[Brainstorm] A Legacy Gauntlet

[Happy Gilmore]

Legacy has more viable decks to play than any other format in magic. This makes testing extremely hard if you want to create a gauntlet of the top performing AND most prevelant decks. You can get a gauntlet that seems to incorporate everything and then t8 results come out showing a completely different set of decks (like the ML3). How do we address this issue?


It is very difficult to predict the metagame of any major tournament where inidividuals travel some distance to get there.
A gauntlet is easier to create for a local meta where you see the same players every week.
Building a gauntlet should, at the very least, contain decks that perform well against the deck your testing with.
It should contain the most popular decks
It should coutain the best performing deck over a period of time (say 2 months or so)
The gauntlet should only contain decks that have established themselves in tournament play and have a recognizable list.
Testing against an archetype rather than a specific deck may be better in such a varied metagame. Ex: one Loam deck, one Dredge deck, one storm combo deck, one thresh variant, one lanstill variant, one red agro deck, one black agro deck, one artifact prizon deck, ........damn, there may be too many archetypes to test :confused: :frown: .
I'm don't want to say "here, this is the gauntlet you should use" because it would not be useful. Lets discuss what the criteria shoudl be in order to limit the number of decks a Legacy gauntlet.

[Finn]

I doubt these discussions will ever produde an answer everyone can agree on. Legacy defies a lot of conventions. This is one of them.

[Bovinious]

In my opinion these 6: Thresh, Breakfast, Landstill, Ichorid, TES, Goblins, and POSSIBLY a 43Land/Stax/Survival variant. Basically just the good decks you're likely to see.

[DeathwingZERO]

If I'm going to a tournament I know has a high turnout (50+) in an area I am unfamiliar with, I'd probably do the following:

Landstill variant (probably 4c)
Lands!/Aggro Loam variant
Mono color Aggro variants (Goblins, Mono-Black Sui-control, possibly White Weenie, Stompy)
TES (fast combo)
Ichorid/Cephalid (grave based combo)
Survival variant (probably a toolbox version, like GRB)
UG/x Thresh (more than likely w variant)
Storm combo (Tide/IGGy)
MUC/Countertop control (non-aggro control)

This covers a majority of the stuff you'll end up seeing that's in DTB/ATW status, and/or popular enough to show.

It also gives you an idea of whether or not you can defeat the archetype in general, as the core to decks like Thresh, Landstill, Storm and Survival are usually built on the engine/win conditions themselves. If you are familiar with the core of any of these decks, and at least have a general idea of the differences, then your play at tournaments shouldn't suffer.

[Atwa]

I agree with DeathwingZERO. However, I wouldn't trow Goblins in the same group with the other mono colour agrro decks.

Goblins has way more power after a boardsweeper then for instance 9 land stompy has.

Goblins will always be a deck I'll test against as a deck, not trown in an archtype it doesn't really belong in.

W00T: 666th post :)

[DeathwingZERO]

I didn't really want to downplay Goblins as just a mono-colored aggro, but I think that it's the best fit for it in that list. I wouldn't even really consider Stompy or WW, but Goblins and Sui-black are definitely worth keeping an eye on, at least.

[MattH]

Don't we have an entire forum for basically exactly this?

[DeathwingZERO]

While the DTB forum is useful for a "known" gauntlet, some random decks over the past few months especially have proven that an unknown gauntlet requires a little more broader looks.

The list I proposed I figure to be the most general safe bet, while still probably not the best overview of rogue styles out there, much like people still playing variants of Deadguy and Red Death, or those still working on Prison and Lockdown/Stax style decks as well.

I think Happy's intention was to bring to light that the DTB is really just there for those that want to see and converse on decks that win, while a gauntlet is more or less a series of decks in total randomization that you'd be likely to play, which is a much broader range.

[Lego]

Landstill variant (probably 4c)
Lands!/Aggro Loam variant
Mono color Aggro variants (Goblins, Mono-Black Sui-control, possibly White Weenie, Stompy)
TES (fast combo)
Ichorid/Cephalid (grave based combo)
Survival variant (probably a toolbox version, like GRB)
UG/x Thresh (more than likely w variant)
Storm combo (Tide/IGGy)
MUC/Countertop control (non-aggro control)

I like this list a lot. I don't know that I would test against Tide/IGGy, especially if I'm already testing against TES. My list wold just be a little smaller:

Landstill
Goblins
Threshold
Breakfast
Ichorid
TES
Survival

For each of these, I would pick the version that does the best against my deck, but keep in mind the other versions. If I'm testing Combo, I'd pick Black or White Thresh. If I'm testing Goblins, I'd pick UW Landstill, etc. but keep in mind how I'd play against the rest.

