I just get sick of the sense of entitlement some (not all) blue players get, having a chip on their shoulder and acting as if its the only strategy that can be played if you want to be a "serious" player of this game. I've fought the "good fight" thus far in Legacy sticking with B/W Deadguy for a while now, but I'm now moving over to the dark side and building NO RUG. Blue is just the most powerful color in the game of Magic. It's fact and just something that you really pretty much need to accept and move on from. There have been periods, while brief, where blue hasn't been the best color in Standard. But it is and always will be the best color in Legacy and I don't think there's anything that can really be done to fix that, if you even feel it is something that needs to be fixed. Something always has to be the best.
It wasn't good in Zendikar until Jace, TMS...and even than it was still hurting for card support until Squadron Hawks and Swords came out in Scars and M11. I mean it needed white support and who played it all before Worldwake honestly?
It was horrible during all of Alara block (yes...it did show in Bant, but that wasn't what was the leader for those decks...it was white beaters with green support).
In Lorwyn block it did have Cryptic Command...when it wasn't busy being stomped by Bitterblossom and Thoughsieze ripping it's cards and getting under the counter minimum costs.
That card was designed by Tiago Chan, winner of the Invitational a few years ago. The prize was getting to design your own card, so blame that on him.
Nah, it's not his fault.
The prize, as you said, is getting to design your own card. The power level of a card is the responsibility of development, not design. They chose to make it this powerful.
Seriously, all I ever see are good blue cards. It's ridiculous that blue is considered to be "thought-provoking, wise, and strategic." This is a STRATEGY game, for heaven's sake. If the point of the game is to win, you can't make "win" the flavor of a color. It's ridiculous. Red, on the other hand, has underpowered random effects, which is the exact opposite of anything anyone wants to do in any strategy game.
On the flip side, when was the last time you saw a decent mono-blue deck? I've seen only Merfolk in Legacy and Modern. On the other hand, mono decks of other colors can do well - RDW, White Weenie (unless you're PV), Elves. What does this tell you? Blue is the support color. If you play it by itself you're begging to lose, if you play it with another color you make your deck better.
According to this article, blue is supposed to be slow. Then why does blue specialize in FLASH?! Red should be flash.
Red has haste for speed. Blue has flash because of the surprise factor and mind games. Playing against a blue mage, you'll end up asking yourself, "Do I go all-in with my Wurmcoil Engine and risk a counterspell?" If you decide to say "screw it" and drop the Engine, you'll be duly punished when your opponent taps 2 Islands and drops a Spellstutter Sprite on you.
Flash is also the only way a creature-based counterspell can work, e.g. Spellstutter Sprite, Creature Venser, Draining Whelk.
I play vintage and legacy, and blue dominates in both. Did you guys ever notice the number of banned or restricted blue cards? Blue is the most banned/restricted by far. Even simple stuff like brainstorm is incredibly overpowered.
How is blue getting all the love? They banned Jace in standard...and oh I'm not sure if you heard but...
The following cards are banned in modern:
Mental Misstep
Ancestral Vision
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
every now and then there happens to be a good blue card and that translates into "all the love"? I don't see the logic at all.
oooooo, This is one of my FAVORITE posts ever. It clearly exemplifies the mindless way people view things Yes, they banned Jace. They also created Jace. They did not end up banning Chandra Ablaze, so they must like red cards better.
On the flip side, when was the last time you saw a decent mono-blue deck? I've seen only Merfolk in Legacy and Modern. On the other hand, mono decks of other colors can do well - RDW, White Weenie (unless you're PV), Elves. What does this tell you? Blue is the support color. If you play it by itself you're begging to lose, if you play it with another color you make your deck better.
This is because there is absolutely no benefit to playing a single colored deck unless it's aggro or uses some very mana intensive cards (such as Cryptic Command - oh hey, what do you know, that's blue! or phyrexian obliterator). In fact, one of the greatest benefits of blue is that you can easily run another color because blue is slow paced/control oriented.
I will have to say, however, that there are a number of things blue actually can't handle too well, such as Bloodbraid Elf. Blue is probably the best color in general, but you can certainly play other colors. Overall the colors are balanced fairly well for how many cards they print.
Calm down dude, I didn't say there wasn't any skill. Don't try to spin a personal attack from it.
There are cases where cards are clearly better, but I still feel that players will gravitate to colors that suit their play style. And for professional players they seem to gravitate more to the blue play style.
