Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Well, I think Top was likely right in the grand scheme of things, but the Deathrite ban is a poor, poor precedent. For the first time, I actually dread Wizard's announcement, since the ideological precedent they set there is very dangerous to the idea of Legacy itself, akin to what they do in culling the top Modern decks from time to time. I think it's fine for Modern, because that is part and parcel of Modern from the get-go. It never was, nor should it ever be part of Legacy.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
From this it sounds like you have the general view of "Legacy should exhibit the most powerful strategies available to MTGs entire card pool" which implies a sort of "don't ban anything" philosophy. Can you articulate why you think DRS shouldn't have been banned but the top ban was ok?Well, I think Top was likely right in the grand scheme of things, but the Deathrite ban is a poor, poor precedent. For the first time, I actually dread Wizard's announcement, since the ideological precedent they set there is very dangerous to the idea of Legacy itself, akin to what they do in culling the top Modern decks from time to time. I think it's fine for Modern, because that is part and parcel of Modern from the get-go. It never was, nor should it ever be part of Legacy.
You can still play Nic Fit now if you want, it's just as competitive as it's ever been (i.e. not very) and in fact Caleb just recently 5-0d a legacy league playing battle of wits, of all things. This complaint is blatant nostalgia-piningIt's just a frustration that the format feels stagnant and while legacy is a slow shifting format it feels to me that the format only gets smaller and smaller in terms of diversity which is what drew me and many others to it in the first place. I remember reading Durwards Nic Fit articles and loving the deck. I remember seeing really cool painter decks and a maverick deck with multiple tool boxes built in and a 4 color lands deck that has a million different tools to fight any situation. Even the tempo decks were cool because they got to use a card like stifle to pair with wasteland to mana screw people. I'm just disappointed that the format has moved away from cool innovation and interesting deck building choices to being "if you want to win 12 of your cards have already been chosen for you now just go figure out what cards you want to kill with".
There isn't any way to prove the following assertion, but I would put money on the fact that if he has less viewer interest playing legacy than modern it's because the modern fanbase is much larger, because the format is more accessible, not because the gameplay in legacy is less interestingLegacy has so boring gameplay from a viewers perspective he doesnt even play it. (because he is rarely playing tiers)
Here is something that you say:I'll repeat why I think you're wrong here. The purpose of the analogy was to explain why someone who wants to make a change to X may not be interested in Y. In more general terms, the purpose of the analogy is to illustrate another situation where the same relation between X and Y appears.
"I believe, is that banning Brainstorm would be a giant leap in the direction of flattening out the dense concentration of decks that build their consistency mainly on Brainstorm. It is by far the most powerful consistency tool."
I claim that what you want (an eternal format without dominant consistency tools) already exists - modern. (Analogy: "You can buy a car with a stereo - Volvo")
In your car analogy you attempt to counter this suggestion with "I don't want a volvo, I want a Ferrari with a stereo". Therefore, for this analogy to work:
1) You need to explain what legacy without brainstorm uniquely offers that can't be found in modern. (It's trivial to to explain what a Ferrari with a stereo offers that you can't get with a Volvo, don't assume that brainstorm-less legacy has the same obvious unique appeal)
2) You aren't only asking for your own Ferrari to have a stereo, but for everyone's Ferrari to have a stereo, so you need to justify that your desire for Ferraris to have stereos is so correct that it's right to install a stereo in everyone's Ferrari, many of whom don't want a stereo and like their Ferrari specificlly because it doesn't have a stereo in it (e.g. other manufacturers don't offer a performance vehicle without extraneous technological luxuries, other formats don't have brainstorm + fetchlands)
LOL
You do realize you are completely misrepresenting it. Actually it was more like:
Dice: blue dominance, therefore metagame sucks, therefore I'll go play modern
Me: goodbye
He: don't you dare deny that legacy is too expensive and too many people are abandoning the format!
LOL again, what a kind of non sequitur!
It's a conversation like "can you tell me what time is it?" "sure, my favorite color is yellow (I hate blue of course)"
As for GP Richmond numbers, one occurrence doesn't mean anything. Maybe wizards should stop be so USA-centric, plan a couple GP less in America and a couple more GP legacy in Europe.
