All B/R update speculation.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

What you are saying is that the density of cantrip decks is going to kill the game? This is pure conjecture based on assumptions about the personal tastes of the player base. My assumption is that if the dozen or so whiners on the internet were all to quit (and each convinced a friend to quit too), Legacy would go just as strong.

I'm sure you're wrong on this matter, man, as if 1+1 ppl did quit only thanks to me, then the average turnout in our lgs would go down by 20%. Kekeke.

[Gheizen64]

So basically:

every other card that was banned in the history of the format , had a lower penetration or representation than any of the cantrip cartel. This means that logically following one of those cards should go but:

1 wotc don't care anymore and want to promote modern and kill legacy
2 wotc don't think banning BS or Ponder/Preordain would help the format nor they think that cards being overrepresented is a bad thing anymore

If point 1, ok, we can't do much. WotC will kill the format amen

If point 2, can we have some of the cards that were banned back? At least this would create alternative pillars for the format that aren't the cantrip cartel. Inaction seems just lazy at this point. The format has been 75%+ cantrip carteled for what, an year and an half now? For a format with 4k+ cards in it, this look pretty sad. Having alternative pillars (mostly SotF because it can't go in a cantrip shell, possibly more combo enablers like Jar, Bargain, F.Search) would at least mean that while the format would still be vastly predictable and dominated by said pillars, at least they wouldn't all play largely the same.

[Chatto]

If wotc don't care why even have the format? Do you realize how stupid that argument is right?

Why do anything you die anyway

And please, don't ever PM me again.

[bruizar]

So basically:
1 wotc don't care anymore and want to promote modern and kill legacy

We've seen it in Vintage.

At some point, Brainstorm will be banned, alongside Ponder and all the other cantrips and people will stop playing legacy all together. History repeats

[Crimhead]

So basically:

every other card that was banned in the history of the format , had a lower penetration or representation than any of the cantrip cartel. This means that logically following one of those cards should go but:

1 wotc don't care anymore and want to promote modern and kill legacy
2 wotc don't think banning BS or Ponder/Preordain would help the format nor they think that cards being overrepresented is a bad thing anymore

3 card representation is not the only factor which determines that a card gets banned.

[Lemnear]

To have a different view or opinion is childish illusion now? Bringing back ten years old metagame from the dawn of format qualifies as an argument now? DTT turned the very really much healthy format into the one where you only choose the kill conditions? are your arguments boil down to hyperboles again?

its a childish illusion that Legacy was ever color-balanced and rooting arguments about the format being unhealthy on color balance.

Its funny that you claim the format was fine before DTT, despite you whinning about how unfun and unhealthy the format is since 2013.

[LeoCop 90]

Crimhead: I am just saying that when a card is played by almost every deck it should be banned, and i think that's elementary. You say that penetration is not the only reason to ban a card, but i think it should be the most important reason. i don't think there will ever be a format that wizards care about (say modern), where 70% decks play a card.

Lemnear: legacy was never color balanced, but now is worse than ever and it is just natural because the more good cards get printed, the more cantrips become good to find stuff. I think it should be in the interests of every legacy player to see what happens when you can't play brainstorm anymore.


In the end we will never agree because we have diametrically different perspectives. I consider the format in a vacuum, see that everyone plays brainstorm and i'm astonished by the fact that it is still legal. You consider the format through the lenses of legacy's history as a "blue format" and you are totally fine with almost all decks being blue and playing brainstorm because you consider their strategies different, i suppose you wouldn't be worried even if 100% decks played blue and elves , death and taxes and other fringe decks wouldn't exist.

[Megadeus]

Do you really think that people simply say "I'm going to play brainstorm, ponder, probes, and digs because I'm worried I'll have to play against belcher!" No. They play those cards because at this point it isfairly evident that playing those cards are the way to Give yourself the best shot at winning by reducing variance. Nobody at this point in time is playing these decks because they are worried about a fringe budget combo deck, and if they were things like mindbreak trap would be much more popular

[Bed Decks Palyer]

its a childish illusion that Legacy was ever color-balanced and rooting arguments about the format being unhealthy on color balance.

