[Article] Unlocking Legacy--Theory & Practice

[TheAardvark]

" Kevin Binswanger takes a look at two of the most discussed cards from Lorwyn and tests out whether they help against the most important deck in Legacy. Then he tries his hand at explaining theory in the context of Legacy."

Clicky (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/14803.html).

I suppose it wasn't awful, but the entire section about Teeg seemed like a throwaway bit, and the "theory" section seemed...I dunno..."off". Like, initiative is all well and good, but what you described is not really initiative. I suppose it is more like momentum, as you mentioned, but the need/desire to wrap everything into theory is really tired at this point.

But whatever.

[Amon Amarth]

I actually really liked this article. Seriously the intro was really good. I read these articles for the newest Legacy content not how you spent your weekend drunk off your ass. I think I agreed with pretty much everything.

I hope Kevin's future articles look like this. Good job.

[APriestOfGix]

Thank you. This is what i have been waiting for. A little stuff at the begining for newer players about thought seize, but tempo and stuff that everyone should already know, but if you don't it's CRITICAL you do.

I'm VERY happy with this piece, nice job Kevin

[sammiel]

So,he matched a list that hasn't seen development in months vs a list that made top 8 at a 170whatever man tournament. I guarantee that whoever was playing red death was playing too conservatively, I don't recall that I've ever played around lightning bolt in any deck that I ran negator in. 5/5 tramplers for 3 win you more games than they lose you.

I think thoughtseize is just so incredibly overrated. Yes, it's good, yes, it will be a chase rare. 2 life is not trivial in legacy, especially when you draw a second or third one, and when you are fetching your life away at the same time. However, for every one time that you seize a tarmogoyf, you will twice look at a hand that duress would have done the job without costing you two life. Yes, people will play it, and then people will realize they are losing games from the extra lifeloss, and switch back to duress. Hell, i'd even rather have duress against goblins. They tend to bring in non-goblin stuff post-board, and since when is 2 life worth getting a goblin in a 1 for 1 trade?

I completely agree with his Teeg analysis though, people will try it, discard it, and it will become the meddling mage for people playing G/W/x instead of U/W/x. It might have a place in U/G/w threshold over meddling mage though.

I wanted to stop reading as soon as I saw the word tempo, the last thing I want is yet another person who thinks he has a PHD in MTG to try and explain things to me in detail that are better left as abstract concepts. I certainly don't want someone trying to keyword even more magic philosophies for other people who don't understand them to throw around. If I want to read about Initiative, I will read military theory, not magic articles.

However, since I'm not the typical reader, and since not everyone is gonna go read boring military crap, good job at bringing concepts like this forward.

[Meekrab]

Sweet tech on the rule update. Happy I slogged through all that basically useless to me since I don't think that much about it theory stuff to see it.

[Nihil Credo]

When I saw that the article was about testing Thoughtseize in Red Death, I rejoiced. I, too, hoped that the card could resurrect one of the most fun decks ever created for Legacy.

Then I got quite disappointed:

1) As sammiel noted, it seems highly likely that you were playing RD too conservatively, especially Negator. This is critical, since a Negator can trample all over a Goyf on turn 2-3, but if you wait more than that it becomes a dead card.
2) Sideboard?! I hope to Satan those ten games weren't pre-side. While that would be terrible testing in general, Dystopia is so ridiculously critical to winning against Threshold.

About Gaddock Teeg, I am on the fence. I agree that Teeg will be featured 90% of the time in sideboards, and will only make the maindeck in a few select decks (D&T comes to mind).
However, I disagree that it will be a minor card in Legacy: I believe it will become a staple answer, comparable to Pithing Needle. Just the fact that a protected Teeg singlehandedly beats every combo deck out there would grant him that status, but when you add its useful (if not as awesome) effect against control and Chalice+EE, that pushes him to "I'm playing green and white -> should I SB Teeg?" status.

The theory part was good, especially the part about tempo (pretty basic, but turn 1 Wasteland is still misused a lot). I agree that in the aggro-control mirror sticking a Dark Confidant or Tarmogoyf first is highly related to winning the game, even though, say, a CounterTop combo may seem more important. If I had to give some criticism, it would be that you should have spent less words on comparisons with other writers' concepts - either explore that in a full article, or leave that stuff for the forums.

Overall, a 7/10 from me.

[AnwarA101]

My overall sense of the article is that it felt like 3 articles in one. This adds to confusion from the reader's standpoint. Why did it go from Red Death vs. Threshold to Gaddock Teeg? Or why is there a section on tempo when it would have been better explored in the context of the Red Death vs. Threshold matchup?

It would have been better if you were able to test with another person as playing 2 decks from both points of view can probably be confusing and may not lead to the best testing results.