That wasn't meant to sound so "attacky". It may look like "colors" but just think of where certain effects get printed. Control decks work by having some sort of protection and gradually build up advantage until they completely outmatch the opponent. The easiest way to do this is with Mass removal, counter magic, and drawing extra cards. These types of effects typically fall into Blue, Black, and White, which is why the same classic archetypes (UW/UB Control) appear more often than other fringe archetypes.
oooooo, This is one of my FAVORITE posts ever. It clearly exemplifies the mindless way people view things Yes, they banned Jace. They also created Jace. They did not end up banning Chandra Ablaze, so they must like red cards better.
This is because there is absolutely no benefit to playing a single colored deck unless it's aggro or uses some very mana intensive cards (such as Cryptic Command - oh hey, what do you know, that's blue! or phyrexian obliterator). In fact, one of the greatest benefits of blue is that you can easily run another color because blue is slow paced/control oriented.
I will have to say, however, that there are a number of things blue actually can't handle too well, such as Bloodbraid Elf. Blue is probably the best color in general, but you can certainly play other colors. Overall the colors are balanced fairly well for how many cards they print.
So if your complaining for them to fix it and they do (severely) why are you complaining? Why are you so angry at a "color"?
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Standard:
Bident Layers B Devotion RG Devotion UW Control Modern:
Jund
UW Control
Combo Pod Legacy: DeathBlade RUG Delver BUG Control
Skimmed this thread and I have to say I sorta agree, but I really think the issue is less blue and more color pie. Blue is not more powerful by virtue of it being blue or any particular synergy within the cards.
Blue is the most powerful color in eternal formats more so because it has 2 pieces of the color pie that it shares virtually none of with any other color, which are card drawing and counters.
Counters are 95% of the time the answer to any problem. This is by virtue of your answers not having to be specific to the situation. A counter handles a creature as well as an enchantment as well as an instant etc. Now even this is not a problem to be honest, as everything needs an answer. The issue is that it seems to be the sole domain of blue. Other colors have maybe a handful of mostly situation and unusable counters. REB/Pyroblast probably being the best of this, if only because they color they hit is often the most important. The other colors simply cannot compete with this, and honestly i have felt for some time now that counters need to be opened up to another color in the color pie (white is the most logical as it is protection, but i fear white getting too good then). The other issue is that for some reason wotc seems intent on giving blue new free counters every block. They sorta hit a critical mass with them recently as is shown by misstep.
The other thing blue has is card draw. It's not as exclusive as countering is to them, but it hurts to think about it even more. It is a fundamental game function, so why even give it a slice of the color pie at all? Other colors core pie elements are not even as pronounced as card draw is to blue. Green has fast mana but creatures for the most part that do not need it or that are so costly you would never be able to hit them without it, Red has burn but not nearly to the quality of blues card draw. 1 brainstorm is probably well more powerful than a single lightning bolt.
Then have him eat Nicol Bolas and the Magic universe can be awesome again. He takes over the Infinite Consortium and turns it into a trans-multiverse Izzet League. His agents scour the multiverse in Venser's planeships looking for magic to learn, technology to improve upon, and less intelligent people to condescend to.
In all fairness, blue is without question the hardest color to balance in the game. It's either ridiculously strong or incredibly weak; there's almost no middle ground when it comes to blue. As protoaddict mentioned, no other colors share what blue is best at, which happens to be two of the strongest abilities in Magic -- card drawing and countermagic.
In all fairness, blue is without question the hardest color to balance in the game. It's either ridiculously strong or incredibly weak; there's almost no middle ground when it comes to blue. As protoaddict mentioned, no other colors share what blue is best at, which happens to be two of the strongest abilities in Magic -- card drawing and countermagic.
Don't forget blue's insane affinity with artifacts. Tinker, tolarian academy, trinket/treasure mages, etc.
This is really nothing new. Blue is naturally the card-advantage colour, so yes, it's going to feel like the best a lot of the time.
All colours have 'Generate Card-Advantage' in their colour-pie; just look at the Titans cycle.
I don't really understand why you're so mad; Blue hasn't had an aggressively costed no restrictions hard counter since Cryptic Command.
And did you happen to see Jace 3.0 from the core set? Compare that to the other PWs. It's an invitational card; they're supposed to be very very strong. See Solemn Simulacrum, and Dark Confidant. If Tiago had picked White instead of Blue you'd be complaining about White right now? Or do you just have the 'Noob'-mentality that Counterspells and Land-Destruction is 'Cheap' and 'Unfair' and nobody should use them?
