[Discussion] Early, Mid or Late?

[Land]

When referring to a typical Legacy format game, I was wondering what other people's thoughts were on when and how many turns are encompassed by the terms: early, mid and late.

ex.
Early Game includes Turn 0 - Turn 5 when counting each turn in succession as a total, independent of the amount of players involved. Or alternately represented as Turn 1 - Turn 3 if units increment per player in a 2-player match.

Using similar terms as defined above, Mid Game refers primarily from Turn 6 - Turn 13, or alternatively represented as Turn 4 - Turn 10. Late Game would then include the remaining turns until completion.

[Mordenkain]

Turn 0-3: Early Game
This is where all the combo decks are going to kill you. Non-combo decks aims to survive past this point. However, a lot of agro-control decks are setting up for the kill in these turns, which makes them very important for all decks, wether its for surviving, setting up or going for the throat.

Turn 4-10: Mid Game
We enter mid game at turn 4, since this is the critical turn for most control decks. They have mana for WoG/Damnation and it's the turn they untap after casting a Pernicous Deed last turn. In other words, it's the turn where decks stabilize. Also, this is also the turn where Survival decks gets enough mana to go broken.
Agro-Control decks now have mana open for swords + goyf or counterspell + goyf which also makes it critical for them.
Mid game is bad for combo decks (most) but not terrible. They have definately lost the advantage of speed by now, and combo decks like Ichorid and TES are the ones that have the edge compared to other "faster" combo decks like Belcher.

Turn 11+: Late Game
Control decks shine now. If control decks manage to survive to the late game, they will take the upper hand easy now. Most at least. Agro decks that can refill after a sweeper easily are still viable in the late game though (read: Goblins and maybe Elves).
Agro Control decks do allright in the late game, although the mid game is the place for them.
Combo decks on the other hands have a hard time to thrive in here. Their resources are exhausted now and all their advantages are lost now.

This is how I percieve it, roughly.

- Mordenkain

[Nihil Credo]

What Mordenkain said, except I prefer to describe the situation in terms of land drops, not simply turns. If two opponents are stuck on 3-4 lands for several turns, the game dynamics work much more like early/mid-game rather than late game.

[Lemuria]

I think Mordenkein covered this pretty much fine.

Thresh and Fish can fight each other for several turns with 3/4 lands, going to play a atrition war that supposed to happen mid/late game. Turns fits better the explanation IMO.