As for the matchup iteself, the printing of Tarmogoyf has pretty significantly changed the matchup. The ability to play a creature on turn 2 that could be a 3/4 is big problem for a deck playing Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning as removal. Though as I stated in the primer this matchup was never that easy to begin with and Tarmogoyf only made this problem much worse. Tarmogoyf made the difference in speed between Red Death and Threshold much closer. Threshold now has the option of becoming more aggressive much earlier in the game. The fact that Red Death was a faster deck (it played bigger creatures earlier in the game) was important in many matchups (especially against control), but without that advantage its difficult to make the case for Red Death post-Tarmogoyf.

I have to disagree about Hypnotic Specter. I've always found him to be a very good threat against Threshold because if he sticks around your other spells will resolve.

[Ewokslayer]

The article was ok I guess.


"Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance."
William Shakespeare

None of you care what I've been up to, or whether I go to clubs and meet girls. You don't want to hear anything about how I've been working on Constructed or Bring Your Own Standard for the Invitational. You certainly don't want to read about Mental Magic, Type Four, or even Skittles (Best. Casual. Format. Ever). Consequently, I will be writing about triple Master's Edition draft. HAHA! A funny joke! Hopefully no one is clicking away right now. Seriously though, from the Unlocking Legacy writers, you simply want to read about Legacy.
Can all writers PLEASE stop with this annoying crap. I don't want to read it.
Trying to figure out how much of every writers article I can skip in the beginning is a bit tedious.

Red Death vs. Threshold seems like a very outdated matchup considering Tarmogoyf already killed the deck and fundamental change in the deck is needed to change that, not a simple Thoughtseize > Duress.

The Theory was interesting. Adding another word to the "theory package" was not. Especially when it was something as simple as
Two similar decks are playing each other, the one currently winning will tend to win more often than not.

You left out alot of Teeg's versatility as well, but I did like your "mosquito effect" statement. Too often people focus on what good things new cards do without figuring out whether that actually helps them win the game which is the only thing that matters.
Still, you probably should have mentioned Survival players busting nuts over it (probably reworded for a family site like SCG)

Your testing methods do leave alot to be desired.
Playing both sides of a matchup simulatenously, no sideboarding.

[Happy Gilmore]

Infinitely better than your previous articles, but just try and focus on one point at a time without jumping too far from what has already been said. The fact that you did testing at all certainly shows well. I commend you for not adding any of those "speculative decklists" to your article.

[Anusien]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I did a lot of things differently to try and vary the style, so I'm glad you liked it.

Yes, I'm almost certain I was playing Red Death too consistently, but it sounds worse than it is. It's usually, "Play Shade instead of Negator" not, "Do nothing instead of Negator". It's really no defense, but A) he had it most of the time, and B) he had Fire as well as Bolt. Anyway since I was watching both sides of the matchup, it wasn't an issue; it was just using other creatures to bait out burn.

Jumping around: This is something I do in order to fit a lot of different content at once. Stylistically, I'm still struggling with it, but I like the freedom it gives me so I may experiment with ways to do it. Thanks for the feedback, and bear with me.

I tested against Red Death for a few reasons. #1) Everyone here and many people on TMD have favored it more than BW. It's more of a metagame factor. #2) It needs more help. Honestly, I thought Thoughtseize would be much better going into the matchup than it was, and I thought Red Death would come out on top. #3) It's still the most popular black/x disruption deck. There were none in the Top32 of Legacy Champs, or I just would have used that.
I didn't test sideboarded because there's no point. The point of the section was to test out Thoughtseize and see how good it was. Thoughtseize in game 1 isn't very different than Thoughtseize in game 2. Yes, testing sideboards is important for testing a matchup, but I wasn't trying to see what happens to the matchup. If Red Death is favored post-side, that's a reflection of the way it's always been favored post-side. Then again, I imagine even with Red Death, the deck's matchups pre- and post-board dropped 10% or so relative to pre-Goyf.
As to two-fisting the matchup: I test with other people when I can, but testing on my own gives me a lot of information after the fact about the way things play out. It's actually really easy to play the matchup at the baseline without knowledge of the other player's hand as long as you just make the statistically correct play. This ignores things like getting reads off the opponent (except for countermagic), but a lot of modern Magic testing is done electronically anyway.

Anwar: I basically came to the same conclusions that you did about Red Death, but it's important to actually do it and see what happened.

Also, I don't know what happened; the intro should have read like this:



None of you care what I've been up to, or whether I go to clubs and meet girls. You don't want to hear anything about how I've been working on T2 or Bring Your Own Standard for the Invitational. You certainly don't want to read about Mental Magic, Type Four or even Skittles (Best. Casual. Format. Ever). Consequently, I will be writing about triple Master's Edition draft. HAHA! A funny joke! Hopefully no one is clicking away right now. Seriously though, from the Unlocking Legacy writers, you simply want to read about Legacy. For those of you at home saying, "Shut up and show me cheesecake.", I just have one thing to say to you: all the cheesecake you could ever want. (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=cheesecake&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2) Check out the curves on that last one!

