Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Again, you provide no reasoning for why this is bad other than "WotC says this is the criteria for ban, therefore ban".Originally Posted by nedleeds
You don't provide any reasoning to support this assertion though.I'm saying Legacy isn't Vintage. It shouldn't be burdened with non basic land cards you must play. It shouldn't be a 56 or 52 card format
This isn't necessarily true; like you acknowledge above, perhaps banning Brainstorm nerfs Force to the point that the format becomes a dystopia where everybody gets shat on by Charbelcher. That is perhaps a little extreme, but there's no reason to think that banning Brainstorm would result in more viable decks than we have currently. Sure, the DTB section would probably look different, but I don't see any reason why you think that it would grow in size.Clearly it would help diversity simply because we'd have a 60 card format.
This is purely your personal opinion.I don't hate Brainstorm, it's just not an interesting format anymore once it's reached this point of staleness.
Looking at the game from a competitive standpoint this statement makes no sense. Should we redact all decklists from major tournaments to stymie the people who get their complete decks served up from the internet? People can just as equally netdeck lists that don't have Brainstorm in them. There are 1000s of cards printed in Magic and you can't expect them all to be playable, making a judgment on the health of the format by drawing an arbitrary line there somewhere is a waste of time.I guess if I was a child and this was all new to me and I thought in terms of complete decks served up to me by my favorite internet hero instead of looking at cards in the card pool maybe I'd be fine with a 56 card format, it does make deck building easier.
I don't think this is a valid comparison because these decks never existed in tandem. You wouldn't expect to see Pump Knight decks making GP top 8s in 2000 when Trix was a thing. Any given format with necro in it had "the necro deck", but there weren't multiple distinct, successful necro decks that were playable simultaneously.I loved Necropotence! You could combo with it (trix), play aggro (hymns, knights, bolts) or just grind people into dust with control necro! All different decks too!
You're again trying to imply that colour diversity in winning decks is somehow important, when previously you said that you "don't I argue about color much at all."There are 17 green cards (including Abrupt Decay in this to be generous) in the top 8
There are 17 Red/pyroblasts in the top 8
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, nice format.
And it should probably include some number of lands to cast your spells, and probably not be more than 60 cards. Should we print a 1 mana Balustrade Spy or Battle of Wits just so we can promote some decks that look different?your deck right now should start with 4 Brainstorm
I accept that Brainstorm is a very strong card and that all the best decks right now have Brainstorm in them. I haven't been convinced by any argument in this thread that this is a bad thing for the format.
I get the feeling that some people put way to much focus on one GP Top8.
This is a claim people often bring up; "you need Brainstorm so Force of Will can stop stuff like Belcher!" Let's stop and think about in what situations a Brainstorm actually makes a difference in regards to that.
1) You don't already have a Force of Will in hand.
2) You have a Brainstorm in hand.
3) Force of Will (and, if not in your hand, another Blue card) is in the top three cards of your library.
4) You're able to cast your Brainstorm and Force of Will (i.e. you have the mana to cast Brainstorm and the Blue card to cast Force of Will)
Odds are actually rather low that all of these will simultaneously be true. Let's actually do some mathematics. Assuming both Brainstorm and Force of Will as 4-ofs...
Chance of no Force of Will: 60%
Chance of Brainstorm: 40%
Chance of Force of Will in Top 3 cards of library: 21%
#4 is harder to quantify, but if on the draw and they're going off turn 1, you obviously can't cast your Brainstorm, so let's call the odds 50%. Multiplying all these together, and you end up with a 2.5% chance of all of those being legal. So only in that 2.5% of the time does it matter. That doesn't seem to be a particularly common occurrence.
It's not only about the specific instance where you've started the game and need to cast Force (even though this is relevant a non-zero amount of the time) but the fact that getting rid of Brainstorm removes an incentive to play blue and therefore causes Force to have a lower format representation.
