Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
True, but it's the turn 1 kill that matters most in regards to Force of Will.Originally Posted by JDK
Of course, things get even more confusing when we consider that the replacement for Brainstorm would be either Preordain or Ponder (depending on if you're already playing Ponder), which digs as deep or even deeper than Brainstorm. It's difficult to evaluate how much that affects things, because while it deeps as deeply, you don't necessarily have as much information, i.e. knowing you need to get that Force of Will.
But the fact of the matter is that regardless of how one looks at it, it's actually a very small number of games that would be lost if not for Brainstorm being able to find the Force of Will, as it presumes you have Brainstorm, can cast Brainstorm, don't already have Force of Will, and aren't in a situation where using Ponder or Preordain to find the Force of Will instead would be tenable.
Thing is, Blue still does have to play other colors for creatures. What creature-based Brainstorm decks are there that aren't running non-Blue creatures? All of the Delver decks are running non-Blue creatures, Stone-Blade is running Stoneforge Mystic, BUG is running non-Blue creatures, etc. Blue decks still do play other colors for creatures. The only decks that don't that I can think of are Merfolk (which doesn't play Brainstorm and isn't that great) and Miracles (which isn't creature-based to begin with).
This x100000. Cantrips that don't have a high power level (Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand) aren't really worth running on their own as you need to chain together to have a semblance of variance reduction, while cantrips with high power levels (Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain) are not only extremely good on their own but when in harmony just outclass every other form of CA the game has to offer. Notice every list starts of with those 12 cantrips? They play to each other strengths. Out of that list I would like to see Delver off of it, because as much as I hate Delver I have just come to accept it as the next evolution of Threshold. Like Goyf pushed out the Bear, Delver pushed out the other crap.
I would like to point out that most decks don't run Preordain. Brainstorm always, Ponder usually, Preordain much more rarely.
Ho ho, you got me! #MightAsWellBanLands
Right. In fact, if Delver wasn't blue, it's entirely possible the metagame would be even less "diverse."
People go to great lengths to tell you how strategically different BUG, RUG, UWR, and Grixis Delver are. But if Delver was red, there might not even be a BUG tempo deck.
Most of the arguments presented for Brainstorm apply to Necropotence as well. Can we have Necropotence legal in Legacy please? It's a fun and skill-testing card. It fuels different strategies and is incredibly fun.
How about we ban false equivalencies, since we have the under-reach and the over-reach here. back-to-back, even
You ignored my last post, so I'm going to ask again - do you not think it's obvious that Brainstorm exists in an area outside the normal banlist criteria? I like debate as much as the next person, and think that the banned list should be used to shake up the format with occasional bannings and unbannings, but it's pretty clear to me that Brainstorm will never be banned, and I can't see any point in arguing about why it should be.
Saying any single card is sitting on the format is silly, especially when the card you're blaming is a creature. Delver strategies are enabled by the same thing that has enabled non-Fish blue aggro-control strategies forever - the ability to substitute cheap library manipulation for lands. The fact that this approach is spreading to midrange and control when it used to be confined to aggro-control and combo is (I suspect) the cause of the most recent angst, and the biggest issue with new deckbuilding is that anything outside of the established deckbuilding paradigm is going to be too inconsistent to succeed or too light on either threats or disruption to have a reasonable chance against the field. There are a ton of decks that you can take to a tournament if you just want to smash aggro/tempo decks, or combo decks, or grindy midrange and control decks, but you're going to be giving up points against some portion of what you aren't targeting in order to achieve that with any sort of consistency.
You took a very narrow part of that post completely out of context. The point wasn't that banning Brainstorm would turn the format into that (which I stated explicitly) but rather that due to the somewhat rock-paper-scissors nature of how different strategic archetypes interact in Magic there will always be an incentive to play 'the best combo deck' or 'the best control deck', and people will always be complaining that they can't have success with a worse version of whatever those decks are. Banning Brainstorm doesn't change this fact at all. Sure, it will make the current best decks look different (or become different decks entirely) but this isn't necessarily a positive or negative change.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!
