What Should I Play In My Metagame?

[Bongo]

Getting back into Legacy, starting from scratch again. Sadly I'm on a pretty tight budget.

-> Burn or Manaless Dredge?

Or is there any other deck under 200$ that is competitive? If needed I can also shell out 300$.

[Vastros]

Mana less. You will get hated out but it's more fun than burn


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[LDX]

I'm looking for a Storm deck, I'm hesitating between ANT and TES.

I prefer the ANT colors, I just generally love blue/black combos. I'm naturally attracted to the deck because of it.

But then, I heard TES is a stricly better deck. I know most of the differences between the two but it seems the power level of TES is just overall superior. Is that true? Should I lean toward this version?

[Matsaya]

At the last tournament (~2 months ago) the metagame was the following :
35 players :
- Jund x7
- Elfes x2
- BUG Delver x2
- Sneak Show x2
- BURG Delver x2
- Reanimator x2
- Burn x2
- Stoneblade x1
- Rock x1
- Eldrazi Ramp x1
- Esperblade x1
- Patriot x1
- Deathblade x1
- Junk Pox x1
- Storm x1
- Junk Depths x1
- Affinity x1
- BUG Cascade x1
- RUG Delver x1
- Miracle x1
- Pox x1
- Merfolks x1
- Oops all spells x1

With 3 jund in the top8.

What should I play, knowing that this time we will be 50 and thus the metagame possibly different.
I really like to play imperial painter or Death&Taxes (both classic and ghost-quarter version), but I'm not sure they will shine in such an environment.
On the other hand, maybe it is a good idea to beat on less Jund this time ...

Thanks

[ORDAL]

Hello, I'm new in the forum and I had never written before now. First of all sorry for my bad English.
Im European Legacy player and i thought about doing this quiz for a little local tournament (around 45/50 people no proxy), because I had no idea which deck to choose and i think can be fun. Looking at the list of pre-registered, (because I know most of the people) we can make a hypothesis about what will be the meta of the tournament.

Each deck has a sign for every person that I believe will pick that deck

O = Very Propable
X = Probable


ANT O

BANT X

BUG DELVER O O X X

BUG SHARDLESS X

BURN X

DEATH AND TAXES O O X

DEATHBLADE O O O

ELVES O O X

GOBLINS X

JUND O X

LANDS X

MERFOLKS O X

MIRACLE O O O X

NIC FIT X

OMNITELL O

PATRIOTS O X

POD X

SNEAK ATTACK O

THOPTERS X X

THRESHOLD RUG O

you can choose most of the decks in the current meta, I will test the deck chosen to week, and next Monday I'll tell you how it went.

Thanks to all

[Megadeus]

Imperial Painter seems strong. Blood Mooning is never bad.

[Matsaya]

Thanks for the advice.

[undone]

Which one is better positioned in the metagame?

[Secretly.A.Bee]

They're fairly different in spite of a lot of the card choices being the same. Delver tends to be a strictly tempo oriented build while Shardless is much more of a midrange deck, boasting a higher creature count and a different way (cascade + visions vs. Small tempo gains in delver) of gaining card and board advantage. I believe that both are acceptable choices, and your success will be based on your playing ability rather than your build. That said, I like Delver better because I feel I have more control of how and where I gain my advantages, whereas a cascade can make or break a game and it's simply based on the luck of the flip. I also dislike visions, because it is much worse as a topdeck than as a cascade hit, and basically becomes a dead draw.

Tl;dr Summary is i prefer BUG Delver.

Edit: I didn't mention it but Shardless BUG tanks to have the better miracles matchup of the two, if that makes any difference.

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[wcm8]

Depends on local expecations:

More control and midrange decks -- Shardless BUG
More combo and tempo -- BUG Delver

They are both capable of shoring up poor matchups with the help of the sideboard. Either choice would be fine. In fact, I think these are the best overall decks in Legacy at the moment.

If they get paired against each other, generally Shardless has a slight edge but TA is still easily capable of winning this matchup.