Its funny that you claim the format was fine before DTT, despite you whinning about how unfun and unhealthy the format is since 2013.

Do you even read what the other people write? I don't give a fuck about color of Brainstorm decks, calling those decks blue is just an easy and short way how to distinguish them, do you get it or do you need to read it thousand times? For what is worth, the metagame might be as white as NSDAP congress, as long as it won't be the ever the same bunch of cantrips-into-cantrips piles that all play the same, suck the same.
Wasn't that you who was fine with the inbred boring predictable metagame gameplay until you miraculously changed your mind due to DTT? Like if the card changed anything about an overall shape of the format...

Why don't you simply accept that Legacy was never about color diversity and be fine with a metagame of "six of 24-of-the-same-cards decks"?

Btw, your posts are completely unconstructive, and I'm going to ignore them. Trying to answer them is a mere waste of time, which I could have spent by writing about thos aspects of today's Legacy that are interesting and important to me, esp. considering the few words I got to say about the great minds of format like Finn or Michael Keller, who seem to be the very last people who're trying to dive for something new and thrilling in the Legacy pool.

[Dice_Box]

Legacy of is starting to look like Vintage in its "Play the power or play an answer" style format. The fact that in Vintage that can not be helped and in Legacy it can is the issue at heart, not the colour of the cards in question.

[Lemnear]

Lemnear: legacy was never color balanced, but now is worse than ever and it is just natural because the more good cards get printed, the more cantrips become good to find stuff. I think it should be in the interests of every legacy player to see what happens when you can't play brainstorm anymore.

Except this isn't true at all. The Penetration of blue decks or to me more precise, decks which run Brainstorm, dropped to 71% from the all-time high of 82% during the DTT outbreak and the TC era thanks to the strong performances of lands, loam and the like.

[Lemnear]

Do you even read what the other people write? I don't give a fuck about color of Brainstorm decks, calling those decks blue is just an easy and short way how to distinguish them, do you get it or do you need to read it thousand times?

I read you rants for years now and I don't care about you name-of-the-day for your matter of complaint. You used the term "blue decks" as well as your synonym for cantrip.dec so don't even try to deny that.

For what is worth, the metagame might be as white as NSDAP congress, as long as it won't be the ever the same bunch of cantrips-into-cantrips piles that all play the same, suck the same.

That's why you quitted and kept ranting about the metagame in a hypothetical base...

Wasn't that you who was fine with the inbred boring predictable metagame gameplay until you miraculously changed your mind due to DTT? Like if the card changed anything about an overall shape of the format...

Do YOU read what I wrote? Obviously not.

Why don't you simply accept that Legacy was never about color diversity and be fine with a metagame of "six of 24-of-the-same-cards decks"?

Show me these different decks/strategies.

Btw, your posts are completely unconstructive, and I'm going to ignore them. Trying to answer them is a mere waste of time, which I could have spent by writing about thos aspects of today's Legacy that are interesting and important to me, esp. considering the few words I got to say about the great minds of format like Finn or Michael Keller, who seem to be the very last people who're trying to dive for something new and thrilling in the Legacy pool.

Yeah, go write about the people who actually innovate and try to fight the metagame and don't follow your example of swimming with the stream for a while and ragequitting the format because you don't like it despite keeping to complain. Props to people holding up against the blue mainstream #NoSarcasm

[DragoFireheart]

Do you really think that people simply say "I'm going to play brainstorm, ponder, probes, and digs because I'm worried I'll have to play against belcher!" No.

Yes.

[Crimhead]

Crimhead: I am just saying that when a card is played by almost every deck it should be banned, and i think that's elementary. You say that penetration is not the only reason to ban a card, but i think it should be the most important reason.

Not everyone thinks that. Some people care more about strategic diversity than card penetration. Some people think Legacy is sufficiently diverse - others do not. This is all about opinions and tastes, to think otherwise is deceiving yourself.

i don't think there will ever be a format that wizards care about (say modern), where 70% decks play a card.