[CAREFUL: MATH NOOB]
Shouldn't it be higher? If we take e.g. http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=16756&iddeck=125531
Probability
- of having Brainstorm in hand ~ 40% (4 out of 60 with 7 draws and at least 1 of them needs to be BS)
- of having no FoW in hand ~ 60% (4 out of 60 with 7 draws and none of them is FoW)
- of being able to cast Brainstorm / to draw a blue land ~ 90% (16 out of 60 with 7 draws and at least 1 of them needs to be a land)
- of having a pitch in hand > 93% (28 out of 60 with 10 draws (due to BS) and at least 3 of them need to be blue since we want BS, FoW + Pitch)
- of FoW being in the top 3 cards ~ 21%
So we get a total of 0.4*0.6*0.9*0.93*0.21 ~ 4.2%, which holds true for being on the play.
If on the draw and you survived turn 1, the numbers are roughly 0.44*0.55*0.93*0.96*0.22 ~ 4.7%.
What is the probability of them going off at turn 1 anyway?
[/CAREFUL: MATH NOOB]
"The format MUST BE blue because Belcher is the Boogeyman due to [insert bad things that will happen here] if Brainstorm is banned." has always been a ridiculous argument.
The format would be alot healthier if other colors had access to maindeckable pitch cards to fight off combo. Imagine a Pitch Thalia variant with flash. That alone would fix alot of broken crap in the format without the need of blue while staying true to the color pie.
I don't understand. You're saying that we don't need turn 0 answers for combo, but also that the format would be healthier if there were more turn 0 answers for combo available?"The format MUST BE blue because Belcher is the Boogeyman due to [insert bad things that will happen here] if Brainstorm is banned." has always been a ridiculous argument.
The format would be alot healthier if other colors had access to maindeckable pitch cards to fight off combo. Imagine a Pitch Thalia variant with flash. That alone would fix alot of broken crap in the format without the need of blue while staying true to the color pie.
If you're simply saying that Force of Will will still be played even if Brainstorm isn't around I guess that's valid to a certain extent, but it's not a reason to get rid of Brainstorm in the first place.
The playability of each colour has no bearing on format health.
This
If anything it is an argument to keep brainstorm, because a deck with Fow and not Brainstorm is going to run more blue, and possibly more countermagic to compensate for the selection loss of losing brainstorm. leading to a bluer format.
Though why bother with this discussion, at this point it is almost all zealots arguing on both sides and not listening/considering the opinions of the other side.
If any card is The Problem with Legacy right now it is probably Delver. Legacy is a multi-color format the only real hindrance to making 3 color decks is the $ investment 4 color decks are easy enough to build as well. In a format where 3 colors is trivial the norm should be 2-3 color decks. Blue has historically been the best support color in Magic which leads to many of those 2 and 3 color decks running blue to support the decks strategy. This is most of what is referred to as the blue shell. Fow, BS, Ponder, etc are pretty much the best support cards in legacy.
Delver + the blue support spell list creates the core of a aggro/control deck type that invalidates to many aggro decks, and reduces the diversity of the format.
Fortunately this is not enough to make the decks all the same, as there is enough room to make the other colors used matter and this allows a BUG Delver to play allot differently from a RWU Delver list. even though they share a decent # of cards. However it is still causing the aggro archtype to be to focused on a single card, which is in the color that should be the weakest for aggro decks.
That looks about right. I got around 4.5 % on the draw, and around 7.2% on the play (when also playing Ponder)....Shouldn't it be higher? ... 0.
The other fun calculation is how often you can Brainstorm or Ponder to get a second or third land drop a turn early, since in those circumstances, the cantrip does actually pay for itself. Edit: It seems that happens about a third of the time.
You're missing the fact that you're only on the play 50% of the time. If you're on the draw and they go off on turn 1, you sure as heck can't cast your Brainstorm as you have no Island in play. So you have to cut your percentage in half.
Cutting it in half would assume they always have the turn 1 kill...