Oh no, you start being serious just about when I was going to suggest wizards should not ban Brainstorm nor fetchland but should indeed ban those fetches that let you find a basic island.
Seriously, I had a laugh at you above but you have good points here. I'm afraid we can't do much about the aging issue and those are the major thing, not people dissatisfied with the format. But there's hope, in my city the legacy community is actually growing, we even have people with kids who is starting playing again. Something we can do is organize playing with proxy for younger people and letting them borrow what they lack for the real tournaments. We are having some new players in this way.
I disagree with the part where the format would be narrowing. We just had an almost new introduction in the metagame (death shadow), one that incidentally addresses also some of the money issues letting you play with shocklands and less Abu duals.
Modern players could come into legacy with Humans.deck. It already made some appearances and I expect it to become at least tier 1.5 in a couple of months, as the new death and taxes.
Agree with almost everything except maybe the TL;DR
OH! And the answer is Brainstorm of course
Isn't this premodern already?
You're absolutely correct here, and this is precisely the reason I quit Modern—probably for good.
Witnessed an interesting conversation the other week, in which one of the participants argued that any card with ≥40% metagame penetration (whatever the hell that means) should be banned. I'd say "Discuss," but given the tenor of his arguments for such a proposition (and the obvious consequences of such an approach that we can predict with certainty), it'd probably be better if we didn't.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
If I heard correctly the GP richmond legacy still had higher participation than GP richmond standard
OK, well, allow me to preface this by saying I do not believe in Dataism, or in this case, we can say succinctly that decisions should be solely (or even mostly) data driven. As in, it isn't simply numerical prevalence that should inform Banned and Restricted decisions. Indeed, I do believe generally speaking Wizards does conform to this ideal for Legacy and Vintage, although how much relative weight they give to it I don't know. That being said, data is important in formulating a reasonable "picture" of the metagame. As are other considerations.
Now, why would Top be a reasonable ban, where Deathrite, in my opinion, was not? Well, first, I did not advocate specifically for a Top ban before it happened. Simply though, I did feel that Miracles (the deck itself) was too "good" in the meta and that the meta was not aptly able to self-correct itself. I do recall mentioning that part of that issue was with how Sensei's Diving Top was designed, as in, it was relatively uniquely difficult to simultaneously defeat while not unduly harming other other matchups. In this way, where we found ourselves, in a perception of the metagame sense, was that Miracles was the "best deck" and so BUG was the defacto "best" way to defeat it. Again, not analytically true, per se, but perceptually true in that this is how it seemed and was not demonstrably untrue.
A monentary aside, I do not believe in "no Ban action for Legacy." Rather, I believe in minimal Ban actions. So, if, as we had in the case of the pre-Top Ban era, the perception of Miracles being the "best deck" and so then the format slowly devolving into Deck vs. counter-Deck(s). This is not what I would call "good." Now, is that the exact road we were on? It is hard to say, but perceptually it seemed that way. Analytically? Very debatable.
I do believe though, that Top's design was obnoxiously good. The cards needed to effectively fight it were not widely playable enough to warrant playing in the numbers that would need to effectively fight the Miracles deck and not simultaneously harm one against the wider meta. Therefor one was not particularly capable (in general) of making a deck simultaneously positive matchup-wise versus Miracles and versus the majority of the meta. So, in this case, we default to one of the fundamental tenets of the Magic metagame: that it is better to just do the thing than try to stop people from doing the thing. This is where things get degenerative. This means that in general, the metagame would slide more toward Miracles as people give up fighting it and just start playing it. This is essentially what happened in the case of Survival of the Fittest, where the European meta did not devolve, but the American one did. Why? Well, it was perceptual not analytical. Americans perceived that the fundamental tenet was at play, where the Europeans did not. Was Survival ban worthy though? Yes, even if it was only too powerful perceptually. The question of if the meta could have eventually self-corrected to Survival is a valid question that I don't know the answer to though.