Last I looked the most powerful things you could do in any of the formats are both in red and black. There's what three Blue combo decks and like 8 Red ones, 3 Black ones Dredge, which is almost all Black, and a few Green combo decks. Blue has 1 card that can be used to deal with all of those. Count it 1 card that you can only run 4 of. Every decent Blue combo gets nerfed. Everyone still cries because dropping Goyf and turning him sideways isn't good enough for them. I would have to say you've never been a U Mage facing down a monster 6/7 with no way to deal with it because you had to Force the Knight the turn before that Goyf came out. Forget that had to bury the Nactl and StP the first Knight and you are not able to draw fast enough to survive until that SFM that gets bolted for that Batterskull you can't cast. Yeah U is overpowered my ***. That's far more common than you think. Hard aggro decks tend to stomp anything running U. It's rock paper scissors.
Just to add further Graveyard Wurm is pretty good. Every color is seeing love. Look at Red from M12. Green so far in Innistrad. Blue gets one decent playable and the whining starts. It's barely playable outside of standard anyways. You aren't going to want to waste slots on flashing Brainstorm back.
If you're just complaining about whats been previewed in standard have you not seen either of the rare red werewolves? Especially the most recently spoiled one.
To the original poster:
You had the option to play Goblin Guide and Teetering Peaks for the past two years and now your whining? Easily one of the best 1 drops in history of magic and easily one of the most oppressive cards printed in my opinion. Not to mention a format with Koth and Hero of Oxid Ridge? They reprinted Grim Lavamancer, another one of the best 1 drops in the history of magic. Lightning Bolt was legal for two years. Have you not seen some of the red cards spoiled? They get +1/+1 every time they deal damage to the opponent. They spoiled a card today that gives all your attacking creatures +1/+0 then +3/+0 when it transforms. You are just looking to complain for no reason at all. And your butt hurt over one card that gave blue and option of an instant speed chump blocker that allows the player to flash back a Mana Leak?
I started playing in a format that had the original Counterspell, Force Spike, Daze, Memory Lapse, etc. Not to mention a format where Counterspell and Isochron Scepter were legal. If you haven't seen the evolution of the game you don't understand that creatures are infinitely better now and true counterspells are waning because "new players don't like to have their spells countered." I'm sorry you just want to turn your cards to the right and win while your opponent does nothing. Why do you not have the same complaint about Deceiver Exarch or Vendilion Clique or other cards with Flash? Most burn spells are instant speed as well.
There are other strategies in the game, get over it. Wizards attempts to balance the power of the cards they print. Its not because they want a certain color to be bad. Look at the MTGO daily's and nearly half of them are Goblin based decks.
I'm not saying this because I'm particular fan of blue and/or control decks but their must be some balance between the colors and sometimes it does seem that blue gets some of the best cards but then again it also gets some of the weakest cards. Blue is popular becuase it rewards tight play, just as red can reward a player with tight play. If your overextending and you run yourself into bad situations playing red, I can see where blue is your least favorite.
My main concern with U right now is not its cards more powered up than anyonw else's. It's that it keeps getting the cheap high-quality card filtering like preordain and to some extent ponder for what 4? straight years now.
Even in Invasion block when it had Fact or Fiction it had to spend 4 to do some good digging, now it just taps 1 and can spend 2-3 to stop most threats.
But the biggest offender in blue's arsenal for THREE STRAIGHT BLOCKS NOW is the hater brothers: Flashfreeze and Celestial Purge. I thought for sure we would have lost one of these spells in M12 since lightning bolt was leaving and cascade wasn't around anymore to justify the hate...
My main concern with U right now is not its cards more powered up than anyonw else's. It's that it keeps getting the cheap high-quality card filtering like preordain and to some extent ponder for what 4? straight years now.
Even in Invasion block when it had Fact or Fiction it had to spend 4 to do some good digging, now it just taps 1 and can spend 2-3 to stop most threats.
But the biggest offender in blue's arsenal for THREE STRAIGHT BLOCKS NOW is the hater brothers: Flashfreeze and Celestial Purge. I thought for sure we would have lost one of these spells in M12 since lightning bolt was leaving and cascade wasn't around anymore to justify the hate...
Dude, Purge is in White.
