[GenCon] 2008 Legacy Championship - August 15

[iOWN]

Where
GEN CON Indianapolis
Indiana Convention Center
TCG Hall
100 South Capitol Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana

Date/Time
Friday, August 15, 2008
10AM

Cost
The entry fee for the 2008 Magic: The Gathering® Legacy Championship is $20.00. Please note that admission to GEN CON is also required. Please visit www.gencon.com for more information.

Prizes

* Winner receives incredible prizes based on the Legacy Format including a play set of Revised Edition Dual Lands!
* Second receives one set of Revised Edition Dual Lands
* Boosters for top finishers

GEN CON Legacy Side Events

* 10AM Thursday: August 14th – Legacy Championship Prelim
- Legacy Format. Swiss rounds based on attendance plus single-elimination Top 8. Winner receives a 2-round bye at the 2008 Legacy Championship plus booster prizes. $12.00
* 4PM Thursday: August 14th – Legacy Championship Prelim
- Legacy Format. Swiss rounds based on attendance plus single-elimination Top 8. Winner receives a 2-round bye at the 2008 Legacy Championship plus booster prizes. $12.00
* 7PM Saturday: August 16th – Legacy Tournament
- Legacy Format. Players will play four Swiss rounds. Prize based on record.


Link. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=events/magic/legacychamps)

Hooray for real prize support!

[Michael Keller]

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1341/225pxbiggoldbeltwweek8.jpg

:cool:

[capewestgames]

Not cool running a grinder when the exhibit hall opens, that will be a tough decision.

Mike

[arsenalpow]

I for one will not be attending GenCon this year due to the split of the Championship events. The vintage champs will be in Chicago at nationals and there are some awesome legacy side events; one side event for a set of revised dual lands.

Also from what i understand there won't be too many other magic tourneys aside from the Legacy Champs, thats just too much of a trip for 1 tourney.

[capewestgames]

I noticed that they moved Vintage to Magic Weekend (1st weekend of August in Chicago). What the hell is Magic Weekend anyway? Is there a website for it?

Mike

[arsenalpow]

I noticed that they moved Vintage to Magic Weekend (1st weekend of August in Chicago). What the hell is Magic Weekend anyway? Is there a website for it?

Mike

That's US Nationals. Its going to suck because that makes the vintage championship a side event to standard constructed nationals as opposed to it being a major marquee event like it was at GenCon.

I just don't see any point in going to GenCon if there is a going to be a legacy side event with the same payout at US Nationals. I think alot of players will feel the same way and GenCon will suffer for it. Honestly, i think it could really dillute the title of Legacy Championships if the best players dont show because Nationals will have better events.

Note: I am assuming that players that are coming from areas not near Chicago or Indi will choose either Nationals or GenCon and not both.

[goobafish]

I for one will not be attending GenCon this year due to the split of the Championship events. The vintage champs will be in Chicago at nationals and there are some awesome legacy side events; one side event for a set of revised dual lands.

Also from what i understand there won't be too many other magic tourneys aside from the Legacy Champs, thats just too much of a trip for 1 tourney.

This is the same reason that I and all/most of our Canadian crew will most likely be attending Chicago instead of Gencon.

[arsenalpow]

So i guess whoever wins the legacy side event should split the title with whoever wins the legacy champ event in GenCon? It will be like college football with a BCS winner and the coach's poll winner.

[iOWN]

# Friday 5PM: August 1st: – Legacy Tournament. Top players receive choice of available Vintage Boosters.
# Saturday 3PM: August 2nd: – Legacy Tournament – Winner receives 30 Revised Edition Dual Lands, 2nd place receives 10 Revised Edition Dual Lands.

^ The prize support for the two Legacy side events at Vintage champs.

I'm sure the Vintage tournament plus the Legacy side events will attract the Legacy players who also play Vintage, but as I would end up not playing in any Vintage event, GenCon sounds better for me.

The prize support isn't the same, although it is close. First in this tournament gets 40 duals, as opposed to 30. It seems they've switched back to the prize payout from two years ago, as opposed to the shit from last year. Top 32 gets a decent number of boosters, including good ones.

[capewestgames]

True, the attendance will be lower for Gencon. Not to mention you have the admission fee for Gencon whereas you only have the entry fee at Nationals. They are also way too close together for players to attend both. My wife only tolerates about 1 major game playing weekend per month for me. Two this close together is tempting but I will also have the extra expense of her revenge (shoes, jewelry, salon trip, etc.) I went to a prerelease once and came back to a $2,500 dining room set.

Is WotC trying to pull Magic events away from Gencon and hold their own "Magic Only" convention? If so, I see little need to ever attend Gencon again.

For me, it makes little difference. Chicago is an extra hour and a half drive but I won't have to wade through RPGA folks which is a plus and I won't have to pay the Gencon admission. I use very little of what I am paying for. I hit the dealer room a couple times and then play Magic the rest of the weekend.

[goobafish]

It seems they've switched back to the prize payout from two years ago, as opposed to the shit from last year..


The prize support from last year ended up paying much much more than the dual lands.

[iOWN]

The prize support from last year ended up paying much much more than the dual lands.

Really? How much did the oversized stuff end up going for?

[goobafish]

Really? How much did the oversized stuff end up going for?

Total it was about 3-3.5k if everyone had sold. I know that 11/13 of the oversized cards sold.

[arsenalpow]

http://community.gencon.com/files/folders/pmcompletecatalogs/entry171741.aspx

Looks like WoTC came through. They have the Legacy Champs as well as numerous side events including 4 premier events for $500 prizes. Looks like my crew will be attending GenCon over Nationals.

[Nightmare]

As far as I know, there's still a Source contingent attending GenCon. I think it's headed up by Urabahn.

[Pinder]

With the lack of a Legacy GP this year, I've had nothing so far that I could spend irresponsible amounts of money on. I might just have to see if I can make this. Any chance I could room with some contingent of Sourcers if I somehow scraped together the money for a plane ticket?

[Bryant Cook]

* 7PM Saturday: August 16th – Legacy Tournament
- Legacy Format. Players will play four Swiss rounds. Prize based on record.

They're going to have 4 rounds with 50+ players?

[Anarky87]

I'll probably be there again. Pending if I get the time off from work.

[URABAHN]

As far as I know, there's still a Source contingent attending GenCon. I think it's headed up by Urabahn.

That's partially true because I doubt I'll be attending. Eventually, I'll give someone the hotel information for the two rooms I've booked. That way the reservation won't be in my name.

[Watcher487]

Well I'll be going again, I'll probably be looking into a room but I do have a backup plan of Kenderleech.

[emidln]

They're going to have 4 rounds with 50+ players?

They only had like 25 at last year's sunday event.

[arsenalpow]

Well myself and a teammate will be flying in from Corpus Christ, TX. Hope to put some faces to names.

[Jander78]

I would really like to go to this. If anyone from Syracuse is going and has room let me know.

[IndyTerminator]

I will be at Gencon as well.

[Pinder]

So, I'm really considering buying plane tickets to this, but I don't really want to foot my own hotel room. Is there anyone with a room booked or plans to book one that I can go in with?

[URABAHN]

I've got two rooms booked at the Marriott Downtown, but I won't be attending. I'd be more than happy to give someone else the information!

[SuicideKing]

Ill be there trying to go back-to-back top8s. The prize support last year paid out much better then you would guess. Oh well, this year im planning on winning it all anyways.

[Joe_C]

god, having children and responsibilities sucks ass, Id love to travel for this:frown:

[Michael Keller]

Ill be there trying to go back-to-back top8s. The prize support last year paid out much better then you would guess. Oh well, this year im planning on winning it all anyways.

Left Field is going. That locks up half the Top 8 at least.

[PowrDragn]

It looks like I will be going and playing at least two Legacy events as well.

[Nightmare]

I would really like to go to this. If anyone from Syracuse is going and has room let me know.
I can't make any guarantees, because it will depend on my finances at the time, but if I go, I'm down with you riding. I know Hollywood, Geoff, and Bob are planning to go as well.

[arsenalpow]

I've got two rooms booked at the Marriott Downtown, but I won't be attending. I'd be more than happy to give someone else the information!

is that the hotel connected to the venue itself? Also what days do you have it booked for, my group still might need an extra room

@ Powrdragn
How are you getting up there and where are you staying this year?

[Redlotus27]

I'll be making the drive down from Chicago. I'm hoping after the side events at nat's, I should have a better idea of what to expect in Indy. This will be at least my 15th (yea, it was better in Milwaukee until the con outgrew the city), and I played in each of the big dances the last 3 years. best record was 5-2-1 playing 4c thresh. Maybe I can get some faces for the names on here.....

[URABAHN]

Yes, it's connected to the Convention Center and I have two rooms booked for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Checkout is obviously Sunday morning, but you can usually call and get an extension.

http://www.indydt.com/images/skywalkmap08.gif

Hotel name: Indianapolis Marriott Downtown
Address: 350 West Maryland Street Indianapolis, IN 46225
Telephone: 317-822-3500
Fax: 317-405-6101
Room reserved: Double/Double Room
Check-in: August 14, 2008
Check-out: August 17, 2008

HOTEL RATES Single Occupancy Rate Per Room:

August 14, 2008 USD 167.00
August 15, 2008 USD 167.00
August 16, 2008 USD 167.00

Additional charges per night, add USD 0.00 for 2nd guest, add USD 0.00 for 3rd guest, add USD 0.00 for 4th guest.
Hotel Tax: The current Indianapolis hotel tax is 15%. Subject to change.

[arsenalpow]

damn we are getting in wednesday night (need to be there for the first legacy prelim early thursday morning)

[Isamaru]

Screw this... I'd rather pay $5-$50 for a tournament... not $1,378.52.

[GreenOne]

Isn't 15th of August an international date of middle-summer-so-everyone-gets-drunk-and-laid-tonight? I guess it's only in Italy. Pity for you.


PS. It's full of German girls round here too, so I expect Zach Tartell to take some plane ticket. I got a free room for ya.

[Citrus-God]

Isn't 15th of August an international date of middle-summer-so-everyone-gets-drunk-and-laid-tonight? I guess it's only in Italy. Pity for you.


And Italian women are hot? Christ, sign me up! I mean, seriously, hot italian bitches + alcohol > alcohol + magic + sausage fest. If you can't relate to the way I feel right now, then you must be Squire or some bad card or something!

[URABAHN]

Hotel name: Indianapolis Marriott Downtown
Address: 350 West Maryland Street Indianapolis, IN 46225
Telephone: 317-822-3500
Fax: 317-405-6101
Room reserved: Double/Double Room
Check-in: August 14, 2008
Check-out: August 17, 2008

HOTEL RATES Single Occupancy Rate Per Room:

August 14, 2008 USD 167.00
August 15, 2008 USD 167.00
August 16, 2008 USD 167.00

Additional charges per night, add USD 0.00 for 2nd guest, add USD 0.00 for 3rd guest, add USD 0.00 for 4th guest.
Hotel Tax: The current Indianapolis hotel tax is 15%. Subject to change.

I created a post in the GenCon Community Forums to dump the two rooms. If someone here wants to go and wants one of these two rooms, you need to act quickly.

[PowrDragn]

Arsenalplow, and the rest of you, if you need affordable rooms, do this:

Call the GenCon Housting Authority at 317-684-2573.

If you are coming in on Wednesday there are rooms at The conrad (about three blocks away) for $267/night.

You can then do what we did...

We are only staying at The Conrad on Wednesday and made arrangements ot get a room for Thurs-Sun at The Marriot across the street from the Convention Center for $169/night. Ther eis also another hotel like 2 blocks away I belive for $189/night. They have the info.

These rooms were previously ooked up, but as usual, there are a ton of cancellations, so the rooms get released back to the GenCon group.

@Arsenalplow

I'm flying in with two local from DFW to Indy Wednesday morning.

[goobafish]

Priceline is awesome to find affordable rooms, as long as you don't mind being off-site. We got the Hyatt for $30/night (gorgeous room) last year at a 10 minute drive away.

[emidln]

A couple years ago I stayed at a campground outside the city with some friends. We came in a couple days early so we could get in some fishing (yes, actual fishing, not goldfishing) and some playtesting. The fee for the campground ended up being $14 a night + taxes + $2 shower charge.* There was a 10 minute drive each day to the indy convention center. If you need last minute reservations and don't mind camping, it's not a bad deal. Plus, if you scrub out at something you can still get in some relaxing fishing.

* The showers were pay-for, which I personally totally recommend, but the rest of ya'll being smelly magic geeks.**
** As opposed to the unsmelly kind like myself.

[Hana, The Deadly Flower]

I stayed at the Best Western next to the airport 2 years ago. I'm ready for the tournament. Who wants to gather up and do some testing?

[Madpeep]

I stayed near the airport last year and I'd never do it again. It was almost a waste of a Hotel room. With events going 24hrs a day, there was never time to get a cab and go back to the hotel. Even when we were dead tired. The money itself isn't a big deal, but when you have to be back at the convention in 4-5 hours for your next event, spending 30-40 mins and $60 for a cab ride (roundtrip) for three hours of sleep, it just didn't seem worth it. We have a hotel downtown near the convention center this year. I'm hoping it will be worth the extra money. If not, I always see people sleeping on chairs/couches/tables. I might do that next year and blow the extra cash on crap instead.

[Xero]

So this is tomorrow... Is there a reason why this event has garnered less interest this year compared to previous years?

[goobafish]

The Vintage Champs aren't at Gencon, meaning a lot of players who would normally go, aren't.

[IndyTerminator]

Just got back from Gencon today. Zohar won the 10am Legacy Champs Prelim with Landstill. He beat Rbw Goblins in the finals. I don't remember what was all in the Top 8 but I remember seeing at least 3 Threshold decks with at least 2 of them being Canadian Thresh. There was a lot of Thresh at the first Prelim with very little combo. I saw 1 Painter deck that Zohar played against.

