[Article] The Meadery - Leaving Legacy for a Modern Mistress

[Dragonslayer_90]

Thoughts on the article found here: http://themeadery.org/articles/leavi...odern-mistress

I doubt I can really prevent it, but please don't let this degenerate into a discussion of banning brainstorm if at all possible. Rather I'd like people to give constructive input and/or criticism on Mr. Hoogland's opinions and also talk about comparative format philosophy in general maybe between legacy and modern.

[Pippin]

Not sure why he's ranting against Brainstorm since that's not the card that "killed" Loam decks. They were pushed aside years ago by Griselbrand/Emrakul on one side and Counterbalance/Entreat the Angels on the other side of spectrum. Sure, both of those strategies played Brainstorm, but what's stopping Loam decks to play it as well?

[lordofthepit]

He posted it on Reddit here, providing comments via Reddit (if you have an account) may be more productive: http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comme...dern_mistress/

I personally disagree with most of the assertions he makes about Legacy other than the one that Brainstorm is a powerful card, and he creates a false dichotomy between Brainstorm decks and non-Brainstorm decks to claim that Legacy is not diverse. I can totally respect that Legacy may not be for everyone, particularly if you hate Brainstorm, and Hoogland identifies himself almost primarily as a "non-Brainstorm player".

[Megadeus]

I think one thing he has a great point about is that since brainstorm decks are so much more consistent in the hands of a good player as compared to a non brainstorm deck in the hands of a similar player, you really are crippling yourself by not playing brainstorm

[LOLWut]

Three points I gleaned about Mr. Hoogland that may or may not affect his credibility.

1. He actually likes the way that WotC has shaped the Modern format with bannings.
2. He appears to have only played Aggro Loam in Legacy, and hasn't tried to attack the format from other angles once that deck became worse-positioned. I guess everyone's pet deck deserves to be Tier 1?
3. He states that there is an "objective best" in the format, ignoring non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.

[Dragonslayer_90]

He posted it on Reddit here, providing comments via Reddit (if you have an account) may be more productive: http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comme...dern_mistress/

I personally disagree with most of the assertions he makes about Legacy other than the one that Brainstorm is a powerful card, and he creates a false dichotomy between Brainstorm decks and non-Brainstorm decks to claim that Legacy is not diverse. I can totally respect that Legacy may not be for everyone, particularly if you hate Brainstorm, and Hoogland identifies himself almost primarily as a "non-Brainstorm player".

I have combed through much of the comments on the reddit thread, but posted a link to the article here to get input from people here on the source. Personally I found most of the article to be kind of disappointing as it seemed more like an outlet for him to complain about why he thinks legacy sucks. The one thing that caught my eye though is the brief comparison of the philosophies of non-rotating format management between legacy and modern. I guess I am wondering what is the significance of the difference in non-rotating format managament between legacy and modern? Is it two different cultures? Is it that legacy's way of managing non-rotating format is Wizard's old method and the way Wizards manages modern is their new method? Is is a matter of different format issues, like how some people say modern can't always self correct as well as legacy so there has to be frequent bans?

[Lemnear]

If you desperately hate Brainstorm & Co. while still not willing to play one of the very few strong counter-strategies, Legacy isn't for you.

It's pretty much like bitching about how bad Vintage is if you are unable/unwilling to get yourself Power 9 and Time Vault or play Dredge. The difference is that Legacy's monetary Chokepoint are not artifacts but Duals & Fetchlands.

A rant-article of you leaving the format because your pet.dec looses on at least one Side of the Legacy metagame spectrum is childish

Edit :

I have combed through much of the comments on the reddit thread, but posted a link to the article here to get input from people here on the source. Personally I found most of the article to be kind of disappointing as it seemed more like an outlet for him to complain about why he thinks legacy sucks. The one thing that caught my eye though is the brief comparison of the philosophies of non-rotating format management between legacy and modern. I guess I am wondering what is the significance of the difference in non-rotating format managament between legacy and modern? Is it two different cultures? Is it that legacy's way of managing non-rotating format is Wizard's old method and the way Wizards manages modern is their new method? Is is a matter of different format issues, like how some people say modern can't always self correct as well as legacy so there has to be frequent bans?

The Problem is the artificially dumped down cardpool of Modern which can't handle certain strategies/cards popping up in addition to the general philosophy of being a creature-centric format due to WotC print politics in the last 10 years. Legacy is just uncontrolable for them due to the reprint-issue with duals (primary) and their Demons of the past like Brainstorm, LED, S&T, etc. so they just gave up on Legacy after they abandoned Vintage 7 years ago for the same reasons (power 9 reprint, Yawgmoths will and friends, format defined by restricted list rather than bannings).