[DeathwingZERO]

Being a combo player primarily, I fully believe that the subtle (or not so much) differences between the varying combo decks means you aren't going to play the same against them.

TES is a Storm combo that's going to go off turn 1 or 2, if at all possible. This means that your answers need to go online on your turn 0, 1 or 2. Typically it's going to be in the form of FoW, Stifle, or EE type stuff for EtW protection.

IGGy/Tide goes off at it's leisure, but often turn 3-4. This means that your answers themselves can be more lax, but you'd want more than just one. The addition to Grim to IGGy also made it much more stable, meaning that you aren't just going to counter 1 spell like it used to be. Same for Tide, which is a relatively stable (albeit much slower than TES) storm system.

Cephalid and Ichorid almost always just happen to go off once pieces are assembled. Traditional countermagic rarely does anything vs Ichorid, and Breakfast packs enough disruption/protection of it's own, that they both warrant different styles of answers. Typically nuking the graveyard or making it completely unaccessible is enough to slow to the point that control elements go online.

These differences in my opinion require different approaches. Cephalid and Ichorid have outs to graveyard hate, IGGy and Tide slowplay as much as possible against control, and TES attempts to pack in it's own protection to go off at a slower pace, albeit a little less streamlined. But Stifle or FoW, etc alone are not good enough to force any of these decks to pack it in for game 2.

[Lego]

These differences in my opinion require different approaches. Cephalid and Ichorid have outs to graveyard hate, IGGy and Tide slowplay as much as possible against control, and TES attempts to pack in it's own protection to go off at a slower pace, albeit a little less streamlined. But Stifle or FoW, etc alone are not good enough to force any of these decks to pack it in for game 2.

You listed Cephalid Breakfast and Ichorid on the same line, so I assumed that you only tested against one or the other. This is a large mistake in my opinion. You're pretty likely to see either at a tournament, and solutions that work for one don't necessarily work for the other, and the way that you actually play the game can be very different. Targeted removal can be good against Breakfast, but is pretty terrible against Ichorid. Counters can work against Breakfast, but will often be largely irrelevant against Ichorid. Artifact removal can actually prove relevant against Breakfast, but will be useless against Ichorid. You get the point.

I don't test against Iggy or Solidarity because neither are metagame concerns at this point. In all probability, if you're beating TES consistently, you're beating Iggy and Solidarity as well. As far as I've seen, TES rarely goes for the EtW plan anymore, so hating that out isn't going to win you too many games against them. If you can beat their other game plan, I see little reason why you can't deal with Iggy. Solidarity might be a bit different, depending on your deck, but I don't see it as a valid concern in the overall meta. If you're seeing a lot of it where you live, by all means test against it.

[DeathwingZERO]

Actually both decks on the same lines would be tested or at least gone over and have near intimate knowledge of most cards as well as outs the sideboard may have, as they are differing enough in their styles. The only reason they both are on the same line is their core of abuse.

And as far as I know with TES, both decks that placed at the last tournament I was at were still abusing EtW pretty heavily due to very few Landstill and Thresh decks, so EE or Deeds weren't showing up. A lot of decks weren't packing Stifle either, which made TES even more valid than it was roughly two months ago, out here. In my opinion, if your going to play a blue based deck, packing both EE and Stifle doesn't seem farfetched at all anymore, especially at an unknown event. With so many permanents between 0 and 2 casting cost, I see EE on the rise again.

While I personally consider IGGy and Solidarity to be pretty obsolete as well, both in my opinion have just as much chance as Goblins of showing up (even if in small numbers), just because it's under the radar. So at the very least, it'd be a good idea to be familiar with the decks, as both of them pack a much stronger late-game than TES did.