Ponder and Preordain are really not that good, and those 4 slots you use up to have it, are four slots in the deck that don't really effect the board state or actually make you win. They help you make the deck that has more filtering elements and maybe 2 different win conditions consistent. Without those cards U would not be worth playing. Not to mention how slow they are.
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Legacy Decks
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Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
Ponder and Preordain are really not that good, and those 4 slots you use up to have it, are four slots in the deck that don't really effect the board state or actually make you win. They help you make the deck that has more filtering elements and maybe 2 different win conditions consistent. Without those cards U would not be worth playing. Not to mention how slow they are.
Doesn't matter that purge is W, what matters is that U can, does and will continure to use such obvious controllish style cards. I'd wager that the hate brothers (Celestial Purge+Flashfreeze)have seen more SB action than any 2 other cards for the last 2-3 years. I can't think of a time in standard's history that that could be said for it. I could only think of pyroblast and hydroblast being as universally used for its time but I didn't pay attention much to standard back then. Maybe the disk I don't know.
How could you possibly say that filtering doesn't help? In the mirror(between 2 evenly matched players I would add so people can't talk about skill), it typically comes down to who makes the land drops more consistently that wins the game. How many matches have you seen where it was the player who could sac his Tec Edges to lock the other player out of the game happen? I know I have and that all boils down to card filtering ala preordain.
Anyway, the Mage is actually quite a nice little package, though I think the best things to flash back won't be in blue.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
I made that comparison not on a power level but on a tempo level. Back then game tempo was much slower so spells cost a little more and so blue didn't have access to good cheap filtering/draw. With the fast paced Bolt-environment that we've been been used to, 4 mana would probably not make the cut. I love FoF, but it couldn't keep up right now.
Blue=Skill Intensive? Sorry, I was too busy realizing you can literally have a deck full of counterspells and one Emrakul, and you're probably set for the game. Because, eventually, they have to play something. Which you will make sure they don't do. Blue is the most powerful because they gave the three most powerful things in a card game to blue: Deck manipulation(on both sides), Draw, and Countering.
Now, note, I'm not trying to say that Blue mages aren't skilled, I'm saying you CAN play blue and win, with little to no actual skill in the game, just from my experience. This is a personal opinion on the color, not on the mages, and purely subjective at that.
Since I'm used to playing aggro, it's fairly difficult for me to play blue because I think "Oh well, I'll play a creature and save this Mana Leak." Obviously, this did nothing for me and I took out the counter spells. One time, in a multi-player game, I decided to take out the 3 Gravitational Shifts because it'd hinder my partner. (It was Two-Headed Giant.) I replaced them with Mana Leaks and drew all 3 of them. I saved my mana for them, and man do I love countering!
Anyways, long story short, blue is a fairly difficult color, for me anyways. I like playing everything at once. There've been times when I've have too many answers and no threats. Also, counters don't work against manlands and Thrun, the Last Troll and friends.
Related to OP, I think it might be hard to decide which color is the absolute best considering there is a loooooooong line to look at.
I made that comparison not on a power level but on a tempo level. Back then game tempo was much slower so spells cost a little more and so blue didn't have access to good cheap filtering/draw. With the fast paced Bolt-environment that we've been been used to, 4 mana would probably not make the cut. I love FoF, but it couldn't keep up right now.
Fact or Fiction would be as good now as it was then. There aren't many cards that can do what it does. In general, it and Ponder don't fit into the same decks. FoF is more of a control card while Ponder helps combo decks to be more consistent (if Preordain wasn't around I think Caw decks wouldn't have even considered playing Ponder in it's place).
Both cards are in the same colour yes, but they play quite a different ball game.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
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It was horrible during all of Alara block (yes...it did show in Bant, but that wasn't what was the leader for those decks...it was white beaters with green support).
In Lorwyn block it did have Cryptic Command...when it wasn't busy being stomped by Bitterblossom and Thoughsieze ripping it's cards and getting under the counter minimum costs.
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Nah, it's not his fault.
The prize, as you said, is getting to design your own card. The power level of a card is the responsibility of development, not design. They chose to make it this powerful.
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On the flip side, when was the last time you saw a decent mono-blue deck? I've seen only Merfolk in Legacy and Modern. On the other hand, mono decks of other colors can do well - RDW, White Weenie (unless you're PV), Elves. What does this tell you? Blue is the support color. If you play it by itself you're begging to lose, if you play it with another color you make your deck better.
