All B/R update speculation.

[Nielsie]

Because just to fix the color was not the whole answer why they do it. Despite beeing not that great a lat drawn fetchland is still better tha a drawn land because the fetch effect is still there(despite beeing not that great).

Oh please, this kind of thing is exactly what Finn was talking about. You keep reiterating your argument, ignoring all the flaws other people point you at. No deck uses fetches to thin their library, it's mathematical not interesting enough. There even are decks out there that would prefer a drawn land rather than a fetch in many situations because of the Stifle-risk or the one-life-point. Often those fetch dangers are much more important than thinning the deck. Everything you say is always out of the perspective of a complete vacuum. Do you only gold-fish magic or do you sometimes actualy play the game?

And please, Teveshszat, don't tell Finn he doesn't know the basic rules of deckbuilding. As far as I know he is the mastermind behind DnT...

[Teveshszat]

FNielsie
And please, Teveshszat, don't tell Finn he doesn't know the basic rules of deckbuilding. As far as I know he is the mastermind behind DnT..

What he displays let me think otherwise. If he really is the mind behin DNT he should know that blue isn´t as opressive as he says because his deck is beating the shell time and time again. He should also know why there are game he loses to bad draw are more often occuring than in blue decks. He also should know how to counter is drawback.
But instead of displaying this he complains about the blue shell her opression and the OPness of Brainstorm. So as long as
that goes I say what I want because he behaves like it.

There even are decks out there that would prefer a drawn land rather than a fetch in many situations because of the Stifle-risk or the one-life-point.

Stifle is only present in a small percentage of decks. Also you can migrate the risk in just letting the fetchlands untouched as long
as you don´t need to break them and than break 1 after another so you can react to his stifle. As long as you do this stifle is a pretty bad card against fetchlands.
If you don´t want the life loss you either play against burn or allready are in the danger zone so something went wrong. Yeah I know this siuations too and in this case fetchlands are a drawback but I don´t concider is a big problem.

Everything you say is always out of the perspective of a complete vacuum. Do you only gold-fish magic or do you sometimes actualy play the game?

Yes I play the game. But you will only be the victor if you are well prepared. My preperation is optimization with math to ensure my deck don´t loses against itself. So I try to minimize dead draws etc.
This is a valid stategy and it is a great way to ensure you win because math is something you can´t hope to win against.
This doesn´t mean I allways see cards in vacuum but the vacuum is a good basis to begin to discuss a card.
So if the card is great in the vaccum I look how it interacts with my deck and this I also discussed(consistency theme you know?).
To discuss each interaction with each card is just impossible so I just lock how good my deck becomes and than I start to test and adjust it when I think I can increase the chances against a deck to beat.

So to sum it up I don´t talk from a Vacuum allone but from the deck interaction and the inherent effiency related to my
deck strategy. Than I adjust the SB and MB to increase chances against decks I feel I could lose against because I miss 1 or 2 cards and for them look how they interact with this deck.

[LOLWut]

If the announcement is at the same time as the last one, we have 19 1/2 hours to wait, to see if people will be making squirrels, making big ol' Hymns, torturing dolls in a vise, having Survival-gasms, or none of it.

[Nielsie]

What he displays let me think otherwise. If he really is the mind behin DNT he should know that blue isn´t as opressive as he says because his deck is beating the shell time and time again. He should also know why there are game he loses to bad draw are more often occuring than in blue decks. He also should know how to counter is drawback.
But instead of displaying this he complains about the blue shell her opression and the OPness of Brainstorm. So as long as
that goes I say what I want because he behaves like it.

I can't speak for Finn but as far as I know he complains about TC not Brainstorm, like many other people.

Stifle is only present in a small percentage of decks. Also you can migrate the risk in just letting the fetchlands untouched as long
as you don´t need to break them and than break 1 after another so you can react to his stifle. As long as you do this stifle is a pretty bad card against fetchlands.
If you don´t want the life loss you either play against burn or allready are in the danger zone so something went wrong. Yeah I know this siuations too and in this case fetchlands are a drawback but I don´t concider is a big problem.

