All B/R update speculation.

[Dice_Box]

Delver is the lest powerful at this moment than he has ever been thanks to the rise of Young Pyromancer. I think at this moment, the banning of Delver would not have the impact people are expecting it would.

[wonderPreaux]

Delver is the lest powerful at this moment than he has ever been thanks to the rise of Young Pyromancer. I think at this moment, the banning of Delver would not have the impact people are expecting it would.

FWIW, banning Brainstorm wouldn't impact Pyromancer that greatly either as just playing spells for value means that Preordain would be acceptable, or just pivoting to other functions cheaply like Gut Shot/Mutagenic Growth

[Lord Seth]

Why does the meta have to change by removing the card that is just fundamentally doing what the color blue is supposed to do? There are cards that are efficient beaters (Delver), efficient evasive threats (TNN, and sorta Delver), cards that exploit the graveyard for advantage (Cruise/DTT), cards that cheat out permanents (SnT), all things blue has no business doing, and you would instead ban the cards that just decent cantripping?

Since when has how much a card supposedly fits into its color(s) ever had anything to do with whether it should be banned or not? Not counting the "banned everywhere" cards (i.e. ante, Shahrazad, dexterity), the only card on the banned list I can see that's arguably not in color is Channel.

[nedleeds]

Edit: Testing32 beat me to it. Also, they tend to go for minimally invasive routes to forcing meta changes; if something changed since the last update, it's Treasure Cruise, so that's what's going to go.

They didn't for sotf.

[nedleeds]

I don't give a shit how many times you brainstorm against me. Can you deal with my threats? Can you kill me? If you can't, all you've done is spend your mana cantripping while I play business.

Guess how I found 3 of my 4 STPs and still have 45 cards in my deck, didn't flood on land and flushed my soft counters once the game went a little long?

[menace13]

Guess how I found 3 of my 4 STPs and still have 45 cards in my deck, didn't flood on land and flushed my soft counters once the game went a little long?

I dont give a shit if youre drawing cards???!!! TopKek

[hobart]

Guess how I found 3 of my 4 STPs and still have 45 cards in my deck, didn't flood on land and flushed my soft counters once the game went a little long?

It's a draw fixer, it's a good card. That's what it's supposed to do. It's still not a blowout.

[wonderPreaux]

Guess how I found 3 of my 4 STPs and still have 45 cards in my deck, didn't flood on land and flushed my soft counters once the game went a little long?

Even if you're re-shuffling and brainstorming to find each of those StP, it's still highly unlikely to find them all withing the top 15 of your deck. You have to find a smaller and smaller number of success in a lower and lower set of samples. Treating every Brainstorm like the opponent has infinite Demonic Tutors is just ridiculous and posts like this seem to be occurring more and more frequently. I'm beginning to think that we need some sort of barrier to entry for this thread where you have to demonstrate at least a basic understanding of combinatorial probability and sample size logic before posting.

Brainstorm isn't broken because it has a single digit percent chance of giving you a certain combo of cards, Brainstorm isn't broken because the only cases you want to recall of its use are the ones where it was disproportionately effective. You can't evaluate a card's power based on it's nut high of effectiveness, that's why cards like Phage (omg, one shot kill) or decks like Belcher (ftk every time guys!) aren't banned.

[Ingo]

Brainstorm isn't broken because it has a single digit percent chance of giving you a certain combo of cards, Brainstorm isn't broken because the only cases you want to recall of its use are the ones where it was disproportionately effective. You can't evaluate a card's power based on it's nut high of effectiveness, that's why cards like Phage (omg, one shot kill) or decks like Belcher (ftk every time guys!) aren't banned.

Brainstorm isn't broken, and it would be a shame if it left the format. The blue shell is, though, I guess most people agree on that. Question is what to do with it.

Leaving everything as it is will probably lead to blue shell everything.
I think Ascendency combo is very strong and will show up way more than it does now, aside from many other combodecks building in cantrips/TC/DTT already.
Miracles already had a high representation of blue shell cards, Monastery Mentor will push blue shell control forward, whether it's in Miracles or a new deck.
Tempodecks will remain overly present.

