lordofthepit
06-27-2013, 06:25 AM
Would a Vintage deck in 2002 (pre-Onslaught) be underpowered by today's Legacy standards?
I decided to take myself back in time and build some of the classic hits from back in the day:
- Keeper: Terrible manabase without the benefit of fetchlands. Superman is slow and underwhelming. Capable of broken plays (Mana Drain into Mind Twist, for instance), but Stroke of Genius, Jayemdae's Tome, etc. are clunkers. Very little removal against aggro decks; lacks important bombs like Jace, Entreat, Counterbalance, Top, Clique, etc. against control; probably not enough disruption against powerful combo decks.
- Trix: Has the benefit of a lot of powerful cards that Legacy decks don't have access to, but it's still a 2-card, 7-mana combo that gets shut down by any Disenchant or REB effect (and can instant kill you if it's played with the life-gain trigger on the stack).
- Blue Bull Shit: Probably the best deck of the bunch. A stable mana base capable of playing a tempo game (because of the power) and chaining together card advantages. The win condition (Morphling) and the draw engine (Fact or Fiction) would be very underpowered though.
- Suicide Black: Metagame deck against the blue decks of the time. Phyrexian Negator and Flesh Reaver are absolutely embarrassing, and the smaller builds running Sarcomancies and Carnophages probably fare worse.
- Sligh: Outside of Wheel of Fortune and Strip Mine, I think this deck may very well be actually worse than Legacy Burn.
- 9-land Stompy: Turn-one Jungle Lion, remove ESG, Ghazban Ogre is embarrassing.
- Parfait: Deck instant loses to most combo and control (blue-based or board-based). Probably fares better against aggro, but aggro decks today have actual removal options for artifacts and enchantments.
These decks seem like they would roll over to almost any reasonable Legacy deck choice today (not talking Tier 1 decks either). I think you have to start moving into the development of Stax, GAT, and Long before Vintage lists really became optimized.
I decided to take myself back in time and build some of the classic hits from back in the day:
- Keeper: Terrible manabase without the benefit of fetchlands. Superman is slow and underwhelming. Capable of broken plays (Mana Drain into Mind Twist, for instance), but Stroke of Genius, Jayemdae's Tome, etc. are clunkers. Very little removal against aggro decks; lacks important bombs like Jace, Entreat, Counterbalance, Top, Clique, etc. against control; probably not enough disruption against powerful combo decks.
- Trix: Has the benefit of a lot of powerful cards that Legacy decks don't have access to, but it's still a 2-card, 7-mana combo that gets shut down by any Disenchant or REB effect (and can instant kill you if it's played with the life-gain trigger on the stack).
- Blue Bull Shit: Probably the best deck of the bunch. A stable mana base capable of playing a tempo game (because of the power) and chaining together card advantages. The win condition (Morphling) and the draw engine (Fact or Fiction) would be very underpowered though.
- Suicide Black: Metagame deck against the blue decks of the time. Phyrexian Negator and Flesh Reaver are absolutely embarrassing, and the smaller builds running Sarcomancies and Carnophages probably fare worse.
- Sligh: Outside of Wheel of Fortune and Strip Mine, I think this deck may very well be actually worse than Legacy Burn.
- 9-land Stompy: Turn-one Jungle Lion, remove ESG, Ghazban Ogre is embarrassing.
- Parfait: Deck instant loses to most combo and control (blue-based or board-based). Probably fares better against aggro, but aggro decks today have actual removal options for artifacts and enchantments.
These decks seem like they would roll over to almost any reasonable Legacy deck choice today (not talking Tier 1 decks either). I think you have to start moving into the development of Stax, GAT, and Long before Vintage lists really became optimized.