You completely miss the point. You state that people use fetchlands to thin their library and you defend that statement by stating a fetchland is a better draw than a land. I tried to give some examples of when this last statement is not true but to be honest, none of these statements are actually important. Simply admit that people only use fetchlands for colorfixing and/or shuffling their library after a Brainstorm, the deckthinning is not a factor no matter how many times the SCG-commentators will make you believe that it is.

I understand you kick on consistency. That is fine, we all like some consistency. What many of us have a problem with is that blue got too consistent because of cantrips that are way too powerfull for their resource cost and we would like to see a change, preferably starting with those cantrips. Banning the blue mistakes (Delver + TNN) is fine by me too, but then we are talking about this shit again when Wizards prints a new Delver in blue. I also wonder, why is Ancestral Recall banned? Why is Demonic Tutor banned? Demonic Consultation? Skullclamp? Yawgmoth's Will? Survival? Necropotence? Gush? Mystical? All of these are consistency tools, why are they banned? Hell, black should be the most consistent color with all those tutors but it's less played than green... Tutors are evil but cantrips are 'just' cantrips??

[Tammit67]

Check out the newest Decks to Beat change.

UR delver
UWR Delver
Sneak and show
Omnishow
Miracles

That's frightening to me. Green and black entirely absent from The Sources DtB.

[Dice_Box]

I did the math on that and got that same list a few weeks back, it was at that point I really started feeling like something was really about to happen.

[wonderPreaux]

I did the math on that and got that same list a few weeks back, it was at that point I really started feeling like something was really about to happen.

Didnt a guy a page or two back post a big amount of data from scg showing that the blue decks are just popular and arent winning significantly more matches? does it really matter that all the flavors of the month this month aren't B/G?

[Asthereal]

Didnt a guy a page or two back post a big amount of data from scg showing that the blue decks are just popular and arent winning significantly more matches? does it really matter that all the flavors of the month this month aren't B/G?

True. And look at the list:

UR delver
UWR Delver
Sneak and show
Omnishow
Miracles

How did Team America drop out of there?
A well tuned TA list beats 4/5 of those, and has a 50/50 matchup against the 5th.

It's the flavour of the week. It doesn't actually mean anything.

[wonderPreaux]

True. And look at the list:

UR delver
UWR Delver
Sneak and show
Omnishow
Miracles

How did Team America drop out of there?
A well tuned TA list beats 4/5 of those, and has a 50/50 matchup against the 5th.

It's the flavour of the week. It doesn't actually mean anything.

Lol, I keep running into TA when I stream MTGO, and it's always a struggle but its in the tournament practice room, i ended up feeling something like "good thing no one plays this for some reason"

[Adryan]

Lol, I keep running into TA when I stream MTGO, and it's always a struggle but its in the tournament practice room, i ended up feeling something like "good thing no one plays this for some reason"

Reason: it's not good against UR Delver or any UWR deck.

[AznSeal]

The way to reduce the blue presence in the meta is to take the cards that foster that heavy presence and ban them. If you ban the blue power spells the cantrip engine will just find non-blue spells to replace them. It's the engine that is the problem. That's what needs to be banned. WotC should ban Brainstorm and Ponder at a minimum. Really they should ban Brainstorm, Ponder, Treasure Cruise and possibly Standstill as well. It's not clear that a lot of lists would move towards Mishra's Factory, Mutavault and potentially other manlands alongside Standstill in the blue vacuum created if the 3 above were banned but it's a real possibility.

Did you see the day 2 data? Every deck was close to 50-50. Blue isn't overpowered. Being popular isn't the same as being over powered.

Didnt a guy a page or two back post a big amount of data from scg showing that the blue decks are just popular and arent winning significantly more matches? does it really matter that all the flavors of the month this month aren't B/G?

Yep! That was me. I linked the guy who did it on reddit. Basically the decks with the best win percentages were Temur Delver and Grixis, and really only Grixis was extremely good. Temur had a really good record but it was still around 50-50 against random tier 1.5 jank. The reason it did so well was because it poops on UR Delver and Elves.