Banning (a) card(s) from the blue shell; If you really want to power down this shell, brainstorm is the single card which weakens the shell the most. Unfortunately, banning it would also have a huge impact for other blue decks not reying on the entire shell. Treasure Cruise is the high end card though pushing the blue shell through the roof, so banning this one would also have a strong effect on the environment. But it's probably only a matter of time before a new blue card gets printed with cantrip synergy, which would lead to this exact same discussion.

The printing of a (or multiple) hatecard(s) against blue / onedrops / carddraw, which is widely applicable in other decks and not abusable in the blue shell.
I don't like hate against a color, but I would be fond of some more chalicelike effects or anticarddraw (chains of mephistopheles - spirit of the labyrinth) in other colors.

My bets though are on the banning of Treasure Cruise.

[wonderPreaux]

Part of this issue is that, in case anyone hasn't noticed, Prowess and Pyromancer/Ascendancy types of effects are just watered down Storm mechanics, on permanents, usually creatures. WotC took the most degen mechanic of all time, and put it on bodies. Except these are relatively economical and don't require careful construction with accelerators and tutors, like Tendrils, because they stick around on the board. It's not the blue shell that's entirely the problem, it's just that the blue shell is the most obviously useful set of cheap spells to string together because, unlike regular storm combo, cantripping into cantrips is actually a decent way to spend the turn. Even if you didn't want to play blue, you could just put in a bunch of Burn and phyrexian mana cards with enough Prowess dudes and probably have a deck.

[Ingo]

This is part of my dislike of where the format is going. It is simply too easy, cantripping was already very good but now you can cantrip into oblivion for the win as well. Where's the careful deckconstruction with well-thought out interactions between cards, resulting in interesting varienced decks? I would like the printing of cards which make new and competitive deckideas possible, but there's quite an efficiency gap to overcome compared to the power of cantrip.

[Lemnear]

Brainstorm isn't broken, and it would be a shame if it left the format. The blue shell is, though, I guess most people agree on that. Question is what to do with it.

Leaving everything as it is will probably lead to blue shell everything.
I think Ascendency combo is very strong and will show up way more than it does now, aside from many other combodecks building in cantrips/TC/DTT already.
Miracles already had a high representation of blue shell cards, Monastery Mentor will push blue shell control forward, whether it's in Miracles or a new deck.
Tempodecks will remain overly present.

Banning (a) card(s) from the blue shell; If you really want to power down this shell, brainstorm is the single card which weakens the shell the most. Unfortunately, banning it would also have a huge impact for other blue decks not reying on the entire shell. Treasure Cruise is the high end card though pushing the blue shell through the roof, so banning this one would also have a strong effect on the environment. But it's probably only a matter of time before a new blue card gets printed with cantrip synergy, which would lead to this exact same discussion.

The printing of a (or multiple) hatecard(s) against blue / onedrops / carddraw, which is widely applicable in other decks and not abusable in the blue shell.
I don't like hate against a color, but I would be fond of some more chalicelike effects or anticarddraw (chains of mephistopheles - spirit of the labyrinth) in other colors.

My bets though are on the banning of Treasure Cruise.

Try to see it the following way: If you ban Brainstorm and hurt all these blue combo decks and Miracles and whatnot in a serious manner, but the core strengh of Ponder+Preordain+Probe+Treasure Cruise remains, would players really skip on that card selection and power to just move to non-blue decks which are no match for that CA and CQ in the first place? They would not. All that would pretty likely happen is that the blue combo, Miracles, etc. players would move to decks with less conditional cards like Terminus or Daze (which they would no longer be able to Brainstorm away). We already have such decks in the format in form of UWx Blades.

Verdict:
Would the total numbers of people abusing the power and redundancy of the beforementioned core shrink if Brainstorm is banned? No it would not and nothing would change for the position of non-blue decks against the blue core. Would the format get more diverse if all the players riding Ponder+Brainstorm for various function and in various decks as a glue simply move to Blade-Variants because conditional cards become a no-go without Brainstorm in the format? It would neither. Would the format become more attractive for players if combo and control get a serious hit only benefiting the SFM/TNN circlejerk in tournaments round after round? No chance in hell

[Deckerator]

If you ask me i would ban no card, especially no TC or BS. Sure the blue shell is strong but give the meta a chance to stabilize on its own. There is no "must ban" decision like we had with Mental Misstep where several decks couldnt be played because of this counter. Nowadays a lot of decks can be played. Some better, some worse but that is meta. If blue/red is the "best" color combination why is there no opportunity to play it? A lot of people want to play "The best deck" in the format. Nowadays they think it is blue/red.

