All B/R update speculation.

[iamajellydonut]

I'd play Modern for sure if...

All roads lead to a shitty ban list.

[sjmcc13]

I'd play Modern for sure if I could play an actual, old-school control deck.

Unfortunately Wizards seems to have decided that old school control decks are un-interactive and un-fun...

[Kanti]

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.

Yeah, Modern really deserves Swords>Snapcaster Mage>Swords, or having every Abzan deck runs swords. No thanks. And to go back to the crappy discussion, I'll reiterate to ban Ponder and Preordain. Ponder is strong as hell, and Preordain would just take Ponders spot as it strong as hell as well. Having decks run x4 BS, x4 Serum Visions, x4 Sleight of Hand/Probe though, I can live with that. Things can compete with that. Yes, you could just ban Brainstorm as well, and have a bunch of sad people, including myself.

[Lemnear]

Yeah, Modern really deserves Swords>Snapcaster Mage>Swords, or having every Abzan deck runs swords. No thanks. And to go back to the crappy discussion, I'll reiterate to ban Ponder and Preordain. Ponder is strong as hell, and Preordain would just take Ponders spot as it strong as hell as well. Having decks run x4 BS, x4 Serum Visions, x4 Sleight of Hand/Probe though, I can live with that. Things can compete with that. Yes, you could just ban Brainstorm as well, and have a bunch of sad people, including myself.

I guess you need to be a bit ignorant to think that Serum Visions and Slight of Hand join Brainstorm rather than SDT. You take away Ponder and Preordain just to see it replaced with SDT. Period.

We have long passed the point where banning a cantrip or even two could break blues supreme card selection monopol. Even if you chop BS and Ponder, SDT+Preordain+Probe or Probe+Preordain+DigThroughTime just laught at non-blue card-selection

[Kathal]

Regards the few Modern related posts.

Please make no statements over a format, which you obvious have never played (otherwise you wouldn't make such statements). Modern has its own problems, reprinting stuff like Wasteland, Swords and co doesn't solve those problems.

Greetings,
Kathal

[Darkenslight]

I guess you need to be a bit ignorant to think that Serum Visions and Slight of Hand join Brainstorm rather than SDT. You take away Ponder and Preordain just to see it replaced with SDT. Period.

We have long passed the point where banning a cantrip or even two could break blues supreme card selection monopol. Even if you chop BS and Ponder, SDT+Preordain+Probe or Probe+Preordain+DigThroughTime just laught at non-blue card-selection

Do you think it would have been better to ban BS and Ponder in, say, 2010? (genuine question, not snark)

[Lord Seth]

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.

Counterspell wouldn't magically make control good, because it has the same problem so many good cards for control have: Any boost control might get out of it would be negated by the boost Twin would get out of it. I'm not against Counterspell being in the format, but I don't see it as making control better than Twin.

Swords to Plowshares would be interesting, but again I don't think it's that real a benefit to control decks. It's not that much better than Path to Exile, though as a GR Tron player I'd be happy to see people playing it because I'd actually prefer people to be using that on my Wurmcoil Engines than Path to Exile.

Innocent Blood I agree with.

Wasteland is important in Legacy because otherwise the dual lands would have basically no drawback. In Modern, they all have built-in drawbacks, so Wasteland seems like too much. Though if it would mean they could unban Cloudpost and I'd be able to pay 12-Post in Modern, I'd personally be okay with it, though that doesn't necessarily mean it'd be good for the format.

I'm also not sure how any of this would "stop the mid-range combo madness dead in its tracks." As I noted, Twin wouldn't be made any worse by these (heck, it might become better), and Junk/Jund (the main midrange decks) would just play Wasteland themselves. Would actually help them to shore up the Tron matchup, which has always been an issue for them.

Unfortunately Wizards seems to have decided that old school control decks are un-interactive and un-fun...

Control decks have actually been pretty good in Standard for the last few years, the issue is that the cards that make it work in Standard don't really work very well in Modern. Sphinx's Revelation fueled UWx Control decks to a ridiculous degree for two years in Standard, but it's too slow to do much work in Modern.

[Macky984]

I would unban Black Vise so fast. It would put a nice clock on control decks or decks that just sit back and wait to strike.

[Kanti]

I guess you need to be a bit ignorant to think that Serum Visions and Slight of Hand join Brainstorm rather than SDT. You take away Ponder and Preordain just to see it replaced with SDT. Period.