[kabal]

Just got back from Gencon today. Zohar won the 10am Legacy Champs Prelim with Landstill. He beat Rbw Goblins in the finals. I don't remember what was all in the Top 8 but I remember seeing at least 3 Threshold decks with at least 2 of them being Canadian Thresh. There was a lot of Thresh at the first Prelim with very little combo. I saw 1 Painter deck that Zohar played against.

What version of Landstill?

[IndyTerminator]

What version of Landstill?

Uwb Landstill with maindeck Crucible of Worlds and I believe Krosan Grip. He had them first game against Goblins in the finals. I'm pretty sure he did not have Cunning Wish.

[Pinder]

UWb with Grip? You mean UWg?

[IndyTerminator]

UWb with Grip? You mean UWg?

Sorry, I mean to say that he was playing Uwbg Landstill but he was only splashing the green for Grip and splashing black for Plague out of the board. I think he only had one or two Trops because I didn't see them out most of the time.

[Nightmare]

Geoff Smelski (Konsultant) won a grinder last night to get 2 byes in the main event.


Edit - Miscommunication.

[Nightmare]

160 players - 8 rounds. Updates as I get them from Geoff.

[Michael Keller]

160 players - 8 rounds. Updates as I get them from Geoff.

Left Field ALL THE WAY!

[yawg07]

I hope Swan Thresh, Stax, or TES take it!
lol I just like rooting for decks I like to play :cool:

[Whit3 Ghost]

160 players - 8 rounds. Updates as I get them from Geoff.
Fuck yeah, solid turnout.

As for top8 predictions:
2 Canadian Threshold
2 Landstill
1 Vroman
1 Goblins
1 Ichorid
1 Random

[Pinder]

1 Random

I'm calling Aggro-Loam.

[Jak]

I'm calling Aggro-Loam.

I'll call Enchantress.

[Nihil Credo]

I'll call Enchantress.
I'll call your mom. Tonight.

[Jak]

I'll call your mom. Tonight.

That was a better joke in your head, huh?

[Pinder]

That was a better joke in your head, huh?

No, it was pretty good out here on the internet, too.

[Wallace]

My predictions:

2 Threshold
2 Landstill
2 Goblins
1 Ichorid
1 Survival

[Pinder]

I predict that we need more updates! My job certainly isn't going to ignore itself.

[emidln]

Fuck yeah, solid turnout.

As for top8 predictions:
2 Canadian Threshold
2 Landstill
1 Vroman
1 Goblins
1 Ichorid
1 Random

Vroman's not there. I'm predicting 1 Jacob Reihm, 1 Jeff Blyden, 1 Jim Erlinger to make top8. Go St. Louis!

[Nightmare]

Konsultant = 3-1
RaiderBob = 2-2

[Illissius]

U/G Dreadstill is going to win it. It makes sense.

[Di]

I demand updates.

[freakish777]

Konsultant = 3-1

Rough start for having 2 byes.

[technogeek5000]

top 8 prediction:
2 Aggro loam
2 Thresh
1 Dreadstill
1 Fetchland tendrills/TES
1 Landstill
1 Survival

[Shriekmaw]

Rough start for having 2 byes.


Sometimes you can't control things. I think going 3-1 is not a rough start, since he only lost 1 match. Please, just shut up.

WTF? No need to be nasty about it.

-PR

[wmagzoo7]

I know my friend top 8d with belcher lol Matt Elias, he's having a pretty good weekend after getting 2nd in block champs yesterday :smile:

[AnwarA101]

I know my friend top 8d with belcher lol Matt Elias, he's having a pretty good weekend after getting 2nd in block champs yesterday :smile:

Any other information?

[Nightmare]

Geoff went 5-3, Bob went 6-2 and missed on top 8. That's all I know guys, sorry.

[Kenderleech]

I went 5/3 and Watcher487 went 4-4.

[wmagzoo7]

Sorry guys no other info he was texting my friend all throughout the day with his record and this funny story: he playing belcher was on the draw and his opponent opened with a wooded foothills for plateau with a pass he drew for his turn and said to the guy, "thanks for the bye" lol he was 6-0 and then i heard he made top 8 thats all though.

[Nemcon]

Sorry guys no other info he was texting my friend all throughout the day with his record and this funny story: he playing belcher was on the draw and his opponent opened with a wooded foothills for plateau with a pass he drew for his turn and said to the guy, "thanks for the bye" lol he was 6-0 and then i heard he made top 8 thats all though.

Elias did good running Belcher? I didnt even know you guys play legacy. I thought you all ran T1

[irrelevant]

top 8
goblins vs counter sliver sliver got there
dragon stompy vs elves elves got there
boros vs painter boros wins
belcher vs landstill belcher
top 4 boros vs elves boros
sliver vs belcher sliver
I'm watching the finals right now I went 6-2 and finished in 16 with ugb thresh

[Whit3 Ghost]

:eek:

[irrelevant]

counter sliver wins in 2

[Jaynel]

Great format we have here.

[Pltnmngl]

I gotta see these lists...Will mtg.com cover it tomorrow?

[freakish777]

Sometimes you can't control things.

Yeah, I was commenting on what I assume is poor luck for Geoff. I know if I went 1-1 after starting with 2 byes, I'd be upset. I wasn't trying to say anything else other than that's gotta be rough.

[whienot]

Great format we have here.

This is how Atlanta players feel every week. With things so wide open, there is no way to prepare for everything..... and then sometimes your deck pops a squat and drops a steamer for x rounds.

[Solaran_X]

I really want to know how many Goyfs were in the Top 8. Given the decks irrelevant listed (thanks!), I'm gonna guess 8 Goyfs total - 4 in Belcher's sideboard and 4 in Landstill's maindeck (or 3/1 if it's Dreadstill). This will go a long way to helping solve the eternal question as to whether or not Goyf is overpowered/dominating in Legacy.

In Vintage Worlds, only 4 Tarmogoyfs made it into Top 8 (sideboarded at that), or a grand total of 6.78% of the 59 creatures in that particular event.

[Ebinsugewa]

Great format we have here.

This made me urinate.

I don't regret not having gone to Gencon, that's fo sho.

[Nihil Credo]

Artichoke thread in 3... 2... 1...

[Lothian]

goblins vs counter sliver sliver got there
dragon stompy vs elves elves got there
boros vs painter boros wins
belcher vs landstill belcher
top 4 boros vs elves boros
sliver vs belcher sliver

Looks like a result for a random 12ish guys tournament in a garage.

Boros, elves and sliver in DTB !!!

[TopGun]

Wow, just wow...not much else to say about the results:eek:

Anybody know where to get these decklists...and also the lists from the Nats side event?

[Volt]

.

[Pinder]

counter sliver wins in 2

Wait, it won the match, or the tournament? Either way, I count 3 (albeit slightly unorthodox) sliver lists in the top8 of a 160 man tournament.

Maybe now people will take that deck seriously. :tongue:

[Volt]

.

[THEchubbymuffin]

Ya... people really need to start dedicating some sideboard slots against elves

[Pinder]

Huh? There was one sliver deck in the T8. It beat Goblins, then Belcher, then Boros to win the tournament. At least, that's how I read it.

Oh. See, the way I read this punctuation free post:



goblins vs counter sliver sliver got there
dragon stompy vs elves elves got there
boros vs painter boros wins
belcher vs landstill belcher
top 4 boros vs elves boros
sliver vs belcher sliver


Was that this was the top 8, and that Goblins was playing against Slivers, and that Slivers was playing against something called Belcher Sliver.

But now I realize I'm retarted, because there's more than 8 decks listed there, and it it says top 4. I chalk it up to his post being completely unreadable.

So yeah, Slivers won GenCon. Sweet. Now we need a fucking list!

edit -


Ya... people really need to start dedicating some sideboard slots against elves

With 3 tribal decks in the top8, I figure Plague's gotta start showing up sometime, right?

[irrelevant]

ok I was on my phone and tryingto update you guys while watching the tournament.
top 8
boros plays painter grindstone combo. the blue red version. boros wins the match in 3 games.
goblin charbelcher plays landstill and charbelcher wins after landstill takes a game loss. the game loss was for marked sleves.
elves vs dragonstompy
elves wins in three.
counter sliver vs goblins
counter sliver wins in 3 after taking a game loss for marked sleves.

top 4
elves vs boros
boros wins in three

charbelcher vs slivers
slivers won

finals
slivers vs boros
slivers win in 2.

I don't remember much of the matchs and I'm sure the decklists will be posted soon enough. it started at 10 and didn't finish till 1230 am so my memory is fuzzy.

[jazzykat]

This sounds like the Abq metagame people were making fun of last week. Who new,,,Abq has a cutting edge meta :P

[Pinder]

Is there no Wizards coverage of this thing? Or coverage anywhere? I find it hard to believe that some posts on the Source are the most coverage this is getting, but I find it even harder to find any coverage.

[m03]

goblin charbelcher plays landstill and charbelcher wins after landstill takes a game loss. the game loss was for marked sleves.


Drat. I was hoping to read about how Belcher completely destroyed Landstill, played around its counters, etc.

[Lothian]

Is there no Wizards coverage of this thing? Or coverage anywhere? I find it hard to believe that some posts on the Source are the most coverage this is getting, but I find it even harder to find any coverage.

Unfortunately, Wizards coverage is going from bad to worse. Pro tour points never updated, blogs updated 2 days later etc....

Let's face it, they don't care about tourneys anymore. Same as for invitational cancellation etc..

The game is dying

[stalkerzero]

Unfortunately, Wizards coverage is going from bad to worse. Pro tour points never updated, blogs updated 2 days later etc....

Let's face it, they don't care about tourneys anymore. Same as for invitational cancellation etc..

The game is dying

I'd have to disagree but I guess you never do know. Wizards does seem to be dropping the ball on just about everything except printing new sets lately.

I can't wait to see these decklists. I'd have never guessed almost any of those decks would see top 8.

[cdr]

Two game losses in the T8 for Marked Cards: Pattern seems pretty sketchy. Wonder what happened there.

[Solaran_X]

I'm just surprised that no one in the Top 8 has access to a computer in Indy to post their deck lists. I'm really curious as to what people ran in such a random selection of decks.

[Brizentine Empire]

Wow I don't know if those results surprise me or intrigue me, or both. If CounterSliver (I'm guessing it was counter, meathooks style I suppose) could win a 160 player event, that has to have some kind of impact on the format. Obviously, decklists are now needed, but I'm really surprised to see zero Threshold decks in the top 8 and three tribal decks, with only one being Gobs. Wonder if slivers will see more play now... I won't play them but I could see people building the winner's build just to test it out.

[porcupinetreeman]

Wow I don't know if those results surprise me or intrigue me, or both. If CounterSliver (I'm guessing it was counter, meathooks style I suppose) could win a 160 player event, that has to have some kind of impact on the format. Obviously, decklists are now needed, but I'm really surprised to see zero Threshold decks in the top 8 and three tribal decks, with only one being Gobs. Wonder if slivers will see more play now... I won't play them but I could see people building the winner's build just to test it out.

Gen con had a lot of random running around. I was playing uwg Thresh and 4-3 dropped.

I saw a lot of a few specific cards.

Magus of the Moon + price of progress

Enchantress with replenish and karmic justice

Extirpate, LOTV, Crypt ( Tons of Graveyard hate)

[Redlotus27]

I played in it also. Played Aggro loam w/chalices. In round 3 I played against and beat the combo elf deck that made top 8 (he later told me I was his only match loss in the tournament). Lots of untap effects and "dark ritualing" out lots of elves and ringleadering for more elves. In game 2, he had 8 permanents out on turn 2. I scooped at 19 life in that one. I eventually won that match behind turn 1 chalice@1 and he couldn't recover before I assaulted his men and ate him with terravore.

I played against the countersliver deck run by this guy named Blake in round 4 (at table 1; we were both 3-0 at this point). It was running vial, sinew, muscle, hibernation, crystalline, winged, FoW, brainstorm, mutavaults that I saw; nothing fancy there. I beat it in 3 games with the final game ending on EE for 2 that he couldn't counter, followed by terminate on his last blocker. He later told me he sided out his crystalline slivers for game 3. Real cool guy, good player.

Interesting side note, there were deck checks being performed after game 2 had already started (wtf?). This happed to me and also a couple tables up from me. Strange. Don't know if it was just poor timing or if it was totally intentional...

I ended up in 11th (6-2) and won 18 packs of eventide. I witnessed one guy playing Astral Slide with duergar hedge mage and kitchen finks. Guess the deck still can hold its own if given enough time. Another side note, Runed halo is good. I've learned my lesson.

[Wallace]

Interesting side note, there were deck checks being performed after game 2 had already started (wtf?). This happed to me and also a couple tables up from me. Strange. Don't know if it was just poor timing or if it was totally intentional...

Mid round decks checks are common at larger events, catches people off guard.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

The thing is that almost none of these decks are going to t8 again. I don't think a fluke t8 is going to cause people to start tweaking their decklists.

Still, the elf list sounds interesting.

[umbowta]

Take the blinders off. Legacy is bigger than the DTBs. It's funny to me how folks can become so focused on the source metagame that they can forget how easy it is to lose when outside the box.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

Take the blinders off. Legacy is bigger than the DTBs. It's funny to me how folks can become so focused on the source metagame that they can forget how easy it is to lose when outside the box.

I don't think anyone said it wasn't.

That doesn't imply that Elves.combo and Slivers are on the warpath, however.

[FoolofaTook]

Slivers could very easily go on the warpath at this point. It's a very underplayed deck that has not gotten a huge amount of attention, but it has lots of dudes, counters and disruption available to it and it has no really bad matchups except for Dragon Stompy.