[Megadeus]

Does Shardless play 4 Wastelands? I would play whichever one plays 4 wastelands.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Depends on local expecations:

More control and midrange decks -- Shardless BUG
More combo and tempo -- BUG Delver

They are both capable of shoring up poor matchups with the help of the sideboard. Either choice would be fine. In fact, I think these are the best overall decks in Legacy at the moment.

If they get paired against each other, generally Shardless has a slight edge but TA is still easily capable of winning this matchup.

Shardless shits on tempo, decks with daze and spell pierce match up poorly against visions

Shardless is prolly better positioned, it's combo mu is worse but the meddling Mage tech lejay has been advocating is legit (people also do not expect it) and generally beats the same decks you'd want team to beat

[GoblinZ]

Does Shardless play 4 Wastelands? I would play whichever one plays 4 wastelands.

I think usually they play 2-3 wastelands, shardless is much more mana hungry than Team America.

[Tormod]

I run 3 wasteland and 2 tarpit in Shardless

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Shardless shits on tempo, decks with daze and spell pierce match up poorly against visions

Stifle is Canadians friend... ;)

I'm like 40:60 against Shardless BUG. But yeah, we don't have any dedicated ShBUG player in our lgs and I don't play anything else than Thresh for nearly a year. (And yes, I got some previous experiences with the deck.) Knowing what, when and why to do against the deck is quite powerful. Once there will be a player sitting against me that does know the same, I think I'll drop to 3:7. And I play the 2/2/2 SS/SP/FB version, maybe the 8 Bolts would fare better.

Most of my wins against ShBUG were the usual Stifle+Waste openings that left the opponent without (one color of) mana and thus my creatures roamed free for long enough to make his CA not matter. As long as my Delvers may get through, I don't care if he just Shardlessed into AV, esp. If I got Lightning/Forked Bolt for the blocker. Then when my creatures stop to matter, I throw them into the desperate alpha strike and try to finish the dude with any leftover burn. Sometimes it works; a little bit more often it doesn't.

I cannot comment on any other ShBug vs. Tempo matchups, as I don't own any other tempo deck then Thresh Can. But I'd expect that the deck with lots of cheap removal and cheap draw and cheap deathtouch owls will own any tempo pile, no matter the exact color combination.

[Grand Superior]

Depends on local expecations:

More control and midrange decks -- Shardless BUG
More combo and tempo -- BUG Delver

They are both capable of shoring up poor matchups with the help of the sideboard. Either choice would be fine. In fact, I think these are the best overall decks in Legacy at the moment.

If they get paired against each other, generally Shardless has a slight edge but TA is still easily capable of winning this matchup.

This.

Just think of Shardless BUG as a BUG version of Jund and Team America/BUG Delver as a BUG version of Canadian Threshold/RUG Delver. They play out in similar fashion and are good against most of the same matchups as Jund/RUG are, respectively. The main difference is that Shardless BUG is better against combo but is worse against creature strategies than Jund (due to Shardless BUG having counterspells but lacking Punishing Fire) and Team America is better against midrange but is worse against combo than Canadian Threshold (due to Team America having the BG package but lacking the streamlined tempo package that Canadian Threshold has).

Essentially, the BUG colours give each deck a bit more versatility against other decks, but they give up percentage points against the matchups that their respective archetypes typically dominate.

I'd honestly try to get the cards for both. They share most of the expensive cards (BUG duals, BUG fetchlands, Wasteland, Tarmogoyf, Force of Will. Only Jace TMS in Shardless BUG is expensive and unique to one deck) and you can easily switch to one or the other depending on meta expectations.

[infiniteJ]

Miracles, BUG Delver, and Esper Blade are some of the most popular decks. Shardless BUG has a very positive matchup across that range. Shardless has less free wins (like daze wasteland delver, hymn blowouts) and is weaker vs combo than Team America. Your matchups become more polarized (in a good way imo): more byes, more tough matchups (dodge bloodmoon). That said, being in BUG colors means you always stand a fighting chance because of your flexible answers and sideboard.

