No, this is not a thread about the best deck in Legacy, rather, the top 10-20 decks you'd be prepared for a major tournament.
Here is the actual deal:
A local store is trying to make a compilation of Legacy decks and are planning to do a Chaos Legacy tournament.
The way it works is that each players are handed out a random Legacy decks and we would play it out like a random Legacy tournament. The store own thought that it would be a good way to introduce Legacy to the community without scaring them off the price (after all, Legacy is more fun than Standard)
Now, the issue is deciding which decks to use. As much as possible, we would love as varied meta as possible.
I would love to go by the site's DTB, but that is slightly outdated.
Zoo, Merfolk, Goblins, New Horizons, CounterTop are going to be there. Possibly other decks such as Ichorid, Enchantress and D&T.
Any input is greatly appreciated, and please, dont troll
We did something similar, but you need to be very careful. A good deck is not necessarily an easy deck for someone to pick up and play. Try to aim for things that new players or standard players will easily grasp. Also try and get something from each colour, as some people have strong preferences.
Perhaps:
Blue: Merfolk, Countertop, Landstill, MUC
Red: Goblins, Burn
White: Death & Taxes, Stax
Green: Beserk Stompy, Madness, Enchantress, Zoo
Black: Suicide Black, Eva Green, Rock
-Silent Requiem
Put an aggroloam deck in the mix, or something else with Life from the Loam anyway. Those are not too hard to play with, and people get a kick out of playing with an easy combo.
Rb or Rg Goblins
Merfolk
Zoo
New Horizons
Bant Countertop w/ Natural Order
Enlightened Tutor Counterbalance w/ Thopters
BUG Landstill
Bant, G/W or G/U Vengevine Survival
Sneak Attack
UBr or UBw Faeries
Bant Daze Aggro w/ Hierarchs and Spell Pierces ( approx. 1 billion ways to build this )
The Rock/Deadgyu Ale Hybrid (the Kowal/Brad Nelson deck from the GP)
Show and Tell Emrakul
Natural Order Elves
Enchantress
That's fifteen decks. Combo is woefully underrepresented outside of Show and Tell/Sneak Attack, but giving someone a deck like TES,Ichorid, or even Charbelcher at random (I'm assuming on the day of the event, so they don't have time to prepare!) and telling them to good luck, have fun sounds pretty miserable. Mulliganing knowledge and sideboarding strategies alone would be difficult for someone who's never played Legacy combo, much less actually piloting the deck and knowing what to tutor for or when to try to go off.
edit: I didn't include Lands because of the same issues. Proper Intution piles/Tolaria West transmutes alone make that deck a no-go for someone who's not familiar with the deck and the format.
I'd try to classify them and sort them out according to types. Maybe something like this:
Aggro Non Blue-
1 Goblins
2 Zoo
Survival Decks
3 Bant Loyal Retainers
4 GW Vengevine
Tempo Aggro
5 Merfolk
6 New Horizons
Countertop Variants
7 Bant or Supreme Blue
8 Enlightened Tutor/ Sword of the Meek
Loaming Decks:
9 Aggro Loam
10 43 Lands/Lands
Other Graveyard
11 Reanimator
12 Dredge
Heavy Control:
13 Enchantress
14 Landstill/JtMS
Storm:
15 Charbelcher
16 Imperial Painter
17 Doomsday? Aeon Bridge?
Stompy:
18 Faerie Stompy
19 Dragon Stompy
Other Suggestions:
20 Team America/ Eva Green
I guess the first relevant question is how many decks do you need? I think the suggestions on which ones to use should be heavily reliant on how many are going to see play.
Smennen has a pretty good list of the top 50 legacy decks. It should he free to read on SCG by now.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...of_Legacy.html
Yeh, it's slightly outdated, but a good starting place, nonetheless.
I'd say to leave stuff like Dredge and Combo out of it. If at least one person at the table doesn't know what to do these decks can produca a rather unfun environment and that is probably not the point if you try to get new players into Legacy.
I think landstill would have the same issues lands and combo would have. Its not an easy deck to hand someone and say go.
So how does the tourney work?
Every player starts with a random deck, and at the end of each match, they swap their deck with their opponents? Sounds like great fun. I wish they offered that where I live.
The priority shouldn't be to neccesarily pick the best decks in the format, but the funnest decks in legacy that aren't too difficult to figure out and also offer a great deal of variety in playstyles also do a good job of balancing each other out.
Some suggestions include decks like...
Quinn
Dragon/Fairie Stompy
Pox
Geddon Stax (or some other Stax variant)
Survival
Loam
Merfolk
etc etc
It works like this: at the beginning of each tournament, everyone draws on which deck their going to play and theyre going to play with it for the rest of the tournament. Although your suggestion of deckswapping sounds more fun.