Or... they do care about Legacy (obviously less so than Modern) but they think the Brainstrom density is not symptomatic of an unhealthy format (not a novel concept - many players feel the same).

Make your assumptions, but don't expect me to accept them as fact. What's factual is that WotC are not managing the format they way you (and others) think they should be. This is not evidence that they do not care.

[Nielsie]

Just leaving these numbers here for you. Data is parsed out of the Tierdecks-data of TCDecks: http://tcdecks.net/tierdecks.php
Once I find some time, I will also parse the meta-game-data ( http://tcdecks.net/metagame.php?format=Legacy ) to see if it matches up.

date	Blue	Rest + Merfolk
1/01/2013	62,39967897	37,60032103
1/02/2013	60	40
1/03/2013	63,7431694	36,2568306
1/04/2013	59,63855422	40,36144578
1/05/2013	63,83191596	36,16808404
1/06/2013	64,50160772	35,49839228
1/07/2013	70,37928958	29,62071042
1/08/2013	57,88561525	42,11438475
1/09/2013	61,32872504	38,67127496
1/10/2013	59,88599929	40,11400071
1/11/2013	64,73202614	35,26797386
1/12/2013	67,52110034	32,47889966
1/01/2014	64,23886779	35,76113221
1/02/2014	68,55432781	31,44567219
1/03/2014	63,98899587	36,01100413
1/04/2014	64,83116883	35,16883117
1/05/2014	61,7167382	38,2832618
1/06/2014	68,97727273	31,02272727
1/07/2014	65,64516129	34,35483871
1/08/2014	64,40382942	35,59617058
1/09/2014	62,73653566	37,26346434
1/10/2014	71,93958665	28,06041335
1/11/2014	67,63636364	32,36363636
1/12/2014	72,20606564	27,79393436
1/01/2015	70,05649718	29,94350282
1/02/2015	65,80624602	34,19375398
1/03/2015	70,33979041	29,66020959
1/04/2015	72,50384025	27,49615975
1/05/2015	76,37474542	23,62525458
1/06/2015	73,35375191	26,64624809

[Mr Miagi]

Someone should email this to Wizards and demand something to be done. This trend looks disgusting.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Agreed, 26% nonblue is frankly too high for my tastes

[Admiral_Arzar]

Data Table

It's interesting how the rantings of the pro-blue crowd are so easily disprovable with a simple data table. This argument has basically turned into politics at some point - it's ideology without any real basis in facts, and thus is capable of ignoring facts when they are presented. I wonder what it would take for blue to crack 80% - perhaps a stupid new printing, which (knowing WOTC) isn't more than one or two sets away.

[Hoojo]

I wouldn't call myself pro-blue, but I am pro-Brainstorm. I'd rather see Ponder, Preordain, Dig Through Time, heck even Gitaxian Probe receive the hammer before Brainstorm.

[Higgs]

It's interesting how the rantings of the pro-blue crowd are so easily disprovable with a simple data table.

Yo, science bitch!

I wouldn't call myself pro-blue, but I am pro-Brainstorm. I'd rather see Ponder, Preordain, Dig Through Time, heck even Gitaxian Probe receive the hammer before Brainstorm.

Agreed. Also Delver. Because it's just too easy to play all the best cards in the other 4 colors plus have the blue shell with the most efficient threat (which also happens to be in-color).

Edit: Didn't want to double post so some additional thoughts.
To be honest those statistics are fucked up. I haven't played Legacy in over 12 months because frankly I think it sucks. But my personal opinion is, Legacy is the format of old, powerful and elegant cards. So if the format is fucked up, the banlist should protect the legacy of the game (pun intended) as much as the balance of the format and get rid of all of the newly printed, power creeped bullshit. I'd rather play a format where things like Survival and Necro are unbanned but bullshit from the new era like Omniscience, Delver, TNN etc. are banned. And also the sorcery speed cantrips. I find instant speed stack interaction fun and the game mechanics of the old cards amazing. So I'd rather see a controversial rehaul of the B&R list than to see simple Brainstorm gone. That is all imo, because that's my opinion of the game.