All B/R update speculation.

[Ingo]

I agree. And TC, Brainstorm, etc would be less oppressive if people played REB or an equally broken draw engine like loam, or elves. Hell, or if people played a deck based on taxing people.

While it's true there are decks that keep up versus brainstorm/TC/... , you can't deny that these decks are limited in their possibilities. Loam evidently needs a deck full of abusable lands, Elves - well you know what I mean.
Blue shell decks however don't require specific card synergies, and because of that can be slotted into any form of strategy you'd like. Basically, the blue shell provides a player with almost anything he needs, from consistency to (free) counters to carddraw to amazing aggro creatures. Blue can play any strategic line it wants because it was provided with absurd amount of powerfull cards without restraints.

Blue shell was already pretty dominant with ponder, brainstorm and force of will, but I found it acceptable because it was a control/combo color. By adding delver and Treasure Cruise to the mix, blue shell took over agressive strategies as well, and with TC even means to reload. When even aggro strategies are dominated by blue, I think it's time for some serious re-evaluation.

Why? It's splashable in literally every deck, which is why virtually every archetype is represented in this format at a competitive level. Would you have a problem with Brainstorm if it was colorless?

The premises of having to splash blue to make an archetype playable is -according to me- a reverse way of looking at things. You can equally say that the blue core is overpowered, which makes splashing it mandatory for many decks, and reduces the variance of archetypes (instead of increasing it).

[apple713]

Why? It's splashable in literally every deck, which is why virtually every archetype is represented in this format at a competitive level. Would you have a problem with Brainstorm if it was colorless?

I would be more than ok with brainstorm and ponder being colorless because that means FOW is not as easily played. Brainstorm by itself is not so bad. It is more so the holy trinity...Brainstorm FOW ponder that creates the issue. Brainstorm and ponder together create the best digging engine in the game for their cost. If anyone wants to dig for anything in any deck OR create consistency, they can do so for 8 card slots. Additionally, if you want protection against combo, add FOW. Now you are only 4 blue cards away from reliably casting FOW, and having the best digging engine. At this point all you have to do is insert the combo of choice or selected aggro cards and you have the basis of a top tier deck. It has consistency, and protection, and can be added easily to any other colors. Any one of the above mentioned cards when isolated from the rest are not too powerful and without the others the individual card would not see near as much play as it does now.

[Lemnear]

While it's true there are decks that keep up versus brainstorm/TC/... , you can't deny that these decks are limited in their possibilities. Loam evidently needs a deck full of abusable lands, Elves - well you know what I mean.
Blue shell decks however don't require specific card synergies, and because of that can be slotted into any form of strategy you'd like. Basically, the blue shell provides a player with almost anything he needs, from consistency to (free) counters to carddraw to amazing aggro creatures. Blue can play any strategic line it wants because it was provided with absurd amount of powerfull cards without restraints.

Blue shell was already pretty dominant with ponder, brainstorm and force of will, but I found it acceptable because it was a control/combo color. By adding delver and Treasure Cruise to the mix, blue shell took over agressive strategies as well, and with TC even means to reload. When even aggro strategies are dominated by blue, I think it's time for some serious re-evaluation.

Loam needs a deck full of lands, Glimpse a deck full of creatures and Treasure Cruise a deck full of cantrips. You act as if the whole Brainstorm + Ponder + Probe + Treasure Cruise + FoW shell isn't outright occupying 1/3 of your decks space and makes decks pretty "airy" and ergo can't "be slotted into any form of strategy you'd like" or we could say the same about Loam as it supports different endgames of either KotR, Seismic Assault, Worm Harvest or Marit Lage. Fact is, that the decks which run the full 20 blue cards listed above are exclusively flavors of Delver or Blade and we have to differ between the strategic flexible 8-cantrip-shell established at the beginning of 2008 and the streamlined-for-aggro-control 20-cards-package, but some gentlemen in this thread want to revive the 2006 Pre-Ponder metagame which looked like this:

The Legacy Metagame and 2006 Legacy Championship

Edit: Now look at Tom Bennetts deck and his cantrip & draw shell in 2006:

Main Deck

60 cards

4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Tundra
4 Windswept Heath

17 lands

3 Meddling Mage
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Werebear

13 creatures

4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Note
3 Pithing Needle
4 Predict
3 Serum Visions
4 Swords to Plowshares

30 other spells


Sideboard
3 Armageddon
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Disrupt
1 Meddling Mage
4 Tormod's Crypt

Surprise, surprise! Brainstorm + Mental Note + Serum Visions were his cantrips and Predict the 2006's Treasure Cruise.


