Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
So what? Ban the Blue?
The answer is Brainstorm, it's always Brainstorm.
No lands? Brainstorm!
Discard? Brainstorm!
Unmulligan? Brainstorm!
Gas? Brainstorm!
Jace the Mindsculptor? Brainstorm!
What to ban? Brainstorm!
slightly sarcasm but mostly not
By the way, just for the record, a while ago it was claimed that Brainstorm was seeing more play in Legacy than Ancestral Recall was in Vintage, but that didn't seem to necessarily be true as that data seemed to come from MTG Top 8 comparing the last 12 months of Vintage versus the last 2 months of Legacy; if we did the last 2 months of Vintage then that wasn't true.
It's true now. According to MTG Top 8, Ancestral Recall has been in 72% of decks in Vintage in the last two months, and Brainstorm has been in 77% of decks in Legacy in the last two months.
I decided to also check out MTG Goldfish. According to MTG Goldfish, Ancestral Recall is at 72.87% while Brainstorm is at 75.74%. So same thing there.
There any other metagame sites that provide information on this to see if it's consistent there? The other ones I know of only list deck percentages rather than how frequently cards are played.
Morphling.de
I feel uneasy making comparisons between Recall and anything in Legacy on play percentages. The formats are very different and things change based on card availability, the positioning of Dredge and Shops at any given time and also if an event your looking at was allowing proxies or not. I mean, sure you can try and make a point, but I feel it is misguided.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
Originally Posted by Spam
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
There are issues with it, I just wanted to note that while previously I noted it wasn't true, now it actually is true. One can draw their own conclusions from the data (that's why I didn't make any argument with it), but I figured I should point out that Recall seeing more play in Vinrtage than Brainstorm in Legacy is actually true now, or at least at the moment.
Unrealistic hyperbole? Brainstorm!
Ok, so you're tying up your clearly limited mana on a cantrip which likely doesn't lead to a followup because, again, your mana is constrained. Even if you hit lands you're are behind the 8-ball in terms of tempo and development, which many decks right now can punish. Congrats, you've managed to overvalue a brainstorm in your opener.
Yes, Brainstorm is fairly solid against discard. So is redundancy and a flat distribution of card quality, if there are no egregiously important cards in a deck then getting any one of them discard isn't too big a deal. Countermagic is also a good answer to discard, since having mana for Brainstorm means you could also Spell Pierce or w/e. I don't see how this is particularly damning.
If I lived in the fantasy world that some posters here live in where Brainstorm is basically several Demonic Tutors, yeah, I'd want Brainstorm banned too. Sadly, I just play actual Magic where Brainstorm is another roll of the dice, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Variance reduction =\= variance elimination, especially since your own first point shows that you'll keep awful hands (no lands, no gas, etc) just because you see a Brainstorm. "I kept a bad hand once and Brainstorm bailed me out" isn't an argument to ban a card, it's just an interesting story.
Yes, Brainstorm can help adjust the composition of a hand. This is most relevant in the case of combo decks, Brainstorm sort of enables a good number of them. That's said, a card that enables a number of decks and a unique dimension of gameplay seems like a net positive to a format. In the case of providing a couple of solid cards like a bomb + removal in a fair mirror or whatever, then, ok, variance is variance. Nowadays, I can just DTT for gas anyway.
Using an incremental advantage engine to incrementally generate card advantage -- *gasp* NVM that for 4 mana I can Sneak Attack, or Tendrils, or other things that just blatantly win the game.
Or we could ban the broken Delve spell, either of the 2 broken blue creatures, or the 1 mana instant-speed wrath. *shrug*
My issue with Mtg Top8 is that it mixes MTGO events with Paper results and throws them into a blender.
There's also tcdecks.net where you can calculate the percentage, although you have wait a while for the rest of the tournament results to trickle in each month.
All miracles final at SCG Portland #NothingToSeeHere
Junk Deathblade top 4.
Elves and Deadguy Ale Top 8.
#OnlyBlueDecksCanPlace
#WhyYouDoThisSCG?
I'll never capitulate on Junk, RUG, or BUG.
Mardu? Sure, nobody used Dega or Oros (at least until WotC announced Mardu and everyone tried to claim old-school cred), and Team Italia confused some people.
Jeskai? Ok, there were a million names for it, so sure.
But the others, the new names are way worse.
"I have a dream that my children will one day play in a tournament where they will not be judged by the color of their cards but by the execution of their play."
They're actually both DGA decks with Abrupt Decay, haha.
I would be thrilled to see Bx no U midrange take over. I don't expect it to stick though. A top 16 with no BUG decks like this one is pretty rare and those matchups are very hard for DGA. If in a month we're still seeing 1-2 DGA-style decks in top 16s I'll happily admit I'm wrong.
That all being said, two Miracles decks in the finals is still two Miracles decks in the finals.
The whole meta could be 100% Cantrip cartel+Dig decks and people would insist it's totally fine -_-'
The tournament was rather low attendance, though, and as we all know, less rounds = higher chance for nonblue decks to place by getting lucky instead of getting fucked over by long-term consistency.
And to be fair, one of the Miracle players was Joe Lossett.
This
Yeah, looking at the lists left me even more confused about SCG naming conventions...