[Volt]

.

[IndyTerminator]

I played in Legacy Champs going 3-2 drop with Enchantress (Spatula's build).

Round 1 - Goblins - Lost
Round 2 - Uwbg Landstill - Won
Round 3 - Ur Jank - Won
Round 4 - Dredge - Won
Round 5 - Elves (Top 8'd) - Lost

I didn't play any Threshold all day though I know there was plenty there. I saw one Storm combo deck but it looked pretty terrible. It was like a cross between Iggy Pop and TES. I had to leave before the Top 8 but I was able to watch Parcher and konsultant's match which was very good.

Gencon was pretty cool and it was great to meet Watcher487, Parcher, Zohar, Raider Bob, konsultant, and Kenderleech.

[URABAHN]

Slivers could very easily go on the warpath at this point. It's a very underplayed deck that has not gotten a huge amount of attention, but it has lots of dudes, counters and disruption available to it and it has no really bad matchups except for Dragon Stompy.

You really think that after this one tournament, one, Slivers is going to grow in popularity by exponential factors?


Take the blinders off. Legacy is bigger than the DTBs. It's funny to me how folks can become so focused on the source metagame that they can forget how easy it is to lose when outside the box.

You're being ridiculous if you think the results of one tournament indicates the Legacy waters are much deeper than what's been discussed on this website. I'm not even sure what you mean by "how easy it is to lose when outside the box". Are you trying to say it's easy to lose to a not-so-well established deck? Or are you trying to say that thinking outside the box means you're going to lose?

If you think the Source Metagame isn't all it's cracked up to be, why do you visit this website? Do you think the results of the GenCon Top 8 reveal some blueprint to crushing the established Legacy metagame?

[Michael Keller]

Any decent deck in the hands of a skilled player can win any given day with variables such as opposing bad draws, match-ups, unorthodox win-conditions, etc. You'll see all the decks in the DTB forums (and the sort) all have a simple, straight-forward strategy using the most efficient cards from a pool of thousands of choices.

It doesn't matter if people agree or not, but this format is seriously like the weather: One minute things are sunny. The next, Slivers does well and it's thundering and lightning outside and people scratch their heads and wonder why.

Magic is a game of chance, math, and luck. I know that. You all know that. Slivers won, and we know why. Get over it.

[Happy Gilmore]

Metagame breakdown? T8 deck lists? Not much coverage being done here, which is kind of dissapointing.

[Pinder]

You really think that after this one tournament, one, Slivers is going to grow in popularity by exponential factors?


I hate to say it, but he's right. It's not like people take GenCon that seriously as an indicator anyway. I'm sure the Source anniversary tourney would be a better indication of the current Legacy meta.

And it will be great for CounterSliver to get exposure on Wizards.com, and mine and others' egos will swell for a time, and a few people will probably pick up the deck out of curiosity. But unless the list that was played has some super secret tech and people start T8ing with it consistently, it's definitely not going to explode. The deck's been around for about 3 years now. If it was going to explode, it likely would have done so by now (like when David de la Iglesia won Spanish Legacy Champs with his list (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=12035)).

That said though, I'm still downright giddy.

[Happy Gilmore]

just one question, was it combo elves or an agro style elves?

[MULocke]

just one question, was it combo elves or an agro style elves?

I didn't see the top8, but I lost to an aggro version of elves with wren's run vanquisher and imperious perfects. It was either 3-1 or 4-0 when I dropped, beating two red thrash lists (one of them me).

I was unhappy with my own performance, as I top 4'd the first qualifier on thursday, but went 2-2 drop in the main event losing to goblins and elves. I did beat a sliver deck on thursday, though. Also, I have the feeling they're rising in popularity because of the recent release of the promo crystalline slivers.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I played in Legacy Champs going 3-2 drop with Enchantress (Spatula's build).

Round 1 - Goblins - Lost

:O

What happened?



re: Slivers - Actually not the most questionable deck in the t8. The point remains that with the decline in the popularity of Goblins, the deck's best match-up, Slivers' ability to t8 consistently is not something I'd bet on.

[IndyTerminator]

:O

What happened?


First game I got stuck on one land with port out for a long time and couldn't get anything going. Second game was first turn Lackey then double port.

[undone]

I went 2-2 with tempo thrash. The deck doesnt work as well when your opponents play 10+ basics. Lost to UR painters servant with lethal on board G1 he tops, draws tops mills and draws from top going like7 cards deep to find combo game 2 double magus of the moon beats me. Next round I lose to the same aggro elves deck that beat MUlock.

Aggro elves with that 2/2 flash dude that makes bears when you have dudes die. He just makes alot of men and over runs you. The only way you win is goyf getting there stifle CA and burn perfects.

[Pulp_Fiction]

This is insane, I can't believe no one has posted top 8 decklists yet. I am dying the see that Elves list and the Belcher list. I have been to deckcheck.net, sideboard.com, and googled for gencon info but there is nothing. Wasn't there like 160 people or some insane number like that attending this event? You would think there would be all kinds of coverage. Anyway, I must know the Elves list, from what I heard it sounded quite standard but none-the-less I still have to see the list.

[Redlotus27]

From what I remember, the elves list had Nettle Sentinel, Imperious perfects, caller of the claw to screw board sweepers, fyndhorns, llanowars, wrens run vanquishers, sylvan messenger, priest of titania, gaea's cradle, wirewood herald, heritage druid, jitte. Chalice@1 was the best thing that happened for me that round. I'm sure the guy's list will be posted someplace soon. It was fun to watch, and he played it very well.

[Sims]

I'm actually Really interested in seeing this guys list. I'm a sucker for Aggro decks that are tribal (See: Used to play goblins, dabbling in merfolk, had slivers built for a while) and wouldn't mind seeing elves work.

[Arkham]

Looking forward to seeing the list for Slivers and Elves, as well. I played heavily with tribes for a very long time. Glad to see slivers finally did well.

[Kilz88]

It definitly was not landstill against the belcher deck. It also was not for marked sleeves. It was a decklist error. He happens to be a good friend of mine and it was a bitterblossom/spellstutter thresh-shell type deck which recently placed well at a large japanese tournament. Check deckcheck.net for more info.

[irrelevant]

It definitly was not landstill against the belcher deck. It also was not for marked sleeves. It was a decklist error. He happens to be a good friend of mine and it was a bitterblossom/spellstutter thresh-shell type deck which recently placed well at a large japanese tournament. Check deckcheck.net for more info.
'

ahh i saw standstill and bitterblossom didn't know it was a faeries build and a judge misinformed me about the game loss. it is a very interesting deck i think i'm going to build it and test it out.

[Shriekmaw]

This is insane, I can't believe no one has posted top 8 decklists yet. I am dying the see that Elves list and the Belcher list. I have been to deckcheck.net, sideboard.com, and googled for gencon info but there is nothing. Wasn't there like 160 people or some insane number like that attending this event? You would think there would be all kinds of coverage. Anyway, I must know the Elves list, from what I heard it sounded quite standard but none-the-less I still have to see the list.


I can't stand people complaining all the time. It would be nice to see the decklists, but this tournament does not change the format at all.

I'm not sure how the elves list excactly got there, but it had everything to do with matchups for the most part. There is no way that an elves deck is better than goblins in Legacy. The best aggro deck will be goblins for a long time unless wizards decides to ban a few cards.

[Finn]

I love Legacy Champs. It is as close as we are going to come to seeing a competitive environment that is Source-free in the U.S. with U.S. players.

You might be surprised to find that this conversation right now (and the near future actions of those in it) will play a large part in whether or not the decks represented in the top 8 gain any notoriety.

[Michael Keller]

It doesn't really matter. Just like everyone else is saying this tournament won't change the face of Legacy, one conversation will not dictate what decks can become legitimate contenders for D.T.B. status.

What's done is done.

[Volt]

.

[Michael Keller]

I think it's pretty damn funny (and possibly significant) that there were probably 40 Thresh decks at that tournament, and maybe 5 Countersliver decks, and yet Countersliver won it all, while not a single Thresh deck made Top 8.

Shit happens.

Did you ever stop and think that the percentage of players who have no skill or testing with Thresh and just decided to pick it up and play it because they heard it was the best deck was starkingly higher in contrast to the number of players who had a plan going in to this event with a deck they probably play with all the time?

Thresh is too generic these days in larger tournaments. It's still one of (if not still arguably) the best deck in Legacy. But when an event of this magnitude comes around people come out of the woodwork and hear about the Source and their friends tell them what to play, you'll get results like these.

[Nightmare]

AAAWWW internet fight!


http://msp221.photobucket.com/albums/dd264/thebitterlegion/Macros/Gifs/Jackson_popcorn.gif

[Volt]

.

[konsultant]

There was incredible amount of randomness at this event. I personally believe Legacy is much broader than the DTB forum but it seemed like the vast majority of people playing in the event weren't Legacy players. I had to explain a number of basic Landstill functions all day long ie: why you cant Stifle Standstill was asked 3 times. I got to know the guy that won the event alittle the day before in the grinder and he was definetly a good player but everything just seemed to come down to pairings. He played Slivers again on Saturday and went 0-2 drop. I played Landstill again and went 4-0. Yes it sucked a ton to get 2 byes, travel 700+ miles and end the day at 5-3. I lost to my opponents outstanding luck round 3, a very competent Ichorid player round 6 and the Aggro Loam deck that made top 8 round 7. My build of Landstill is set up to face Islands and the 3 rounds I did seem them I blew my opponents out, I hoped not to see Graveyard based decks since I only ran 2 Crypts and 1 E Tutor in the board and it ended up costing me 2 rounds. Overall I can't complain since I went x-0 both Thuirsaday and Saturday.

[Michael Keller]

You seem to be overly fond of quoting bumper stickers.

I'm simply a bi-product of the society you have helped to build. Don't blame me.


Sure, except when I thought about it, it was a lot more concise and didn't involve the word "starkingly."

/confusion.


it's actually a pretty poor* deck to play in Legacy right now.

That's the most lopsided opinion I've heard on this site in years. How could you make such a judgment when some of our finest players continue to pilot Threshold variants to frequent placings all the time? You have no idea what people are playing, where they're playing it, and what they're playing against. Making such an assumption attacks the credibility of the D.T.B. forum and that's just something that is ludicrous.

I hate Threshold. In fact, I despise it. But that doesn't mean I don't respect it enough to say it's a *poor" or *unethical* choice to play right now. Again, it depends on where you play and what people are playing. They will prepare for you, just as you should prepare for them. But don't assume it's a poor selection, because I'm sure a lot of other people would tend to disagree with you.

And once again, nice work Geoff.

[SuicideKing]

Well All I have to say is wow. This tournament ranks as one of the scrubiest tourneys I've ever played in.

A judge told me they wanted to DQ the slivers player for having all his forces and all of his swords to plowshares in significantly shorter sleeves then the rest of his deck but they couldnt prove intent, so he just got a game loss.

The games i watched in top8 were played piss poor, so I had to go do something else. I would say that this pretty much sums up legacy, random decks and poor playskill.

I unfortunetly went 2-1-2 and had to drop despite not losing a match until round 5. Oh well, thats what i get for pllaying control, but i still won a black lotus in a vintage event.

[Ewokslayer]

I hate Threshold. In fact, I despise it. But that doesn't mean I don't respect it enough to say it's a *poor" or *unethical* choice to play right now.
Playing Threshold is always unethical.
Only evil people play Threshold.
I have yet to run into one Threshold player that doesn't drown puppies and eat babies.
The Hatfields sacrifice a goat before each major tournament.

[Nightmare]

I would say that this pretty much sums up legacy, random decks and poor playskill.

I unfortunetly went 2-1-2

Hmmmm....

[Volt]

.

[Wallace]

Well All I have to say is wow. This tournament ranks as one of the scrubiest tourneys I've ever played in.

A judge told me they wanted to DQ the slivers player for having all his forces and all of his swords to plowshares in significantly shorter sleeves then the rest of his deck but they couldnt prove intent, so he just got a game loss.

The games i watched in top8 were played piss poor, so I had to go do something else. I would say that this pretty much sums up legacy, random decks and poor playskill.

I unfortunetly went 2-1-2 and had to drop despite not losing a match until round 5. Oh well, thats what i get for pllaying control, but i still won a black lotus in a vintage event.

What? Why don't you come play in the 5 year anniversary event or another large Legacy event in the North East? Then try and say "random decks and poor play skill" are the norm in Legacy. As a person who plays a lot of legacy with some of the best players in the area I take a lot of offense to that statement. Think before you post please....

[Nightmare]

What? Why don't you come play in the 5 year aniversery event or another large Legacy event in the North East? Then try and say "random decks and poor playskill" are the norm in Legacy. As a person who plays a lot of legacy with some of the best players in the area I take a lot of offence to that statement. Think before you post please....Uh, he's not wrong.

[Wallace]

Uh, he's not wrong.

Maybe not about that event in paticular...

[Nightmare]

Maybe not about that event in paticular...On the whole, I would stake the playskill of any given limited player vs. any given Legacy player, and bet on limited all day long. Look, we do a lot right, but we're well below the learning curve of every other format when it comes to playing tight, precise games. It's just the way it is.

[Nihil Credo]

On the whole, I would stake the playskill of any given limited player vs. any given Legacy player, and bet on limited all day long. Look, we do a lot right, but we're well below the learning curve of every other format when it comes to playing tight, precise games. It's just the way it is.
Absolutely QFT.

Legacy does from time to time create razor-tight situations (the blue mirror being a good example of this), but I'd say that in the vast majority of games you can make one key good choice (baiting at the right time to resolve a bomb, naming the correct card with Therapy, etc.) and ride that to victory despite making tons of small mistakes along the way. There are many formats in which this is thankfully not true.

