All B/R update speculation.

[Dice_Box]

I wonder what would happen if WOTC decided to print sorcery-speed Brainstorm in the next set, and then banned the real thing. Would it be as dominant? It would certainly make Thoughtseize/Hymn/etc. relevant cards again, while still enabling a lot of the plays that make real Brainstorm powerful. However, being at sorcery speed it would require some planning and - dare I say - skill to be used correctly rather than the default "Brainstorm in response to whatever I don't like" play that is almost always the correct choice.

I have been thinking on this for a while. While I am on the record as stating I wish to see the card stay, if they did this I think I would be quite happy with the change. I do feel though that overall, it would change very little. Make discard better yes and make mana control and planing more forefront issues but really over, on the format as a whole I feel it would do very little. (RIP Solidarity though.)

[Admiral_Arzar]

I have been thinking on this for a while. While I am on the record as stating I wish to see the card stay, if they did this I think I would be quite happy with the change. I do feel though that overall, it would change very little. Make discard better yes and make mana control and planing more forefront issues but really over, on the format as a whole I feel it would do very little. (RIP Solidarity though.)

The issue for me is that I'm not entirely comfortable with a Brainstorm ban and the unforeseen consequences thereof. However, I have watched the format move from a comfortable 50% blue, with plenty of other things viable, to around 80% with only a few specific hate decks viable outside of the blue shell over the last 4-5 years. Something needs to be done about this, and I'm not sure stopgap measures like banning Dig Though Time (which may be necessary) are going to do much in the long term.

[Lemnear]

The issue for me is that I'm not entirely comfortable with a Brainstorm ban and the unforeseen consequences thereof. However, I have watched the format move from a comfortable 50% blue, with plenty of other things viable, to around 80% with only a few specific hate decks viable outside of the blue shell over the last 4-5 years. Something needs to be done about this, and I'm not sure stopgap measures like banning Dig Though Time (which may be necessary) are going to do much in the long term.

If ~50% is comfortable and ~70% is not depends on personal views and it ever was a very blue format right from the start. It however should not distract us from issues like TC caused, developing the format into a Delver clusterfuck and I can understand people complaining about DTT being run in OmniTell, Miracles and Delver decks for pretty much the same reasons TC was.

[M+1]

..., never actually refuting or debating it's power level which is what the banned list is about.

Not entirely true.
Power level is one thing, but the primary purpose of the banned list is diversity - to ensure that there are multiple competitive decks for the tournament player to choose from.

[nedleeds]

well I guess then the debate is over once a spell hits 100% usage in the formats highest level events ... Equally true is that if Legacy was a Pro Tour format the card would have been banned long ago.

[Dice_Box]

well I guess then the debate is over once a spell hits 100% usage in the formats highest level events ... Equally true is that if Legacy was a Pro Tour format the card would have been banned long ago.

It will never hit 100%. There will always be people like myself who just do not want to play with it. I rather play MUD, Lands, Elves, Deadguy or Junk than Delver or Show and Tell. Just who I am. People like me exist and will keep that flame alive regardless of how good the card is.

[Gheizen64]

They could also unban Survival which is by BS-defenders standards, absurdly broken and would dominate the format when it never ever got to 80% presence at its peak. Let me share a secret with you; if Survival were unbanned tomorrow, it wouldn't dominate the format anymore since too many cards have been printed since then that make the card much worse than it was post-vengevine. It would however, become an alternate pillar of the format to the blue shell (while you could still play BS alongside it, Survival need, like FoW, 20+ creatures to work, so you couldn't fit both the blue shell and all those creatures in it. For what its worth, old UG survival lists didn't run brainstorm, but FoW/Daze/stifles to allow you to combo survival undisturbed).

Incoming post quoting me saying that i'm a tard because Survival would actually be stronger now that better creatures have been printed; ignoring the very simple fact that best thing to do with survival is still to chain Vengevines or reanimate Iona/Grizzly/Ooze, and no new creature actually sinergistic with survival was printed since then. On the other hand, we got omniscience, DRS, Terminus, RiP, Delver, Pyromancer, Swiftspear and surely something else i'm missing.

[nedleeds]

On the other hand, we got omniscience, DRS, Terminus, RiP, Delver, Pyromancer, Swiftspear and surely something else i'm missing.