That's why I wrote:
So we get a total of 0.4*0.6*0.9*0.93*0.21 ~ 4.2%, which holds true for being on the play.
If on the draw and you survived turn 1, the numbers are roughly 0.44*0.55*0.93*0.96*0.22 ~ 4.7%.
What is the probability of them going off at turn 1 anyway?
Mystical Tutor was banned because of one GP top 8.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
Well, shit. Better go ban all the top8 cards then! :x
My point is that if WOTC wants to ban a card, one GP top 8 is all the justification they need (and a few games in the magic online practice room). Therefore, saying people are all up in arms about one GP top 8 as if that's not enough of a criteria is disingenuous.
On an unrelated note, I'm going to postulate (once again) that the solution to Legacy's staleness is to fix WOTC's recent mistakes. Sure, Brainstorm is busted and everyone knows it. When I started playing Legacy back in 2010, the format was only around 50% blue, as opposed to 70+ as it is today. Blue has always had the best spells, but historically had to play other colors for creatures. The reason blue dominance has increased by more than 20% in the last 4-5 years is largely because of creature printings. Delver of Secrets is the best aggressive one-drop ever printed, making tempo insane and traditional swarm aggro irrelevant. True-Name Nemesis is a horrible abortion of a card that belongs in an "Un" set, which continued Delver's work of giving blue the best creatures. Griselbrand isn't blue, but everyone knows that it really costs 2U. That guy turned a goofy tier two deck that occasionally got there into a format-oppressing monster that has not been anything less than tier one ever since (not to mention supercharging other A+B combo like Reanimator). Honestly, the only broken spell that's contributing to the delinquency of the format is Terminus. Ban those four cards, the shit hits the fan for a few months, and then I believe the format would be much more diverse and pleasant - all without touching any sacred cows.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
Probably also because they didn't want to see it used with a miracles toolbox.
That was way before the miracles mechanic. MT was banned because of combo. ANT and Reanimator were busted at that time. Doomsday was getting popular with Show and Tell hybrids. Those decks became too consistent and resilient.
I think the source of the divide is a total lack of imagination among some players. Look at the imaginary “top 8” from the Brainstorm-less GP:
First of all, this vision where the format would go from 100% blue decks to arguably none (depending on your build of Post or Lands) is insane hyperbole. Right, we take Brainstorm out and all of a sudden blade and tempo and Show and Tell decks are COMPLETELY dead! Look at the strangling of format diversity!SI/Charbelcher/Oops
12 post
1-Drop Zoo
Lands
Jund
Lands
Big Zoo
12 post
Whatever. Anyway, here’s what this view is missing: Currently, Brainstorm + fetchlands is SUCH an efficient draw engine that a deck that doesn’t play it is at a significant disadvantage. People play BG with U. They play Stoneforge Mystic with U (and only the extremely tight and metagamed list of D&T has any success as an exception). They play Cloudpost with U. They play Entomb and Reanimate with U. And before someone links me random decks that top 8’d without doing that, the point is that 76% of top decks play this engine. No one plays 2 Brainstorm for value, no one plays 4 Brainstorm and 0 fetchlands. When you start building or brewing a serious deck, the only place to begin is 4 Brainstorm, 8 U fetches.
What is offensive is people saying that this represents “strategic diversity.” What they really mean is “Storm really needs Brainstorm, and it doesn’t win through the attack step, and even though 2/3 of cards in Alpha mention creatures or are creatures, I can’t bear the fact of actually using creatures to win a game.” That’s fine if that’s your opinion, but:
1) Your opinion doesn’t really matter when it comes to evaluating how busted a card is.
2) There might some other sort of Storm list that isn’t as reliant on Brainstorm to win that is more viable in a post-Brainstorm world.