We have long passed the point where banning a cantrip or even two could break blues supreme card selection monopol. Even if you chop BS and Ponder, SDT+Preordain+Probe or Probe+Preordain+DigThroughTime just laught at non-blue card-selection

Takes the place of Sleight for sure. You can't just get too greedy though in a world with Dig through Time as that card will pick up the pieces as long as you are chaining cantrips into one another, which becomes a lot harder with SDT. Delver decks will also not be running Tops as it is too mana intensive, so yes, there are decks that would run Ponder or Preordains underpowered cousins. Dig through Time isn't a "cantrip" per say, as it's providing actual CA, so I woudn't class as a replacement to a banned Ponder/Preordain, but rather just accept that Dig though Time will come to be run by almost every deck running Brainstorm, fetchlands, and other cantrips, so it will come to be run by almost every deck (Ha!).

tl;dr Not really, as though a Probe/Scour/Sleight/Serum are individually weaker than SDT it helps feed DTT, which is ultimately stronger for a lot of strategies. More midrangey decks will opt to be using SDT and still run DTT, though.

[Lemnear]

Do you think it would have been better to ban BS and Ponder in, say, 2010? (genuine question, not snark)

I say that the powerlevel of Impulse and Brainstorm should have given WotC a clue about the potency of blue cantrips. They did not learn, printed a "fixed" Brainstorm in Ponder and later banned it + Brainstorm in Vintage just to print a "fixed" Ponder in Preordain and later banned it and Ponder in Modern. See a pattern? Mind we also got Probe and SDT at certain times between. They should have taken a second after the Vintage ban and think about their Road to Redundancy.

At this point, banning a certain cantrip to weaken the blue shell is as pointless as banning Lightning Bolt to weaken Burn.dec

[Barook]

At this point, banning a certain cantrip to weaken the blue shell is as pointless as banning Lightning Bolt to weaken Burn.dec

Says the guy who cries that Storm would die without Brainstorm.

Brainstorm provides a bunch of unique benefits the other good cantrips don't:

- instant speed
- protecting key cards from discard
- replacing chaff in hand with fresh cards

Thus the comparison is rather lacking. Without those benefits, it wouldn't be the sacred cow of the format to some people and blue would certainly get hit in terms of powerlevel without it, even if it's just replaced by Ponder and Preordain as the new cantrips of choice.

[Lemnear]

Says the guy who cries that Storm would die without Brainstorm.

Brainstorm provides a bunch of unique benefits the other good cantrips don't:

- instant speed
- protecting key cards from discard
- replacing chaff in hand with fresh cards

Thus the comparison is rather lacking. Without those benefits, it wouldn't be the sacred cow of the format to some people and blue would certainly get hit in terms of powerlevel without it, even if it's just replaced by Ponder and Preordain as the new cantrips of choice.

Pfff ... I'm able to build a storm deck which easily works without Brainstorm and said it before. Would help if you read peoples comments instead of putting them words into their mouth. I was talking about the variety of decks which would shrink if BS would be gone as Miracles, SneakShow, Aluren and a dozen other decks would possibly struggle to maintain their gameplan.

Keep your Captain Obvious to yourself. We can read the card. What about bringing some actual arguments that the card is harmful for compeditive play? I mean real arguments and not ones grounded on your own personal taste of how Legacy should look like. All I hear from the likes of you is the childish bullshit of "color equality" and "metagame is broke if Zoo/Goblins is unplayable" as if we're at a fucking Miss America Contest

[frafen]

Says the guy who cries that Storm would die without Brainstorm.

Brainstorm provides a bunch of unique benefits the other good cantrips don't:

- instant speed
- protecting key cards from discard
- replacing chaff in hand with fresh cards

Thus the comparison is rather lacking. Without those benefits, it wouldn't be the sacred cow of the format to some people and blue would certainly get hit in terms of powerlevel without it, even if it's just replaced by Ponder and Preordain as the new cantrips of choice.

Actually the instant speed is what makes brainstorm fair. If it was a sorcery people would misplay it far less often. I'm kidding, but not at 100%. The point is that often you shouldn't cast brainstorm at instant speed, unless you really need it, because it reaches his maximum power level when it's cast at sorcery speed. So, for me the instant speed isn't what makes bs awesome. "Frankly the card is too good to be cast" wrote Sacher in an old article. A brainstorm with the right timing could be as good as ancestral recall.

I agree that the comparison brainstorm/bolt is lacking because the difference in power level between brainstorm/ponder is much bigger than the one between bolt/suboptimal-bolt.

[Lemnear]

I agree that the comparison brainstorm/bolt is lacking because the difference in power level between brainstorm/ponder is much bigger than the one between bolt/suboptimal-bolt.

Congratz for missing the point completely. It's not about powerlevel but about redundancy of effects at this point.

