All B/R update speculation.

[testing32]

btw, if it's ok for a card to be absolutely everywhere as long as it powers all sorts of decks, can I have Skullclamp?

I didn't know we could pick! I want demonic tutor.

[Nielsie]

I'm done with this discussion, this shows you haven't the foggiest why Tev is making those calculations, what he's trying to explain with them, what a context is (nor what a vacume is, funnily) and how all of these concepts relate to one another. Continueing this is a pointless excercise in futility.

It is futile because I doubt that you understand those words yourself. Teveshszat is making good points on one aspect of Brainstorm, it's ability to dig, but you guys forget (or ignore) all the rest. By your standards Ponder is a better cantrip than Brainstorm because it kind of digs 4 cards (look top 3, shuffle, draw). And perhaps Ponder actualy is a better cantrip than Brainstorm. But that is not my point, I am saying that Brainstorm is a much better card than Ponder. That assesment can only be made by looking into all the details of the cards and not with a simple mathemical formula.

[Echelon]

Except that the original discussion concerned the impact different cantrips made concerning consistency and not what the better card was. So there's that. But I'm glad you want to answer a question that wasn't being asked.

[Nielsie]

I was of the impression we were discussing about cards here, not consistency and cantrips. Perhaps you need to create a new thread were you can post mathematical formula's and papers about the influence cantrips have on consistency in a game of Magic? Seariously, that is an interesting topic. But here we enjoy discussions about what to ban or unban, how pointless this discussion may be.

[Teveshszat]

Tao
What you don't get is that only win percentages matter when you compare decks, not consistency, not any other concept. And a deck with higher consistency through cantrips does not automatically have a higher win percentage than decks without cantrips. Consistency is just one part of it.

The opposite is the case. I get that only win percentages matter. What I claim is that my win percentage is higher because I can execute my plan on a more consistent basis than decks with lower consitency. The reason is that decks with cantrips have a higher chance finding the card needed than decks without.
This is proven again and again by the blue shell.

Nielsie
I am not ignoring the context but Teveshszat is. I am merely asking about his magical formula which proves that Brainstorm is not more powerfull than other cantrips.

If you call math magic you should think about quitting to play a game were math is needed to win.

I asked him how he takes into account things like CMC and Instant speed or all the other things Brainstorm does. He was saying those things are not important and that is what I am disputing:

Because all cantrips have the same Manacost CMC1 I don´t have to evaluate this. The instant speed of Brainstorm makes him better than the rest true but this was not what I tryed to prove. What I wanted to prove is that the other cantrips are not as far away from hin than you may think because the core competence enhancing the chances to execute you gameplay is on par with Brainstorm.

Nielsie
I think this is also why we always end up having this discussion in the first place and why it amazes me that some people can predict how Legacy will look like if Brainstorm would be banned.

Again nothing special we just use Math to look what is the logical outcome of the ban. What will change, which cards replace Brainstorm, which decks will be weaker and which stronger. The conclusion is blue wil still be the strongest colour and Tier 2 decks will stay in tier 2 because of the consitency issues.

Nielsie
How does Preordain help you when an opponent Hymns you? Now think again when you have Brainstorm in hand. This is only one example of many numerous ways that makes Brainstorm unique amongst cantrips, don't ignore those aspects

Preordain helps me to find the next card with which I can defend against your threat. Pls note that Hymm is quiet disrupting but not an threat at all and 2 Hyms don´t kill me when I find the STP against you beater in time. This is acomplished by both Brainstorm and Preordain and therefore both are on par again.

Nielsie
I was of the impression we were discussing about cards here, not consistency and cantrips.

That we do. We discussing brainstorm which is a Cantrip and his task is enhancing consitency. So to evaulate this card we have to discuss both different cantrips and how they influence the game to come to an correct evaluation of the powerlevel.

Nielsie
But here we enjoy discussions about what to ban or unban, how pointless this discussion may be.

And thats the point if you want to ban a card you have to agrue why. I just said that banning brainstorm is not the thing to do because of math says so. So my argumentation is in the right thread and is not distracting the discussion because it is about why we should not ban brainstorm.

[Nielsie]

We discussing brainstorm which is a Cantrip and his task is enhancing consitency.

Well, here you exactly hit the nail. The problem is that Brainstorm is doing much more than enhancing consitency and that for the measily cost of 1 CMC. You take a Grizzly Bear, his tasks are defined by attacking the opponent and defending yourself. Now drop an ability on it in the form of 'At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card' but you don't change it's CMC. What do you get? Still a simple Grizzly Bear that attacks and defends? Or something much more? Is the CMC still on par with everything it can do?