Personally I don't want to see Bx midrange take over - I don't want to see any archetype take over (and this is where the big debate is, since some people feel that the cantrips shell is an archetype). I think this top 16 was reasonably varied. There is too much varience involved to say, "miracles mirror in finals, miracles OP" (not that you said that specifically). More interesting to me personally is that only two miracles decks made it to the top 16.
"I have a dream that my children will one day play in a tournament where they will not be judged by the color of their cards but by the execution of their play."
There is a huge gap between "80% of decks run Brainstorm" and "every deck runs 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, 4 Probes, 4 Force of Will, 4 Dig Trough Time" in terms of judging the format health from what we have heared in this thread.
I still believe that bitching over 4x Brainstorm in 80% of Legacy decks as a problem per sé is as stupid as pointing to Beta Moxen and Lotus in Vintage. Mind that the worst in terms of fixed-slots we have ever seen in MTG Format history was during the second Gush Era in Vintage in which near every non-Workshop deck began it's building with 4x FoW, 4x Ponder, x4 Brainstorm, 4x Gush, 4x Merchant Scroll and Legacy is still worlds appart from such a constellation (which was really fun for Vintage players and caused a Spike in tournament attendance as skill mattered so much, just saying)
If Legacy develops into 20 fix-slots + 20 manasources + 20 cards defying your strategy and kill, we can talk again.
Edit:
It's like we blame the ~8 Fetchlands in like 95% of all Legacy deck for fueling Brainstorm, Cabal Ritual, Dig Through Time and DRS and call that "streamlining the metagame"
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Oh, I only want to see the "take over" purely for the trolling opportunities. "Sorry you bought those underground seas. Scrubland >" (I bought underground seas in January.)
I was surprised to not see more Miracles decks in the top 16 after 5/16 from the last PIQ, but a mirror match in the finals is nothing to sneeze at. Miracles consistently has top placings and the decks shuffle underneath it, which is really the point. Remember when Lands was putting 2-3 players in the top 16? Now it's nearly vanished.
Miracle Control has been in the top 2 of the TCdecks ratings every month since last January except for two:
--Last July (when only 204 decks were rated instead of the usual 400-ish)
--This January (when it was third behind RUG and UR right before Cruise got the ax.)
It has been in the top slot every month since TC was banned.
It was in the top slot in May, June, August and Sept. last year (basically the four months until TC was printed)
The only deck even close to approaching it is Team America, which was the top deck at the beginning of last year, and it's been strong since (usually No. 2 or 3), but even now we are seeing Grixis take some of its market share. (This news is really good for DGA-esque decks since BUG decks are really, really tough).
I would say by the fall set, if there isn't something dethroning miracles (and especially if it gets worse with 2+ in the top 8 and a couple more in the top 16) we will see a ban. Unfortunately, I think it will be SDT or Dig Through Time rather than one of the miracle cards or counterbalance.
We really are there. The best Miracles builds play 4 Force, Brainstorm, Ponder, Dig.
The Grixis deck plays 4 Force, Brainstorm, Ponder, Probe, Dig (or Thought Scour).
Most delver decks play 4 Force, Brainstorm, Ponder and some play a couple Probes.
Omni plays 4 Force, Brainstorm, Ponder, Dig, Preordain and Probe.
Storm plays 4 Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Probe.
And of course shoutout to Esper Thopters with 4 Force, Brainstorm, Ponder, Probe and 3 Dig.
But Miracles still isn't oppressive and it still isn't present in overwhelming numbers. It's just "a deck" that happens to put up consistent numbers.
Grixis taking market share from bug, so to speak, is pretty good for fair decks - I hadn't even thought of that.
I think Miracles is fine, personally, and I hate playing against it. In some ways it reminds me of Modern Twin, in others its the exact opposite.
They both have been at or near the top for years.
They both play control until they wind their wincon and then try to win in 1 turn.
They both play the best legal cantrips available.
They have similar market shares in their formats.
They both have a couple different builds that are really similar (Euro vs Legends, Blood Moon vs Tarmotwin).
On the other hand, miracles isn't really a deck you can just pick up and do well with, whereas Twin is A + B.
Miracles allows really talented players to leverage that advantage much more so than twin (twin gets most its advantage in the deck building period rather than in play).
Miracles is a combo deck (countertop) that doesn't win the game outright.
But where I'm going with this is that I don't expect a ban for miracles. If omnitell gets oppressive, I could see DTT being banned, but I don't expect that to happen either. We're going to keep seeing a bunch of miracles players stuck in the draw bracket, and the couple good ones make it to the top 8 consistently, and that feels OK to me.
As far as lands goes, its an expensive deck to build optimally (tabernacles and such) which means less players really commit to it, and miracles is going to be a rough matchup for any slow deck that runs singleton threats. If they started playing some raging ravines the miracles matchup might get a lot better (just speculation on my part). The point is that lands is poorly positioned for a Miracles Omnitell meta because it wants to be in between those two decks.
"I have a dream that my children will one day play in a tournament where they will not be judged by the color of their cards but by the execution of their play."
No, we are not and that's why I presented the extreme example. We don't have 20 cards overlap in various strategies. We have only 8 in blue decks in general and that's less than the usual "white shell" of Plows/SFM/Batterskull/Jitte and no one cries about that either as the best white package in Legacy.
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