[The Rack]

In my opinion which most of you probably won't agree with , but if you are playing a non blue based deck, you need to goldfish, calculate the number of times you can Wasteland/Duress/Whatever before turn 3 against combo, put early blockers against aggro, and a house finisher. I don't really test against much of a gauntlet more of just scenarios like the opponent automatically has a FoW in hand or a turn 5 clock, or something to that extent.

[DeathwingZERO]

The problem with that is that it doesn't really give you any grasp whatsoever on whether or not your hard pressed, or what's considered overextending your board position.

The goldfish (which is what you described) is basically there to see if your deck can even withstand a minimal amount of pressure, or no pressure at all. But when you've got either recurring threats, constant answers, or a possibly larger threat than yours is going to make interactions much more different.

While the goldfish is very helpful to see if a deck is valid in the first place, it's a very bad replacement for a gauntlet if your planning on hitting a big event.

[thebadmagicplayer]

I'm still playing IggyPop So I usually test with:

U/G, and U/G/W thresh
sui black,
stax,
and Ichorid.

I generally dont test ageinst loam beacause it's an auto win fo me. stax keeps killing me so I keep looking for a way to pull out a win. Thresh is a bad match up so it's good to know how to play it. And Ichorid is not an auto win without leylines in the main.

[rufus]

It really seems like this comes down to making a taxonomy of decks, and then selecting representatives from that taxonomy so that they're as separated as possible. Selections should also be made based on meta game considerations.

Because the goal is to span the taxonomy, the best representative sample is likely to vary by the number of decks that you're willing to test against. Similarly (and people have pointed it out in this thread) the most one-sided and the least difficult match-ups will typically require the least testing.

So, if you're going to test against three decks, it's going to be a combo deck, a control deck and an aggro deck - a.k.a. the big three. As the number of decks to be faced increases, the distinctions get finer, and metagame considerations become more of a factor.

[Nihil Credo]

I'd also say the gauntlet you want to build depends in some measure on your deck.

For example, let us assume you are trying out a deck with lots of cheap countermagic: the TES and Belcher matchups will likely be very different for you, because the former has much more defense against your counterspells, particularly in Game 1. But if you're playing a deck without countermagic or discard, which relies on stuff like Chalices or Thorns of Amethyst to handle combo, then the difference between the two decks will be practically nonexistant.

Another example is Goblins vs. a RDW port: there's next to no difference if you're playing a combo deck, or a control deck with a solid manabase and tons of sweepers... but for an aggro-control deck running Counterbalance, those matchups are completely different.

[FoolofaTook]

I really test just against U/g/w Thresh, R/g Aggro-Burn, Ichorid and TES.

The U/g/w Thresh that is in play right now is probably the best deck in the format so you have to test against it because it's the most certain top 8 placer in any major tournament at the moment.

R/g Aggro-Burn is the most consistently active deck in the format and puts a lot of threats in play that have to be responded too as well as consistent direct damage. It is not going to place well in a tournament but you're fairly likely to run across it on the way to the final 8. Unlike Thresh it demands permanent solutions and sweepers.

Ichorid is the graveyard manipulation deck from hell. If graveyard manipulation and recursion is going to be a problem for a deck Ichorid will let you know. It's also something you'll see a lot in tournament play.

TES tells you whether or not you can respond to a deck going off in your face for the win on turn 2.

Other than those specific examples I just play at the local shop against whoever comes in. If something like Discard, straight red Burn or mono-U Control is going to bother a deck I find out really quickly because casual Legacy players tend not to get too fancy in what they are doing, particularly if they do not own multis.

[Happy Gilmore]

When I want to test a deck I start with the matchups I think will be the hardests to overcome on paper. That narrows it down a bit. And if I find more than 4 or 5 decks that are a bad matchup I normally just scrap the deck idea entirely. Its a great check for me. I figure that if I learn how to win the hard matchups, and learn to play the deck well. I can overcome the easy matchups through understanding and play skill. The only exception to this is side boarding. I like to get atleast one set (ten games) in against every deck post SB. It takes a while but If your dilligent you can play 2 sets in every testing session. Or, if you feel like you have a good handle on a matchup (say your record is 4-1 in the first five games) just move to another. Your testing partner will thank you and it will make for a better experience all around. The main goal is to figure out what cards to SB in and out.

Come to think of it, I have wasted a a lot of time just testing matchups I alreays know how to play and sb for. I guess I'm not all that gung ho. :cool: