All B/R update speculation.

[iatee]

Earthcraft probably doesn't break the format, but yeah, if you want mindless 2 card win cons, the format has Show and Tell. Don't even have to play green.

I'm skeptical on unbanning Survival - the card is effectively a one card combo for 2 mana. Yes it takes more mana / time to get an engine going, but enchantments are difficult to interact with upon resolution.

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

So because Earthcraft is, in your opinion, a mindless card, means that it should stay banned when 90+% of players want it unbanned. Just because it is unbanned, doesn't mean you have to play it. So what it is mindless? Eldrazi is a mindless deck and no one is advocating for it to get banned in legacy. People that don't like the deck are simply not playing it.

[Fox]

Earthcraft probably doesn't break the format, but yeah, if you want mindless 2 card win cons, the format has Show and Tell. Don't even have to play green.

So the thing with Show and Tell is they can't actually cast their targets, and they need two specific cards in hand to do anything - they lose to hate in the form of discard and effects like Containment Priest. Monastery Mentors and a 1x tutorable Earthcraft isn't a build-around combo, it's kind of just a random win-button floating around as a 1x in the main. Then there's the whole part where your opponent can put just about anything into play for free as well.
@LegacyIsAnEternalFormat the Eldrazi deck requires a specific build. The idea that I play card X and enchantment Y and because I did this, I went infinite is the kind of nonsense I'd expect to see in hearthstone. Earthcraft was a bad idea when it came out, and it's only gone from bad to worse as the creative space of tokens is explored in magic....but, they just reprinted it in a fixed form (even though the underlying idea of earthcraft is bad), so why would they unban unfixed earthcraft?

[iatee]

So because Earthcraft is, in your opinion, a mindless card, means that it should stay banned when 90+% of players want it unbanned.

I am gonna guess that the real number is more like "90+% of players probably don't care either way."

Anyway, I just don't see why anyone *needs* to play Earthcraft. I think there's kinda some libertarian tendencies for a lot of players where it's like 'the fewest cards that can be banned should be banned, keep Wizards out of the game'. But honestly what does Earthcraft add to the format? Nothing particularly interesting. A marginally higher number of games you play end on t3/t4 vs some two card combo. Why would you want to play more magic like that? Do you have Earthcrafts burning a hole in your binder? An Earthcraft tattoo that you're tired of being ashamed of?

Eldrazi is a mindless deck and no one is advocating for it to get banned in legacy.

No, in fact there are a few of us rebels out there, fighting the good fight.

[btm10]

I don't think Survival is fast enough to just play a fair game... if you are doing the "fair game with oops I win" idea, you probably decide that based on whether or not you have a Survival in play. In other words, the increased presence of solid, efficient creatures like DRS and TNN doesn't necessarily make Survival better, because in that kind of deck, the payoff dropping a two-mana enchantment then tutoring for one of them isn't really there compared to if you just put more cantrips or Eladamri's Call in your deck or something, or used that enchantment to untap and win the game.


Right now, I wonder if the best thing to do with it is Retainers -> Griselbrand. Vengevines are pretty good of course, but hardly game over given Terminus, plus you have to play lots of Rootwallas and stuff that aren't as good on their own compared to the compactness of the Retainers combo.

I agree with the rest of this post though. Specifically, Batterskull, which didn't exist when SotF was banned, makes SFM into a similarly positioned two-mana threat while freeing up deck construction constraints. You have to be prepared to lose the game on turn 2 or 3 in Legacy, and I don't think SotF is more dangerous than other cards currently banned... AND it has the potential to be a value engine in addition to combo enabler. GSZ is definitely comparable and probably better in some ways and that card is hardly broken.


I don't think that's a risk. The opportunity cost of playing 4 Survival + the combo package is pretty high considering the effect on opening hands/mulligans to just say "I'll jam it into Jund/Maverick/BUG." There's an argument to play like 2 survival in Maverick for value when you draw late dorks, but again, better or worse than GSZ? Or just jamming Depths/Stage to use with your Knights.

A few thoughts on this. Survival/Vengevine doesn't care about Terminus because with Squee (or any creature, but Squee is obviously the best) you can just combo again the next turn. The best argument for unbanning Survival for the last 2 years has been that it's extremely good against Miracles since green also gets lots of built-in answers to their answers (Decay being the most obvious among them) and doesn't give a rat's ass about Terminus since they just find their creatures again after they're put back into the library. That being said, Survival is a borderline case, unlike Mind Twist and Earthcraft. Unbanning cards that have the potential to see play right now is probably a bad idea since we don't know where the meta stabilizes with Eldrazi. It's for this reason that I don't it's the right time to unban Earthcraft as much as I want to see it happen.

It's cantrips, and it's also SDT and infinity prowess triggers. Splinter Twin-esque "look I went infinite 'cause I have 2 cards" combos aren't really what magic is about; it's not quite as bad as Flash + Protean Hulk, but ideologically they're about on the same level. Unlike Twin you don't have to run patently bad creatures and multiple copies of local enchantments (auras); you simply look up the 4color counter/top/mentor/drs (DeMentor to those who keep up with brainstorm show) lists add in 2-3x Enlightened Tutors and 1x Earthcraft.

Will it break the format, almost certainly not...but it is a pretty mindless wincon that requires no sequencing [cards won't sit in hand waiting for discard spell], doesn't use the graveyard, and doesn't require any real change to existing decks to incorporate a win button.

Adding Earthcraft to the Mentor/Top/Top combo is the very definition of winning more. How often does Mentor/Top/Top not kill over two turns? Two Monks, Mentor and five open mana is lethal from 19 - and you're likely to have a Monk or two just from playing the game after resolving Mentor or from looking for (another) Top. As I said above, I don't think that now is the right time to unban Earthcraft, but that's because I think it turns Enchantress from fringe playable to being roughly as well positioned as Lands while being substantially less expensive. It speeds the deck up by about a turn and a half, and the pillow fort is much stronger than the mana denial approach once it's set up; it's also not vulnerable to Graveyard hate (to the point where gets to maindeck 1-2 Rest in Peace) or nonbasic hate, and is natively strong against Counterbalance and Chalice since you can just jam your 1s to draw cards and have tutorable removal main and side. The combo matchups still aren't great, but now being faster is at least an option, and on average they're certainly no worse than Lands' matchups against the same decks. Since we don't know where the current metagame balance actually lies, I think it's premature to potentially introduce another competitive deck

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Survival is in the same boat as drain imo, it's not obviously broken (I think it is, but that's besides the point) but there is a lot of potential for the card to be pretty busted, unlike Drain however, it can potentially get MUCH better with new printings.

[joven]

Survival is ..., it's not obviously broken ...

Survival is a repeatable tutor, that tutors up everything it combos with! In my books that's broken.
With Squee it's a card advantage engine. You can easily tutor for your Squee every game.
Besides Vengevine there's also Loyal Retainers into Iona or nowadays maybe Griselbrand or something.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

Idk earthcraft doesnt even looks so good in enchantres. Sure you can tap your agothinas for an enchanted basic... But its also a do nothing enchatnment in a list with only 4 creatures... I wouldnt play it!

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

I think the banlist should be a voting process. It doesn't make sense that WotC, a company that does not even test any format except Limited and Standard should make decisions for formats they do not test. Well, who plays these formats? It is not WotC so who is it? The players play this format, so they should make decisions surrounding it. It is ridiculous that a card must be banned for a perfectly safe card to come off. It is ridiculous that a group that does not play a format should be able to make decisions regarding it without the input of the thousands who play and test the format. This resembles the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. In this case WotC is the dictatorship and rules the banlist. WotC should be the government that carries out laws(banlist changes) based on the people's wants. Democracy>Dictatorship.