Brainstorm is not the innocent cantrip you try to make it appear. How powerfull Brainstorm exactly is, is very difficult to assess, but it's doing much more than simply drawing a card.

[Teveshszat]

Nielsie
Grizzly Bear, his tasks are defined by attacking the opponent and defending yourself. Now drop an ability on it in the form of 'At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card' but you don't change it's CMC. What do you get? Still a simple Grizzly Bear that attacks and defends? Or something much more? Is the CMC still on par with everything it can do?

I get a bear which is worth of thinking to add him to my deck because e actually becomes usefull. Ok jokes aside yes he is still on par with the other bears in terms of attack and defend. He is better in terms of ability and he is euqal in the difficulty in removing him. So yes in most of the cases it is still on par in terms what you can do with them (attack and defend).

Nielsie
Brainstorm is not the innocent cantrip you try to make it appear. How powerfull Brainstorm exactly is, is very difficult to assess, but it's doing much more than simply drawing a card.

Never tried that. The starting argument was that some want to ban brainstorm because it would weaken the blue shell to the level
were the non blue decks and strategies are on par. This is wrong because blue will still have better consitency and therefore better plan execution which ultimatly leads to a win in the long run and this it what I wanted to proves with the formula.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So you'd ban the most powerful blue spell and the blue wouldn't get hurt? Mind to share your mushrooms?

[Teveshszat]

Bed Decks Palyer
So you'd ban the most powerful blue spell and the blue wouldn't get hurt? Mind to share your mushrooms?

I can see why you quit Magic.
No what I said is if we ban the most powerfull spell blue will not get hurt so hard as you assume. It will harldy change anything but the cantrips which are played.
The only thing it will change is the consitency of storm probaly making it unplayble. But the decks which so see as unhealthy like
SNT or Delver will still be there because it will not hurt them so much as you think. Also it will not deal with the consitency problem of non blue stategies.

[Lemnear]

Stop feeding the troll. The same bold one-liner appears every two pages (edit: 4 pages to be picky) and is answered with a few thousand words time and time again.

[LeoCop 90]

You mean after the hilarious tries to splash green and play Tarmogoyf themselves? Joke aside, the deck has increasing problems with the manacurve of it's own and in relation to it's opponents. While your opponent keeps smacking for 3 with the Investment of a single blue mana which renders cards like Wasteland or Port hilariously bad to gain time for you to make landdrops or tick the Vial the only cards which really accelerate you are Lackey and Instigator (with the later still not being the auto 4-off it deserves to be). Vial and 3-4cc creatures to sneak in turn 4+ is bad today, because the format is too fast. I agree, Goblins is actually pretty good against Miracles because of Vial and the high Cmc to dodge counterbalance but against the rest of the field the high cost is far from helpful. In addition the deck has still not adopted to combo ... after ten years in existance! Because "hate-card x is bad with ringleader!", ignoring that Elves does right fine running Glimpse despite 20 lands and 12 Sorceries and a SB full of combo-hate.

Don't fool yourself, Goblins struggle right because of the deck design and the dependancy on a limited amount of REAL acceleration. Someone ever considered some Out-Of-The-Box thinking within this archetype and maindecked P.Fire and Carpet of Flowers in this meta? I doubt it. (Speed-edit: I asume I immediately get trolled for just mentioning MB anti-blue cards *sigh*)

Goblins was dead long before TNN hit the shelves. It was not Terminus that killed it either, it was the reduced effectiveness of its mana denial plan to push though to the late game as well as the decrease in Lackeys efficacy that killed it.

If anything, I think Goblins has a rather good Miracles match up.

Dice Box, the average legacy mana curve becoming lower certainly hurt goblins a bit, but it's not like mana denial is the main goblins plan. The deck can have explosive starts and anyway could overwhelm opponents in card advantage in lategame (before treasure cruise).

