Tom LaPille - he's at it again

[honestabe]

Do any of you actually play vintage, or are you just talking right out your ass like most people on this forum do about the format?

As a vintage player, it appears to be the latter

[DragoFireheart]

Do any of you actually play vintage, or are you just talking right out your ass like most people on this forum do about the format?

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/met...&fecha=2011-10

Look at the previous months. Mud, mud and mud! Once or twice something else got closer, but mostly that lovely shit color mud.

[honestabe]

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/met...&fecha=2011-10

Look at the previous months. Mud, mud and mud! Once or twice something else got closer, but mostly that lovely shit color mud.

This also lists Drain Tendrils and Painter as major decks. I'm surprised Meandeck Gifts and Cerebral Assasin aren't on their either...lol

[Gocho]

This is the October meta. Only 16 Tops.
You must see the September meta to get a better look of the format. But yes, MUD is Tier1.

[TsumiBand]

I think the more relevant issue - or at least the one I was hoping to impart - is that in Vintage, when you're building a deck, if it isn't "as fully Powered as is logical", you're doing it weird. While the power of the format as a whole is (arbitrarily) much higher than Legacy, the potential for that power to expressed as a function of non-overlapping decklists is much smaller.

Why do you think people piss and moan so much about cards like Force and Tarmogoyf? The closer this format comes to each color having singularities in their cardpool, the closer we get to homogenized decklists that don't have nearly the kind of variance that they do today.

Lightning edit - no, I don't want FoW or Goyf banned :P it's just an example!

[Nelis]

Really?!?!

Yeah, I feel no difference in complexity when I play standard or legacy. I still have a hard time making the right plays in both formats. Its not that I feel more lost in legacy when faced with a tough decision than in standard or the other way around. It could have something to do with my magic skills, I'd be lying if I said I'm a very good player', maybe its just a matter of having a certain 'skill level' I cant see beyond so it feels the same to me.

[Humphrey]

To me Standard is like a demo-version of Magic lol. Its sooo bad

[Admiral_Arzar]

To me Standard is like a demo-version of Magic lol. Its sooo bad

My favorite description of standard:

Hurf Durf: the Derpening

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

[Koby]

Yeah, I feel no difference in complexity when I play standard or legacy. I still have a hard time making the right plays in both formats. Its not that I feel more lost in legacy when faced with a tough decision than in standard or the other way around. It could have something to do with my magic skills, I'd be lying if I said I'm a very good player', maybe its just a matter of having a certain 'skill level' I cant see beyond so it feels the same to me.

I partially agree with this. However, a format as deep as Legacy has better opportunities to tailor a deck towards a particular play-style moreso than Standard. This is the primary difference why many think that Standard is boring.

[majikal]

I actually took a dive into Standard this past weekend, and it was a pretty deep and complex format. Sure, there are a lot of dumb red decks that are anathema to complexity, but playing Pod opened up so many different lines of play that it felt quite similar to playing a Legacy deck. In particular, the current Standard environment is extremely unforgiving of play errors.

[DragoFireheart]

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

Storm decks like TES and High Tide are easily the most complex decks in magc. It's pretty easy to screw up a play and auto-lose from making one mistake.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Storm decks like TES and High Tide is easily the most complex decks in magc. It's pretty easy to screw up a play and auto-lose from making one mistake.

Trust me, I know :P. I punted two matches at my local with High Tide this weekend by making plays that weren't obviously play mistakes, but only became really apparent in hindsight.

[DragoFireheart]

Trust me, I know :P. I punted two matches at my local with High Tide this weekend by making plays that weren't obviously play mistakes, but only became really apparent in hindsight.

- I have a friend that plays his Storm deck (which is trys to use to beat my CounterBlade deck with, lmao) and it's amazing watching him do all of the hoops that need to be done for playing storm. Should I keep this hand and draw into what I need? Can I go off regardless of FoW? Do I have enough mana? What card do I get with Burning Wish?

[AriLax]

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

As a expert on one and a reasonable source on the other, the difficultly level of both was fairly high. In fact, the Caw mirror pre-NPH is on the same level as Storm vs. Landstill in terms of skill, if not harder because you often didn't have a definite game plan to execute. Every so often you have the pre-Rise Jund mirror where it literally was count the cascade spells, highest count is 90% to win, but is Belcher vs. Zoo any better?

Legacy will tend on the skill intensive side because of Brainstorm and Force of Will lowering mana and card restraints in lines of play, but that doesn't mean that every Standard matchup is two monkeys flinging feces. Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

[Admiral_Arzar]

Legacy will tend on the skill intensive side because of Brainstorm and Force of Will lowering mana and card restraints in lines of play, but that doesn't mean that every Standard matchup is two monkeys flinging feces. Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

Agreed on this part. I did play a considerable amount of standard a couple seasons ago - and while the decks obviously take some playskill, I've found Legacy tends to be more complex and skill-testing in most cases. That doesn't mean I haven't had some interesting decisions to make in standard, even playing such "dumb" decks as mono-red.

[honestabe]

I'm pretty sure that Storm trying to beat Countertop is the most skill intensive matchup ever. (for the storm player, obviously). Not only is it technically a nightmare, but you also have to factor in all the psycological aspects...Man, I really miss grinding Ad Naus against CounterBant...

[Richard Cheese]

Right, because clearly the way to deal with the complexity issue is to spin Magic off into two games, "Hurf Durf: the Derpening," and "Right and Proper Gentleman's Olde Game of Magicks," where there are no creatures and all the cards are blue, have flash, and have, "As an additional cost to play this spell, draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order."

How the hell did I miss this? Am I the only person that isn't ashamed to admit that I'd probably play "Hurf Durf: the Derpening"?

[DragoFireheart]

I'm pretty sure that Storm trying to beat Countertop is the most skill intensive matchup ever. (for the storm player, obviously). Not only is it technically a nightmare, but you also have to factor in all the psycological aspects...Man, I really miss grinding Ad Naus against CounterBant...

- Don't worry, CBT still sees play.

[Mr. Safety]

From AriLax

Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

I can't be the only person that thinks this is a smart line. The only minor variance I would have would be that it doesn't matter what format you are playing, sometimes suboptimal cards are a necessity in order to leverage value. Look at Unearth and what it's doing with Snapcaster Mage. Unearth is nothing special, pretty horrible actually compared to the other reanimation spells. But it gains whole different dimension of value given Snapcaster Mage.