[Finn]

Idk earthcraft doesnt even looks so good in enchantres. Sure you can tap your agothinas for an enchanted basic... But its also a do nothing enchatnment in a list with only 4 creatures... I wouldnt play it!

I can speak from lots of experience in saying that if you rebuild your Enchantress deck only a little, Earthcraft completely breaks the deck.

[nedleeds]

I can speak from lots of experience in saying that if you rebuild your Enchantress deck only a little, Earthcraft completely breaks the deck.

Not even close to as broken as the Storm mechanic, LED, Griselbrand and the dumb ways to put him on the battlefield, and even the mana engines in elves come online just as fast. We know how Wild Growth works it's not broken with respect to the other idiotic things happening in legacy. Can be revoked, can be needled, can be decayed and responded to with any removal, requires basics. At least we aren't discussing squirrel nest as being something so busted, that's progress.

[ramanujan]

Most likely is always no changes.

If there are changes, I would guess

Urban Earthcraft

Ban Brainstorm


Changes I would like to see
Ban all fetch lands

[Gheizen64]

Let's be real they ain't banning anything right now.

They didn't ban BS when it had 80% penetration for what, 2 years straight? Now we got the lowest BS representation ever and it's not even clear which is the best deck.

[Noctalor]

Let's be real they ain't banning anything right now.

They didn't ban BS when it had 80% penetration for what, 2 years straight? Now we got the lowest BS representation ever and it's not even clear which is the best deck.

Miracles.

[ramanujan]

Let's be real they ain't banning anything right now.

They didn't ban BS when it had 80% penetration for what, 2 years straight? Now we got the lowest BS representation ever and it's not even clear which is the best deck.

I agree that it is a long shot, but one thing I have found to be pretty true about the changes is that they aren't timely and don't always make sense. A ban of brainstorm, although well earned, would fit the bill of being oddly timed. We will see in a few short hours whether I can predict them.

Like I said before, I believe the most likely result will be no changes.

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

If they ban Brainstorm I'm selling out.

[Dice_Box]

I think the banlist should be a voting process.

And how would you run the Vote? Site poll that can be easily manipulated? Facebook poll? Also what happens when people just decide to troll the poll? What happens if Brainstorm finally gets banned?

If you want to really see an answer to how silly this idea is, look up. There is a poll on the top of this page. While I do think that the list could be handled better, with members of the Legacy community each given a say, a poll is the dumbest idea because we are on the internet.

[Lord Seth]

0 cost cantrip chaning at the cost of a green splash and a basic Island in play and running a card that is useless in multiples and is not instant speed? Not to mention that it is useless without a token producer and the age-old question of "what to take out?" Also, you'd have to run more cantrips to make the synergy worthwhile(maxing out on ponders) I think you are overrating this card in a cantrips deck. Also with the recent Eldrazi deck, running lots of cantrips is not as good as it used to be.

This.

[iatee]

Brainstorm is safe from ever being banned because Wizards wouldn't want to deal with the chaos/bitterness that would come with it. Whether or not a Brainstorm ban would make the format better is mostly an intellectual exercise since Brainstorm is effectively too-big-to-fail within the format.

If legacy were a Pro Tour format, who knows.

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

And how would you run the Vote? Site poll that can be easily manipulated? Facebook poll? Also what happens when people just decide to troll the poll? What happens if Brainstorm finally gets banned?

If you want to really see an answer to how silly this idea is, look up. There is a poll on the top of this page. While I do think that the list could be handled better, with members of the Legacy community each given a say, a poll is the dumbest idea because we are on the internet.

1) the poll on the top of the page was which cards are the most bannable. Just because a card is most bannable doesn't mean it should be banned.
2) the poll should be administered in the legacy GPs and should be voted on by those playing in the GP. That way only those who are serious about legacy get to vote.
3) if Brainstorm is banned it is for the greater good because it would only be banned if the majority wanted it to be banned.