The metagame had 3 DtBs, 2 with blue and Brainstorm aka T.Hold & Solidarity with Goblins being the third. Landstill marking the 4th place after a significant gap. That's 75% blue decks at the top in 2006! I habe no fucking clue why people bring up,the fairy tale that blue was less dominant back in the days. I suspect it's because they only have the short era of Zoo and Maverick in mind after the release of Alara (2008-2009)

[Ingo]

Loam needs a deck full of lands, Glimpse a deck full of creatures and Treasure Cruise a deck full of cantrips. You act as if the whole Brainstorm + Ponder + Probe + Treasure Cruise + FoW shell isn't outright occupying 1/3 of your decks space and makes decks pretty "airy" and ergo can't "be slotted into any form of strategy you'd like" or we could say the same about Loam as it supports different endgames of either KotR, Seismic Assault, Worm Harvest or Marit Lage.

Are you really comparing the variations of blue core decks in all its flexibility, be it combo/aggro/control, with the variations of loam? Ofcourse blue cards take up space, but their cantrippy nature picks out the resources it needs, be it combospells, Griselbrand, delvers, goyf, counterbalance, force of will, etc, and with which it requiers a minimum of synergy. Whereas loam only works with a limited cardpool, with high synergies, and therefore a limited amount of deckpossibilities.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I finally realized where the trouble, why we're having this skewed discussion.

Back in Stone Age, there were those really powerful and consistent blue decks whose cantrip suite started with Brainstorm and then the remaining slots were occupied with Portent, Serum Vision or *gasp* Sleight of Hand. That was before Ponder that immediatelly constituted itself as the Cantrip No.2; in fact what we see now is that the two cantrips are inseparable, people nearly always use both of them.
Add the next CA and CQ (be it Preordain, Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time; I guess that there's nothing important missing), and we're at today's situation.

Now, all those cards function as Jokers, they can become whatever the player needs, and some people view this as overpowered. Spare me "but they're no overpowered, they alone don't do anything!" Jokers don't do anything, and you cannot play flush only of Jokers, but you know, but they kinda help to complete the flush.

The cantrip-lovers say that it's silly to mix the decks together, because they are strategically diverse. I'll leave that to someone else who cares about this mantra to think and write about the strategical diversities of 28Jokers.dec, moreover I don't even think that there's that much of a difference between the certain decks, e.g. the Delver-centric piles are strategically the same.

While for the most part of MtG history the blue color was more about CA+CQ than all other colors, it wasn't that of a difference as we have today. There's nothing as close to the cantrip suite (which is always accompanied by next CA/CQ tools, be it TC, JTM, DTT or SFM), so all that "strategical diversity" and "lots of different decks" boils down to what kind of additional blue CA/CQ tools you use alongside BS+Ponder. There's no SotF+GSZ, there's no Sylvan Library + GSZ, there's no [enter example here] simply becasue all those cards are either too slow, too unreliable or too banned to create an opposition/competition to The Blue Jokers Gang.

"But it' ok, blue should have dominance on CQ+CA, it's in its color pie dammit! Also, you need to leave the casual shell and acknowledge that your Kavu petdeck won't fare well against established decks!"
Of course. But care to enlighten me why the only playable decks should be the ones with 16 cantrips? "Something something consitstency, something something play w/e you want." Ok, I'll play w/e I want, maybe even a consistent deck, but would you mind to point me towards a non-cantrips consistent deck that can actually... um, win?

"Competitive players don't thnk like that. We play w/e wins. Even Jokers." Yeah, and that's the point. While it was pretty usual to play anything else than just 16 blue cards, it's not anymore. And all those competitive minds (that never touched nor a shardland, neither a sealed deck) owe me an answer why (when they're so thrilled about consistency) they don't want to see another CA/CQ tools other than cantrips injected (back) into the format.