Cage, Surgical, Scavenging Ooze, DRS, Phyrexian Revoker, Abrupt Decay, Containment Priest ... also Green Sun Zenith as competition for it in an elf deck which goes off as fast as Vengevine chain ever did with Trample. SotF would be fine, and certainly wouldn't approach 32/32's (it never did), or 64/64's.

[Tylert]

I'm a little bit disturbed by the fact that brainstorm was played as a 4 of in the 16 top decks of the last SGC...
Is there a way to know the meta of this particular occurence of the SCG circuit?
I'd really like to be able to see if this is because in this area people play only blue based decks or if it is really due to the dominance of the blue shell...

[M+1]

They could also unban Survival which is by BS-defenders standards, absurdly broken and would dominate the format when it never ever got to 80% presence at its peak.

Wait.. what? What the hell is a "BS-defender"? Is it a normal, active Legacy player?
I agree that Survival would be fine right now to shake things up. Let's have it back and see how it goes. Goblin Recruiter, too.

[Chatto]

Wait.. what? What the hell is a "BS-defender"? Is it a normal, active Legacy player?
I agree that Survival would be fine right now to shake things up. Let's have it back and see how it goes. Goblin Recruiter, too.

I would love to see Recruiter unbanned, but it's also banned for being able to stack your deck... Something that's really not appriciated.

[FoolofaTook]

I would love to see Recruiter unbanned, but it's also banned for being able to stack your deck... Something that's really not appriciated.

Anything that lets players stack a large part of their pile has some cheating potential built in. It's too easy to stack good early combo cards back-to-back several times and then shuffle lightly after the game, leading to an increased chance of those cards showing up together the next game. The opponent can do an industrial strength riffle based "cut" to counter that but many players feel that having an opponent overly handle their pile beforehand is rude, not to mention the disaster that is cards hitting the floor at a large event when somebody else does that and fumbles the attempt.

Now throw in the time involved in searching your pile for 20 cards and aligning them and the Goblin Recruiter ban is right from many different angles.

[Barook]

Goblin Recruiter is partly banned for logistic reasons.

On a slightly different topic:
How exactly does TCdecks choose the decks that are represented in the graphic that is later used by us in the DTB section? Ever since Magic Top 8 data was "polluted" with the inclusion of MTGO events, I used to calculate the peneratration of Brainstorm manually from the deck numbers provided by TCdecks as it seemed more reliable to get data on Paper. However, as time went by, I started suspecting that there was something "off" with the data when they became more and more complete with the rest of the tournament results trickling in after the month has ended. What was "off"? E.g. why would Brainstorm suddenly lose 5% meta penetration despite more blue decks placing than the month before?

By now I'm pretty sure that after a certain point, they stop adding cards in the "most played card" section (probably shortly after the end of the month) while still adding decks to the graphic, thus resulting in lower percentages for all cards if you try to calculate it with the given numbers. At least that's my observation after several months. So the actual meta penetration of Brainstorm in Paper is most likely beyond 70%.

Now my question is: How does MTG Top 8 calculate its card penetration percentage? Since Brainstorm is roughly 79% on MTGO and it shows ~82% for the combined data for the last 2 months, it would mean the rest of the Brainstorm surplus comes from Paper results. My assumption is that TCdecks data is "polluted" as well by really small tournaments (even <20 people events, making Top 8 submissions look pretty stupid as far as "placing" goes), thus messing with the data, while MTG Top8 has only the bigger events (and those dreadful MTGO results mixed in).

Interpret that as you will until that question is answered, but the implications for the format are rather - unpleasant.

[M+1]

I would love to see Recruiter unbanned, but it's also banned for being able to stack your deck... Something that's really not appriciated.

Goblin Recruiter is partly banned for logistic reasons.

No. That is nothing but a widely spread myth.
Recruiter has NEVER been banned for "logistic reasons" in any format - ever. Please offer proof to back up this false claim, or stop spreading it.

Recruiter has always been banned in Legacy.
At the time Legacy was created, Recruiter was on a short list of cards that were banned "for being banned in Extended".