To those interested in this discussion, I invite you to the "Easiest format?" thread.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

On the whole, I would stake the playskill of any given limited player vs. any given Legacy player, and bet on limited all day long. Look, we do a lot right, but we're well below the learning curve of every other format when it comes to playing tight, precise games. It's just the way it is.

What is a "limited player" and what is a "legacy player"?

[Ewokslayer]

What is a "limited player" and what is a "legacy player"?

A "limited player" is a player with a mental handicap and is thus "limited"
A "legacy player" is an old player that may or may not be senile.

Both require the use of diapers.

[Volt]

.

[Michael Keller]

On the whole, I would stake the playskill of any given limited player vs. any given Legacy player, and bet on limited all day long. Look, we do a lot right, but we're well below the learning curve of every other format when it comes to playing tight, precise games. It's just the way it is.

I agree whole-heartedly, Adam. I've competed against some fine Limited players and I'll tell you what: If you don't know what you're doing, you're dead in the water in that format. I've recently tapped into it and I like it more than Legacy.

The good thing about limited too, is that the cards you get you can put toward your constructed deck.

[Nocco]

I completely agree with the people who are saying that the Legacy championship was a kind of scrubby event with random decks. For the most part, success at the event really depended on pairings. The sliver guy with the short sleeves on FOWs and STPs was really shady too.

While I do not consider myself a legacy player (mainly t2 and limited), I did pick up aggro loam splash black and pilot it to a 3-2 drop. 2 of my friends who live and breath legacy both played ugb thresh with intuition that they got from a well-known person on the source (the intuition package is genesis, loam, and gigapede or other 1-ofs depending on the situation). I consider them very good legacy players as they know the format and test it very often. They finished x-3 and x-2 respectively.

I watched a lot of other matches and some of the t8 in between rounds of the ptq later that night and I saw some really bad plays. It seemed like the majority of the field was like me and, not knowing legacy very well, picked up a deck like thresh or another successful deck on a whim.

On the subject of general legacy playskill, I agree with the posters that say that it is not up to par with other formats, specifically limited. Don't get me wrong; there are a ton of good legacy players. But i think that there are even more bad ones. A good deal of my opponents throughout the day said that they were mainly legacy players and had been playing for awhile. They then proceeded to punt games left and right and make very questionable or downright awful plays. This confirms my notion that a lot of legacy-only players have this kind of inbred playskill where they know all of the cards in legacy and how to play them, but miss the tricky or more complex aspects of magic in general due to the fact that they don't play limited or other very skill-intensive formats.

[Brizentine Empire]

You know, at first, as a mainly Legacy-only player, I was confused at how people could characterize an entire format as having less skilled players, but as I read on, I actually found some people's comments true. Even when I began playing Legacy, I learned what all of the legacy cards were within weeks, but that doesn't provide skill; just knowing what to name with a cabal therapy in a certain MU doesn't mean you played it at the right time, pending the turn, the opponent's mana situation, or even your own hand. I do believe that in limited and even standard, players have a much stronger feel of how to play correctly, due to the fact that there are less cards to master, often less bomb cards than legacy, and often much less disruption. The current legacy format is basically as follows: Tons of disruption so that one of your 8-12 creatures can hit the board and win. Obviously, there are exceptions, but generally that is how the format plays out. In this way, however, even if you make a player mistake, you have many ways of correcting it with another disrupting card in your deck. I'm beginning to get into Standard, and I can honestly say that it is fun and certainly does seem to be saturated with skillful players. In all fairness, though, Legacy does have very skilled players as well, so maybe its not COMPLETELY fair to characterize the entire format.

[Dxfiler]

On the whole, I would stake the playskill of any given limited player vs. any given Legacy player, and bet on limited all day long. Look, we do a lot right, but we're well below the learning curve of every other format when it comes to playing tight, precise games. It's just the way it is.

This is pretty accurate. I'd still say legacy on the whole is above vintage on the curve, but yeah when it comes to playing tight games legacy has a ways to go still. Eternal formats just happen to be on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the skill curve, but that's completely intentional by WOTC.

I wouldn't say that it's limited vs. legacy, it's more 'WOTC' supported formats vs. legacy. The reason why legacy has a ways to go is because it isn't supported alot by Wotc, which means that higher level events rarely focus on it. If you don't have high level legacy events, you don't have pros focused on it hence the level of competition is down and non-pros don't have incentive to reach that higher level.

If there were legacy ptq's for example, you'd see the curve in legacy rise drastically and fast. There'd be an influx of players who don't normally play that would generally play tight and hence the legacy regulars would be forced to do the same, and in general you'd see alot better plays on the whole.

It's a tradeoff though. If legacy got more support from Wotc, it would defniitely be a less fun format for many of the regulars. Legacy isn't really meant for a PTQ environment, it's just a little bit more casual than that.

I think the way WOTC approaches the format now is OK, but it needs a little more support. Just some more GP's to keep people on their toes. I doubt you'll ever see Legacy get the support of limited because limited forces you to buy more cards every time you play, which is exactly how WOTC wants it.

Overall it's not a big deal. WOTC supported formats are just more skill intensive than eternal ones because WOTC supports the formats that make them the most money. There's still plenty of skill in Legacy and it's definitely not scrubby. Plus the bar is raised significantly when you get a giant event like a GP or even the Source anniversary tournament. The bar gets raised for events like that because they mean more than say Legacy champs.

Anyway interesting debate just wanted to put in my 2 cents.

- Dave Feinstein

[voltron00x]

I'm the guy (Matt Elias) who played Belcher and ended up in 3rd place, going 6-0-2 in Swiss and losing in the semis to CounterSlivers.

Here's the list I ran:

Belcher:
4 Lotus Petal
4 LED
4 Chrome Mox
4 S. Spirit Guide
4 E. Spirit Guide
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
4 Dark Ritual
4 Tinder Wall
4 Land Grant
4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Plunge Into Darkness
4 Belcher
3 Empty the Warrens
3 Manamorphose
1 Bayou
1 Taiga

SB:
2 Pyroblast
2 REB
4 Xantid Swarm
3 Shattering Spree
1 Thoughtseize
1 Cave-in
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Empty the Warrens

I posted a tourney report as a blog on my tcgplayer.com:
http://my.tcgplayer.com/blog/view/id_2399/

To summarize, I beat Sui Black, some Red/White deck (he got a G1 game loss for deck mis-reg and I killed him turn 1 of game 2 - and for what it's worth, I did not say "thanks for the bye" so whoever that was, please don't misquote me like that. I pride myself on not being that kind of player / person, even when the deck I'm playing is sort of ridiculous), goblins, boros, u/g/b standstill with bitterblossom, u/w control, two IDs (6-0-2 swiss), then quarters beat standstill again (same player, he also got a g1 loss for deck mis-reg) and then lost 0-2 to counterslivers.

I didn't really play anyone I thought was a particularly bad player, but I did play people that made bad deck decisions, in my opinion. I might not be a Legacy player but I did spend a week reading forums here, on Starcity, and going through a few hundred netdecks to get a feel for what people played and have some options, and then playtested for 6 hours or so. This also wasn't a typical metagame and lots of people were running burn or beatdown decks that are basically hopeless against a non-blue combo deck like Belcher, which made my choice very strong. Had CounterSlivers (blake? I think that was his name) lost even one game in the quarters, it's probably my tournament as I'd then play goblins in the semis and boros in the finals.

I did completely screw up my first turn in my quarterfinals match by not playing LED before I cast Burning Wish. I have to blame it on fatigue. At that point I'd been playing 48K Magic for 22 of the last 27 hours, after coming in 2nd place to Sam Black in the Block Champs. My brain was just completely fried. It's also sort of tough to change gears like that. I'd played 10 rounds with block Doran, a creature beatdown/midrange deck that often goes turn 1 vivid, pass. Then I had to play a deck that often said turn 1, empty my entire hand.

Still, I enjoyed the tournament, met some cool people, and think the format is really awesome and I enjoyed playtesting it, reading about it, and everyone I played was very cool I really hope that WoTC realizes that the enthusiasm and passion of Legacy players is something they're wasting and shouldn't be ignored.

[xsockmonkeyx]

I want the Slivers list nao! In your face, everyone.

[Pinder]

and losing in the semis to CounterSlivers.


Do you remember much about that match? Like how many colors the other guy ran, or if he had anything out of the ordinary in his deck? I'm just really interested to see a Sliver list that won GenCon.


And congratulations.

[kicks_422]

I really hope that WoTC realizes that the enthusiasm and passion of Legacy players is something they're wasting and shouldn't be ignored.

I find Legacy players as the friendliest in general, especially compared to Standard players. Is this a general trend? Or is it a meta call? :tongue:

[voltron00x]

Yeah, I remember some. I lost the die roll, which is huge because not only does he get an island in play for Daze, but he can Brainstorm for FoW. My first hand was decent. It had everything I needed except for one mana source to go off on turn 1 if he didn't have a FoW and even if he had a Daze. I thought about mulling it anyway, but with that many outs (basically Lotus Petal, either Spirit Guide, RoF, Song, Dark Rit, or potentially manamorphose into action) I didn't think it was worth the mull. As it was, I drew a 2nd belcher, so i played land grant into land and passed. I believe he brainsormed EoT and played a sliver. I drew a 3rd belcher :frown: and played a chrome mox. He played another Sliver. I drew a 2nd chrome mox and passed. He played a 3rd sliver. I drew a 3rd Chrome mox. GG.

2nd game my opening hand was again pretty strong but I had no REB and no Swarm, so I suppose I could've mulled. It wasn't a turn 1 win but it was a turn 2 warrens with backup against Daze and potentially a REB on top. He kept a hand with 2x FoW, Ponder, Krosan Grip, a sliver, and Stifle. Yes, no blue sources. I played Land Grant and passed. He drew a fetch land off the top and played ponder and hit his mana from there. I tried to go off and he used his FoW, then blew up a chrome mox with Krosan grip and I couldn't get back in the game fast enough before sliver + mutavault beat me down.

So basically, neither of my hands were extraordinary but both were just good enough to keep. The first game in particular I had a million outs and just drew total garbage. I'm pretty sure that if you play a 10 round tournament with Belcher, you'll hit at leaset one round that you don't draw the nut high, and I picked a bad round to do it, because Slivers has enough counters that you need your best hands. Both of those hands would've owned any non-blue deck. Obv the keeping a mutavault hand is awfully loose and I wasn't happy to hear that after the fact.

His deck was Blue/Green/White, with FoW, Ponder, Daze, Stifle, Brainstorm, Sinew Sliver, Muscle Sliver, Fetches, Mutavault...

[kicks_422]

His deck was Blue/Green/White, with FoW, Ponder, Daze, Stifle, Brainstorm, Sinew Sliver, Muscle Sliver, Fetches, Mutavault...

I guess MeatHooks still works.

[Arkham]

I remember having a debate with somebody over whether or not Mutavault would be a good addition to Counterslivers. Looking at the price tag alone, I laughed at him, and pointed out that because of the deck's fragile mana base it probably wasn't a good idea to try and put colorless lands in a deck that needed to rock three colors simultaneously. Besides, if I were to fish out lands out of counterslivers for a useful colorless land, I'd pick wasteland for my metagame specifically every day of the week.

But anyway, nice job, Voltron.

[Firebrothers]

What I think Legacy needs is more 'grassroots' support from the playerbase. Texas magic players recenty started a Texas Magic Tour that includes many formats, Legacy included.

More support from Wizards would help as well.

[Parcher]

The tournament was full of shitty players with shitty decks, deal with it.

The problem is that it has no real relevance toward the Legacy format in general. I would estimate that 80% of the participants had never played in a Legacy tournament before. Of those, probably half were part-time casual players that joined simply because it was an open chance to be "World Champion", and they were already at GenCon.

As for the decks that made Top8 sucking, quit bitching. To quote Edinger, if you think you could do better, you should have gotten off your ass and gone to the event. I saw a total of six Sourcers all weekend, one whom I came with.

[Watcher487]

The tournament was full of shitty players with shitty decks, deal with it.

The problem is that it has no real relevance toward the Legacy format in general. I would estimate that 80% of the participants had never played in a Legacy tournament before. Of those, probably half were part-time casual players that joined simply because it was an open chance to be "World Champion", and they were already at GenCon.

As for the decks that made Top8 sucking, quit bitching. To quote Edinger, if you think you could do better, you should have gotten off your ass and gone to the event. I saw a total of six Sourcers all weekend, one whom I came with.

Simple as it comes this is just quoted for Truth. And this is something to remember especially for bigger tournies. I ended up going 4-4 due to a minor playmistake and 2 HORRID match ups that no one would expect. And to top things off I was running a Survival variant w/o Goyfs and to say the least I'm just a little upset about not actually picking up 4 more just to play them.

And despite what people are pointing out. It was easy to see what the meta was especially after floating around both of the pre-lims. Enchantress and Thrash (not Thresh) were everywhere and no one was really playing Counterbalance.

[TeenieBopper]

As for the decks that made Top8 sucking, quit bitching. To quote Edinger, if you think you could do better, you should have gotten off your ass and gone to the event. I saw a total of six Sourcers all weekend, one whom I came with.

I think you've got me mixed up with someone else dude. I'm the quintessential armchair quarterback.

[Volt]

.

[Pox_you]

So this is my first time here at "The Source" and this is the first thread I've read since Friday Last night(took a while for access?). Needless to say, Very intresting community you have here. But, needless to say right now I'm not that impressed.

Not to quote anyone ,but go over a couple of things instead.