[Ewokslayer]

The cheesecake joke has been done before.

[DragoFireheart]

Why would I run Red Death over Sui-Black? Is the reach granted by Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt really worth losing the stable mana base of Sui-Black? Is there some other reason, metagame or not?

[Bardo]

(Cross-posted from the SCG forums.)

First off, this was an excellent article. Very well done.

It flowed nicely, the content was relevant and timely and was an otherwise good read.

As the self-designated Official 'Unlocking Legacy' Critic, I would be remiss not to offer some points of constructive critcism.

Paragraph breaks. Use them. And Web content in general deserves even more paragraph breaks than print content (reading big blocks of text on the monitor is murder on the eyes). Personally, I think this is the job of a good editor, but it doesn't hurt to do it yourself.

Heading titles. Want a way to avoid people saying your articles are too random? Write in section headings. Headline writing is an art in itself, as is quality section titles. It will give your reader a sense of what is to come next, if one paragraph leads to another in a more or less random way.

Lists. I was speaking with Artowis about this last night, but I was pretty drunk, so it's possible the conversation just happened in my head. Anyway, I like to see lists in articles, we're writing about a card game after all. While Josh had a good point about not doing it in his last 1.x article, I think this series is useful in recruiting people to play Legacy and just dumping the list in there is more helpful to that end (especially for people who print and read artices, like me), than making them work for it.

Again, this all meant to be constructive. It was otherwise a quality piece of writing.

[Mad Zur]

To beat this, you either need to speed the deck up and make it overwhelm the opponent, or slow it down and generate long-term advantage. Personally, I think the second approach is more interesting. You lose the awkward Hypnotic Specter...
This doesn't make much sense. If you want to generate long-term advantage in a black-based aggro-control deck, Hypnotic Specter is the first card you should run. Every turn it stays in play, it nets a card. It's very good against Threshold.

Deathmark seems like a decent alternative in addition to the cards that have already been hashed to death, since apparently we only kill white (Nomad en-Kor) and green (Tarmogoyf) creatures nowadays.
Deathmark on Nomads en-Kor is not a good strategy against Cephalid Breakfast. Sorcery-speed removal is generally pretty bad against that deck because it usually plays both combo pieces in the same turn. If, for some reason, it does have to play one combo piece and pass, Deathmark isn't even relevant if it's the Illusionist that comes down first.

There was one U/G/W Threshold deck in the Top 32 of Legacy Champs, and one U/G/W/R; the rest were U/G/R Threshold.
U/G won the tournament. Why didn't you mention it at all in this section?

The rest of the problems I had with the article have already been pointed out.

[Ophidian]

U/G won the tournament. Why didn't you mention it at all in this section?


That's what I was thinking when I read the article. Wouldn't that have been the first decklist mentioned? Or mentioned period, for that matter. The only reason I could see it being left out, is because the UG Deck has an inherently worse matchup vs Red Death, therefore it would appear that the results of the "Thresh" matchup vs the Red Death were inherently skewed due to a favored deck-choice. Would it have not been a better idea to play Red Death vs UG, UGR, and UGW Thresh and show what the advantages/disadvantages were?

Or was your premise based on the knowledge that all 3 decks run a similar Threat (Thoughtseize target) base, and therefore, any non-green creatures were all Duress'able, therefore leading to the argument that Duress is on the same level as Thoughtseize in this matchup.

[Anusien]

U/G won the tournament. Why didn't you mention it at all in this section?
UG isn't nearly as popular as UGR or UGW. Time will tell, but at the moment I still feel like most people decide between UGW and UGR, not between those two or UG.

[aTn]

UG isn't nearly as popular as UGR or UGW. Time will tell, but at the moment I still feel like most people decide between UGW and UGR, not between those two or UG.

Actually, in my meta the choice is mostly between UGR and UG, but hey, maybe the environment here is not representative of the 'global' metagame.

Good article by the way. The points where I disagreed with you have been mentioned in the previous posts.

Keep up the good work.

P.S.: Thanks for the sideboard rules update :)

[Bane of the Living]

"Gaddock Teeg is the Legacy card and Thoughtseize is the Vintage card"

"Gaddock Teeg is an awesome, well-defined card, and I look forward to playing it in Vintage, but I think Teeg is simply not going to find a home in Legacy."

Huh? I take it theres a typo somewhere. This article had a better style, focus, and attention to detail but most of it was "Binswangers opinion 101" You say alot of things like "of course people will think otherwise.." You make very bold statements throughout the article that Im not sure your playtesting warrents. The talk about spector being dropped is a good example.

I honestly dont mind your little mention of Initiative since its something not many people think of. Alot of people will play too conservatively and miss a chance to win the game or something since they couldve applyed pressure sooner. My favorite example of this is playing around Daze, do I wait till I have one more mana open or not? I do find it ironic that you bring up initiative when you played around Lightning Bolt in testing. Oh well..

Yes thanks for the rules update btw.