ahead and have inevitability. An opposing player who Brainstorms against that usually does so with the assurance that the important turn is not the one he is facing but will be the next turn or the turn thereafter. It's much easier to prioritize the hiding of assets in that situation.

Control players use discard proactively early in the game when they're buying time to setup their plan and then in the mid-game to create an inflection point they can win off of. Most of the time they won't even bother using the early discard against an opponent playing Brainstorm unless the draw has left them bereft of answers for common problems or the opponent has done something that makes discard very valuable, such as playing an SFM and stashing Batterskull in their hand - tapping out in the process.

[btm10]

Discard is bad right now. I don't care if it's hymn or seize or whatever...as long as cruise decks continue to be top decks (which they always will unless something is done) discard will be an irrelevant strategy. Combo players everywhere continue creaming their pants with what these recent printings are doing to the meta.

Discard isn't a viable strategy, nor has it been since Megrim/Bottomless Pit or thereabouts, and it was a bad strategy then. Discard effects as part of a disruption suite however, remain effective.

As for aggro decks using discard against combo, we're getting pretty far from a discussion of Brainstorm's brokenness. Has aggro ever had a favorable combo matchup? Should it?

[death]

tl;dr play the storm mirror a bunch and then tell me discard can't beat cantrips

The games can go either way depending on how each player utilizes his/her cantrips, Brainstorm and Ponder. It's not all that difficult to beat discard with Brainstorm, float/find your missing combo piece with Ponder and recover. This is especially easy with ANT where you can D. Rit or C. Rit > IT or crack LEDs in response to draw spell > AdNaus/IT because the deck is all about mana + tutors, 2 storm enablers (AdN/PiF).

PS - I just showed you a video.

[Julian23]

People sometimes tell me you have to cast Brainstorm to do concistently well in Legacy. Somehow I'm not buying it. #HumbleBrags

Out of all events played in 2014, I played Elves in every single one except for one tournament where I ran Miracles.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

People sometimes tell me you have to cast Brainstorm to do concistently well in Legacy. Somehow I'm not buying it. #HumbleBrags

Out of all events played in 2014, I played Elves in every single one except for one tournament where I ran Miracles.

Out of all events played in 2014, I played Can Thresh in every single one except for that I played in no tournament since September 26, 2014.


My snactioned Legacy Win% for 2014:
Overall record: 11-3-1
Total number of matches: 7
Win percentages ignoring draws: 78,4358 %


You'd better off play cantrips.

[Julian23]

My snactioned Legacy Win% for 2014:
Overall record: 11-3-1 (=15 matches)
Total number of matches: 7 (7 =! 15)
Win percentages ignoring draws: 78,4358 %

This is the moment where everyone competitive minded really wonders why we are even talking to someone who claims to have played 7 (or let it be 15) matches of Legacy in 2014, lol. #FilthyCasualConfirmed. You've always struck us as one of those "I want reality to fit into how I want it to be." Making up and posting a "statistic" that doesn't even bear anything close to statistical significance lets you choose to be either just somebody irrelevant to talk to or not interested in actually perceiving reality the way it is.

/Edit: You apparently don't even know how to calculate win%s, lol. I guess even the "fake-it-until-you-make-it" approach doesn't work for you. 11/14 = 0.78571428571. I don't know where that 78,4358% is coming from, lol.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Actually win percentages in BDP vs. Julian match reach about 100 %.

[Julian23]

I'm sorry for giving you the benefit of the doubt about you actually meaning what you say. Do you want to contribute anything with substance?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm sorry for giving you the benefit of the doubt about you actually meaning what you say. Do you want to contribute anything with substance?

Considering that you didn't actually pulled the numbers out of lotto machine, even than it's still very little more than an anectodal evidence. There's no way to tell if you would not have been more successfull with a cantrip deck; we may stochastically model that, but that's about it. Moreover, this tells us nothing about a(n un)necessity to ban Brainstorm.
Congrats on the many games of Magic: the Gathering you played.

[FoolofaTook]

Considering that you didn't actually pulled the numbers out of lotto machine, even than it's still very little more than an anectodal evidence. There's no way to tell if you would not have been more successfull with a cantrip deck; we may stochastically model that, but that's about it. Moreover, this tells us nothing about a(n un)necessity to ban Brainstorm.
Congrats on the many games of Magic: the Gathering you played.

Additionally, nobody is arguing that Eves can't be played successfully in a blue shell meta. The problem is that Elves is one of the very few non-blue shell lists that can be played successfully in that meta.

[btm10]

Additionally, nobody is arguing that Eves can't be played successfully in a blue shell meta. The problem is that Elves is one of the very few non-blue shell lists that can be played successfully in that meta.

Then maybe we should unban some nonblue cards.

[death]

People tell me you have to cast Brainstorm to do concistently well in Legacy. Somehow I'm not buying it.

Out of all events played in 2014, I played Elves in every single one except for one tournament where I ran Miracles.

What is Elves? Specifically, what is an Elves Combo deck?

Well first, it's a fucking consistent combo like blue, does nothing but draw (uhm cantrip?) into more draw, cast "free" spells (like blue?) and cheat costs (1-sided Show and Tell?) with untap engines, thankfully 4xTolarian Academy is legal (errr Cradle). Legendary? Lol no, according to the new rules. Enchantress is tier 3 because it's lacking a consistent Frantic Search draw/mana engine. Having said that, who needs Earthcraft unbanned?

You've proven that Elves is tier since it is consistent as most blue cantrip decks, although myself and others won't pick it up due to one simple fact: Not everybody likes Elves.

And no, there is no green elf creature on the DCI watch list, if anything it's Gaea's Cradle.

tl;dr I'm not buying your argument either. Maybe try something like Aggro Elves in 2015 perhaps?