Legacy is a very broad unexplored format in which several possibilities remain and unlike Standard and other Limited formats Half of won match-ups are decided when you choose a deck to go into a designated tournament. Where as standard deck are nearly in stone thus making most of the victories determined in game by various mistakes made and not made.

This makes the Legacy format in general yes more casual ,but also leaves players to develop new decks capable of strong things recently developed here in my hometown was death and taxes which I think is a prime example showing that there are deck's simply not yet built and undiscovered that can be in are future.

As for this particular tournament and the downsizing of this event it simply upset's me. No, I was not there, so I can't tell whether people making these statments speak the truth or not ,but in saying things like "scrubbiest tourament ever" or "Half of them had no idea what they were doing" ,well it simply makes are format look bad, people who play the format look bad, This site look bad, and the tournament mind you wehere are "World Champion"(whether you like it or not) is crowned look bad.

Anyways if anyone has yet gotten any more lists or info on this tournament please let me know it would be appreciated.

[BoomChild]

I was in attendence at the Legacy Champs this last weekend and I made a questionable deck choice of attempting to play a version of TPS/IGGY without extensive testing with the deck... Risky choices were made and I ended up going 3-3 which was disapointing but oh well....

Now, for the actual tournament, from a meta standpoint it was very different from last year. There was no real breakout deck and it seemed as though people were tired of playing goyfs and counter-balancing their way to victory. Almost all the thresh that was being played was red tempo which is solid but not overpowering.

I did not see any straight UG thresh like last year and there was a significant amount of dedicated burn decks in the top tables at the start of the tournament. I did manage to watch most of the top8 and want to give my feedback on the matches.

Top8

Slivers vs Goblins.

This match started 0-1 to goblins as the sliver player was deemed to have marked sleeves during deck checking. Note to all... DON'T USE DRAGONSHIELDS UNTIL THEY FIX THEIR QUALITY. There were many marked penalities this tourny due to the Dragonshields.... anyways. Slivers was able to get a crystaline onto the board unhindered in the 2nd and 3rd games which lead to poor situations for goblins. From what I noticed, Slivers boarded in 4 Stifle/4 Blue Blast for the final game and it was not very close.

Slivers 2-1

Boros vs. Painter

This game went very quickly game 1. I believe it was turn 2 Painter, turn 3 Stone/win. The Boros player was from the CoD area and I know that he does not pack hate maindeck for other creatures and the burn was not enough. Game 2 was an epic match that went for over an hour which involved a lot of shattering sprees and disenchant effects. At the end of the game, with a Jotun Grunt on board Painter activated to mill and lost to Grunt's upkeep stacking the deck. Thus is life. Game 3 Seemed to be over fairly quickly I didn't watch much of it because I was distracted by friends.

Boros 2-1

Fae Still vs. Belcher

Fae Still is a newer archetype that has been appearing over mws the last few weeks that I have noticed. It's based upon spellstutter being the nuts with bitterblossom and Standstill to control the tempo of the game. Unfortunately FaeStill was given game 1 loss due to marked sleeves again... sigh.

Game 2 was a blowout for FaeStill when Belcher revealed his hand with Land Grant and Fae had I believe 3 active counters in his hand... awk.

Game 3 Was a blowout for the other side when 12 Goblins came down turn one for Belcher and was able to go the distance. Not a very exciting match. I did note that the FaeStill player was very upset at having to play against this matchup.

Belcher 2-1

Elves vs Dragon Stompy

I did not watch much of this matchup but I was able to watch the Dragon Stompy play in the round before the top8. While the deck is very strong, there is not much it can do outside of a Trini to stop the swarm of elves that would eventually come across the board. Game 1 went to Dragon on the back of a turn 1 Trini turning off the mana elves. Game 2 went to Elves with a combo turn of Heritige Druid, Nettle Sentitles, and lots of Sylvan Messengers. Good times. Game 3 would have gone to Dragon, but elves was able to mind trick the Dragon stompy from keeping a turn 1 Morph, turn 2 play/equip jitte hand and mulling into a turn 1 magus hand.

Elves 2-1


Top 4

Slivers vs. Belcher

I did not watch any of this match because I was testing with friends for a block PTQ the next day. I did hear that Slivers swept the match on the back of counterspells.

Slivers 2-0

Elves vs. Boros

This match was hinged upon who could resolve the threats faster. Game 1 went to elves on the back of a very quick draw with Sylvan Messengers turn 3 and Boros was stuck on one land for 4 turns. Ouch. Game 2 was the opposite with fast beats by Lions and Legionaires. Game 3 went down to the wire with Elves getting in for 2 points a time while Boros sat back on 3 dudes and 10 points of burn in hand. I believe it was Helix/Bolt/Blast if my memory is correct. After a long standoff elves did not block well to drop to 9 life and that was all that it took for the barrage of red spells to take the game down.

Boros 2-1


It was at this point that my brother and I headed out with friends to get dinner at Hooters downtown Indy. The finals were pretty lopsided as the Slivers was able to get a strong foothold by always having a turn 2 Crystaline sliver.

I believe that the Legacy meta is going strong and there are more and more decks that are becoming viable as the last few expansions have raised the bar on creature power level fairly significantly. Tribal is strong as ever as shown by the breakdown of the decks and Goblins is still very much a player in any metagame.

The only slops that I would have to give out are to the closed-minded members of the legacy community who will not open up to opinions of others. There were many moments where I was very upset by the comments of some players refering to the fortitude of some of the other players in the field.

As a final note. Dragon Stompy player at table 4 or 5 in the last round playing against Ichorid. You played turn 1 magus which was strong and a turn 2 land/Morphed Gathan Raiders. Very strong play with Backup Magus and Dragon in hand. When you played the turn 3 SECOND MAGUS/Pitch Dragon to raider morph I wanted to instantly throw up. You needed to play that Dragon and pitch the Magus bro. I don't know if you read on this site or if anyone knows him irl but holy shit that one play lost you that game and I thought you would lose the match because of it.

BoomChild

[Jak]

Wow! Thank you for all that. This is exactly what I wanted to see. Well, one of the things at least. Hopefully, we will see lists from people.

I feel the same way about close minded people. I want legacy to be diverse because with a card pool this big we should be able to play against a lot of different decks. I want aggro to do well. I want control to do well. I want combo to do well. And I want Aggro-control to do well. That makes Legacy the most fun.

[insertnamehere]

Has anyone seen the Elves decklist?

[donkyranger]

Alright I don't feel like reading everything because that is a waste of my time. But my name is Josh I was the person playing Faeries in the top 8 aganst belcher. I had gotten a game loss due to the fact that the previous night I was brainstorm on puting a swamp into my deck which I ended up doing to the deck list but not in my deck. (Noobish I know) So right before the tournament started, I remembered the swamp was not in there so I put it in, but I had forgotten that I had changed my fetchland count around to 4 PD 2 FS, which I did not change and got a game loss for going into to top eight against belcher... For everyones information this I have never lost a match to belcher in my life until this tournament. I played him in the swiss and went 1-2 aganst him and went 0-1 in top. I would also like to make the note that in all four games against this belcher player (name was Matt I think) I saw a total of ZERO Force of Wills!!!

As for my deck list I loved it all, yes even the annuls! I luckly did not get a match-up against a deck with EE, Deed or CB/Top, but if I would have I would have had those awaiting!

I would aslo encourage people to play bitterblossom!! Or just outright play my deck! Because I love it!

And for people who are going to say I just copied the deck of deckcheck, you are some what right. I was coming up with the idea of how to bring the brokenness of bitterblossom(BB) into legacey and then I had come up with BB, Spellstutre Sprite, Standstill, and Vial. Did some play testing and research and discovered that deck list.

As it goes for the Trygon Predators!!! OMFG!! They were the MVP of the whole freaking day! They ate everything!! And to make it sweeter I played against affinity round two. They ate face all day and sould not ever even thought of being taken out!!

This is my first time doing this well in I tournament of this size so I was not the happiest of people when I got my "you lose target belcher match-up" from judge Aron, but it by goly didn't damper the fact that I was there in the first place!!

Oh! And finally! My store 'The Melee' (in Brighton MI ()) is projected to go under sooner then later, so if anyone!! and I mean anyone is looking for a great time on Weds we have a 100% prize payout legacey tournament that starts at 5pm!! THere phone number is (810) 229-3300

As it goes for any questions, please feel free to ask them!

Oh! And I almost forgot! That elf deck that was in top 8 was one of the biggest flukes I have ever seen!!!! He was even luckyer then the belcher player... Oh and he was a really really really really really really really bad player!!!

Hmmm, I thought by now that they would have posted deck list but I dont know If I just cant find them or they haven't been but Here is my wonderful list of what I would like to call "JDB FaeStill" because I totaly get to name it because I do.

JDB FaeStill
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Mutavault
1 Island
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Trygon Predator
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Bitterblossom
4 Smother
4 Standstill
3 Aether Vial
2 Umezawa's Jitte
Sideboard:
1 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Hydroblast
3 Extirpate
3 Engineered Plague
3 Annul
3 Threads of Disloyalty

Oh, and Matt (Belcher player from Top 8) I hope to god to you read this and relize how lucky your are!! but in the end congratz! It was nice to meet you and hope to see you around and stuff.

[Mirrislegend]

Do we have all top 8 decklists yet? If so, can someone direct me to it? Cuz I cannot find it for the life of me...

[Parcher]

For a moment there, I almost got to enjoy seeing my favorite deck win a major tournament. Fortunately, several pretentious know-it-all dickheads were Johnny-on-the-spot, tripping over themselves in a rush to assure the rest of us pretentious know-it-all dickheads that said tournament was entirely populated by morons and retards who were too busy wiping the snot and drool from their faces to pick out a decent deck and/or play it with a modicum of competency. Plus, that guy who won was a big, fat cheater. Whew! Thank God! We can sleep well, safe in the knowledge that the Legacy metagame as we know it is safe and sound. Thank you.

Yes, that's much more logical than admitting that not only do I have no knowledge of what actually happened at the tournament, but know nothing of the players or decks played.

For instance, only a pretentious know-it-all dickhead would assume that the majority of the field had not played in Legacy tournaments before when 5 out the 8 finalists said blatantly that that hadn't. You would have to be a complete asshole to think that they didn't know their decks when fully half the Top 8 admitted they netdecked just for this tournament.

We probably won't find out for a week or two how ratings were affected, but I will guarantee once points change that the ratings will back up the lack of quality players there as well.

I'm not blowing smoke because I have an inflated opinion of myself, or some deck. I was there. There were at least thirty Thresh decks, and two had Counterbalance. The Elf deck ran fucking Wolf Skull Shaman! The field was dumb overall, and most of the players were awful. Blake had a solid build, was probably the second-best player in the Top 8, and fully admitted that he had not a bad match up in either the swiss, or finals. To me, this sounds exactly like the last two Legacy Champs.

[Shriekmaw]

Wow, I can't believe on a lot of people just bashing Threshold. No one can agrue that its a good deck, probably the best deck in the format right now. I do prefer the Canadian Threshold list b/c the aggressiveness that it plays and would probably be the best choice for GenCon since it has a pretty good matchup against a lot of the random decks that traditional Threshold has a problem from time to time with.

If I could have got the time off from work, I would of played goblins down there as I thought that would be the best choice. The primary reason is because I would expect a lot of randomness and goblins beats that all day long.

I hope everyone had fun that got to go to GenCon this year. Congrads to all the sourcers that were able to make it and put on a decent show. Hopefully next year we will be able to bring the trophy back where it belongs to someone that is a Legacy player on The Source.

Take Care.

[Volt]

.

[yawg07]

So, basically if a competent TES player was there, they would have prospered.
Because I've never played a deck that punishes randomness so brutally as TES.

[Ewokslayer]

So, basically if a competent TES player was there, they would have prospered.
Because I've never played a deck that punishes randomness so brutally as TES.

Well, apparently it can randomly lose to burn (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10722)

[Bryant Cook]

Oh well. I was a storm short. I'm still better at the game called life.

[Nightmare]

Edit - You know what? It's too easy.

[goldenj]

Thanks to those who are contributing meaningfully here.

I never understand why the harsh language and personal attacks for people just presenting their opinion. If their opinion demonstrates they are a fool, expose their faulty reasoning.

There's a bit of an assumption here that if you're not playing Legacy regularly, you should scrub out. One of the reasons I like Legacy is because it admits players who have broad experience. If you've played combo, you can study Belcher and play it reasonably well.

This is an especially bad assumption combined with the over-simplification of matchups. A dominating matchup is 75% - which means you still lose 1 out of 4. It is a card game, which is a considerable amount of the fun.

The variety in the T8 and the missing Thresh is evidence of a tremendous format rather than a stale, solved problem. Enjoy it!

[voltron00x]

Josh - It was good playing against you. I do feel lucky that you failed to draw FoW, and it was unfortunate that you got the game loss against me in particular because Belcher is so unforgiving. You're a good player and your deck seemed rock solid. Best of luck in the future.

Goldenj - I agree with your post 100%. I felt like the week I spent searching the net for decks and then playtesting a few hundred games paid off. I chose the deck that I thought was the most powerful and fastest in the format, and would perform the best against random aggro and poorly played Threshold, and wouldn't lose to random sideboard hate as easily as Ichorid. It's also a deck where a failure to know the format as well as others isn't as much of a liability. I consider those the decisions of an informed and competent player, but if people want to consider it lucksackery from someone outside their format, that's their opinion. I don't have much legacy experience because there aren't meaningful tournaments in that format in my area, not because I'm not interested.