I would never guess that the sole reason why I'm leaving the game after 18 years of playing is too much consistency. Nowadays strategically diverse consistent decks lead to robotic gameplay and boring tournament experience where you see the same and same and same shit all day long. That's some unbelievable waste of time. There's nothing interesting left in Magic tournaments, only a bunch of nerds assembling the same pieces all over again and again. It's like watching a dice roll olympiad and masturbation contest combined. Dull robotic people play dull robotic decks. Amazing.

I'm not sure if bans and/or unbans could do something about this state, fortunately I'm ceasing to care. It says a lot that I enjoy Kingdom Rush far more than a game of Magic. Kingdom. Fucking. Rush. A tower defense freeware videogame.


edit:

Surprise, surprise! Brainstorm + Mental Note + Serum Visions were his cantrips and Predict the 2006's Treasure Cruise.

One would guess that all is lost when you're comparing Mental Note with Ponder and Predict with Treasure Cruise, especially in context of Survival still unbanned and no post-2006 card (Omniderp, Griselderp, Derper of Secrets) printed yet.

[Nielsie]

Isn't this a slippery slope to take for every colors competitive shell? White decks from D&T to Blade to Maverick start with 4 SFM and 4 Plows (even in some Miracles we see the SFM!). No one complains about that. Green/Black decks start with 4 DRS and 4 GSZ. I still hear no one complaining. I could also point to most red decks and Lightning Bolt. No competitive deck starts from the scratch with 60 undefined cards. Period.

I guess the problem is, almost all of those decks share Brainstorm (and Ponder and FoW). There is no good reason not to use BS when you join 4 SFM with 4 Bolts. This in turn gives you the color with the best and most efficient creature in history: Delver.

To do this you have to ban Brainstorm AND Ponder AND Preordain. The joke however is that the deck still seems to work without those cards if I look at Modern.

Aren't you always the one telling us not to draw parallels with Modern?? I challenge you to try to Modern version of that deck in a Legacy tournament, even if your Modern deck is the only legal Blue deck you can play


Maybe we need Brainstorm 2.0 and Ponder 2.0. Nobody will complain about Infernal Tutor, it needs a specific setup to mimic Demonic Tutor or else it has a specific drawback. Brainstorm and Ponder don't have this, they actualy are too agressively costed for what they do. If Brainstorm didn't exist and Wizards would print it today, I can't imagine them to design it costing only one blue but more something like 2U.

Argh, who am I kidding? If Wizards would design Brainstorm today, it would cost 1 blue phyrexian mana

[Higgs]

I would ban Fetchlands before I touch Brainstorm and see how the blue cantrip shell pans out in the format. (was just looking to the 1999-2001 extended decklists to reply to another thread so I went back to the good old times when BS was just a benign cantrip without so much shuffling effects). Also if BS gets the axe I would be in favor of unbanning powerful bullsh*t like Survival, Oath, Tinker etc. cause if we lack consistency in the format at least we should be able to jam powerful stuff and be able to fling fun spells rather than going into full Modern mode.

[apple713]

I would ban Fetchlands before I touch Brainstorm and see how the blue cantrip shell pans out in the format. (was just looking to the 1999-2001 extended decklists to reply to another thread so I went back to the good old times when BS was just a benign cantrip without so much shuffling effects). Also if BS gets the axe I would be in favor of unbanning powerful bullsh*t like Survival, Oath, Tinker etc. cause if we lack consistency in the format at least we should be able to jam powerful stuff and be able to fling fun spells rather than going into full Modern mode.

yeah but you can't ban a whole cycle of lands because that would destroy the format entirely. I agree brainstorm is just alright without fetches but fetches are just alright without brainstorm.

[Hopo]

...

For the sake of internet's signal-to-noise ratio, I challenge everybody who publicly decides to quit playing magic to also stop crying in public about mtg-related matters that do not touch them anymore.