This isn't necessarily a problem when the 4 Brainstorm 8 Fetchlands beginning can lead you in many different (or at least a few distinct) directions, which I believe is the case currently.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.
I can't discuss this paragraph because I have no idea what you are trying to say.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.
Literally any game of Magic can be described with this mundane, matter-of-fact language. Sans the word 'cantrip' you could be reporting on a game of Standard. That's only an important distinction if cantrips are inherently bad, which they aren't.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.
Instead of saying that "Any new card released has to work with the blue shell or it’s practically a blank" it's much more honest to say that "any new card released has to be better or as good as 20 years worth of other printings for it to be playable". Surprisingly it isn't very difficult for a card to work in "the blue shell" because when mana is so good it's not difficult to construct your deck in a way that can support a 1 mana blue spell. If you want to use underplayed draw engines and 2/4s for 1GG then there is nothing right now stopping you from doing that. "This thing isn't as good as the best thing and therefore the best thing is too good" is not an argument.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.
Again, "this thing isn't as good as the best thing, therefore the best thing is too good" is not a valid argument.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.
Pox decks are very good against some Brainstorm decks but not others, because not all Brainstom decks function in the same way.
Cruise and Survival got banned because they pushed the format into a direction where one strategy was significantly more powerful than others.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.
If Memnite was a 20/20 people most people would agree that it would be ban-worthy, it doesn't matter what a card's type is. (Not trying to say Delver or Goyf are worth banning just that this line of reasoning doesn't make sense).
People are listening to you (I bothered to reply) but you're comparing Brainstorm to Bargain, are you really surprised that people aren't agreeing?
10/10How about we ban false equivalencies, since we have the under-reach and the over-reach here. back-to-back, even
It is still a problem, as the format isn't as diverse nor deep as it could be. It's like the Necropotence analogy others are bringing up; there's lots of different ways to build around The Skull, but the resulting format wouldn't be as interesting as a Necro-free format. When one method of achieving consistency (be it through card advantage or selection) is clearly superior to the rest, the format stagnates. And this is what the Cantrip Cartel, particularly Brainstorm, does to Legacy; the best method of achieving consistency is clearly borne out by all the top 8s the Cartel completely swamps.
Compare the way Blue decks achieve consistency with non-Blue archetypes. Most of these decks have to build around specific card advantage/selection engines or mechanics. Things like Goblin Ringleader, Life From the Loam, the Dredge mechanic, Green Sun's Zenith, Entomb, Enchantress, etc. Some decks, like Merfolk or Burn, rely on pure redundancy to be consistent. But no matter how they achieve consistency, most all non-CantripCartel decks have some restrictions in how they build their deck, trading flexibility for consistency. You can't really jam Lighnting Bolt, Eidolon of the Great Revel, or Young Pyromancer into Goblins. Similarly, any card that can't be played (in some fashion) from the graveyard won't really fit in Dredge.
But U/x/y decks don't really have this problem. They can jam in whatever they want, to a point. U/x/y Tempo/Aggro decks are a collection of goodstuffs, tailored to the meta, kept together by cantrips and an extremely tight manabase (that likely wouldn't be feasible without the abundance of cantrips). The top-tier combo deck as of late, S&T builds, are basically a shell of Blue cantrips wrapped up with a A+B combo and a meta-specific protective package. Miracles pretty much lives and dies by the Cantrip Cartel. Imagine a format in which they couldn't easily place Terminus spells that ended up in hand into their library via the wonders of Brainstorm.
Going back to the Necro analogy, it's like Trix, Mono Black Control, or Knights of Stromgald Aggro; different strategies, same driving force behind everything. That might be acceptable to some folks, but don't begrudge others who want a better, more interesting format with lots of varied archetypes all running in more divergent manners.