[oneiros76]

Hey, this is the boros player from the top eight at this tournament, I didn't keep a full report but I thought I'd post what I could here. First here is the list I went with:

3x Isamaru
4x Savannah Lions
4x Goblin Legionnaire
3x Jotun Grunt
3x Grim Lavamancer
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lightning Helix
4x Chain Lightning
4x Price of Progress
4x Magma Jet
3x Fireblast
4x Mountain
2x Plains
4x Plateau
3x Wooded Foothills
2x Bloodstained Mire
3x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
S.B.
4x Vexing Shusher
1x Jotun Grunt
3x Shattering Spree
3x Pyrokinesis
2x Pithing Needle
2x Disenchant

Second is general stuff on the tournament. Most of my rounds were against Thresh, If I remember right the rounds went belcher (beat after he forgot to activate lions eye when burning wishing, by far my strongest play against this deck @-@), BR burn/discard, something I forget, Thresh with red, mono red burn, Thresh with black, ID, ID, then the top eight. Best games were against the thresh with black player, game three I actually mulled to 5 and got there with white guys he couldn't blue elemental blast, earlier games were won by sower of temptation not being a problem and keeping entirely to many shushers in play. Top8 Matches were fun, the match against painter was some decent magic until I found that he didn't know how to deal with Jotun grunt with his combo and he let me put all the shattering sprees and needles in my deck on top, that was not powerful wizardry. I'm QUITE glad I beat elves, not only so I didn't have to say I lost to elves in this tournament, especially top eight but also I know the player from local tournaments and I never would have heard the end of it. His build was pure aggro, it actually had chameleon colossus, nettle sentinel and wolf skull shaman in there, but he just ran out of gas in game two and three. Finals was actually fairly close both games, they were fast but at the end of the first game I had emptied my hand and he had two cards (maybe three) and two life when I pulled a magma jet off the top but was denied by his second force of the game, second game I had ten or twelve points of damage in my hand but was a card away from the fourth mountain to double fireblast/ then price when he had no counter.
Overall I really enjoyed the tournament, I had fun playing a deck I enjoy and, as is the way of things at gencon, got to hang out with a lot of decent folk, and while I agree with some people that the average level of play skill at this particular tournament was a bit low, some players would rather see a lower play skill level than constant tarmogoyf/ countertop battles thoughout the tournament, and I think a lot of the time the Legacy environment allows a lot of cool/interesting/people's own decks to do relatively well when allowed some respite from threshold. Although I can't really glean for sure if the top eight was legitimate and would hold ground against what some previous posters might say was a heartier metagame, I really wouldn't care since I had a great time and am glad to see that some people are excited about seeing decks they like doing well.

[voltron00x]

Good lord would I have loved to play against you in the top 8 / top 4 :wink:

Congrats on the finish and I really like the deck. Then again I'm a huge sucker for Fireblast, by far one of my all-time favorite cards.

[Anusien]

oneiros76: Why Isamaru over Figure of Destiny? FoD is the new hotness these days.

[umbowta]

oneiros76: Why Isamaru over Figure of Destiny? FoD is the new hotness these days.
Oooh Oooh lemmme guess..."game three I actually mulled to 5 and got there with white guys he couldn't blue elemental blast". Was it luck or would FoD have sucked.

[yawg07]

To the Boros player: Have you considered replacing Isamaru/Savannah Lions with Figure of Destiny?
He seems like such a perfect fit for that deck and he'll give you a heightened mid-late game.

EDIT: Didn't see the last page, yeah I'm not the only who thinks so XD

[Shriekmaw]

To the Boros player: Have you considered replacing Isamaru/Savannah Lions with Figure of Destiny?
He seems like such a perfect fit for that deck and he'll give you a heightened mid-late game.

EDIT: Didn't see the last page, yeah I'm not the only who thinks so XD


I'm sure your suggestions are noted for the future. To be fair, it is a new card that many people outside of standard/block haven't tested, so please give him a break.

Nice tournament run with boros. I guess in a threshold rich environment it can do very well, even in legacy.

[Linkin Pac]

Congrats to the Faeriestill and Boros players who made the top 8! It's refreshing to see people take advantage of the most creative Magic format to build decks that they actually enjoy rather than the "optimal" build. And a lot of people may be bitter, complaining about the players playing poorly, the convention being seedy, the hallowed decks from the DTB forum not winning destroying all of the tournament's credibility, blah blah blah. The truth is, these decks won the premiere Legacy competition. People can either get off their high horse and realize that the Source is not the end-all decider of which decks are good, or they can put in work in making their favorite deck a contender.

[oneiros76]

voltron00x: Ha that surely would have been epic >.>, I am definitely glad I dodged that bullet. Whats more hilarious is that one of my buddies always plays belcher, and he reeeeally hates boros and rips on it constantly, so after I beat it round one then x-o into top eight and I see you with belcher I was halfway wanting to just play you for the chance to beat belcher in that scenario, then hold that over my friend FOREVER BWAHAHA. And oh god yes fireblast is definitely my favorite card, its unbelievable how often it gets there and in such hilarious fashion.

Anusien: yeah I definitely thought about him over either Isamaru or Lions and he is the sexy tech these days, but the deck usually wants to have one or two mana open on the opponents turn for a lot of different reasons (activating legionnaire is important, mancer, and being able to use any of the instant burn at any time is really important) and I couldn't see it wanting to afford the mana for that over the options that the deck gives you with what it has now.

umbowta: Ha no that was luck, the deck just barfed things to me in the exact order I needed them and his draws were not so hot, it was pretty rough beats, especially at the top table round six.

[Bryant Cook]

Congrats to the Faeriestill and Boros players who made the top 8! It's refreshing to see people take advantage of the most creative Magic format to build decks that they actually enjoy rather than the "optimal" build. And a lot of people may be bitter, complaining about the players playing poorly, the convention being seedy, the hallowed decks from the DTB forum not winning destroying all of the tournament's credibility, blah blah blah. The truth is, these decks won the premiere Legacy competition. People can either get off their high horse and realize that the Source is not the end-all decider of which decks are good, or they can put in work in making their favorite deck a contender.

There's one problem here. Fitting 160 sixty people in one room, I guarantee that 120 of these people barely know anything about legacy. The remaining 40 people who have knowledge of the format, have a much greater chance of not making it compared to the scrubs. I'm not trying to bash the people who made top 8, however, events in the northeast are much greater in skill and competition compared to large events with less then mediocre players.

[oneiros76]

yawg07: He does seem really strong at first but with the way that boros works is that it wants to just roll along dropping dudes and sparing a mana or two to respond with bolts or opportune prices or mancer activations and keeping mana open for legionnaire, and after seeing that FoD wouldn't do much for the late game since a plain 4/4 that doesn't chew up tarmogoyf food and costs mana would hold up the deck. Also, the late game for this deck is like fireblast price bolt XD. If anyone tries him out and I am totally wrong then more kudos to that creepy-eyed little dude, he is more awesome than I thought.

Bryant Cook: Fireblast you in response to your scathing criticism

[T is for TOOL]

There's one problem here. Fitting 160 sixty people in one room, I guarantee that 120 of these people barely know anything about legacy. The remaining 40 people who have knowledge of the format, have a much greater chance of not making it compared to the scrubs. I'm not trying to bash the people who made top 8, however, events in the northeast are much greater in skill and competition compared to large events with less then mediocre players.
You seem to be confusing skill with ego. :rolleyes:

[Lothian]

First of all,

Well done to oneiros76 and voltron00x !

Sounds like 2 great players who really enjoy the game.

Second is:

Second is general stuff on the tournament. Most of my rounds were against Thresh, If I remember right the rounds went belcher (beat after he forgot to activate lions eye when burning wishing, by far my strongest play against this deck @-@), BR burn/discard, something I forget, Thresh with red, mono red burn, Thresh with black, ID, ID, then the top eight. Best games were against the thresh with black player, game three I actually mulled to 5 and got there with white guys he couldn't blue elemental blast, earlier games were won by sower of temptation not being a problem and keeping entirely to many shushers in play.

So here we go, boros went through a field of thresh (any version) undefeated. A guy who mulls to 5 to get a non-red creature so it won't get beb has to be a good player.
When I've seen shushers coming out, as a MUC player, I thought that was the last straw after storm, flashback dredge etc... But it nearly got no attention on those forums
So great sb choice indeed against thresh. And by the way, I would see that guy being a brilliant sb inclusion for the mirror in thresh itself.

Good card choices for a heavy thresh field with nice play

And it looks like with Grunt and mancer, Goyf was never a great threat.

Who was looking for a Thresh beater again???

Here you go!

Another mention: no reb in sb, shusher makes 8 counter dead on its own instead of 1 for 1 trade with reb

[Afro]

I would also like to make the note that in all four games against this belcher player (name was Matt I think) I saw a total of ZERO Force of Wills!!!

Are we to assume that you didn't mulligan?

[czeluff]

oneiros76: Can you explain to me how you s/b against Dredge/Cepahlid? Seems to me this is your most difficult matchup, because they're JUST FASTER! If you expected alot of dredge in your metagame: A) would you still play Boros? B) How might you better tweak your sideboard?

Chad Z

[insertnamehere]

Where's the elf deck?:rolleyes:

[voltron00x]

So, Wednesday update, and still no mention of Legacy or Block Champs, or decklists, anywhere. Not only that, but they posted the results to DCI Ratings, and they posted the event at 16K for both. Both were advertised as 48K events. That's a ridiculously huge freaking difference, especially if someone were to, I dunno, say TOP 4 BOTH EVENTS.

Thanks, Wizards. I appreciate it.

[Parcher]

Yeah, this is typical Pastimes bullshit. I actually lost points after going 6-2 in the main, and 8-6 in the side events. I expected little due to ratings matchups, but Wizards has to be contacted about one of their scheduled events getting screwed up.

EDIT: Appeal sent.

[voltron00x]

I appealed as well.

[AJ_Wolf]

Here is the deck list for Blake's winning CounterSliver deck:

Creatures - 19
4 - Crystalline Sliver
4 - Sinew Sliver
4 - Muscle Sliver
4 - Winged Sliver
3 - Hibernation Sliver

Spells - 19
4 - Brainstorm
3 - Ponder
4 - Force of Will
4 - Daze
4 - Swords to Plowsahres

Artifacts - 4
4 - Aether Vial

Lands - 18
4 - Flooded Strands
1 - Windswept Heath
1 - Polluted Delta
3 - Tundra
2 - Tropical Island
2 - Underground Sea
3 - Mutavault
1 - Plains
1 - Island

Sideboard
4 - Planar Void
3 - Stifle
4 - Blue Elemental Blast
2 - Harmonic Sliver
2 - Krosan Grip

[kicks_422]

Pretty standard, except for the 3 Mutavaults. Only 15 color producing lands?... I wonder how he got away with that.

[Volt]

.

[AnwarA101]

So, Wednesday update, and still no mention of Legacy or Block Champs, or decklists, anywhere. Not only that, but they posted the results to DCI Ratings, and they posted the event at 16K for both. Both were advertised as 48K events. That's a ridiculously huge freaking difference, especially if someone were to, I dunno, say TOP 4 BOTH EVENTS.

Thanks, Wizards. I appreciate it.

Will there be no coverage of this event? I'm pretty surprised that we haven't heard anything. I guess its possible that we might have some coverage by the end of the week.

[emidln]

I just finished talking with John Scamihorn (JSNiceGuy21), the UR Painter Control player who made top8. I learned the following about his list:

Main:
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Painter's Servant
1 Grindstone
6 Red Blasts
4 Trinket Mage
4 Imperial Recruiter
X Magus of the Moon
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
X Sensei's Divining Top
19 Lands (very few nonbasics including 1 Volcanic Island, 1-2 Academy Ruins)
0 Counterbalance
0 Stifle
0 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Side:
1 Grindstone
1 Cursed Scroll

In explaining the top8 match, John said that his errors were soley due to exhaustion and I believe him. According to him, when he lost game 3 he had enough mana to activate Top and Top into Force of Will but didn't remember to, in addition to forgetting that Fireblast was/could be in his opponent's deck. In game 3, his mistake with Jotun Grunt came from blanking that Grunt was even on the board. He had a rave review of the deck and claimed that it performed extremely well, and, in his opinion, is the best deck in the format.

Congrats on the finish!

[risethehandsofreason]

This is the Elves list played by Bolingbrook, Illinois player Brad Hewry that top 4'd at Gencon:

-41 Creatures
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Wolfskull Shaman
3 Skyshroud Elite
4 Imperious Perfect
3 Wirewood Herald
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Caller of the Claw
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
1 Chameleon Colossus

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

2 Gaea's Cradle
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
9 Forests

Sideboard
4 Krosan Grip
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pithing Needle
4 Umezawa's Jitte

This is the list as conveyed to me, one of Brad's most recent local tourney victims.

[Mirrislegend]

What did that elf list get paired against? The list makes me cringe. Lucksack into t8 ftw?

[Sims]

This is the Elves list played by Bolingbrook, Illinois player Brad Hewry that top 4'd at Gencon:

-41 Creatures
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Wolfskull Shaman
3 Skyshroud Elite
4 Imperious Perfect
3 Wirewood Herald
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Caller of the Claw
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
1 Chameleon Colossus

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

2 Gaea's Cradle
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
9 Forests

Sideboard
4 Krosan Grip
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pithing Needle
4 Umezawa's Jitte

This is the list as conveyed to me, one of Brad's most recent local tourney victims.

I'm actually kinda surprised. When someone said Wolf-Skull Shaman, my inner child figured he was running Wren's Run Packmasters for the Fat Beating LoLz and supa-Deathtouching Wolves. It's good to have a list though, even if I take umbrage with portions of it.

[DrewliusMaximus]

emidln, do you know if that UR Painter build used the full sets of Cities/Tombs/Moxen? Either way, John's list is interesting. Thanks for posting it.

[Ewokslayer]

Is the Elves list supposed to be 62 cards?

