All B/R update speculation.

[sjmcc13]

Yes, I agree. Goblins in 152th place was fucked on breakers. Elves at 55 had the same issue. Oh and Fish on 112th. Those fucking breakers.

The problem is that when looking at these lists you NEED several factors, and once you factor them in placing 152nd can easily still be impressive.
Some of what we need to consider includes :

1. The number of players at the tournament (well over 1500)
2. How many people ere playing the archtype
3. How many people made day 2 with the deck (seeing as less then 11% of the field made day 2, just making it there is impressive enough)
4. Remember that deck strength does directly relate to deck popularity, and
5. realizing that popularity matters more towards higher placings as a more popular deck has more chances to place
6. most Legacy players are just copying the decks that they see in top 8's, and this leads to a cycle of decks re-enforcing their results.

We need to properly evaluate the results, and elves placing at 55th is indeed impressive as that is the top 4% of the players in the event and a good indicator that the deck is strong. The lone dredge player to reach day 2 got 22nd which is VERY impressive.

Legacy is caught in a couple vicious cycles and delusions at the moment. Players do not ant to lose to fast combo, especially the glass canon decks so they pack FoW, whcih leads to BS and other cantrips to enable those FoWs. This causes more Fows in Top 8s, which causes more people to run FoW.
Add Delver as one of the biggest mistakes to come from the insanity that is the NWO and blue gets even more prominent as we know have a deck core (Delver, FoW, Daze, BS, Ponder) that invalidates entire strategies (almost none of them were in blue heavy decks), and has decent match up against the field, as it can run answers to everything (though weither or not you have them in hand is a mater of luck, but there are allot of gamblers out there so someone will be lucky often enough at most major events) which makes the format even bluer.
This with to many players disregarding decks because they are not placing, rather then testing them first (disregarding any non-placing deck with comments like "teir 2 crap" even though deck Tiers have more to do with Popularity then strength, as they need the popularity to have a chance prove their strength) as a deck that is only slightly stronger then the field but is only being played by 1 player still needs allot of luck and skill to place, so repetitive results are hard to achieve, and without repetitive results no one will adopt the deck as the results were just "a statistical aberration" or some other nonsense. This means new decks come to the for front slower then they should since no one tries out ew decks, and just sticks with the tried and true deck lists.
We also need to consider how the cross-value of purchases affect decks being played, most of the cars in the top blue decks are general good cards that go in multiple decks, or very cheap so you write off the cost. Blue almost every non-blue deck uses an expensive card that sees little play elves needs Gaea's Cradle which is not really played elsewhere outside EDH, D&T and Lands both need Ports, Lands also needs Tabernacle. simply put the monetary costs of Legacy push people towards blue based decks, as who wants to spend $100+ each on 4 cards for 1 deck only, when you can buy FoW and it goes half the field.

The tournament results are not giving us a proper evaluation of deck strengths, because the player base is just acting to re-enforce the previous results, ends up inflating the #'s of the decks that are winning, and stifling new decks unless that are overpowered or attack from an angel that no one expects. The tournament data is more the results of a popularity contest then actually deck strengths right no. At this point the only way to really tell if a deck is strong enough to play is to do a full gauntlet testing, with a large enough # of games per gauntlet to remove and anomalous data an the testers need to sap decks half way through to ensure the results are not just one knowing the match up better then the other, of every deck, including the notable fringe decks, to see where they all place. It would also need to track how many matches were blow out wins where the opponent did not stand a chance, and how many were more balanced wins where both put up a fight. Then with the statistics for EVERY match up not just the popular decks we could actually see what decks are to strong and what are weaker, but to get this data would require an EXTREME amount of effort as you are looking at evaluating at least 15-20 different decks since just the current DtB would prove nothing and we need the data from the known non-BS decks as well as the current BS decks. and each match up (15 decks would be 105 matchups) would probably require 20+ games both pre and post board to negate the variance of the decks.