Are you actually saying that you base your years long crying spree on that, particularly vague statement which explicitly doesn't state any strict ban criteria? Now how did that pan out for you?Cards are usually banned from play if they enable a deck or play style that heavily skews the play environment. What does that mean? If the card were legal, a competitive player either must be playing it, or must be specifically targeting it with his or her own strategies.
Some cards are banned because they have proven to simply be too powerful in their respective format. While hundreds of hours are spent rigorously playtesting sets before their release, the complexity of Magic makes it nearly impossible to accurately predict all the ways the new cards interact with older ones.
I don't know when it all went super awkward, but I guess it's around the time when you started to imply that people are maindecking red blasts to counter Brainstorms.
I understand that it's difficult to let go of the idea that Brainstorm is a very playable card. What I don't understand is why that is a problem. It only makes sense if you read the above quote and leave out all the words that express conditionality and interpret them as absolutes.
It must be annoying as hell to lose all the time when your friends play Brainstorm and you don't but that has little to do with the card itself. There's no cantrip like Brainstorm but I really stuggle to see how a single support spell can raise such a shitstorm. This might be on the slippery side of the slope, but I can easily see people starting this same crusade when all good cantrips are nerfed and they realize that GSZ does somewhat the same thing in some decks.
Some of my friends sell records,
some of my friends sell drugs.
I think there should be some radical changes to keep things intresting enough.
Unban many cards or ban many cards.
Unban many cards (you really think they are any better than Show and Tell?):
Survival of the Fittest
Goblin Recruiter
Black Vise
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Ban many cards:
Show and Tell
Lion's Eye Diamond
True-Name Nemesis
Brainstorm
Feel free to flame.
I am not sure, if you really didn't get the point, but I will gladly point it out to you:
The way you broke down a "boring" game to imply Brainstorm takes away diversity can be applied to any game, so the flaw in your "argument" is the lack of impact Brainstorm has on this.
Well said, and cuts right to the heart of the matter.
no, it should not
Care to supply a reason for that?
Because Modern is a shit format and no one wants its awful core philosophies imposed on other formats?
Right, but nobody doubts that if Ponder or Brainstorm were banned alone that Preordain would become the go-to to keep the cantrip engine running and most likely as a 4-of in every list that ran it. In addition, the extremely consistent blue combo lists almost always run at least 3x Preordain already as their 9-11 cantrips.
If you want to knock the blue cantrip engine off of it's perch as the indisputable consistency engine that must be run in most serious lists then you have to remove the best cantrips, which are Brainstorm and Ponder. A cantrip engine that ran Preordain and Serum Visions or Thoughtscour as its main foci would be much less consistent and much less omnipresent in the meta. That's the point of the exercise: not to remove the blue cantrip shell entirely, just to bring it back to the meta to the point that other things can compete with it for consistency.
Of course what would happen in that event is that we'd get a GP top 8 with 20 Sylvan Libraries and WotC would immediately emergency ban Sylvan Library. Because, yes... That's how things really are. They should sweep the minders clean and start over. Fresh eyes, fresh world view.
My only gripe with Modern is that the disruption is way too weak without Force and the cantrips are too unreliable. Not having to worry about facing the same metagame continuously is a feature, not a bug. I'm not saying the format should be nuked from orbit, but I'd be 100% ok with banning Brainstorm, or Top, or Goyf, or anything else if it was obviously going to be for a year or two.
Modern would be fine with about 3 reprints: Counterspell, Swords to Plowshares or Innocent Blood and Wasteland. That would give control a real counterspell to build around. It would give the format another real creature solution and make Lightning Bolt less ubiquitous in the process. It would stop the mid-range combo madness dead in it's tracks.
Not so sure about Wasteland in a format with shitty duals, too oppressive. But agree on the rest. I'd play Modern for sure if I could play an actual, old-school control deck. I'd hate losing to some creature based combo like Twin.
"We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war."
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