[oneiros76]

czeluff: If I expected a lot of dredge or even cephalid I would probably replace the mainboard lions with Mogg Fanatic, and probably swap the two needles for two Tormod's Crypts, with the current sb I actually board in Pyrokinesis (and the 1 grunt obviously). The choice between Needle and Crypt is awkward, as needle does a better job as a general stopper (scepter nomads grindstone etc etc) but Crypt helps out against the awful current dredge matchup.

Yes its odd that wizards has posted hardly anything that came from gencon, I'd expect slacking more in regards to the legacy portion but not so much with block. Did this happen last year at gencon? Gencon = black hole for wizards reporting??

[SuicideKing]

Last year for Legacy worlds we had to take photos and fill out player profiles and it all got posted that night. My guess is they were embarrased by the top8.

[ChiiMagic]

Lol. King, you're way too funny. If it wasn't for you and your 150 minute vintage match, ridiculous story of dream crushing, I would have had a far worse time. Lol. But I have to agree with you about that one.

[IndyTerminator]

What did that elf list get paired against? The list makes me cringe. Lucksack into t8 ftw?

I faced him in Round 5 playing Enchantress. I crushed him Game 1. Game 2 he won the turn before I would have locked him out. Game 3 I had to mull to 5 and he had the Turn 4 kill. He seemed to have pretty good matchups all day from talking to him. He didn't play very tightly and he openly talked about how lucky he was that day.

Edit:

do you know if that UR Painter build used the full sets of Cities/Tombs/Moxen? Either way, John's list is interesting. Thanks for posting it.

In the matches I saw him play against Zohar and a few others (in the Friday Prelim and Champs) I did not see any Cities/Tombs/Moxen. It looked like a very good list and from talking to people who played him he played very well.

[MULocke]

I faced him in Round 5 playing Enchantress. I crushed him Game 1. Game 2 he won the turn before I would have locked him out. Game 3 I had to mull to 5 and he had the Turn 4 kill. He seemed to have pretty good matchups all day from talking to him. He didn't play very tightly and he openly talked about how lucky he was that day.

Edit:


In the matches I saw him play against Zohar and a few others (in the Friday Prelim and Champs) I did not see any Cities/Tombs/Moxen. It looked like a very good list and from talking to people who played him he played very well.

The elf lst didn't get as many favorable matchups, at least early. He beat two red thrash lists (props, btw if you're reading this.) I was one of those two, and I felt like I should have been favored but had real trouble. The list is better than it looks, methinks. Then again, I played horribly all day in the main event.

As for the UR painter, if its the same list from the 10am qualifier the day before, the manabase was 2 volcanics, 3 fetch, and the rest basics for the moon effects, iirc.

[Master Shake]

Most everything from this tournament has been stated, but I'd like to add a bit to the metagame breakdown:

Anything that went X-2 drop before round 5 was likely missed. This includes a lot of Threshold, Landstill and Goblins.

5 Enchantress
4-5 White Stax
3-4 Dragon Stompy
10 Suicide Black
4-5 Dredge/Ichorid
20ish Sligh/RDW/Burn

In the top 40 during rounds 7&8 I saw only two threshold decks, UGw and UGr, two Dragon Stompy decks were in position to T8, a few Sligh decks nearly got in.

About Elves, after every round I'd hear a group of people bitching about how they and/or their friends lost to Elves. I don't know what his MUs were like but I imagine Rock, Landstill and Threshold - all of which are decks that can be overwhelmed or lose to something like a 3rd or 4th land drop being Treetop Village or Faerie Conclave.. While its funny, there is a lot to say about a deck that can put 18 damage on the table by turn 3. Also, Wern's Run Vanquisher, pretty solid. I'm surprised there was no Elvish Champion, that guy wrecks threshold.

Personally, I find the fact that the Meathooks player was boarding out FoW Game 2&3 against Goblins more disturbing.

[Dxfiler]

This is the Elves list played by Bolingbrook, Illinois player Brad Hewry that top 4'd at Gencon:

-41 Creatures
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Wolfskull Shaman
3 Skyshroud Elite
4 Imperious Perfect
3 Wirewood Herald
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Caller of the Claw
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
1 Chameleon Colossus

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

2 Gaea's Cradle
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
9 Forests

Sideboard
4 Krosan Grip
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pithing Needle
4 Umezawa's Jitte

This is the list as conveyed to me, one of Brad's most recent local tourney victims.

This list seems fine. I don't understand why so many people are giving him shit. I've run a list very close to this before and had great success with it.

The only clear flaw in his list is that it's 62 cards.

People just can't stand losing to decks perceived as casual or budget. I'd say Elves is neither. It has plenty of pressure with enough mid-game stuff to survive alot of matchups.

He has some stuff I haven't tried, mainly Wolf-skull Shaman. A free bear even turn can't be bad, right?

Congrats to the elf player. Go-go gadget tribes :p

- Dave Feinstein

[Illissius]

Wow, Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel is awesome. I just noticed this.

[Hightower]

Looks like Counter Sliver (Meat Hooks or whatever it's called) is making a come back.. It just won the Legacy side event at GP Copenhagen today (63 people tournament)

[xsockmonkeyx]

http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGDST/aether_vial.jpghttp://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGSTR/crystalline_sliver.jpg

[Master Shake]

http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGDST/aether_vial.jpghttp://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGSTR/crystalline_sliver.jpg

I hear those guys are pretty good.

[LandDestroyer]

So, yeah...I know I quit after Grand Prix flash, but i still wanted to see how it ended up this year and I can't find coverage. Please IM me on AIM with the details once they are available.

[Volt]

.

[CoryWM]

I just wanted to chime in on the "bad decks" winning tournaments threads.

Do you really understand what's going on here? You're whining about under skilled players... Name any other tournament where people whine about people being under skilled.

There's 3 types of mentalities in competitive legacy.

1st. The "skilled player" who relies on the hard work on hundreds of other people testing a deck for them. They often times are the monthly warriors. They play in bigger events when they come by. Researching online during the down time.

2nd. The "I play legacy for fun player" This is where people play elves, enchantress, enduring renewal combo etc! They look online to get ideas for the decks that they already enjoy playing.

3rd. The "Competitive Player". How is this any different from the skilled player? This is the guy who plays in at least 1 legacy event every week. They understand the "LEGACY MATRIX"<-- New buzz words! You will lose to elves, random jank deck, random kid playing TES with only basics, and two colors because he can't afford duals. Legacy is a format that it's hard to recover if your deck stumbles. It's not standard, where you're playing the limited card pool and the top 2 decks are found and established. It's also not type 1 where the game turns on a dime.

Legacy Matrix is the grind of legacy games. You grind out wins, due to play skill, and card choice, and understanding your opponent and opponent's deck.

You're playing threshold, you sit down across from your opponent round 1. Keep a decent hand. Your opponent is playing elves. You sigh with relief. He plays some bland elves, you let them hit, cause your Tarmogoyf will hold them at bay. Then they play a wellwisher, you counter it because it's annoying. They play some more elves, and don't attack you when they can, clearly when they have the elf advantage. You counter another wellwisher. Then the staff of domination hits the board, and they go infinite on you. Guess what you lost the game. You go to game two. You feel even more confidant, It's elves, this deck is horrible you think. You bring in 175 cards of hate, just for this scrubby situation. You look at your first 7, and your mana light, you have to mull, you look at your second hand, and have 4 lands a daze, and a Tarmogoyf. If you keep you surely lose, due to your 1/2 goyf. You mull again, to 5 and get 2 lands, thoutseize, enginered plague, and a Ponder. You keep cause you have the hate. You thoughtsize him turn one. Take his timberwatch elf. He plays out some duders, you don't draw land #3 until turn 6. And you lose.

Thats right the Tier one deck, just lost to someone's little brother with his elf deck, that just got Priest of Titania he just saved up for.

Now take the same elf deck, put it in the hands of a 1800+ rated eternal player, and you'll get stomped. They will make the tweaks necessary to win. Ever played survival elves? Proxy it up. It can win turn 3, and wins reliably turn 4. I know why would you play such a bad deck. It has no disruption! It also avoids the main strategies that every other deck in the format uses. Making everyone else's deck useless!

Playing survival elves, is the same as playing Ichorid. You play the game in a way the format is not used too. You play 2x as many creatures as any other deck. You don't use the graveyard at all. Most of your spells you resolve are insignificant. Losing this elf or that elf, is irrelevant. You have two good draw engines, survival, and sylvan messenger. I know, I know, what about wrath of god, damnation, swords, fire/ice, lightning bolt etc. Caller of the Claw, not overextending, playing wirewood symbiote. You also get to run quirion ranger! You're wasteland proof!

Now this is just one example. This example can be made true for alot of decks. People see others playing a deck badly and assume that it's a bad deck. People also see others doing well with a deck and think it's the best deck.

There is more to magic than just the format. Take burn for instance. It's a deck that is easy to hate. Easy to play, easy to build, easy to win matches with. How often do you choose it as your big tournament deck? Hardly ever right? You can't stop combo, and are afraid of white weenie etc. It's not powerful enough.

This deck has an element that few other decks have in the format. Redundancy. How many times have you played against burn, and lived past turn 5. How many times have you gotten mana screwed, or mulligan to 5, or got the wrong mix of cards. All of those lead to a turn 5+ game. Against burn you just lost. Burn will operate at that rate 98% of the time. Take any other deck in the format, and at best you're looking at 60% the deck playing out optimally.

The fact that there is a tournament size for the DTB is stifling the format. The development of the format is coming from the lower end. You think getting all our data from the 40 tournaments a year that people choose the best net deck will lead to a better DTB database? Or the other 5000 tournaments played each year that could be submitted? Will a team of 10 people, be able to produce a well rounded deck once a year? You betcha. Will we appreciate that, yes. There are also other decks that are being refined every day. I wonna know when the random guy from some other random state, puts in that new elf in his deck that makes him win 3 tournaments in a row. I want it to be brought to my attention that the new card to make this deck work was printed, and fit in.

At the moment, we as a community evaluate the cards are they are printed, hardly tested. Once that set is no longer new it doesnt get tested. It's the weekend warriors, who keep that elf from two sets ago in their deck, and then this elf from this set, and between the two are making an unbeatable force, at their 15 person tournament. But we'll never get to hear about it. Sure does he run 16 4 casting cost elves, with no mana curve? Yep, but the interaction between a few cards are winning him games and the tech there is going untapped.


I'm tired of things being shot down. If a decklist is bad/deck is bad/ wont work in the current meta. Let the player decide. What do you care if I play 50 merfolks and 10 island.deck. You'll love to play against me for the free win right?

And remember. This is the only competitive tournament scene where someone complains about the other person being worse than them. Next we'll hear the tennis pro screaming about how unfair it is that his opponent is 95 years old. He's not used to the soft hitting of the ball and slow serves. It's making it difficult for him to return the ball!

Seriously people, as a 1900 rated eternal player who plays in a legacy event twice a week for the greater part of the last 4 years. Wake up. Realize that bad players, bad decks, and synergies will overcome your deck from time to time. Your deck will fall asleep on you. Also realize that you arn't putting in enough effort to pilot said bad deck. I'd wager than you yourself haven't played and tested elves, as much as the 37 different versions of threshold, you think are tech. You have an awesome understanding of how threshold plays out. You have a terrible understanding of how elves play out. You've only played against it, and your opponent didn't have the resources, or time put in or skill level. Don't tell me you've never sat across from an army of elves that could slaughter you if they attacked. But instead he was waiting for his combo.

Let the bad decks sink themselves, not another dude hating on a deck, that in turn makes the poster feel bad. Their random merfolk deck might be a disaster on the forum... They'll stop trying to make a new synergy. It's just easier to use someone elses. We then hit the point where we're at now. The people who are innovating, arn't coming here. Those who do come here, are hiding the innovation, on their team boards, to beat the rest of us who arn't innovating. We then copy that innovation, and drive it into the ground.

[Hightower]

Link?

No link yet, I'm afraid.. But I was there and I played him in the final round.

It looked like traditional Counter Slivers, with Hibernation - and no Mutavaults.. pretty straight.

[Dxfiler]

And remember. This is the only competitive tournament scene where someone complains about the other person being worse than them.

It sounds like someone's never played poker before :rolleyes:

Seriously though good points on the whole. People complain alot when they lose to decks they view as not sub-par. Complaining about those people complaining isn't going to change anything though :tongue:

Complaining is just part of the game like it or not. It's something that you're never going to escape and it's usually not a big deal... esp if you're the guy with the deck that people are complaining about. It's usually fun to hear the complaints then. :laugh:


- Dave

[fullgrip]

ok ok im the silly fuck who went top 4 with elves. i know there are flaws in the deck but i wasnt playing with the total card pool of choice. btw i do have an 1800 and sometimes pluss eternal rating. there are actually only 7 forests in the build only 17 lands. but the 3 sky shroud elite are the weak link. they will be replaced by the 4th q ranger the 4th heareld and the 2nd caller of the claw. the board remains the same with thorn as an option if i think the meta is combo heavy. my old build did run tity and staff but the fewer non elf cards the better so i eventually droped it. garuk is the nuts. in chicago i won a game with 2 e plagues on board by just making beasts. i have a decent game againts almost any deck. i used to run a one of pack master berofe i switched to collosus i might try to squeeze him back in somewhere. and even though there is no staff and i can only win by turning guys sideways, this does have a combo element to it. heritage goes with nettel sentinal, perfect and q ranger, heareld and caller, sylvan messenger and cards that say elf. ive drawn 8 cards on turn 2 before with a rather large G bomb awaiting on turn 3. btw and i havent lost a match 2 goblins after i took out staff. they really dont have much of an answer when i play a bunch o fucking dudes and draw a bunch o fucking cards on turn 2. i made a goblin player say his first turn lackey was too late. then game after next he felt the same way about aether vial. the only way he beat me one game was 2 sharpshooters in play. of course i have problems with challice but i have the answer in the board and sometimes i run v shaman out of the board. in place of needel. aside from challice, massive ld effects can get me also. mainly geddon and d dreams. but now with 4 q rangers, sink hole and thoes other spells dont bother me so much. i have a good chance at rebuilding befroe they do and killing them. not to mention this deck is kinda chep to build and preforms well against the curent meta. i saw one loam deck there and lost in 3.i probably had my most broken turn 2 against him game 2. i had 16 power in play and caller of the claw backup. he conceded at 19 life. i also lost to rw burn in top 4 because i drew nothing games 2 and 3. didnt see one jitte out of 2 games and 4 boarded in. not to mention he shouldnt have beat grindstone anyways. grindstone punted by conceding to a grunt he couldnt do anything abought when all he had to do was let kid resolve his grunt trigger and then grindstone him before draw. what a punt. but thats ok i would have probably beat him if i saw grindstone instead of chris. im glad another c.o.d. kid top 8ted mono green elf strom ftfw

[CoryWM]

It sounds like someone's never played poker before :rolleyes:

- Dave

I could be wrong, but i thought poker players welcome the thought of under skilled players. The "fish" I believe they call them. For the free easy money from tight correct plays. Even though the under skilled players are hard to read because of their misplays.