Without this detailed analysis this entire thread is pretty pointless, as we do not have the strength data, and the discussions just becomes subjective feeling based arguments which almost always turn into Zealots shouting at each other and not listening. Is BS to strong, possibly we do not have the necessary data to correct for player popularity and someone getting a run of dumb luck which probably happens allot more then we would like. Is it needed for the health of the format, at the moment I think so. Should Wizards make more anti-combo cards in White Red and Green (Black already has enough options with discard+surgical Extraction), yes but what we need is cards that make the math up a game not just something that they put in play and the comb deck has no chance to win now. Do we need consistency enablers is other colors definitely, the less variance in a match up the more skill effects the results, and the further we are from someone being able to declare Magic gambling and falls under all your local gambling laws, If they keep making cards that increase the luck factor of the game (to increase the "fun" factor) then eventually someone who disapproves of the hobby (because of all the satanism/paganism/whatever other nonsense, just look at the old anti-D&D campaigns from the 80's on for examples) will be able to use that to severely hurt organized play in their area.

We probably also need people to realize the the entire concept of "fair" decks is idiocy, and the difference is simply decks that use conventional means to win the game (creatures in the red zone) and decks that use unconventional means to win, but all are fair, and you need to be prepared to fight against both types of decks, and all calling decks "fair" and "unfair" does is reassure the snowflakes who just lost that it is not their fault, since they lost to an "unfair" combo deck which builds resentment towards that style of deck. We need the number of deck styles being played to INCREASE not decrease over time, and for the last while, it is decreasing with people complaining non-stop whenever a deck that is not the norm, or requires you adjust your game plan, starts to get good results (look at miracles, that s the ONLY playable pure control deck right now, and the complaints about it are nonstop).

[Dice_Box]

I can not respond to the whole think from my mobile, so let me cover the thing I disagree with the most.

"The tournament results are not giving us a proper evaluation of deck strengths"

This is bullshit. A deck that is barely played like Lands is putting up decent results. This is not to do with the amount of people playing it or the amount of people jumping onto a bandwagon. It's a strong deck, as proven by results. Miracles is a strong deck, proven by results. Goblins is a dead deck, as proven by results.

There is no evidence of a deck that is not currently strong and being proven by finishes. There is in no world, an evaluation that has not provided over time proof of the top dogs. The decks can be seen over a period of years doing well and that's not anything to do with some idea of "Oh but people just don't know how to play non blue decks or the 'Best' decks". The top decks are the strongest and there is no bullshit way to claim otherwise.

The top tables, over and over provide evidence of the state of play. The evaluation is proven by years of record keeping here in the site too. So I feel your comment is not factual and I disagree with the idea that people are sheep just playing follow the leader. If they happened to be doing that Goblins would still be a top deck because no one would have tried anything new.

[Zombie]

Players do not ant to lose to fast combo, especially the glass canon decks so they pack FoW, whcih leads to BS and other cantrips to enable those FoWs. This causes more Fows in Top 8s, which causes more people to run FoW.

Uh, even in metagames where people were cutting FoWs from their 75 and moving them to the side, people were still playing Brainstorms. BS is independent of FoW. No one ever cuts Brainstorms or sides them out. With Force, that does happen. Maybe not now because we have DTT to mitigate the downside of the card but before that it sure did happen.

You know what the antidote to people running FoW, traditionally, is? Not running Force of ***** Will because it's a bad card against threat-dense fair decks. There's a reason most SB guides for fair matchups at least used to advise people to side out Force in those matchups. Because there are situations where the card is actually bad.

Brainstorm, nope.


On crunching the numbers on tournament results - what you'd need to do to assess deck strength is to get known good players to play a lot of games with different decks and record their winrates. If we just take the whole field, a small crew of experts on a deck that hasn't been metagamed against will naturally outperform the masses on The Hotness, especially if The Hotness is something like Miracles where you have to be a fast player to not score up ten draws per tournament. As I said in some thread on this previously, average players adopting a strong deck causes the data to "fix" itself. Staring at the data is what ruined SC2, because the numbers never showed a problem but any fool could see it by just looking at the actual games and how they played out.