Also, I like your idea of funnest decks, not the best decks.
As a big fan of Quinn (one of the only ones in my area, in fact), I do have to say that it takes a, euhr, "special" kind of person to actually enjoy playing with/against it. Most people I hand the deck to are bored of it pretty quickly. I would prefer CounterTop Thopters, as it has a similar style of play (top/enlightened tutor + permanent based control + combo-kill), yet is more powerful and requires some more (interesting) interactions. Also, it futures some key interaction which define legacy, such as CB/Top, brainstorm-fectchlands-duals, blue card management (FoW),...
I would agree with earlier posters that balancing the representation of archtypes will be the best thing to do. It will be great to show off diversility of the format. The deck-swapping thing sounds fun, but you take away ppls chances of familiarizing themselves with the deck they got. One of the kicks I would get from a tourney like that is the fact that you get better while you are playing and you can see your game improving throughout the tournament. It would be a very interesting experience to see the effect of knowing your deck.
Grtz
Meathooks, can't forget that one. Everyone i know who has played it, enjoyed it. It's very straightforward.
Thats a really great idea, and i must admit, im a little jealous. It would be cool if something like that would take place near to me.
A few suggestions: As already mentioned, for players absolutely new to legacy, some decks or even deck types could be hard to play due to lack of knowledge what the decks aim to. To adress this problem you could A: choose the "easier" to play decks like i.e. Goblins, Aggro Elves or Stuff like that(which have the further advantage that those decks aren't that expensive for beginners) or B: print out primer pages, which explain in a short way, what's the strategy of the deck, key cards and so on.
It's about easy & fun right?
ELVES, everybody likes that, no crazy stuff, just straightforward aggro.
And Pox is a pretty easy topdeck-mode game. + Eva Green. Get 2-3 sets of Hymns/Sinkholes in the decks.
The Rock should not be missing, have a Eternal Witness/ Kitchen finks build, those are fun, better yet, add Doran Rock too.
Don't take any decks that are to skill-intensive or weird. Dredge depends on familiarity of course, but I wouldn't include, also no Storm. Reanimator is fun & easy though, at least the opponent can look at a nice monster.
And I would not include to many survival builds, a bit difficult.
Phyrexian Dreadnought/Stifle should be included though, Dreadstill being a good candidate.
Don't do 42land man, stick to Aggro Loam, lands.dec is so unfun, just like Quinn/ Dredge/ Storm
Get at least 5-6 Fow/Daze builds, straight-up Canadian thresh, 2 UGW builds, dreadstalker/team america etc.
D&T should be there, and WW-knights, Vampires that kinda thing.
Don't worry if lists are outdated. That's kinda the point. They will think "Hey my Jace could really go well in this deck!" *ktsjing*
Ruling combo out would hurt the overall image of a format that players will get. You can always prepare some printed instructions and give them with a deck. An Introduction, win conditions, engines, few simple hands and a general sideboard plan.
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I agree, easy ones as reanimator, show and tell etc. definitely include. However, are you really going to learn how to play/deal with storm/42 land in a single match, presuming you follow the swap idea. So, I'm just saying, it takes to much time, it is not very much fun, and all the preconceptions of brokenness will be validated. Better to just give them a piece of the good stuff, the interactive stuff. Let them have their asses kicked by storm when they already bought their deck. From a shop-owners perspective...
Combo's gotta be represented somehow though, right? Alluren might be a little complicated for someone who's unfamiliar to figure out.
I think there should be at least one sort of Storm deck, since it's such a huge factor in the overall meta. ANT is perhaps the easiest of the ones available. I'm not sure y'all will agree it's a necessary inclusion, but it's kind of like, if you don't represent combo decks at all, these folks might eventually get bitten in the ass if they go to a tournament.
I think a hilarious option would be False Cure.deck. It might take a brief little primer to go with the deck, but I think that's a fun deck, and it manages to use a bunch of creatures and still want to "combo out". But in a way that a relative newbie could probably understand pretty easily.
Also, think a Berzerk Stompy deck might be a fun inclusion. Everybody lovers pulling off crazy shit with Berzerk.
I think those two would be good options for combo-esque type decks.
On the control end of the spectrum, I think you've gotta have Countertop and/or Landstill somewhere in there.
Hell, for old-school sake, why not even throw in some motheruffkin' Angel Stompy?
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
Lol. On that front. Why not Belcher as Storm Deck? Way way easy, and quick enough to grap a bite after 2 mins... It is THE exemplary deck of why you should play FoW, and creates the same feeling of helplessless and frustration you usually get vs combo. (big dissuasion to play Legacy, for a beginner I'd Imagine), without all the Hassle of any kind of tutored storm. (not to much tutoring anyways).
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