Lemnear, you can't pretend that goblins can shave a lot of goblins from main deck to play cards like punishing fire , carpet of flowers or similar. The deck functioned well because of matron, ringleader, plus the fact that everything, removal included, was a goblin. Someone played with discard main deck but you can't go too far, you can't afford more than 3-4 slots for these things. The elves comparison is wrong because glimpse is a card you can hold in hand and cast when you have some creatures, and elves also have visionary symbiote or just natural order and win so they can afford their glimpse to just be a cycle or draw 2 sometimes, while goblins have usually a grindy plan so their card advantage engine must be as strong as possible.
Goblins don't need to adapt to combo because your main plan when you sleeved goblins for an event was being favorite in every fair matchup and then have an heavy sideboard for combo. Despite you saying that the deck was already dead years and years ago, i think the deck had very positive , slightly positive or at worst even matchups against every fair deck until deathrite shaman and decay saw print. Delver was not a problem (you usually could kill it with gempalm incinerator before he attacked your life total under 10) , tarmo was not a problem (you can chumpblock him all life long especially with mogg war marshal), nor stoneforge mystic (you have main deck artifact hate). I mean, they are strong cards and sometimes can beat you but overall i always felt goblins was favored to win against stoneblade, canadian and so on (assuming you know how to play the deck.)
I'm not trying to say let's ban everything from deathrite shaman to decay so goblins return a good deck, but please don't argue that goblins were dead a lot of years ago because it is just not true and probably the argument of someone who never actually bothered playing goblins since those years and still now speaks as he knows what is best for the archetype ( instigator, that is good and a lot of people now play it, punishing fire main deck that is a very bad suggestion because a mana hungry deck like goblins doesn't need at all a 3 mana shock.)
To sum up, i'm pretty sure real problems for goblins started with decay and deathrite (but these are fine cards and i'm fine playing against them), and are now aggravated by true name nemesis and treasure cruise (which are not fine cards at all, the first because of being stupid and invalidating most midrange strategies, the second because of being just broken, i think both should be banned).
And always remember that there is a goblin in the ban list that i'm always more convinced nowadays should be tournament legal (especially if they don' ban anything), and could possibly return goblins from tier 3 status to tier 1,5-tier 2.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Brilliant post on Goblins

Thank you for speaking knowledgably on a deck you are extremely familiar with! Your post = truth.

It's a clue on the future of the storyline. Karn will probably return back in time and save Mirrodin from the dark tide of Phyrexia.

I really hope this happens.

Me too! I'm starting to think Omniscience should have flavor text quoting Lejay.

It makes the most sense too. Karn returns to Mirrodin and exiles all the good guys. Then restarts the plane and returns the good guys. The only downside is Magic loses the Phyrexians... again.




On topic: Ban Kird Ape! People thought power creep made this card fair, but it's way OP.

[Lemnear]

Dice Box, the average legacy mana curve becoming lower certainly hurt goblins a bit, but it's not like mana denial is the main goblins plan. The deck can have explosive starts and anyway could overwhelm opponents in card advantage in lategame (before treasure cruise).

Lemnear, you can't pretend that goblins can shave a lot of goblins from main deck to play cards like punishing fire , carpet of flowers or similar. The deck functioned well because of matron, ringleader, plus the fact that everything, removal included, was a goblin. Someone played with discard main deck but you can't go too far, you can't afford more than 3-4 slots for these things. The elves comparison is wrong because glimpse is a card you can hold in hand and cast when you have some creatures, and elves also have visionary symbiote or just natural order and win so they can afford their glimpse to just be a cycle or draw 2 sometimes, while goblins have usually a grindy plan so their card advantage engine must be as strong as possible.
Goblins don't need to adapt to combo because your main plan when you sleeved goblins for an event was being favorite in every fair matchup and then have an heavy sideboard for combo. Despite you saying that the deck was already dead years and years ago, i think the deck had very positive , slightly positive or at worst even matchups against every fair deck until deathrite shaman and decay saw print. Delver was not a problem (you usually could kill it with gempalm incinerator before he attacked your life total under 10) , tarmo was not a problem (you can chumpblock him all life long especially with mogg war marshal), nor stoneforge mystic (you have main deck artifact hate). I mean, they are strong cards and sometimes can beat you but overall i always felt goblins was favored to win against stoneblade, canadian and so on (assuming you know how to play the deck.)
I'm not trying to say let's ban everything from deathrite shaman to decay so goblins return a good deck, but please don't argue that goblins were dead a lot of years ago because it is just not true and probably the argument of someone who never actually bothered playing goblins since those years and still now speaks as he knows what is best for the archetype ( instigator, that is good and a lot of people now play it, punishing fire main deck that is a very bad suggestion because a mana hungry deck like goblins doesn't need at all a 3 mana shock.)
To sum up, i'm pretty sure real problems for goblins started with decay and deathrite (but these are fine cards and i'm fine playing against them), and are now aggravated by true name nemesis and treasure cruise (which are not fine cards at all, the first because of being stupid and invalidating most midrange strategies, the second because of being just broken, i think both should be banned).
And always remember that there is a goblin in the ban list that i'm always more convinced nowadays should be tournament legal (especially if they don' ban anything), and could possibly return goblins from tier 3 status to tier 1,5-tier 2.

