Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I mean, what "versions" are there of Oath decks? Survival had a number of different strategies it could be utilized in, but Oath of Druids is about as restrictive as Show and Tell is.Originally Posted by MGB
As for Oath of Druids, it'd be obnoxious but I'm not sure it would change the metagame all that much in terms of what is good or bad outside of it being great (or, depending on how you quantify it, making Show and Tell a lot better because they'd likely play some copies of that card as a backup). What I mean is, I'm sure it would take a big piece of the metagame and reduce the shares of everything else, but are there any decks it's especially effective against that would be driven out? It seems like the same strategies people had against Show and Tell would work against Oath of Druids. Again, they wouldn't be as effective because Oath of Druids is a better engine, but I can't think of any strategies that would go from good against Show and Tell to not being at least decent against Oath of Druids.
If Oath were unbanned you would probably see Abrupt Decay come back in the same numbers that we say in the counterbalance days where you had to have a really good reason to not be playing it.
Hahaha perfect. Sigged!I was actually kinda thinking the opposite, and wondering what it would be like to play in the "Megadeus and Stevestamops Presents: The Nedleeds Memorial Tournament" (banlist: just the regular legacy one, except survival is legal and all blue cards are not).
Strawmans are dumb, but that was the point. Saying "legacy is muh broken powerful format hurdur" is also stupid and I'm sick of hearing that we should suffer from the misery and oppressiveness of Deathrite for longer than we already have because "Legacy is all about powerful shit and go play Modern if you don't." Legacy is supposed to be the open format where multiple decks are allowed to be powerful. Not just "go play combo or drs or fuck off" the format which is what it basically is now.
Personal attacks removed. Stop. -zilla
Right, because:
- Combo and DRS do not amount to "multuiple decks".
- Lands, and D&T are not decks (nor are Eldrazi, Burn, or Infect).
Yup!
Last edited by Crimhead; 11-01-2017 at 09:58 AM.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
haha glad you liked it, let me know when it's going down and I'll play...can't guarantee I won't be on something like Jund Waste-Not Storm, but I can guarantee I'll bring some beers
I honestly do think that multiple decks are powerful at the moment, and it's actually flatter than it used to be, because miracles was arguably a little bit better than everything else before. There are a ton of decks that are all fun and different that can do well (admittedly, a lot of them have brainstorm and DRS in them, but not all of them) and maybe Grixis Delver is a little better overall, but I think by a slimmer margin. I actually think the meta was fine with Miracles in it, too, but it really feels, to me at least, like all the metrics that advocates of brainstorm and DRS bans are interested in have only improved since the Top banning.
This deck sounds amazing...pleaz share teh cheezburgerz.haha glad you liked it, let me know when it's going down and I'll play...can't guarantee I won't be on something like Jund Waste-Not Storm, but I can guarantee I'll bring some beers
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
I think from Steve and my perspectives that where you see many different decks doing different things, we see decks that just cast cantrips as their "engine" with different win conditions. Like how much different is 4 color control and grixis? What about then going to delver? In the end the games tend to play out the same way from the opposite side of the table, the only difference is the threat we face. We still spend a majority of our game watching our opponent cast one broken cantrip after another until they find their threat or answer.haha glad you liked it, let me know when it's going down and I'll play...can't guarantee I won't be on something like Jund Waste-Not Storm, but I can guarantee I'll bring some beers
I honestly do think that multiple decks are powerful at the moment, and it's actually flatter than it used to be, because miracles was arguably a little bit better than everything else before. There are a ton of decks that are all fun and different that can do well (admittedly, a lot of them have brainstorm and DRS in them, but not all of them) and maybe Grixis Delver is a little better overall, but I think by a slimmer margin. I actually think the meta was fine with Miracles in it, too, but it really feels, to me at least, like all the metrics that advocates of brainstorm and DRS bans are interested in have only improved since the Top banning.
I just hate the the hyper efficiency of the format has pushed out synergistic deck building. Delver and DRS are the main offenders of this imo though. I just hate looking at tourney results before innistrad because the decks look so fun until the threats made it so you will never have time to do anything interesting
This has literally been the Legacy format since its inception, though. Bant Threshold was one of the three Tier 1 pillars since I started playing Legacy in 2006, and the blue-based aggro/control with 8+ cantrips has always been a Tier 1 strategy.
Synergistic deck building still exists, and synergistic piles are still competitive. There is way more netdecking and much less brewing these days, but new archetypes pop up all the time.
I disagree that the metagame looked more fun and diverse before. More players netdecking the most popular decks may give off the illusion that less decks are viable, but the format is as wide-open as ever.
You see an over-representation of blue decks at large events because most players gravitate towards them due to the reduction of variance, but that doesn't mean non-blue isn't capable of doing well. The most recent Top 64 and Top 32 breakdowns are evidence of that.
Also, I don't equate synergistic piles with non-blue. You can absolutely build synergistic piles that also include blue. Synergy is a very vague wording anyway. Why is jamming Mother of Runes/Thalia/Knight of the Reliquary synergistic, but Probe/Therapy/Pyromancer is not?