Speaking of numbers. 77%+ format penetration on Brainstorm. Maindeck REBs are sane, you see sideboards with six. It's still the blue that wins. If it was just popularity and not strength, nonblue decks packing shittons of hate should be the successful ones, no? What does it say that people can be packing maindeck REBs and people will still choose to run blue in an environment like that rather than blanking half of someone's sideboard or a handful of cards in their maindeck?

[JDK]

He may be a fan, but he doesn't play it on a regular basis, which is crucial to true understanding of format state.

How do you know? Regardless of that, he has a waaaaaay better understand of what makes a format competitive and "healthy" than any of the people suggested or us.

Yes, I agree. Goblins in 152th place was fucked on breakers. Elves at 55 had the same issue. Oh and Fish on 112th. Those fucking breakers.

Please read whole sentences.

I still fail to see how you would base your argumentation solely on Top8, when other decks just missed it by some points. Don't you think they still did fine or even very well?
Remind you, this is not a reasoning against the critical view of blue and its meta share (or of a given deck). To me, it's just outright wrong to just argue with "wasn't in the top 8, so it didn't do well" or "no top 8 no influence on the meta", when the competition consists of 15 rounds and significantly over 1000 people.

Maybe I just misinterpreted the post. If that's the case, sorry and nevermind.

[Barook]

@sjmcc13: Cost is hardly a reason on MTGO where switching decks is cheaper. And guess what, the blue percentage is in general even higher than in Paper.

Good deck will get good results. See: Lands and Loam this GP. Despite low numbers, they placed pretty high, simply because the deck IS powerful and plows through this kind of field, partly due to lack of proper SB hate against it.

Miracles might have sheer numbers in the meta, but when the sole two Miracle decks placing in the Top 8 make it to the finals of a GP twice in a row, then it isn't much of a coincidence, either.

[testing32]

I don't think it will matter if they ban DTT. It won't be enough to change anything. It will be just like banning TC.

You will go from 77% blue to 75% blue and nothing will really change. Miracles and Delver will still be the best decks. Omni-Tell will switch out for Sneak and Show.

[maharis]

I don't think it will matter if they ban DTT. It won't be enough to change anything. It will be just like banning TC.

You will go from 77% blue to 75% blue and nothing will really change. Miracles and Delver will still be the best decks. Omni-Tell will switch out for Sneak and Show.

Exactly. I don't really think banning DTT and/or SDT will accomplish anything but pissing off people who have paid $30 each for Tops or even $30 total for a set of Digs (I know they're cheap now, but they haven't always been).

I really hope they go off the reservation and go after Counterbalance or S&T. Those cards suffer from the issue of being so difficult to answer that it forces Wizards itself to print clunky and/or narrow answers like Abrupt Decay, Cavern of Souls, Containment Priest and Hallowed Moonlight.

As for whether the format is too blue, I'll just make my stock point: Brainstorm & fetchlands & friends is by far the most powerful draw engine in Legacy. Almost any strategy is better if you add that engine to it. It's why the best Young Pyromancer, Stoneforge Mystic, Tendrils of Agony, Reanimate, and Tarmogoyf decks all play it. Whether that's good or not is a matter of opinion, but it is a FACT.

Yes, some decks that don't play that engine do well with varying levels of consistency, but overall, your Legacy deck has to either play that engine, shut it down, or go over the top in a way that leaves you open to more effective hate than the Brainstorm engine faces. For example, the 1cmc artifact Grafdigger's Cage is stronger against Dredge and Elves decks than any number of REBs is against the blue decks.

[iamajellydonut]

I'd welcome a SDT ban. Miracles makes nonblue aggro a joke and doesn't exactly encourage diversity among control decks, too.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but it's worth noting that Miracles alone doesn't make nonblue aggro a heap of shit. Blue aggro also makes nonblue aggro a joke. And so do the various compact combos. And basically everything else in today's meta.