Team America is more rounded, and is a great deck-I played it for around a year,at GP DC and a few opens to above avg finishes- but the deck is not without flaws. Without lightning bolt, a delver alone will often not get there vs controlling decks. The delver itself is harder to protect without spell pierce, and the dazes you have become dead in the mid late game without stifle. I found trying to protect the delver in TA to be a trap strategy (it was one that worked very well when I used to play RUG). After playing the deck for a long time, and wishing every delver opening was just deathrite instead (and losing because I opened on delver instead of deathrite numerous times) I came to realize that delver was the worst card in the deck. I also found I was slowly upping the number of lillianas. Despite my frustration with it, delver felt necessary because the deck was threat light in the long game.

The obvious answer was to drop delver and with it daze, and switch to shardless bug. I tried the Prosak BUG control list a few times, and it's also a decent choice. I prefer Shardless BUG.

[FortyThree]

Miracles, BUG Delver, and Esper Blade are some of the most popular decks. Shardless BUG has a very positive matchup across that range. Shardless has less free wins (like daze wasteland delver, hymn blowouts) and is weaker vs combo than Team America. Your matchups become more polarized (in a good way imo): more byes, more tough matchups (dodge bloodmoon). That said, being in BUG colors means you always stand a fighting chance because of your flexible answers and sideboard.

Team America is more rounded, and is a great deck-I played it for around a year,at GP DC and a few opens to above avg finishes- but the deck is not without flaws. Without lightning bolt, a delver alone will often not get there vs controlling decks. The delver itself is harder to protect without spell pierce, and the dazes you have become dead in the mid late game without stifle. I found trying to protect the delver in TA to be a trap strategy (it was one that worked very well when I used to play RUG). After playing the deck for a long time, and wishing every delver opening was just deathrite instead (and losing because I opened on delver instead of deathrite numerous times) I came to realize that delver was the worst card in the deck. I also found I was slowly upping the number of lillianas. Despite my frustration with it, delver felt necessary because the deck was threat light in the long game.

The obvious answer was to drop delver and with it daze, and switch to shardless bug. I tried the Prosak BUG control list a few times, and it's also a decent choice. I prefer Shardless BUG.

I have nothing to add about Shardless vs Team America, but I just wanted to let you know that this was a very good and well-thought-out post. Thanks for that!

That is all =)

[Megadeus]

I met a guy at SCG Knoxville who had come to a similar about delver in TA. He ended up dropping delver for TNNs, upped the land count a bit and such, but still played a tempoish shell. Deck seemed solid. At least he crushed me anyway

[btm10]

Miracles, BUG Delver, and Esper Blade are some of the most popular decks. Shardless BUG has a very positive matchup across that range. Shardless has less free wins (like daze wasteland delver, hymn blowouts) and is weaker vs combo than Team America. Your matchups become more polarized (in a good way imo): more byes, more tough matchups (dodge bloodmoon). That said, being in BUG colors means you always stand a fighting chance because of your flexible answers and sideboard.

Team America is more rounded, and is a great deck-I played it for around a year,at GP DC and a few opens to above avg finishes- but the deck is not without flaws. Without lightning bolt, a delver alone will often not get there vs controlling decks. The delver itself is harder to protect without spell pierce, and the dazes you have become dead in the mid late game without stifle. I found trying to protect the delver in TA to be a trap strategy (it was one that worked very well when I used to play RUG). After playing the deck for a long time, and wishing every delver opening was just deathrite instead (and losing because I opened on delver instead of deathrite numerous times) I came to realize that delver was the worst card in the deck. I also found I was slowly upping the number of lillianas. Despite my frustration with it, delver felt necessary because the deck was threat light in the long game.

The obvious answer was to drop delver and with it daze, and switch to shardless bug. I tried the Prosak BUG control list a few times, and it's also a decent choice. I prefer Shardless BUG.

I think this is basically the story. I've also played all three BUG lists, and found that TA/Delver didn't suit my playstyle at all, but came to the opposite conclusion about Shardless vs. BUG Control. If you're into playing and swinging with creatures, Shardless is better than Control, and it has way more blowout matchups because of how absurdly powerful some of its cascades can be. The downside to that is that, as has been pointed out, you sometimes just don't cascade into what you need. The more recent iterations of Shardless seem to have shored that up a little with Sylvan Library, but it's still subject to randomly not getting what it needs. The control list has less in the way of card draw, but it does get to run Spell Pierce and potentially Counterspell so it's got a stronger combo matchup.