Miracles found itself in the same sort of position. Except Miracles was given a far longer run (rightly). The metagame never self-corrected though. Whether this is due to people invoking the tenet of "just play it" or there being a lack of adequate tools to fight it is largely irrelevant. The fact is, there was no way to (seemingly) break up Miracles "dominance" (that is, the perception that it was simply the best deck).
This largely would have been incidental, were it not for the fact that Top, by virtue of it's absurd design was also a time sink and detrimental in the long term of design space. To spice it, I doubt if Wizards was outright lying in saying that time considerations were a part, but certainly misleading in how much of a consideration that actually was. All these things, that is: Miracles dominance over a long span of time, the perceptual fact of Miracles being labeled "the best deck" and it's over-the-top design were all nails in the coffin. So, how does this differ from the case of Deathrite?
So, similarly, Deathrite enjoyed widespread play (even more so than Top) and great results. It was even a part of the so proclaimed "best deck in Legacy" (which, incidentally is what I am sure got in banned). The difference however, is that Deathrite was not a driving force toward any deck's dominance. Simply, it was the best available card one could be played in what was the best shell. That is to say, Deathrite Shaman did not make Grixis the "best" deck, which is actually post-facto information borne out now, but it was my intuition back then too. What Deathrite did do, was to make BUG in the neighborhood of Grixis, which is now, sadly, not the case. Deathrite also went a good distance toward making Snapcaster less of the defacto best creature, generally, which ironically enough is exactly what happened for a good portion of time in Modern post-Deathrite.
There were few decks that could not, using maindeck cards, fight off Deathrite. Not that Deathrite wasn't very good. It was, it was the Brainstorm of utility creatures, exceedingly good. And it was highly played because of that. But, like Brainstorm, it did not, in a manner, promote one deck to the detriment of others, or any given strategy over others. It's a nuance thing, but that is my point, these decisions are all nuance. Analytically, Brainstorm should be banned. Except it isn't. Deathrite lay in that category to me.
I disagreed at the time and to me, the results and feel of the format only bore out that Deathrite's influence on the meta was a net-positive. Grixis was an ideal choice preban (just so happened to also have a tiny Green splash) and now it still is. Except now Delve creatures are even better than they already were, as is Snapcaster. Where did we get to? It's flatly regressive.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
My point was that your comment makes no sense. Cheering at others dissatisfaction does not help the format itself. So no, he got it pitty much right.
Also the whole "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" attitude amuses me. Because it's not like I personally have anything to lose sleeving up decks in other formats. I just wish the format I enjoyed the most was this one. It's not.
I have said in the past both everything I have said above and that I no longer discuss Brainstorm. So if you want to suggest anything about Brainstorm be my guest, but I will not converse on that topic. No point. My views are known and Wizards has confirmed its a pillar. Why waste my time? It's not like my views are secret.
Also I have never suggested the removal of Fetches. Ever.
Yea, you where being a dick, I noticed. But hey, it's the internet. At least your not an idiot so you have one up on Reddit posters.
As for dissatisfaction. Feline is basicly gone, Einherjer is not really seen anymkre, Megadeus was agreeing with the stagnant nature of the format last page. Slowly, the old guard are fading away. Not for the same individual reasons, we haven't all gotten together to throw a wake for legacy for example, but each individually for our own reasons. Some of it was specialisions in decks that are no longer viable, others it's stagnation of the format. I seem to hear more often that Legacy is about drinking beer then playing games. God I wish I lived in Texas sometimes. Not just for Legacy but still.
But hey, let's all sit around in a circle and talk our feelings out. It's not like remembering what we have lost isn't as depressing as fuck. Oh wait. I need a beer.
I have, as you know being in the Lands Channel, not wanted DRS gone over other more egregious (imo) creatures. So what do you label those of us who held this view months before the ban?
Do a thought experiment where every one of those cards is banned every month. How long do you think it would take to arrive at a format where there are only literal Grizzly Bears legal?
It's an absurd proposition that is a race to the bottom (which you allude to). It's why a data-only driven model is certainly a poor implementation if your intent is to have a sustainable format. See my post above for my expanded views.