[Stevestamopz]

How do you know? Regardless of that, he has a waaaaaay better understand of what makes a format competitive and "healthy" than any of the people suggested or us.


Please read whole sentences.

I still fail to see how you would base your argumentation solely on Top8, when other decks just missed it by some points. Don't you think they still did fine or even very well?
Remind you, this is not a reasoning against the critical view of blue and its meta share (or of a given deck). To me, it's just outright wrong to just argue with "wasn't in the top 8, so it didn't do well" or "no top 8 no influence on the meta", when the competition consists of 15 rounds and significantly over 1000 people.

Maybe I just misinterpreted the post. If that's the case, sorry and nevermind.

The Goblins player ended up with 24 points after he'd played all of day 1 and 2. 9th placed Andrew Rayner had 37 points. I thought the whole "missed on breakers" thing was a joke... but obviously not. At best that means the Goblins player went 8-7 at the end of GP Lille. That's not even close to having made top 8.

[MGB]

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but it's worth noting that Miracles alone doesn't make nonblue aggro a heap of shit. Blue aggro also makes nonblue aggro a joke. And so do the various compact combos. And basically everything else in today's meta.

The fact that a 1-mana instant speed Hallowed Burial is the centerpiece sweeper of the premiere control deck is the single most aggravating factor for nonblue aggro. There are other things like SFM->Batterskull and Delver and the like, but Terminus, more than anything else, invalidates nonblue creature strategies.

Sure, it isn't the sole reason nonblue aggro isn't viable, but it is the primary reason. And making the Terminus deck less efficient would certainly go a long way to helping nonblue aggro compete. Would it make nonblue aggro viable? Who knows, but the current state of affairs certainly doesn't.

[Gheizen64]

Why would you want to Ban What basically are fringe cards? It make no sense

[Admiral_Arzar]

The fact that a 1-mana instant speed Hallowed Burial is the centerpiece sweeper of the premiere control deck is the single most aggravating factor for nonblue aggro. There are other things like SFM->Batterskull and Delver and the like, but Terminus, more than anything else, invalidates nonblue creature strategies.

Sure, it isn't the sole reason nonblue aggro isn't viable, but it is the primary reason. And making the Terminus deck less efficient would certainly go a long way to helping nonblue aggro compete. Would it make nonblue aggro viable? Who knows, but the current state of affairs certainly doesn't.

Nonblue agro needs bans on Terminus, Delver, and something out of the Show and Tell pillar for it to have a shot at competing in the meta. Terminus and the SnT piece because those two decks oppress nonblue decks quite thoroughly, and Delver because Delver.dec is simply better at agro than actual agro.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Is 'non-blue aggro' code for Zoo? Can we just say 'Zoo'?
Is Zoo's viability really the determinant for a healthy meta?

[Admiral_Arzar]

Is 'non-blue aggro' code for Zoo? Can we just say 'Zoo'?
Is Zoo's viability really the determinant for a healthy meta?

Don't put words in my mouth. If you go back a few years you will find plenty of results from various builds of Goblins, Zoo, Affinity, even stuff like Team Italia and Boros were viable at one point. "Non-blue agro" is an archetype not a deck, stop playing dumb.

EDIT: I'm not even going to go there with the "healthy meta" part, that rabbit hole can stay unoccupied for now.

[Stevestamopz]

Don't put words in my mouth. If you go back a few years you will find plenty of results from various builds of Goblins, Zoo, Affinity, even stuff like Team Italia and Boros were viable at one point. "Non-blue agro" is an archetype not a deck, stop playing dumb.

EDIT: I'm not even going to go there with the "healthy meta" part, that rabbit hole can stay unoccupied for now.

Goblins were viable right up to the point of True Name Nemesis' arrival.
It was a bit iffy with the arrival of DRS and Abrupt Decay, but TNN was the nail in the coffin.