Sure it's one event, but the CFB 4k Meta top 8 looked pretty healthy.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=17361&f=LE
Only 3 brainstorm, and 2 DRS decks. Format is fine, just give it some time.
"win conditions" make sense if we are talking about a combo deck (or a control deck with a "combo" finish). These decks want to resolve a huge hay-maker that will single handedly win the game.
Fair decks like Grixis and Czech don't win by resolving a single threat or answer. They win through attrition by a series of trades which ultimately leaves them with an advantage in CA and/or tempo, allowing them to gradually edge the opponent out of the game.
In other words, most of the "play" in a fair deck is leveraging threats and answers - not cantriping into a "win condition". That argument is either dishonest or misinformed.
I'm a big proponent of synergistic decks myself. But we still have these in the top tiers. Lands, Eldrazi, Infect, Elves, Reanimator, Storm, and Sneaky Show are all highly dependent on synergy (as well as less represented decks like Food Chain). Good-stuff decks (Grixis, Blade, and Czech) are arguably marginally better overall than the other options - but not by very much. And they have enough tough MUs that they are not going to overrun the format. According to MTG Top8 (paper data), neither of these decks have above an 8% meta share - and the second most successful deck is Eldrazi.
My biggest fear for Legacy is that it might devolve into a good-stuff format where the only tier decks are jamming value and efficiency. But I'm not seeing this at all when I look at actual data; nor when I show up at my local events. I think the problem is in your head.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
The goodstuff decks have risen, but I still think its still healthy also.
@crimhead: on that list I also think Death and Taxes is highly synergistic, as I usually evaluate a deck with "does it run a lot of unplayable cards by themselves, but it is still a competitive deck? then it is a synergical deck".
Anyway just adding more decks to the list xD.
I really do prefer the synergical decks, but I don't see as now the goodstuff taking over all the other decks, also if you are taking data like from 2010, 2011, sorry there were a lot of goodstuff decks on that time also, the old blade decks, bant, Zoo... not like there wasn't any goodstuff deck back then and there is only goodstuff now. I hope this doesn't become a goodstuff format, but right now, I'm pretty ok with the format.
I think they're meaningfully different from my perspective. Getting delvered/young peezied with dazes and stuff has a different feel than leo and TNN with hymns, even if the glue is still cantrips.
I think the deck I play, ANT, is a very synergistic deck; it just also happens to have cantrips, which are important so that I can get the synergies online.
As for the efficiency of the format...I'm not sure it's a tractable problem, or even a problem; I do sympathize with the notion that it feels hard to do a lot of cool things on account of how steamlined many of the decks are, but I feel like whenever I play other formats that have less efficient stuff, it feels throttled. Pauper, for instance, has a lot of cool cards, but it often feels super clunky to play because of all the CIPT mana, and Modern has a little more "go fast" but you have to hurt yourself to do it, and the banned list is so long it feels like they just get rid of anything that has a lot of juice.
Personally, I feel like Legacy strikes the right balance between "I can play whatever I want" and "I can play a deck that is competitive against most of the field." I've lost plenty of games to saucy piles, and plenty of games to meta goodstuff, and I feel like it has enough variety that it's still the most interesting.
This touches on something I think is really important. One reason I think people might be complaining about a lack of diversity in decklists is that the Internet is a really powerful tool that hadn't really gotten off the ground as a means to share information on deckbuilding when Legacy first came about. So netdecking (or, for people who got into the format late, "research") is something I think wasn't anticipated in the early days. I used to bemoan it when I was a dirty casual player, but it's hard to argue that the potential for information sharing both hasn't caused a lot of the homogenization we're seeing today and hasn't been an extremely useful tool for people looking to up their game.
I'm not totally happy with the situation as it stands—I, too, really admire people who brew winning decks, though I don't think I have the resources to make it worth my while. But netdecking is here to stay, and I don't think it's likely that any bans are going to change the process by which people gravitate toward proven strategies. It might change what those strategies are, but I don't think it's going to bring back the early days.
Hell, in Vintage, there's an obvious canon of staples without which it's extremely difficult to build anything viable (the major exception being Dredge, which has its own staples). But in Legacy, where we don't just have "the eight or nine best cards in Magic (minus Contract) plus 52–51 other things," there's a bit of an illusion of choice: there are still cards that are unequivocally the best in the format, and because we don't just have a rocket-surgeon's checklist like they have in Vintage, netdecking both brings the power level of decks toward a pinnacle and stifles diversity in builds.
So like the days of Merfolk, Supreme Blue, New Horizons or Zoo being the actually DTB?? Or Maybe you are referring when Vengevine Survival was the deck everyone was playing? That was "interesting"???? Sounds like Legacy hasn't been interesting to you for quite awhile.