It's been more than a month, pretty sure it's been two. But I said it before the ban and I'll still say it now, until something demonstrates to me otherwise.
Don't imagine I am the kind of person to not change my mind when presented with reasonable cases. Once upon a not so long time ago, I was even a post-Modernist like most everyone else here. But I realized it was a trap. And so I changed my position.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
*checks calendar* huh, guess I should cut back on the rum then. That said, I think it's a matter of perspective
You certainly aren't wrong, however, it homogenized the format tactically. Strategically the format was very diverse, except all the games played out the same way. Almost every deck went underground sea>ponder, or underground sea>deathrite shaman. While games certainly ended differently (be it, getting beat to death via delver, exceedingly large walking ballista, the same parasitic strix cast multiple times, etc), how they got there was exceedingly similar.Originally Posted by H
Misguided. DRS made cards like Leovold and your favorite merfolk much more castable than they would otherwise. Turn 3 TNN/Leo is much easier to handle than turn 2. True Name still sees play, but Leovold has almost disappeared from the format.
Admittedly this is only a couple of months out and Legacy moves at a snails pace so that is liable to change in a year.
Nah, lay it on man.
But you are absolutely correct. It is a matter of perspective. Because what inevitably does define Legacy is not set in any sort of stone. I don't preface all that I wrote above with the fact that it is solely my opinion, but it indeed is.
Indeed a fact. However, minus Deathrite, we've extingiushed that line, but not the root cause of it. Delver decks are still a thing, just in non-BUG colors. Food Chain and Alluren are simply not particularly competitive things now, seemingly. So, in reality, we actually have less diversity, if we look at it this way. Which is to say, really, that this is also a matter of perception.
I can't pretend that Leovold was probably a good idea to print, as is. However it still then saddens me to have lost Deathrite for keeping TNN/Leovold (which are, by my arbitrary metric, more degenerate and less of a positive for the format) then. Your second point though is what I point out though, that there is very little upside now to splashing Green over Red, which is why you see so few Leovold around. Simply, without Deathrite, Green has very little to offer, so the format now homogenizes around Grixis, since the pay-off of Red is better, for 'Blasts and Bolt. Again, you are correct that the format homogenized around Deathrite, but now it just homogenizes around the next best option, so where have we really gotten? Time will tell, I guess.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Mine was exactly the same. I simply chose, for once, not spending too many words in mocking your whining.
It's not like that specific post of yours was particularly rich in content, it was just you crying and complaining. On the contrary, after me being a dick, you immediately spent a few words more and made a very interesting meditation.
Wait. Are those pillars of the legacy community worldwide? USA wide? The legacy is dead if they are gone? OHHHHH MY GOOOOD
So sorry for you guys. But if instead you are referring to TheSource users, and that means that THE FORUM is dying, well, good luck have fun to you all and goodbye.
It just so it happens that in Italy the forum dedicated to eternal died three years ago (by the way I suspect Ehineriar came here from there when that one closed), and the legacy scene is still alive and kicking. Try to understand the difference between the forum and the format, the internet and the real life. And while you're there, as I already said, try to understand USA is not the fucking center of the world.
Regards.
I am talking about the format, not the site. I would be shocked if about 70% of Legacy based communication is not done though Facebook/Discord/other direct points of contact these days. (The rest on Twitter, Reddit or other public facing sites.) Facebook itself is so omnipresent now that there is no longer dedicated Aus eternal forums any more. I'm not complaining about that, it's the way of the internet now.
Also you say "Whining" I say answering a question asked.
Question: Hey, why ain't you all bitching about this T16 finish.
Answer: Becouse it wasn't news and Legacy is ecpected to be stale. You all already knew that and why.
You: You where whining.
Me: Nope, just answered a question about why I didn't bother to bitch about a T16 with 13 decks that all are built around the same ideal and thus are not shockingly unexpected in the T16.
You: Hey you said something else.
Me: Nope, still just rehashing old shit that I have said before.
I like to think that the most important thing I do is is fail to update the DTB correctly, not converse over this shit. But hey, who knows.
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