I consider this a pretty interresting discussion on it's own given that the number of Goblin decks listed on MTGTop8 dropped from 3% in 2011 to less than 1% in 2014 and even in 2014 lists, I can't find Instigator (including Jean-Marie's and Marc's online lists) or any Change or Adjustment made to the mana-denial plan despite the manacurve topping at a whooping 5 mana in cases.

If we somehow agree that the powered manacurve in Legacy did hurt Goblins, I still wonder why I can't see any reaction to that in years. Not even DRS and Decay which you spotted as the Main offenders infulenced deckbuilding which is utterly strange.

[tescrin]

btw, if it's ok for a card to be absolutely everywhere as long as it powers all sorts of decks, can I have Skullclamp?

This seems like a sadly unanaswered argument. You can support combo, control, or aggro with the Clamp; seems like a fair comparison. The only difference is colorless, but Lemnear (and some others)'s arguments tend to be "making the format blue is a nonargument" => color is nonargument.

Can some of the talking heads address this poignant point? Skullclamp does nothing but increase consistency and is universally accessible. If you saw 24-32 Skullclamps in the Top8 all the time.. would it matter to you if the meta was diverse?

@Lem
DRS was everywhere for a bit; and it's good against Goblins; I think that was what he was saying.

[eays]

LeoCop, great post about goblins, and I think it helps me comprehend as to why I'm so dissatisfied with where legacy is at right now.

The current meta that has been created by recent pushed printings like TNN and Treasure Cruise took decks like Goblins, Loam, Pox, Merfolk, Maverick, Deadguy, Junk, Jund, Zoo, Nic Fit, the list goes on, from being tier 2 decks capable of rogueing a tournament and being very dangerous in the hands of a practiced player to being tier 3 decks that are simply irrelevant when compared to delver and goodstuff control/aggro (the fact that these aggro control and midrange control decks now have a built in card advantage engine in cruise that requires no investment other than playing their usual cantrips, counterspells, fetches, etc is really terrible).

It's not that I want my "pet decks" to be tier 1 or even tier 1.5. What I really enjoyed about legacy was that there were so many fringe but still viable tier 2 lists to choose from, brew with, and heck even take down the occaisional tournament with if you put the time in.

Since these recent printings, the metagame of viable decks (by viable I mean tier 1 to tier 2) has been significantly decreased, and I'm worried that with WOTC's current design philosophy of printing pushed goodstuff cards that slot right into delver/blade it could get worse. Frankly the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, these new printings are not creating any cool or new archetypes, they are simply pushing lots of really interesting ones out of the viable meta altogether.

I could be wrong, but I think we are literally maybe 1 strong printing similar to TNN or Cruise away from the meta being relegated to Storm, Griselbrand, Delver, Blade, and Miracles, and maybe elves being the only viable decks. It almost feels like we're there already to be honest.

I'm fine with Brainstrom decks being tier 1, but I want other stuff to still have a chance. That's why my vote is a ban on cruise and I also agree that TNN could go and no one would be sad, that card is such an abomination of design.

[Ace/Homebrew]

If we somehow agree that the powered manacurve in Legacy did hurt Goblins, I still wonder why I can't see any reaction to that in years. Not even DRS and Decay which you spotted as the Main offenders infulenced deckbuilding which is utterly strange.

Goblins were on the decline with the printing of SFM and the rise of Death and Taxes. Let's say Goblins was pushed from tier 1 to tier 2 around that time... It would still place occasionally but the list didn't have to change much.

When DRS and Decay were printed, matchups that had been even or favorable were given a 1 mana answer to Lackey as well as a main deck answer to Vial. So it went from 'still placing occasionally' to 'not placing'.

The Vial Goblins thread here has a number of people using various tactics to adapt to the meta. Unfortunately the things Goblins were the best at are now being done equally or better by other decks (D+T is the better mana denial deck, Treasure Cruise is => Ringleader).