If we have to lose Deathrite, I would like to see a blue card go along with it, whether that's Delver or Brainstorm or Ponder or TNN something else I don't care, but something that hits the blue "Deathrite" decks specifically. That shell has benefited from so many other additions over the time period you identified it's hard to separate all of them out. But consider:
-A new 1 cmc removal spell (Fatal Push)
-A card that allows you to recast all your hyper efficient spells including the above (Snapcaster Mage)
-A whole new subset of cards that give you additional value from playing cantrips and other efficient spells (Prowess creatures, YP and Mentor token generation)
-A 5/5 for 1 that only asks once for you to have a "full" GY (Gurmag Angler)
-2 and 3 cmc creatures that dominate the combat step against other creatures of all sizes and CMCs (Baleful Strix and TNN)
-A one-sided way to blank or at the very least neuter your opponent's efficient spells (Leovold)
That was just on top of the stew that already existed including efficient spells from Alpha, all the cantrips, the fetches, free/cheap counterspells/interaction, Jace and the beginnings of pushed blue/blue-synergistic creatures like Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, SFM.
The upshot is the pressure to build a "fair blue DRS deck" comes from a lot of angles. I can relate to your post about just being tired of playing worse cards and losing and going all in on the blue shell as a result. If balancing that out is something we're interested in, it can't just be about one card.
Some of this is silly. Fatal Push is a black spell, and can just as easily fit into any non-blue deck splashing black. The same goes for Stoneforge Mystic in white and Tarmogoyf in green. Why even mention these cards? None of these cards have anything to do with making blue decks stronger than non-blue decks.
For all of the whining about blue being too good, the format would be far more hostile to non-blue fair decks without it. Force of Will polices' the format and keeps powerful linear strategies from taking over like they did in Modern. Force of Will is just as responsible in forging the blue stew as Brainstorm is. Without FoW, we might see light blue splashes for Brainstorm more often... but because of the blue spell count required to support FoW, and the necessity of FoW in this format, decks commit all the way.
I don’t think that banning Brainstorm is the key to making Zoo and Maverick great again.
I disagree immensely with your premise. Without Force the format does not lose Blue penetration thanks to no longer needing to pitch because filtering is already so strong on its own. In a theoretical format that is balanced without Force in it, a deck like Aluren would still be just as Blue, a deck like BUG would be as well. Because the structure of these decks, be it filtering and combing or filtering and delving are such powerful effects independently of other mitigating factors.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
My point is that Deathrite is only a component of a shell that has gained a lot more over the past few years than other shells. Yes Fatal Push is black, but as a 1 cmc instant it just slots right into the existing Uxxxxxx decks without any trouble -- especially in decks that want as many efficient spells as possible to draw off their cantrips. Push even synergizes with the other component of the Xerox engine in fetchlands.
To the extent that DRS needs to be banned for supercharging Grixis decks, Fatal Push has done a significant amount as well. Note that I don't think DRS should be banned on its own, nor that Fatal Push is bannable. But the idea that you can stop these decks from dominating by taking out just DRS is what I disagree with. These decks have received several high-power printings that have pushed the format in that direction.
Gurmag Angler, Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor aren't blue either, but they synergize far better with blue decks/strategies than their native colors. You can try to trigger YP with Punishing Fire, Loam and Raven's Crime, but that's much clunkier than just playing it with Brainstorm and buddies. You can delve away Thoughtseizes and Sinkholes to Gurmag Angler, but it's easier to just flush all your used Ponders.
Similarly, Tarmogoyf was the original "rewards you for playing Magic" creature, and Stoneforge's role in blue control decks is much more key to its power level than its role in, say, D&T. Those cards have been pushed aside in favor of many of the cards I mentioned for a reason. Angler is often bigger than Goyf, YP/Mentor often faster/more compact than SFM.
I understand that you don't think there needs to be a ban. To be clear: I actually agree. My view on the format is:
-Don't ban anything and actually unban stuff
-If you're going to ban to target midrange/value strategies, go nuclear because one piece ain't cutting it
I don't expect many people to agree, nor do I think this is what Wizards will do. I just enjoy discussing the format. Honestly, posting in this thread gets me thinking about decks that can beat powerful cards.
Without Force of Will, there would still be decks splashing blue for cantrips, but you'd see much less decks being all-in on blue.
The only way to have a theoretical balance in Legacy without Force of Will is to ban a couple dozen other cards. Without Force of Will, there'd be tons of powerful linear strategies that would require too many unique pieces of sideboard hate to handle them all, aka Modern.
All I was trying to get at is that Force of Will is as much responsible for the blue stew as Brainstorm, and that banning Force of Will would be horrible for the format. I wasn't saying that banning Force of Will would stop people from playing cantrips, or that banning Brainstorm would stop people from playing the blue stew.
Regardless, if the argument if banning Brainstorm is to make decks like Zoo or Maverick viable again, I just don't see it. Those decks used to prey on the cantrip/tempo decks... those were their good matchups. The bad matchups were the combo decks. If the cantrip/tempo decks are no longer good matchups, it's not because of the cantrips, it's because the threats have become more powerful/efficient. If the combo matchups are still bad... how does knocking down blue help Zoo/Maverick? I just don't get it.
I do like and quote all of your post, i suggest wotc (if they are going to ever read this) to print some good cards for combo and less silly 3 effects in one card creature, or to unban something like frantic search, yawgmoth bargain or mistical tutor to see what is gonna happend...
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