Also some others seem to think that pretty much every card in the history of magic should be playable, otherwise the meta is warped/broken/stagnant/boring. Unfortunantely it doesn't go like that. In general the playable cards in eternal formats need to be aggressively costed, efficient and quite powerful. That closes the door for vast majority of cards in existence. What the whiners want is to artificially break this and open doors to shittier cards. It makes zero sense to force crappy cards to replace good ones in this format when there are many other formats doing excatly that already.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

For the sake of internet's signal-to-noise ratio, I challenge everybody who publicly decides to quit playing magic to also stop crying in public about mtg-related matters that do not touch them anymore.

I never knew that this forum is for the owners of cards only. Also, these things still touch me, as I got a box to get rid of.

Also some others seem to think that pretty much every card in the history of magic should be playable, otherwise the meta is warped/broken/stagnant/boring. Unfortunantely it doesn't go like that. In general the playable cards in eternal formats need to be aggressively costed, efficient and quite powerful. That closes the door for vast majority of cards in existence. What the whiners want is to artificially break this and open doors to shittier cards. It makes zero sense to force crappy cards to replace good ones in this format when there are many other formats doing excatly that already.

"The queen could read ones minds."

Where does this certainty of yours that "the whiners want... open doors to shittier cards" come from? Or do you really think that people who dislike playing against the ever same pile of shit wouldn't welcome say Survival? But idk, maybe Survival is shitty card.

Reading this thread makes me wonder what I found so interesting and time-deserving about the whole community.

[Nielsie]

It makes zero sense to force crappy cards to replace good ones in this format when there are many other formats doing excatly that already.

Infernal Tutor is a shittier version of Demonic Tutor. Fauna Shaman is a shittier version of Survival. Where do you draw the line?

[Dosferra]

But care to enlighten me why the only playable decks should be the ones with 16 cantrips? "Something something consitstency, something something play w/e you want." Ok, I'll play w/e I want, maybe even a consistent deck, but would you mind to point me towards a non-cantrips consistent deck that can actually... um, win?

Definitely Elves, Lands, Death & Taxes and possibly Maverick.

If feeling feeling generous, specific meta call decks like Dredge, Painter and "good" chalice decks such as Tezz, 4C Loam.

[Echelon]

I believe they invented EDH for those that like to play with crappy cards.

As for consistent, non-blue decks - try Manaless Dredge. Rather then cantrip and filter, it just "draws" 5/6 a turn until it can strip the opponents' hand and flip its library FTW. When goldfishing, you usually hit the mark between turns 2-4. When not goldfishing, you can easily stall your opponent long enough to either develop a winning board state or combo out after all.

[Hopo]

Infernal Tutor is a shittier version of Demonic Tutor. Fauna Shaman is a shittier version of Survival. Where do you draw the line?

That is a very good question. I thought about adding the phrase "notoriously broken cards aside" somewhere there but didn't because I've learned that some think even cantrips can be broken.

[Wordslinger]

There are some similarities between vintage deck construction starting with solomoxen or null rod, and legacy deck construction having decks that star the blue shell vs decks that fight the blue shell, with the obvious argument that legacy non-blue decks are maybe not as good at fighting blue as vintage null rod decks areat fighting decks with moxen.

Look how many decks I can put solomoxen in! Strategic diversity! Actually has some truth to it. Feels a little filthy though.

I guess recent printings have created an era where the increased consistency level of blue has pushed some of the worse decks out of the format, and now that the bar is raised a ton of things that were good enough before .. aren't.

Huh. no wonder people are screaming. They feel like their format is drowning under rising water (zing!).

If it feels like this post is all over the place it's because I don't know how i feel about this. In my meta people just find a way to be successful with nonblue, and we still get new players sometimes. Just play thalia or choke or kill them with thespian depths or elves or.. something. just don't do it consistently.

[ubernostrum]

I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that Gitaxian Probe needs to go in Modern if that format's going to continue to have the rest of its current card pool. And starting to think that it might not be such a bad idea for Legacy, too -- it tones down the most oppressive opening hands of the UR Pyromancer shell, and also sets back quite a few combo shells, giving fair decks more opportunity to fight them.

[Lemnear]

Are you really comparing the variations of blue core decks in all its flexibility, be it combo/aggro/control, with the variations of loam? Ofcourse blue cards take up space, but their cantrippy nature picks out the resources it needs, be it combospells, Griselbrand, delvers, goyf, counterbalance, force of will, etc, and with which it requiers a minimum of synergy. Whereas loam only works with a limited cardpool, with high synergies, and therefore a limited amount of deckpossibilities.