It has nothing to do with format Management. It's laziness. If they fuck up a format bad, they abandoned it and create a new one and hope it turns out the better. We saw this with T1/T1.5/Vintage/Extended/now Legacy

[Dragonslayer_90]

Legacy is just uncontrolable for them due to the reprint-issue with duals (primary) and their Demons of the past like Brainstorm, LED, S&T, etc. so they just gave up on Legacy after they abandoned Vintage 7 years ago for the same reasons (power 9 reprint, Yawgmoths will and friends, format defined by restricted list rather than bannings).

What makes you think that they've abandoned legacy just like they've abandoned vintage? Not saying I agree or disagree, but some might say they disagree with you since they seem to have been designing cards with legacy in mind very recently to varying degrees of success (TNN, Council's Judgment, Spirit of the Labyrinth). Are you merely talking about the decrease in support and the lack of bannings/ unbannings in recent years?

EDIT: I see what you're saying with your comment on "laziness". I guess it can be argued that modern's their most recent venture in this vein of laziness?

[Lt. Quattro]

He does realize that his pet deck rolls over to graveyard removal right?

[menace13]

non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

[CabalTherapy]

This article sounds like a huge complaint about how he cannot win with his random Loam pile against Shardless BUG and other "blue" decks.
What a frustrated guy.

Then this: "Anyone who thinks they can consistently beat these two cards without playing them is kidding themselves." (he refers to Brainstorm and Force of Will)
Not sure if this guy is that much frustrated that he simply writes down shit. At least this article was fairly short.

[Lord Seth]

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

Jund placed twice in the Top 8 of GP Denver (early 2013), with one of them taking second place. Death & Taxes landed two decks in the Top 8 of GP Strasbourg (one of which won the whole thing) and one in the Top 8 of GP Washington D.C.

To be fair, some of those were from over a year ago, but Legacy Grand Prix happen rather infrequently.

[Lt. Quattro]

If by "healthy as a format" you mean "largely unchanged since 2011" the. I agree with you. The format is fucking stale. Look at GP top 8 lists from 2011. They're all basically still viable except now you have death rite, abrupt decay, and Tnn. Other than that the format hasn't changed.

Check out one of his replies on reddit. Some of the major shake ups in that time were:

Griselbrand getting printed
Miracle mechanic
Death of Maverick
Rise then fall of Goblins
Legend mechanic change

Any other major change I'm missing? What Kool-Aid has this guy been drinking?

[Lemnear]

What makes you think that they've abandoned legacy just like they've abandoned vintage? Not saying I agree or disagree, but some might say they disagree with you since they seem to have been designing cards with legacy in mind very recently to varying degrees of success (TNN, Council's Judgment, Spirit of the Labyrinth). Are you merely talking about the decrease in support and the lack of bannings/ unbannings in recent years?

There is barely and GP support anymore, no PT support, World Championships are not held during Worlds but dumped to GenCon (till 2012, now "eternal weekend") and always held in the US, card support including non-standard-legal boxed products is close to zero (not talking about the judge FoW but products for the mere mortal), lack of new printings, unwillingness to care for the B&R list aka removing trash from it, unwillingness to tackle the Dual Land dilemma they created with the reserved list, etc.

You can see this in Vintage, where WotC on-&off-restriction of Gush, the mindless restriction of blue spells (known as vintage Apocalypse), the following creation of the Time Vault desaster and the ultimate chockehold of death, Lodestone Golem killed the whole playerbase, without WotC ever giving a fuck about getting hold of the format again. They put it into an accelerated downward spiral and never cared about stopping it by restricting Lodestone 4 example, a restriction vintage enthusiasts call for more than 5 years now without WotC giving a Fuck

EDIT: I see what you're saying with your comment on "laziness". I guess it can be argued that modern's their most recent venture in this vein of laziness?

Well, they finished off T1/1.5 due to the given fact that their B&R lists were connected and created 2 formats which were Independent and freed from the shackles of their ancestors. WotC could have changed the B&R list management instead but choose to go the easy way and instead of seperating the formats slowly, they chopped them down from one day to another and created a restricted list for Vintage and a ban-list for legacy from the start as random as they choose to creates Moderns 1st. With Extended driven against a wall with lacking support and the annoying semi-rotating character and Legacy long out of control (not only because of brainstorm but because of the broken cardpool and duals), they choose to NOT fix any existing problems of the formats, but, once more, just created a new one and let the support for the old one(s) run out. There is no doubt in Legacy going the way of Vintage, but with an inportant difference to the previous format replacements happened in the histeoy of the game: this time there is no more alternative to choose if you don't like the dulled creature-gameplay

Edit:

Check out one of his replies on reddit. Some of the major shake ups in that time were:

Griselbrand getting printed
Miracle mechanic
Death of Maverick
Rise then fall of Goblins
Legend mechanic change

Any other major change I'm missing? What Kool-Aid has this guy been drinking?