Can we agree that SDT, Probe, DTT and Preordain are still much better variance-reducing-tools than Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library and all what would be achieved by banning BS and/or Ponder is making the powerlevel gap a bit smaller only? Does Zoo get a significantly better shot at winning against Blade.dec if the blue deck uses DTT+Probe+Preordain to filter for SFM/TNN rather than Brainstorm+Ponder? I consider the effect too marginal to cause a mayor shift in the metagame other than eradicating the decks what really rely on BS for their functionality, but all that has been said several times in this thread before

[FoolofaTook]

Congratz for missing the point completely. It's not about powerlevel but about redundancy of effects at this point.

Can we agree that SDT, Probe, DTT and Preordain are still much better variance-reducing-tools than Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library and all what would be achieved by banning BS and/or Ponder is making the powerlevel gap a bit smaller only? Does Zoo get a significantly better shot at winning against Blade.dec if the blue deck uses DTT+Probe+Preordain to filter for SFM/TNN rather than Brainstorm+Ponder? I consider the effect too marginal to cause a mayor shift in the metagame other than eradicating the decks what really rely on BS for their functionality, but all that has been said several times in this thread before

This is a ridiculous argument that insults the intelligence of the people you're asking to make the comparison.

Is a card quality/advantage device that draws a single card at sorcery speed worth as much as a card that draws three at instant speed and then returns two to the top of the library? Is a card quality/advantage device that takes 2 of the top seven at the cost of plus 6 required cards in the graveyard worth as much as the card that lets you look at and potentially keep 3 off the top of the pile for just ?

Gitaxian Probe and Dig Through Time are both fine options and both broken in their own way but nether of them is close to Brainstorm's value and neither of them is as good at sorting as Ponder is.

Could you build a list that used the 3 cards above as your cantrips and win with it? Of course you could, but you couldn't win at the level you will with the two cantrips that let you start sorting well on turn 1 and are instantly redeemable for a look at the top 3 or 4 of your pile whenever you draw them down the road.

Preordain is a wonderful cantrip but you only get to look at the top two cards of your library before you make the choice as to whether to blind draw the third. That's not close to Ponder's value.

Your attempts to make the difference between Brainstorm, Ponder and the rest of the pack trivial are insulting to anybody who has to read through them over and over again as you continue to try to fog the power level issues.

[frafen]

Congratz for missing the point completely. It's not about powerlevel but about redundancy of effects at this point.

Can we agree that SDT, Probe, DTT and Preordain are still much better variance-reducing-tools than Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library and all what would be achieved by banning BS and/or Ponder is making the powerlevel gap a bit smaller only? Does Zoo get a significantly better shot at winning against Blade.dec if the blue deck uses DTT+Probe+Preordain to filter for SFM/TNN rather than Brainstorm+Ponder? I consider the effect too marginal to cause a mayor shift in the metagame other than eradicating the decks what really rely on BS for their functionality, but all that has been said several times in this thread before

I think that you can't speak of redundancy of effects without considering the power of those effects.

Yes, I agree that SDT, Probe, DTT and Preordain are better variance-reducing-tools than guile/library. It's what blue does, and it's right.
The ban of brainstorm shouldn't aim at reducing the gap between blue and non-blue variance-reducing-tools. Instead it should be aimed at reducing the power gap between blue and non-blue strategy.

You consider the effect af that ban too marginal, and I'm not saying that you couldn't be right. But I think that there is also the chance that you are undervaluing the hit that blue would take with the loss of 4x pseudo-ancestral recall.

Actually if I should bet on Zoo or on Blade.dec (with DTT+Probe+Preordain) I would choose Zoo. That cantrip configuration looks too weak.

[Gheizen64]

No BS would also reduce a lot of OmniTell power , and Show and Tell in general as a strategy. Plus black would become a relevant support color again. But noo, let's argue about the fact that blue would still play ponder and preordain so it would be pointless. Remind me of those people who rather do nothing that try to do something good because of "moral integrity", bah.

[Dice_Box]

No BS would also reduce a lot of OmniTell power , and Show and Tell in general as a strategy. Plus black would become a relevant support color again. But noo, let's argue about the fact that blue would still play ponder and preordain so it would be pointless. Remind me of those people who rather do nothing that try to do something good because of "moral integrity", bah.

Because not everyone agrees that the Banning of the card would be "Something Good". Moraltiy has nothing to do with that, its opinion. I myself would rather see a shorter ban list over a longer one. Unban things until there is nothing "Safe" left on that list and then come back to me with suggestions on what to ban.

[testing32]

Latest SCG top 8: 5 Jace control decks, 1 show and tell and 2 prison decks.

Edit: top 16: 8 Jace control decks, 1 show and tell, 2 tempo and 5 prison decks.

[Megadeus]

Dig Through Time confirmed insane? These delve cards have proven to be very strong indeed.