3) Some people disagree on what represents strategic diversity. I played two matches the other night. I was on esper control and my opponents were on RUG Delver and Storm. So that’s combo, aggro, and control, right? Well, here’s how the games went: Someone played a land and cantripped. Then the opponent did. Then someone attempted to impact the board. Then the opponent played some sort of disruption. Then there were more cantrips. Eventually someone had more business cards than their opponent had disruption and won. So diverse.
And yes, this stifles the format. There hasn’t been a new archetype developed to any sort of success or fruition that didn’t play this engine since Zombardment, and that only had a few weeks in the sun before getting obliterated by Avacyn Restored’s white miracle cards and RTR’s printings of DRS and RIP. Any new card released has to work with the blue shell or it’s practically a blank. I’ll tell anyone that listens that Courser of Kruphix in a format with GSZ, Sylvan Library, and Top is actually ridiculous, but they don’t believe it. Why even bother trying to build a deck that has a long-term incremental plan to gain card advantage when I can just Brainstorm and fetch?
In such a huge card pool, there are probably tons of reasonably efficient draw engines that can be explored and fleshed out. This doesn’t have to be Modern where any efficient card selection/advantage is banned. Modern has lots of different problems that frankly don’t mean anything to whether or not Brainstorm is bannable in Legacy.
Anyway, without Brainstorm, cards that come up in this thread a lot like Grisly Salvage and Sylvan Library are less of a joke. Tax-Rack and Dark Confidant might be able to come back. For all we know the Necromancer’s Stockpile-Shambling Shell engine might be breakable. In addition, there are means of attrition that can be explored like Pox which right now is pretty much a non-starter because trying to resource-deny decks that are so good at drawing cards is almost impossible.
I understand that Legacy card prices and GP attendance are high, and there’s an aspect of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But you know, I’d like to think we are better than that, and we can as a community see when something is out of control. We did that with Treasure Cruise, and there’s often a counterpoint that when a card gets out of control that it’s Wizards’ fault for power creep. But it’s always because the card slots into a Brainstorm-engine deck too well. Treasure Cruise. Delver of Secrets. Terminus. Griselbrand. Emrakul. And even from the OP of this thread: Tarmogoyf & Counterbalance. How did Vengevine get Survival banned but Delver didn’t get Brainstorm banned? People actually want to ban a French vanilla creature instead of a spell… that is insane! And if it would take the banning of Delver, Terminus, Griselbrand, and Counterbalance to make Legacy embrace other draw engines so that every match isn’t just cantrip-till-fundamental-turn, what’s the real message we’re sending to Wizards? Don’t push cards because it might break Brainstorm again?
This probably won’t convince anyone and I probably just wasted my time writing it. But maybe the draw engine view will help some people see why this is not about banning an innocuous cantrip like Formation, this is about banning a ridiculous card advantage engine like Yawgmoth’s Bargain.
Ponder made a huge difference in the evolution to the heavy blue shell meta also and Preordain is close enough that having Brainstorm plus either of the other 2 of them around is going to keep things deep blue.
If WotC really wanted to fix the format while maintaining Brainstorm they'd have to ditch Delver, TNN, Show and Tell, Terminus, Ponder and Preordain. That would knock the blue shell back hard enough that it was no longer the consensus choice as head and heels above the format.
Or they could just ditch Brainstorm and see what happens. I'd rather they did that first to see if we got back to the 50/50 meta or better.
"Well, here’s how the games went: Someone played a land. Then the opponent did. Then someone attempted to impact the board. Then the opponent played some sort of disruption. Then there were more lands. Eventually someone had more business cards than their opponent had disruption and won. So diverse."3) Some people disagree on what represents strategic diversity. I played two matches the other night. I was on esper control and my opponents were on RUG Delver and Storm. So that’s combo, aggro, and control, right? Well, here’s how the games went: Someone played a land and cantripped. Then the opponent did. Then someone attempted to impact the board. Then the opponent played some sort of disruption. Then there were more cantrips. Eventually someone had more business cards than their opponent had disruption and won. So diverse.
Spot the differences!
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