It was banned in Extended in December 2003 for being too fast. Specifically for enabling turn 2 kills.
Here is the 2003 announcement:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...e/dci20031201a

EDIT:
See also Randy Buehler's explanation in the follow-up article: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...eek-2003-12-05

[Stevestamopz]

No. That is nothing but a widely spread myth.
Recruiter has NEVER been banned for "logistic reasons" in any format - ever. Please offer proof to back up this false claim, or stop spreading it.

Recruiter has always been banned in Legacy.
At the time Legacy was created, Recruiter was on a short list of cards that were banned "for being banned in Extended".

It was banned in Extended in December 2003 for being too fast. Specifically for enabling turn 2 kills.
Here is the 2003 announcement:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...e/dci20031201a

EDIT:
See also Randy Buehler's explanation in the follow-up article: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...eek-2003-12-05

Thankyou ^

The potential for abuse is minimal; you grab your deck and flick the goblin cards out of your deck and onto the table in front of you. Shuffle up and stack; ringleader, 3 goblins, ringleader, 3 goblins etc. This entire process takes literally 25 seconds. I have sat across from players pondering brainstorms (pun not intended) and divining top piles for much longer than that.

Goblins is a dead deck right now, with only idiots or the faithfuls (of which I am both) still playing it. Goblins historically was very good against fair blue decks because the deck manipulation was about even... now with ponder + preordain + dig through time on top of brainstorm, there's no way for any non-blue deck to compete unless it is just specifically hating on it as Death and Taxes does. Now that the fair blue decks also have access to a 3 mana Progenitus and Stoneforge and Deathrite, the deck is in a world of hurt.

Ringleader wouldn't even make Goblins come close to Tier 1, but it would definitely give it a leg up. I've tested a Goblins deck with 4x Recruiters against Jeskai Stoneblade and it's evened the matchup a lot. For what it's worth, it can be a very skilltesting card, although sometimes it pretty much becomes ancestral visions a few times in a row.

As for Survival, unban it. Thanks to Wizards love of unconditional answers (abrupt decay, councils judgement to name the two best), it's unlikely to ever to be able to take over a game completely like it did 5 years ago. It's not even clear that it's the best thing to be doing in Legacy anymore anyway, with Legacy having moved from synergy into goodcards.dec

Does anyone know how Wizards review the Legacy banned list, or how often they do actually consider unbanning things? I'm curious as to why Black Vise and Mind Twist are still banned for instance.

[Chatto]

No. That is nothing but a widely spread myth.
Recruiter has NEVER been banned for "logistic reasons" in any format - ever. Please offer proof to back up this false claim, or stop spreading it.

Well, I was assuming to know the 'truth', I stand corrected!

[Blastoderm]

64/64 brainstorm at this past SCG legacy event, hurray!!

[nedleeds]

It will never hit 100%. There will always be people like myself who just do not want to play with it. I rather play MUD, Lands, Elves, Deadguy or Junk than Delver or Show and Tell. Just who I am. People like me exist and will keep that flame alive regardless of how good the card is.

It has hit 100% you just don't know it because you dropped at 4-2 in the 6th round because you couldn't salvage a bad hand by un-mulliganing with the greatest skill tester since the Rubik's Cube Brainstorm ...

[btm10]

well I guess then the debate is over once a spell hits 100% usage in the formats highest level events

I think there will be a case for some action if SCG Worcester and GP Lille look like SCG DFW. That being said, I think that the correct action is far less clear than you do if we see more events with results like SCG DFW's.

I absolutely agree that by how frequently cards are played and by power level, Brainstorm should be the card that goes. But using only those criteria ignores the experience of a large part, maybe even a majority, of the Legacy community for whom playing with Brainstorm is incredibly important. You obviously don't think the way these people feel is as important as having an 'objectively correct' banned list, but I'd rather have a string of SCG Dallases than have a Legacy format where it's hard to get a weekly event to fire because people quit playing the format over a ban.

If the goal is to make the top tables less blue, banning Dig Through Time is probably the easiest reasonable action in terms of getting community support, though it doesn't provide much headspace for new powerful blue cards to enter the format without saturating the top tables again. There are arguments for banning Ponder if a ban has to happen, but the Preordain-for-Ponder swap is so seamless (and in some decks Preordain is likely better anyway) that both cards would likely need to be hit to have an impact.