[Lemnear]

This seems like a sadly unanaswered argument. You can support combo, control, or aggro with the Clamp; seems like a fair comparison. The only difference is colorless, but Lemnear (and some others)'s arguments tend to be "making the format blue is a nonargument" => color is nonargument.

Can some of the talking heads address this poignant point? Skullclamp does nothing but increase consistency and is universally accessible. If you saw 24-32 Skullclamps in the Top8 all the time.. would it matter to you if the meta was diverse?

@Lem
DRS was everywhere for a bit; and it's good against Goblins; I think that was what he was saying.

Color is a non-argument, but powerlevel is. Black Lotus, Mana Vault, Sol Ring and Moxen are also colorless and can fuel different archetypes, but they break the games cost/effect/ ratio for spells you cast off them. Would you like to call for their unban with the same logic? You would hopefully not. People complain about Treasure Cruises 1-shot 3 cards draw, but you don't see an issue with a PERMANENT Source of drawing 2 cards IF YOUR RUN CREATURES. This isn't control territory nor combos (Elves aside) but Survival of the Fittest level of potential as a combo engine paired with cardadvantage

[Lemnear]

I could be wrong, but I think we are literally maybe 1 strong printing similar to TNN or Cruise away from the meta being relegated to Storm, Griselbrand, Delver, Blade, and Miracles, and maybe elves being the only viable decks. It almost feels like we're there already to be honest

And how is this any less diverse than 2006s 4 deck metagame?

[FoolofaTook]

The current meta that has been created by recent pushed printings like TNN and Treasure Cruise took decks like Goblins, Loam, Pox, Merfolk, Maverick, Deadguy, Junk, Jund, Zoo, Nic Fit, the list goes on, from being tier 2 decks capable of rogueing a tournament and being very dangerous in the hands of a practiced player to being tier 3 decks that are simply irrelevant when compared to delver and goodstuff control/aggro (the fact that these aggro control and midrange control decks now have a built in card advantage engine in cruise that requires no investment other than playing their usual cantrips, counterspells, fetches, etc is really terrible).

It's not that I want my "pet decks" to be tier 1 or even tier 1.5. What I really enjoyed about legacy was that there were so many fringe but still viable tier 2 lists to choose from, brew with, and heck even take down the occaisional tournament with if you put the time in.

Since these recent printings, the metagame of viable decks (by viable I mean tier 1 to tier 2) has been significantly decreased, and I'm worried that with WOTC's current design philosophy of printing pushed goodstuff cards that slot right into delver/blade it could get worse. Frankly the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, these new printings are not creating any cool or new archetypes, they are simply pushing lots of really interesting ones out of the viable meta altogether.

This is an excellent post that mainly encapsulates what I've been saying all along. The diversity in Legacy is vanishing at an astonishing rate as everything becomes bluer or alternately anti-bluer. The blue shell has become the only thing that matters in terms of being competitive in the environment. You're either playing significant components of that shell or you are playing a list specifically designed to counter that shell. If you're really competitive you're playing the blue shell or Elves, because those are the only lists that can really compete consistently. Elves competes because of the insane card draw alongside tremendous redundancy and disruption (try spot removing the elf you need to remove when you need too) and an overwhelming early combo finish. It competes because lists that would prey upon it are invalidated by the blue shell's consistency. The one predator against Elves that can survive in the meta is a blue shell list itself.

At the rate we're going there will only be three or so relevant lists in the meta: Miracles (going to depress Elves as a contender), UWR non-Delver Aggro-Control (going to depress the non-Ur Delver variants) and Ur Delver (which is going to be the only list fast enough to race the 2 others once Elves and the other Delver variants have been downgraded.) People will still play Elves and D&T and MUD and various blue-based aggro-control but the 3 lists mentioned are going to be the meta with everybody else just kind of hanging on. Dredge and Storm will still be played but they'll be over mastered by one of the three lists and just hoping not to face it too often. That's where we're going.

[eays]

And how is this any less diverse than 2006s 4 deck metagame?

I don't know, I did not play in 2006 nor am I a scholar of magic history.

All I can say with certainty is that it's not as open as when I started.

That noted, I don't understand where you're getting at. Is your argument that because at one point in magic's history there were only 4 viable decks that any metagame containing more than that is by default acceptable?

My argument was never that this is the worst it's ever been, only that when I started playing legacy, I did so because of how wide open it was. It just seems like it's going quite a ways in the wrong direction right now. If you disagree I'm happy to hear your reasoning, this is just my anecdotal experience and feelings after all.