Delver?

This article sounds like a huge complaint about how he cannot win with his random Loam pile against Shardless BUG and other "blue" decks.
What a frustrated guy.

Then this: "Anyone who thinks they can consistently beat these two cards without playing them is kidding themselves." (he refers to Brainstorm and Force of Will)
Not sure if this guy is that much frustrated that he simply writes down shit. At least this article was fairly short.

Must be frustrating to lose with a pet.dec to both sides of the spectrum: Combo and Rest in Piece lol

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I played Loam in the past. I set away the deck when Ichorid became really good (Faithless Looting or what) with the obvious reason being "why play slow gy-based deck when I may play fast gy-based deck". And then I sold every gy-based deck when DRS, RiP (and the amount of old hate like Relic of Progenitus) made any of these decks obsolete; no thanks, I don't buy that a random guy with random Dredge won random tournament.

So yeah, I do understand his frustration, and I'm curious about several gleeful comments, but no surprise, a Magic community.

Overall I find the dominance of blue and bomb-cards quite annoying, but as Lemnear wrote, this is due to WotC's inability/unwillingness to reprint duals and because of broken (blue) spells be it SnT, BS, DoS/IA, LED, etc.
There's not much what can be done about it (if anything at all), and Legacy will continue to look like it looks now, because monetary barrier won't crumble (there's no chance for non-China reprints), oppressive cards won't get banned and every new set will bring another problematic issue, as WotC has clearly fallen in love with all kind of crazy nonsense like Omniscience, Griselbrand or omnomnom6 stupidity. Man, looking back i love the time when the most annoying creature to Show and Tell was Iona.

[Lemnear]

I played Loam in the past. I set away the deck when Ichorid became really good (Faithless Looting or what) with the obvious reason being "why play slow gy-based deck when I may play fast gy-based deck". And then I sold every gy-based deck when DRS, RiP (and the amount of old hate like Relic of Progenitus) made any of these decks obsolete; no thanks, I don't buy that a random guy with random Dredge won random tournament.

So yeah, I do understand his frustration, and I'm curious about several gleeful comments, but no surprise, a Magic community.

Overall I find the dominance of blue and bomb-cards quite annoying, but as Lemnear wrote, this is due to WotC's inability/unwillingness to reprint duals and because of broken (blue) spells be it SnT, BS, DoS/IA, LED, etc.
There's not much what can be done about it (if anything at all), and Legacy will continue to look like it looks now, because monetary barrier won't crumble (there's no chance for non-China reprints), oppressive cards won't get banned and every new set will bring another problematic issue, as WotC has clearly fallen in love with all kind of crazy nonsense like Omniscience, Griselbrand or omnomnom6 stupidity. Man, looking back i love the time when the most annoying creature to Show and Tell was Iona.

I guess you can thank WotC for their new focus on multiplayer Commander, which resulted in their splashy I-win-more-creatures nonsense which had an imo predictable, desasterous impact to any format with tools to cheat creatures on the battlefield (1-vs.-1 EDH included if you look at their banlist)

[sdematt]

I'm writing a rebuttal article to that pile of trash as we speak.

-Matt

[Dice_Box]

I agree with some of what he says, but can't beat blue without blue. My friend, Painter says otherwise.

Edit. When I say I agree with some of what he had said, I mean that I feel playing blue can be the easiest path though legacy.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm writing a rebuttal article to that pile of trash as we speak.

-Matt

Do it. I enjoyed the article. It pretty sums the thoughts of a non-blue mage, and I find it interesting, though a bit bitter. I don't know why anyone not satisfied with how Legacy looks like must be ridiculed, and his opinion and frustration is equally legitimate as an opinion and enjoyment of you and the others.
Personally I find Legacy a bit boring and everytime I ride for the torunament, I struggle with a strong urge to stay at home, often times saying to myself "what am I doing here". This is definitely a mix of tireness from game, bad manners in our lgs, etc., but frankly, if the prices would be less intimidating, I'd migrate to Modern long ago, as it's a natural place for my beloved GW-and-creatures style of play.

[Sloshthedark]

Ok so a random guy has a string of top 8s becomes somehow scg "star" or what, doen't win anymore, leaves the format crying... So how did he get into top8? nothing has changed since 2013, he should be happy for his fair amount of success better players with U decks haven't had... I recall other one crying guy finding his salvation in Omnitell this month...

There should really be some entry requirements/ trial period (in years) to make statements about legacy, cardboard price is clearly not enough...