I'm far from convinced that there is an objectively right or wrong answer to the Brainstorm question, but I think that those calling for a ban are severely underestimating the degree to which some people value the card and would leave the format if it were banned.

Equally true is that if Legacy was a Pro Tour format [Braindtorm] would have been banned long ago.

This is unambiguously true. But we'd see other similarly major changes if Legacy were a Pro Tour or even PTQ format and I think that the community is happy with being a GP-only format for those reasons. In particular, WotC would almost surely be more aggressive with then ban list than people would like.

Ringleader wouldn't even make Goblins come close to Tier 1, but it would definitely give it a leg up. I've tested a Goblins deck with 4x Recruiters against Jeskai Stoneblade and it's evened the matchup a lot. For what it's worth, it can be a very skilltesting card, although sometimes it pretty much becomes ancestral visions a few times in a row.

I assume you mean Recruiter, but wouldn't it be better to update FCG if Recruiter were unbanned rather than just stacking for value?

[wcm8]

I'd like to whine about Show and Tell for a few minutes. :)

This card is just... dumb. It's a 3-mana Sorcery that essentially says something like, "Add infinite mana to your mana pool. This mana may only be spent to play your next non-Planeswalker permanent spell."

Why is this not ban worthy? Is not a 3 mana ritual for 15 colorless, 7BBBB, or 8UUU (or whatever those obnoxious cards cost) not clearly broken?

The decks built around it are equally dumb, and are constructed to functionally ignore their opponent entirely aside from denying them interaction via counterspells, discard, and/or permanents that further restrict interaction (Leyline of Sanctity, Boseiju, Defense Grid, etc.). These decks are essentially like playing solitaire, simply cantripping for a few turns, and then going for the one single spell. At least MOST Prison decks have to consider their opponents at least a little bit.

Ignoring your opponent is a hallmark of combo in general, but other combo decks at least have to go through more hoops and end the game in a fairly spectacular, flavorful way. Reanimator has to first get a huge creature into the graveyard, and then it has to resolve a reanimation spell. And even then, it still has to swing through a few times and avoid having said creature get removed in the meanwhile, all while often hanging on at single-digit life total. Dredge has to mill its own library, and then still typically needs to resolve a few spells. Its army of the undead typically still need to attack at least once to finish the opponent off. Storm-based combo must first accumulate a critical mass of cards, then explode into a fireworks-display flurry. Etc, etc.

Show and Tell simply has to resolve its namesake while holding a Timmy-esque EDH "I Win" card in hand. The deck has gotten even more obnoxious now that it's dropped Red and doesn't even need to win via the Combat step.

Without fail, in real live I tend to get paired against the luckiest SnT pilots ever. The guys that resolve it on turn 2 WITH Force of Will + other counter backup. Sure, in testing the deck seems to fiddle around and have its spells get countered or otherwise nullified, but I'm talking real life games with money and prizes on the line. I'm talking after going undefeated in the Swiss and being the first or second place seed, losing to some guy who only played a grand total of 30 minutes of Magic on his way into the Elimination rounds.

Seriously. I've had my own FoW countered, then Dazed their SnT, and had them pay for the Daze via exiling a Simian Spirit Guide. Loss to Emrakul.

I've had another SnT opponent land his maindeck one-of Boseiju on turn 3. Loss to a chain of spells cast freely via Omniscience.

I've resolved Ethersworn Canonists, Meddling Magi, and Containment Priests to only have them be Massacred or die in a Pyroclasm. And then lost to an Emrakul.

I've seen things you people wouldn't imagine. I've had my Flusterstorms seized from my thoughts and my Hymns muted by Leylines. I've had Oblivion Rings left in limbo as my opponent cunningly wished for some sort of answer. All these moments... will be lost in the tournament pairings... like tears in rain.





I am sick and ****ing tired of losing to this stupid ****ing deck and these stupid ****ing players that just shrug their fat shoulders, drop their hand of pink-sleeved cards onto their grubby My Little Pony playmats and say, "Didn't matter anyways, still had all deez nuts."

Ugh. Please. Do something. Ban this card. It might have been fine when the best thing you could drop in was a Progenitus or a Verdant Force, but now it's just gross. Same thing happened with SotF. The new overpowered designs ruined the fun and made the enabler OP.