Red has haste for speed. Blue has flash because of the surprise factor and mind games. Playing against a blue mage, you'll end up asking yourself, "Do I go all-in with my Wurmcoil Engine and risk a counterspell?" If you decide to say "screw it" and drop the Engine, you'll be duly punished when your opponent taps 2 Islands and drops a Spellstutter Sprite on you.
Flash is also the only way a creature-based counterspell can work, e.g. Spellstutter Sprite, Creature Venser, Draining Whelk.
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Big Johnny.
oooooo, This is one of my FAVORITE posts ever. It clearly exemplifies the mindless way people view things Yes, they banned Jace. They also created Jace. They did not end up banning Chandra Ablaze, so they must like red cards better.
This is because there is absolutely no benefit to playing a single colored deck unless it's aggro or uses some very mana intensive cards (such as Cryptic Command - oh hey, what do you know, that's blue! or phyrexian obliterator). In fact, one of the greatest benefits of blue is that you can easily run another color because blue is slow paced/control oriented.
I will have to say, however, that there are a number of things blue actually can't handle too well, such as Bloodbraid Elf. Blue is probably the best color in general, but you can certainly play other colors. Overall the colors are balanced fairly well for how many cards they print.
That wasn't meant to sound so "attacky". It may look like "colors" but just think of where certain effects get printed. Control decks work by having some sort of protection and gradually build up advantage until they completely outmatch the opponent. The easiest way to do this is with Mass removal, counter magic, and drawing extra cards. These types of effects typically fall into Blue, Black, and White, which is why the same classic archetypes (UW/UB Control) appear more often than other fringe archetypes.
So if your complaining for them to fix it and they do (severely) why are you complaining? Why are you so angry at a "color"?
Bident Layers
B Devotion
RG Devotion
UW Control
Modern:
Jund
UW Control
Combo Pod
Legacy:
DeathBlade
RUG Delver
BUG Control
Blue is the most powerful color in eternal formats more so because it has 2 pieces of the color pie that it shares virtually none of with any other color, which are card drawing and counters.
Counters are 95% of the time the answer to any problem. This is by virtue of your answers not having to be specific to the situation. A counter handles a creature as well as an enchantment as well as an instant etc. Now even this is not a problem to be honest, as everything needs an answer. The issue is that it seems to be the sole domain of blue. Other colors have maybe a handful of mostly situation and unusable counters. REB/Pyroblast probably being the best of this, if only because they color they hit is often the most important. The other colors simply cannot compete with this, and honestly i have felt for some time now that counters need to be opened up to another color in the color pie (white is the most logical as it is protection, but i fear white getting too good then). The other issue is that for some reason wotc seems intent on giving blue new free counters every block. They sorta hit a critical mass with them recently as is shown by misstep.
The other thing blue has is card draw. It's not as exclusive as countering is to them, but it hurts to think about it even more. It is a fundamental game function, so why even give it a slice of the color pie at all? Other colors core pie elements are not even as pronounced as card draw is to blue. Green has fast mana but creatures for the most part that do not need it or that are so costly you would never be able to hit them without it, Red has burn but not nearly to the quality of blues card draw. 1 brainstorm is probably well more powerful than a single lightning bolt.
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You do realise flash doesn't allow you to play the cards any earlier, right?
In all fairness, blue is without question the hardest color to balance in the game. It's either ridiculously strong or incredibly weak; there's almost no middle ground when it comes to blue. As protoaddict mentioned, no other colors share what blue is best at, which happens to be two of the strongest abilities in Magic -- card drawing and countermagic.
Don't forget blue's insane affinity with artifacts. Tinker, tolarian academy, trinket/treasure mages, etc.
All colours have 'Generate Card-Advantage' in their colour-pie; just look at the Titans cycle.
I don't really understand why you're so mad; Blue hasn't had an aggressively costed no restrictions hard counter since Cryptic Command.
And did you happen to see Jace 3.0 from the core set? Compare that to the other PWs. It's an invitational card; they're supposed to be very very strong. See Solemn Simulacrum, and Dark Confidant. If Tiago had picked White instead of Blue you'd be complaining about White right now? Or do you just have the 'Noob'-mentality that Counterspells and Land-Destruction is 'Cheap' and 'Unfair' and nobody should use them?