[xsockmonkeyx]

<3 fullgrip and CoryWM. Cory's post > mtgthesource.com

[Dxfiler]

I could be wrong, but i thought poker players welcome the thought of under skilled players. The "fish" I believe they call them. For the free easy money from tight correct plays. Even though the under skilled players are hard to read because of their misplays.

They don't welcome the 'fish' when they lose.

It's way worse in poker... this is coming from someone who spent a good part of the last year in brick and mortar casinos. You name it I've seen it. Cards thrown, chairs thrown, and in one case a person thrown :eek:

So yeah, people complaining in magic when they lose is kind of a drag... but it's nothing compared to people losing in poker.

If you've never played it, best advice I can possibly give is stay away. You don't want to turn into a degenerate... like me :tongue:

- Dave

[Nihil Credo]

CoryWM's post, minus the emo, reminds me a lot of the classic debate about what it means and what are the pros/cons of playing a rogue* deck. I'll refer you to Flores' 2004 article (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/6984.html) on the subject (one of his best, IMO), but I'd like to explicitly quote this part:


Rogue is good not because different is good, but because different wins. Rogue deck decisions are based on one thing, and one thing only: metagame predictions. There can be no rogue deck design outside the metagame, and the rewards for playing a rogue deck rarely occur when metagame predictions are not accurate.Which is the whole difference between playing Merfolk because you noticed that no-one runs Engineered Plague anymore, most manabases revolve around nonbasic Islands, and hitting 3cc with CounterTop is great; and playing Merfolk because you like the little blue guys and just hope you hit the right string of matchups to finally make Top 8. Or playing Burn because CounterTop and CoP: Red are nowhere to be seen and playing Burn because it's what your friend could lend you.

Or, in this particular case, between running Elves because Forestwalkers outrace Tarmogoyf and turn 2 Wirewood Herald is more scary for Pernicious Deed.dec than turn 1 Lackey; and running Elves because you have most of the deck from T2 and might as well run this side event too, huh?

Both situations can lead to a Top 8. But in one case, people will have to physically alter their decks to handle your attack, else you'll keep blazing through Swiss rounds; in the other, they'll just have to learn how your deck works and play correctly against it.



* if you say "rouge" I'll Stendhal your Balzac

[CoryWM]

CoryWM's post, minus the emo, reminds me a lot of the classic debate about what it means and what are the pros/cons of playing a rogue* deck. I'll refer you to Flores' 2004 article (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/6984.html) on the subject (one of his best, IMO), but I'd like to explicitly quote this part:

Which is the whole difference between playing Merfolk because you noticed that no-one runs Engineered Plague anymore, most manabases revolve around nonbasic Islands, and hitting 3cc with CounterTop is great; and playing Merfolk because you like the little blue guys and just hope you hit the right string of matchups to finally make Top 8. Or playing Burn because CounterTop and CoP: Red are nowhere to be seen and playing Burn because it's what your friend could lend you.

Or, in this particular case, between running Elves because Forestwalkers outrace Tarmogoyf and turn 2 Wirewood Herald is more scary for Pernicious Deed.dec than turn 1 Lackey; and running Elves because you have most of the deck from T2 and might as well run this side event too, huh?

Both situations can lead to a Top 8. But in one case, people will have to physically alter their decks to handle your attack, else you'll keep blazing through Swiss rounds; in the other, they'll just have to learn how your deck works and play correctly against it.

* if you say "rouge" I'll Stendhal your Balzac

Lets be clear, I'm not saying that a random merfolk deck is good very often, if ever. it was merely a bad example I could come up with to demonstrate the point.

However, I do feel that you have illustrated my point perfectly on the deck hating part of my post. Every deck that is new and wins tournaments is rogue. Until it puts up results. Just look at some of the threshold builds, wastelands + stifles, + 3 or 4 colors etc. On paper this deck gets shot down. If I was to post that list a year ago, people would pick it apart, saying the manabase is too shaky etc. Fast forward to a major tournament, where a team puts a few into the Top 8 with the deck. All of a sudden it's the new Deck to beat.

We've shifted the entire forum to. " I know you think the deck is good, but until you prove it, you're wrong."

Look at another real life example, of our current situation. Take the medical field. We're looking all kinds of cures for all kinds of diseases.

In reality. the "experts" hardly ever come up with the cure, even though they're working on it 24/7 for years. It's the random guy in a lab with no recognition, that makes the breakthrough. He finds that you can do something, that doesnt cure the disease, but puts the experts one step closer to understanding what is needed to cure the disease.

This is because your mind becomes one track, why would it want to work harder? If you see a pattern, you check your memory to see if it's right or wrong. You don't analyze data where you know the answer already.

We need fresh eyes. Ones that don't know the patterns. So that they will test results, we feel we already know.

Am I gonna use my play test time to test merfolk? Probably not, I haven't noticed anything game breaking being added to them. It's not my pet deck, so I don't have it laying around either. This story repeated throughout all of us, is why this deck doesn't advance.

How about we have a first place tracking thread, to promote other DTW up to the DTB database. That way, the players in these smaller tournaments, have a reason to contribute. Right now as a community, we're saying, if you don't play in a 30 plus tournament, we don't care what you think.

There's so much data, not being mined from the tournaments we're already playing. Will the one good player in his 10 person tournament show up and win with burn, and win 10 weeks in a row? Sure. It'll skew the results? Sure it will. But I think the good players will be able to take in the DTW results in with a grain of salt. Much like we do now.

[Nihil Credo]

Lets be clear, I'm not saying that a random merfolk deck is good very often, if ever. it was merely a bad example I could come up with to demonstrate the point.

Heh, I actually didn't notice that you'd mentioned "50 merfolk 10 Islands.dec". I brought up Merfolk because I actually think it's got some serious potential as a metagame deck right now.


We've shifted the entire forum to. " I know you think the deck is good, but until you prove it, you're wrong."Well, I don't think you're suggesting that anyone else should prove it, right? Or that we should assume the deck is good unless it scrubs out 5+ times in a month?

Each of us spends some time testing those decks that just strike his fancy, and some more time testing those decks that may not be as intriguing but that show potential.

You need some criteria to pick which decks to devote the latter category of time to. Tournament results are a fine one. Sound arguments in favour of the deck (whether you yourself came up with them, or they were posted by somebody else) are another. Do you know of better ones? 'Cause I don't.

By the way, bringing up the medical field, or any other serious work, is irrelevant. Those people's research have important consequences and they're being paid for it, so even a 1% chance of coming up with a new development can be worth pursuing. Playing Legacy is a hobby, so the threshold is much, much higher.


How about we have a first place tracking thread, to promote other DTW up to the DTB database. That way, the players in these smaller tournaments, have a reason to contribute. Right now as a community, we're saying, if you don't play in a 30 plus tournament, we don't care what you think.

There's so much data, not being mined from the tournaments we're already playing. Will the one good player in his 10 person tournament show up and win with burn, and win 10 weeks in a row? Sure. It'll skew the results? Sure it will. But I think the good players will be able to take in the DTW results in with a grain of salt. Much like we do now.I think you misunderstood the reason behind the 33+ players cut.

It's not that we think that player quantity = player quality; Japan has large tournaments yet their decks mostly suck (not in the "unusual" type of suck, in the "running Goblin Chariot" type of suck). It's that a deck making Top 8 in a six-round tournament must have won at least four matches in a day, which is less likely to be a product of sheer luck.

[CoryWM]

Heh, I actually didn't notice that you'd mentioned "50 merfolk 10 Islands.dec". I brought up Merfolk because I actually think it's got some serious potential as a metagame deck right now.

Well, I don't think you're suggesting that anyone else should prove it, right? Or that we should assume the deck is good unless it scrubs out 5+ times in a month?

Each of us spends some time testing those decks that just strike his fancy, and some more time testing those decks that may not be as intriguing but that show potential.

You need some criteria to pick which decks to devote the latter category of time to. Tournament results are a fine one. Sound arguments in favour of the deck (whether you yourself came up with them, or they were posted by somebody else) are another. Do you know of better ones? 'Cause I don't.

By the way, bringing up the medical field, or any other serious work, is irrelevant. Those people's research have important consequences and they're being paid for it, so even a 1% chance of coming up with a new development can be worth pursuing. Playing Legacy is a hobby, so the threshold is much, much higher.

I think you misunderstood the reason behind the 33+ players cut.

It's not that we think that player quantity = player quality; Japan has large tournaments yet their decks mostly suck (not in the "unusual" type of suck, in the "running Goblin Chariot" type of suck). It's that a deck making Top 8 in a six-round tournament must have won at least four matches in a day, which is less likely to be a product of sheer luck.

I don't think I conveyed my message clearly here. When I mean proving the deck. I was also thinking about how hard it is to prove a deck. Even if you pioneered the threshold deck. It would be hard to prove it. You have to play in a 33+ person tournament, and make top 8, without any fine tuning. As we see here, after a year of tweaking, threshold still didn't make top 8 at this tournament. Now imagine you're pioneering the deck, and didn't make top 8, at this point you might abandon it, due to not being able to prove it. More over the help you're trying to seek, wants proof it works before helping.

As for suboptimal lists winning tournaments. This intrigues me more than others I guess. When i see a guy win a tournament with goblins running goblin chariot. I instantly think, the deck must be strong, he's winning the tournament, when the deck isn't even optimized. I could replace those cards and do even better! However not seeing the deck at all, I think that it isn't placing anywhere, and is outdated and done for.

I think we could loosen the grip on what data we allow in. It's not hard to see what the Top 8 decks played against, and make your own judgment accordingly.

I guess my bottom line is. Even if you have revolutionary tech, the best deck, and make no play mistakes at a 33+ tournament. You can still lose, and not "prove" your deck. It's much easier to put up results, in a 15-20 man tournament. Over the coarse of a month or so. Where you place 1-3rd every week. Besides observing something over a longer time period is better than a 1 time event.

I'm not saying I have the best ideas to open it up more. However I do think someone can come up with something better. Maybe the requirement is, 10 match wins, vs 1800+ eternal player playing a tier 1 deck.

[Nihil Credo]

Maybe indeed. Collecting pairings and ratings statistics is unfortunately beyond anyone but the DCI itself's data-mining abilities. However, on a case-by-case basis, if you put up a new thread in N&D with a notice that says "PERFORMANCE: Has won 19 out of 26 matches against opponents with average Eternal rating of 1814", or something like that, I'm pretty sure people would take notice, and for that matter it would help speed up the thread's promotion to Established.

[aTn]

Any links for the Top8 lists ? Sorry if this was posted on another page or thread.

[DireLemming]

Any links for the Top8 lists ? Sorry if this was posted on another page or thread.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/features/472adecklists

[aTn]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/features/472adecklists

Thanks a lot.

[iOWN]

Does anyone know the full t8s for the two prelims?

[MULocke]

Does anyone know the full t8s for the two prelims?

I don't know for sure, but I remember most for the first (10:00 am) prelim. This is what I've got:

2 UGr Thrash (one was me)
1 Enchantress (I remember the player, not the deck too well...)
2 Goblins (at least one Rgb)
1 UW Landstill w/ scepters and chants
1 Ugb(w?) Landstill
1 Unknown

[fullgrip]

they fucked up the order of the top 8 on the wizards website. slivers won and chris did get 2nd, but me and grindstone guy should be three and 4. dragon stompie lost to me first round of top 8. i think wizards is ashamed of me and probably realized they fuck up in trying to offset the power of blue with all the green creatures u could dream of, and might be trying to down play my deck. mono green elves isnt my first choice in my local tourneys, because the local meta has adjusted to the fact i might be there with that stupid green deck, and also because i won my last 3 tourneys in a row there playing rw loam. but my big tourney deck is gonna be elves because i finish matches, i dont draw games like a stalled out blue deck can. and if you are going to play 7 matches you might as well play something that will finish with enough time to relax between rounds. 7 rounds isnt easy. plus who has any good hate for this build. people will be scared of the big decks that every one thought would be there in force.

[voltron00x]

Ahem, um actually I came in 3rd. You're right about the order being screwed up - basically that list is the top 8 in no particular order.

I was in 2nd after the Swiss and lost in the Semis to Blake after beating the FaeStill deck in the Quarters... definitely came in 3rd place. I have the uncut antiquities sheet to prove it.

[fullgrip]

yep. i took a picture then, i sold mine asap because its almost useless to me. but i got a twister for it.