Nothing to do with Miracles or Terminus at all, just saying.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Goblins were viable right up to the point of True Name Nemesis' arrival.
It was a bit iffy with the arrival of DRS and Abrupt Decay, but TNN was the nail in the coffin.

Nothing to do with Miracles or Terminus at all, just saying.

As someone who has played Goblins against Miracles I am aware of the hilarity of that matchup. No other agro deck has the card advantage engine necessary to compete with Terminus though, so my point stands.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Don't put words in my mouth. If you go back a few years you will find plenty of results from various builds of Goblins, Zoo, Affinity, even stuff like Team Italia and Boros were viable at one point. "Non-blue agro" is an archetype not a deck, stop playing dumb.

EDIT: I'm not even going to go there with the "healthy meta" part, that rabbit hole can stay unoccupied for now.

I didn't quote you because I wasn't speaking directly to you. You just happened to be the post before mine.

First off, Goblins is not an aggro deck. It plays the aggressive role against combo, because... what else does it have? But against creature-based decks it very much tries to play the control role and will often switch gears throughout a game.

I'll give you Affinity though.

So why is the loss of 'non-blue aggro' a bad thing? It is a simplistic strategy that gets stopped easily by numerous highly prevalent cards.
I haven't seen Belcher or Spanish Inquisition top 8 any high-profile events lately, but I don't hear people calling for the banning of Force of Will.

Strategies come and go. I don't see why 'non-blue aggro' is a sacred cow... Why differentiate between blue aggro and 'non-blue aggro' anyway?

[nedleeds]

Goblins decline went as follows

1) SFM

Jitte always destroyed Goblins, with SFM you got a Demonic Tutor that could block Lackey if you were on the play.

2) Batterskull

Now instead of jitte you could get a life link wall with flash that made profitable combat difficult. Goblins lethal piledriver fueled attack is destroyed by Batterskull.

3) DRS

Decay is nothing against Goblins, a Goblin deck can almost always beat 1-for-1s. But the fact that 1/2 the decks were playing a Norwood Ranger made Lackey totally unreliable.

4) Show and Tell / Reanimation targets going from great to retarded

Goblins could race Empyrial Archangel, Inkwell, Jin Gitaxius, sometimes even Iona with a couple of Vials. With the next generation of R&Ds peyote induced abortions like Griselbrand, Emrakul, Elesh Norn, Omniderp, goblins stands no chance.

I don't think TNN is particularly a problem more so than say a resolved Knight. Both crush most Goblins in combat, TNN can't even block Piledriver. It's the equipment attached to said TNN that makes the game unwinnable. It certainly didn't help, but I think the DRS and SFM in a deck like Shitblade are the bigger problem for goblins.

Terminus isn't particularly good vs. goblins mostly in that goblins can refuel quickly on the back of Matron and ringleader. But it's not like Terminus is bad. Prior to Terminus the top 4-5 legacy decks didn't play a ton of sweepers, it was mostly Firespout (in RUG countertop), EE (in blade other u decks), and then some decks sideboarded actual Wrath of God.

A Brainstorm banning would help Goblins, all the 2 card combo decks would lose some consistency, the blue tempo decks should be good match ups for goblins, vs. combo game 2 spot discard would have more impact.

[Stevestamopz]

As someone who has played Goblins against Miracles I am aware of the hilarity of that matchup. No other agro deck has the card advantage engine necessary to compete with Terminus though, so my point stands.

But can Zoo or Affinity or Boros (?) ever beat a bolt, a plow and a snapcaster mage? Or a Stoneblade deck, or even a bug deck with Decays and Delvers and Liliana? No.

So saying "ban terminus and those decks come back" is blatantly not true.

[nedleeds]

STP, SCM STP is pretty brutal. It hasn't helped that blue got an ambush viper that regrows the formats best removal. I can't imagine trying to grind through that with a traditional zoo deck. Ooze is just too slow to impact SCM (at least in a traditional zoo time table meaning a lethal attack on the 4th or 5th turn). There just hasn't been a printing to swing the balance back, look at fucking shit like Skylasher.