Blue is just popular. Not terribly OP.

[Tao]

Did you see the day 2 data? Every deck was close to 50-50. Blue isn't overpowered. Being popular isn't the same as being over powered.

Of course it i not. It is just a complete coincidence that the 5 Deck to Beats all run 4x Brainstorm and the deck people here claim beats all of them also runs 4x Brainstorm. But that has nothing to do with Brainstorm being too good or anything. It was just the the flavor of the past weeks, I mean past months, I mean past 5 years...

[AznSeal]

Of course it i not. It is just a complete coincidence that the 5 Deck to Beats all run 4x Brainstorm and the deck people here claim beats all of them also runs 4x Brainstorm. But that has nothing to do with Brainstorm being too good or anything. It was just the the flavor of the past weeks, I mean past months, I mean past 5 years...

Right, but it's not winning more than it's popularity. If 70/100 people in a room play decks with brainstorm, and 7 out of the top 10 run brainstorm, then brainstorm placed proportionally well to it's representation. Now if 30/100 played brainstorm and 9/10 was brainstorm, then we'd have a problem.

[Barook]

There are some blurry "leaked" screenshots floating around right now, so take that as a grain of salt as chances are that it could be fake.



But if it's going to turn out true, I predict that the Source is going to go nuclear.

[wonderPreaux]

There are some blurry "leaked" screenshots floating around right now, so take that as a grain of salt as chances are that it could be fake.



But if it's going to turn out true, I predict that the Source is going to go nuclear.

I have secret insider knowledge but I cannot take a right and proper screencap.
Credible/10

I'm surprised there isn't a fake out there with SotF unbanned to grind out even more cash.

[death]

On a serious note: there's a green card coming off the list, tonight.

[Finn]

Blue is just popular. Not terribly OP.

I try hard to see it from this point of view. Honestly I do. But I wonder about the folks who feel as you do. I mean, the entire DtB category is now blue-centric. There is not a single deck that is not on the cantrip train. If somehow you guys can rationalize that, ok, but those decks all have some copies of completely unfair draw effects. Is it really so hard to connect the dots on this? I mean, you have to really try hard to say with a straight face that decks which look like they have unfair cards in them and also dominate the top rungs of the format are not a problem.

I want to stick my neck out here and say that either Cruise and Dig have to go or Brainstorm and Ponder. Either way I would be fine with it. I feel confident that wotc will get this right. I think it is more likely to be Cruise and Dig, though that feels like treating the symptom and not the illness.

[Kage]

And like clockwork, Stoneforge has just jumped from ~15$ to 25-30 bucks ans SCG is sold out. Bloodbraid Elf jumped to 4 bucks, too.

Before the next prerelease, I'll buy 200 Deathrites, Visions and Jaces plus hire a photoshop expert.

[Tammit67]

I have secret insider knowledge but I cannot take a right and proper screencap.
Credible/10

I'm surprised there isn't a fake out there with SotF unbanned to grind out even more cash.

You can change a page's source easily. I don't see a link to an article explaining changes so its probably fake

[wonderPreaux]

I try hard to see it from this point of view. Honestly I do. But I wonder about the folks who feel as you do. I mean, the entire DtB category is now blue-centric. There is not a single deck that is not on the cantrip train. If somehow you guys can rationalize that, ok, but those decks all have some copies of completely unfair draw effects. Is it really so hard to connect the dots on this? I mean, you have to really try hard to say with a straight face that decks which look like they have unfair cards in them and also dominate the top rungs of the format are not a problem.

It's not a matter of rationalization, its now a matter of statistics. if there isn't a statistically significant difference between usage and performance, then there's nothing wrong with the flavors of the month being blue. if you dont want to play blue, there is demonstrable evidence that you can do fine without it. if all the people who wanted cantrips to be banned went out and actually played a non-blue deck, youd see Elves, DnT and the like back in the DtB in no time