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Just to add further Graveyard Wurm is pretty good. Every color is seeing love. Look at Red from M12. Green so far in Innistrad. Blue gets one decent playable and the whining starts. It's barely playable outside of standard anyways. You aren't going to want to waste slots on flashing Brainstorm back.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
You had the option to play Goblin Guide and Teetering Peaks for the past two years and now your whining? Easily one of the best 1 drops in history of magic and easily one of the most oppressive cards printed in my opinion. Not to mention a format with Koth and Hero of Oxid Ridge? They reprinted Grim Lavamancer, another one of the best 1 drops in the history of magic. Lightning Bolt was legal for two years. Have you not seen some of the red cards spoiled? They get +1/+1 every time they deal damage to the opponent. They spoiled a card today that gives all your attacking creatures +1/+0 then +3/+0 when it transforms. You are just looking to complain for no reason at all. And your butt hurt over one card that gave blue and option of an instant speed chump blocker that allows the player to flash back a Mana Leak?
I started playing in a format that had the original Counterspell, Force Spike, Daze, Memory Lapse, etc. Not to mention a format where Counterspell and Isochron Scepter were legal. If you haven't seen the evolution of the game you don't understand that creatures are infinitely better now and true counterspells are waning because "new players don't like to have their spells countered." I'm sorry you just want to turn your cards to the right and win while your opponent does nothing. Why do you not have the same complaint about Deceiver Exarch or Vendilion Clique or other cards with Flash? Most burn spells are instant speed as well.
There are other strategies in the game, get over it. Wizards attempts to balance the power of the cards they print. Its not because they want a certain color to be bad. Look at the MTGO daily's and nearly half of them are Goblin based decks.
I'm not saying this because I'm particular fan of blue and/or control decks but their must be some balance between the colors and sometimes it does seem that blue gets some of the best cards but then again it also gets some of the weakest cards. Blue is popular becuase it rewards tight play, just as red can reward a player with tight play. If your overextending and you run yourself into bad situations playing red, I can see where blue is your least favorite.
Even in Invasion block when it had Fact or Fiction it had to spend 4 to do some good digging, now it just taps 1 and can spend 2-3 to stop most threats.
But the biggest offender in blue's arsenal for THREE STRAIGHT BLOCKS NOW is the hater brothers: Flashfreeze and Celestial Purge. I thought for sure we would have lost one of these spells in M12 since lightning bolt was leaving and cascade wasn't around anymore to justify the hate...
Dude, Purge is in White.
Ponder and Preordain are really not that good, and those 4 slots you use up to have it, are four slots in the deck that don't really effect the board state or actually make you win. They help you make the deck that has more filtering elements and maybe 2 different win conditions consistent. Without those cards U would not be worth playing. Not to mention how slow they are.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
Doesn't matter that purge is W, what matters is that U can, does and will continure to use such obvious controllish style cards. I'd wager that the hate brothers (Celestial Purge+Flashfreeze)have seen more SB action than any 2 other cards for the last 2-3 years. I can't think of a time in standard's history that that could be said for it. I could only think of pyroblast and hydroblast being as universally used for its time but I didn't pay attention much to standard back then. Maybe the disk I don't know.
How could you possibly say that filtering doesn't help? In the mirror(between 2 evenly matched players I would add so people can't talk about skill), it typically comes down to who makes the land drops more consistently that wins the game. How many matches have you seen where it was the player who could sac his Tec Edges to lock the other player out of the game happen? I know I have and that all boils down to card filtering ala preordain.
Anyway, the Mage is actually quite a nice little package, though I think the best things to flash back won't be in blue.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Anyways, long story short, blue is a fairly difficult color, for me anyways. I like playing everything at once. There've been times when I've have too many answers and no threats. Also, counters don't work against manlands and Thrun, the Last Troll and friends.
Related to OP, I think it might be hard to decide which color is the absolute best considering there is a loooooooong line to look at.
RGGruul Aggro
WSoul Sisters
WBTokens
BUGRRestore Balance
BMono-Black Infect
EDH:
RGWMayael, the Anima
GWURoon of the Hidden Realm
BDrana, Kalastria Bloodchief
Fact or Fiction would be as good now as it was then. There aren't many cards that can do what it does. In general, it and Ponder don't fit into the same decks. FoF is more of a control card while Ponder helps combo decks to be more consistent (if Preordain wasn't around I think Caw decks wouldn't have even considered playing Ponder in it's place).
Both cards are in the same colour yes, but they play quite a different ball game.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.