If people find decks to beat U/R more easily than this deck will rise and U/R will go back in popularity.

imo the meta is as fine as it is. Banning a card would be a big fault. The cards are strong like we see but there is no reason to ban because legacy is the format with the best cards magic has ever seen.


Edit: I would like to see SoTF gets a new chance in legacy.

[Ingo]

Lemnear, I don't have a hard time to see things as you do. I even don't disagree. But an argumentation pro brainstorm does not address the problem of the blue shell, it seems like an argumentation for the sake of the status quo. So you might be totally fine with the overabundance of this blue shell (then we disagree, because I think it turns the environment in a grey goo of more or less the same deckstrategies). But if you're not, what do you think should happen?

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

Still pulling for mass bannings, but with a slightly updated (and truncated) list:

-Delver of Secrets
-True Name Nemesis
-Treasure Cruise
-Brainstorm
-Progenitus
-Iona
-Emrakul
-Jin Gitaxis
-Griselbrand
-Gaea's Cradle
-Terminus

Kill these, and the format will become much better overnight. It's like scraping out all the junk that Wizards dumped on the format while keeping the good additions (Thalia, Deathrite, Abrupt Decay, Past In Flames, Young Pyromancer, etc).

And knocking Elves down a peg in the fairest way possible, because it's getting harder and harder to not make legitimate Academy comparisons when talking about Cradle.

[Lemnear]

Lemnear, I don't have a hard time to see things as you do. I even don't disagree. But an argumentation pro brainstorm does not address the problem of the blue shell, it seems like an argumentation for the sake of the status quo. So you might be totally fine with the overabundance of this blue shell (then we disagree, because I think it turns the environment in a grey goo of more or less the same deckstrategies). But if you're not, what do you think should happen?

Maybe it's because I'm coming from Vintage and am used to see a Problem per sé with the same cards being present in many decks especially if they are pure support-cards. A few years ago every non-Workshop, non-Oath Vintage deck in Vintage basically started with 4 Dark Confidants and no one had a problem. During the Golden Age of Vintage half of the format played Scroll/Brainstorm/Ponder and we had a plendid Vintage community despite of these "fix slots".

What appears to be constantly undermined in the discussion is that the Cantrips aren't keeping Tarmogoyf and Lackey and Wild Nacatl out from the format, but it' in fact the Powercreep. UR replaced RUG because Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf doesn't cut it anymore thanks to Delver, Swiftspear and Pyromancer. Lackey can't get past DRS. Would this change if these cards are found via Preordain instead of Brainstorm? Nope.

Don't mistake me for being fine that a) blue decks these days basically build itself, b) Tempo and aggro have better carddraw than control decks (My worst fear for Legacy ever was that tempo decks get access to real cardadvantage - to name Gush) or c) all that comes without real tradeoffs - but even worse - even allowed these decks to cut down colors for even more stable manabases.

WotC can undo that development if they wish. They can reintroduce graveyard-matters-cards like Mongoose, Tarmogoyf and Tombstalker as reasons to splash colors. They can do this pretty easily without the format collapsing end of January, give the format more time trying to adapt or get going with relevant printings in BGW

[YamiJoey]

Can we stop pretending Survival is a balanced and fair Magic card? It is the second most broken Green Spell ever printed (citation needed) after Fastbond.

[Dice_Box]

Can we stop pretending Survival is a balanced and fair Magic card? It is the second most broken Green Spell ever printed (citation needed) after Fastbond.

Oath would like a word with you.

[Julian23]

Oath would like a word with you.

Did anyone say Quirion Ranger?

[spirit of the wretch]

Oath would like a word with you.

So does Channel. Still, Survival is pretty busted.