When, please show me the Combo or Control deck which runs the full 20 cards listed. Where is your Counterbalance or Griselbrand deck with Treasure Cruise? Is it THAT hard to admit that you find these 20-card-shell ONLY in Aggro-Control variants?

While for the most part of MtG history the blue color was more about CA+CQ than all other colors, it wasn't that of a difference as we have today. There's nothing as close to the cantrip suite (which is always accompanied by next CA/CQ tools, be it TC, JTM, DTT or SFM), so all that "strategical diversity" and "lots of different decks" boils down to what kind of additional blue CA/CQ tools you use alongside BS+Ponder. There's no SotF+GSZ, there's no Sylvan Library + GSZ, there's no [enter example here] simply becasue all those cards are either too slow, too unreliable or too banned to create an opposition/competition to The Blue Jokers Gang.

Yeah, ignore the fact that DRS + GSZ are exactly such a combination in green, providing a redundancy effect for both "early acceleration" and "reach" in all decks which run it.

edit:
One would guess that all is lost when you're comparing Mental Note with Ponder and Predict with Treasure Cruise, especially in context of Survival still unbanned and no post-2006 card (Omniderp, Griselderp, Derper of Secrets) printed yet.

...says the man who compared Brainstorm and Ancestral Recall for several weeks in this thread. I'm convinced it's fine to compare the construction structure of 2006s T.Hold with 2015s Delve decks, as both work on a common base of "get 7 cards in your graveyard asap", knowing that also the non-blue decks got improved tools since when in form of KotR, DRS, GSZ, etc.

It proves that the cantrip shell and blues dominance over the Legacy metagame is stone old and claiming that the metagame had a certain balance between colors back in the days is blatant nonsense.

Aren't you always the one telling us not to draw parallels with Modern?? I challenge you to try to Modern version of that deck in a Legacy tournament, even if your Modern deck is the only legal Blue deck you can play

Yes. I took the 2006 example and the Modern Delver to show where the root of the issue is: It doesn't matter much if you cast Ponder, Preordain, Mental Note, Thought Scour, Probe or Portent in a redundant enough number to fuel Delver, Tarmogoyf, T.Hold or Delve, as long as the limited number of oppressive threats and kill mechanisms are outclassing all other options. People pointing to Brainstorm ignore, that we are long past the point to fix blues supremacy in CQ tools and all you can do is chopping the Hydras head so the next cantrip ascends to being the top choice. What WotC CAN do in Legacy is controlling the CA tools which are (suprisingly) STILL limited in the format, but mainstreamed by the obviously broken Delve mechanic (T.Hold itself and Tombstalker should have given WotC a clue)

[Bobmans]

Can someone please close this thread? There is no end to this pointless discussion.

[Echelon]

Can someone please close this thread? There is no end to this pointless discussion.

Wisest words in the thread.

[Nielsie]

Yes. I took the 2006 example and the Modern Delver to show where the root of the issue is: It doesn't matter much if you cast Ponder, Preordain, Mental Note, Thought Scour, Probe or Portent in a redundant enough number to fuel Delver, Tarmogoyf, T.Hold or Delve, as long as the limited number of oppressive threats and kill mechanisms are outclassing all other options. People pointing to Brainstorm ignore, that we are long past the point to fix blues supremacy in CQ tools and all you can do is chopping the Hydras head so the next cantrip ascends to being the top choice. What WotC CAN do in Legacy is controlling the CA tools which are (suprisingly) STILL limited in the format, but mainstreamed by the obviously broken Delve mechanic (T.Hold itself and Tombstalker should have given WotC a clue)

I am not convinced that blue strategies would be as effective as they are now if Brainstorm and Ponder would be banned. If only Brainstorm is banned, then perhaps you are right. I think there are two easy options: ban Brainstorm + Ponder OR ban Brainstorm + Treasure Cruise.

Sure, you will still have blue cantrip engines, but they won't be as effective as Brainstorm + Ponder engines. Other (non-blue) strategies would find themselves in a much better position to fight this cantrip engine and I think that's what this is all about.