Gen-Con Legacy Championships 2008Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer
4c Slivers (Brainstorm)
Boros Aggro-Control
Dragon Stompy
Elves
2-land Belcher
Painter's Servant (Brainstorm)
Goblins
3c Faeries (Brainstorm)
That's diversity. You have 3 tribal lists all trying to win with a different plan (counter control synergy, combo, aggro synergy). You have two combo lists that are using different tempos, with linear and set piece strategies both represented. You have a lockout list trying to shut down the opponent immediately and gain inevitability in the process. You have two aggro-control lists with one using counterspells and card advantage and the other creature removal and burn to set the field of play.
That's a healthy meta. The most-represented cards in the final 8 are 12 Brainstorm, 12 Force of Will, 11 Aether Vial (in Slivers, Goblins and Faeries)
A year later: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...ly/feature/53c
What's changed? A powerful new blue creature Tarmogoyf appears in 5 lists alongside 20 Brainstorms and 20 Force of Will. There are 18 Dazes in those 5 lists. There are 12 Counterbalance and 11 Spell Snare in those lists. The lists all play at least 3 of either Counterbalance or Spell Snare.
This is not a healthy meta as 3 of the lists, including the winner, try to achieve a state of non-interaction with opponents by locking them out or blitzing them early in ways not easily managed. 5 of them are blue based aggro-control of varying speeds.
I think it is time to examine a different question, because it also matters but I think it changes the arguments depending on one's answer:
Do you still enjoy playing this game?
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?
Hello,
yes I like playing the game and enyjoing it. It is different from the days were you could just play without creatures in
control decks and win like Punishing Fire Control or even further back Keeper but as long as I can play control Decks
like Miracles I will have fun in Legacy.
Best Regards Teveshszat
Ha.
Nothing was said about a format-dominating secret deck. Things were said about infrequently played decks that might have similar top 8 #s if they were played by similar #s of players at tourneys. I assume you're on board with the idea that if the same deck gains more pilots, the deck's number of top finishes usually goes up proportionately.
There's a long history of people "overplaying" or "underplaying" decks for reasons as diverse as card availability, personal preferences, and misinformation. There are more Too Much Information articles, but these are the two I found that compile data from multiple SCG tourneys.
From April, 2011, detailing March's four tournaments:
The three most commonly played decks were Merfolk with 75 pilots, a 51.34% win percentage, and a 89.51 average finish, Goblins with 48 pilots, a 39.53% win percentage, and a 115.79 average finish, and Junk with 45 pilots, a 51.76% win percentage, and a 96.78 average finish.
Starting from the bottom, (I'm gonna put # of pilots / win % / average finish in order) Reanimator with 8 / 50% / 79.88, Landstill with 9 / 52.88% / 91.44, RUG with 9 / 49.04% / 85, Metalworker with 9 / 55.83% / 77.67.
From April, 2010, detailing the previous month's three tournaments:
The three most commonly played decks were Merfolk with 76 / 45.87% / 101.2, Goblins with 45 / 46.58% / 101.33, and GWB Rock with 34 / 56.97% / 81.18.
Starting from the bottom, White Weenie with 5 / 43.1% / 94.4, GWB Survival with 5 / 46.43 % / 107.6, and Canadian Thresh with 5 / 61.54% / 48.
Browse around the rest of the charts, and the charts of the entire TMI series, and see if you still think that players' deck choices are based on a universal consensus of what has the best chance to succeed, that decks with few players are always that way because of lack of quality, and that people wouldn't widely play a deck unless it represented the best chance to win. The opening quote from the 2010 article:
Well, it was bound to happen at some point: the most popular decks in Legacy are not the best.
When that magical Christmas land happens where people suddenly stop playing Brainstorms and start playing non-blue shells call me. I'm going to go with the people playing Brainstorm are winning. It isn't like card availability by majority of players was accidently oops no Brainstorms guess I go play these other decks that are just as good if only more people played them. If 100% of people picked non blue decks is that by accident?
Yeah, that's my point, the games feel all the same, it simply doesn't matter what fetch you lead and what's the first undercosted beater that will be snuffed out by first undercosted removal. It's still the same, Deathrite, Delver, Delver, Goyf, Goyf, Goyf, cantrip, cantrip, cantrip, cantrip and it's getting old.
Banning BS would definitely not undo blue's dominance, as there are lots of really powerful (sometimes even stupid) cards. There's hardly anything else to do than either move along, or move away, or simply hope for the powerful prints in non-blue that cannot be absorbed by blue.
Part of the fun I had back in 2007 when I entered the Legacy scene (and somehow coerced our lgs owner to start Eternal tourneys; it took me some time to dispose of Vintage and its community, but after a while, it was Legacy-only Thursdays), so part of the fun I had was with playing all sorts of old "crappy" cards, that were not only source of nostalgia, but also quite reasonable choices. Speaking of creatures, at least until Goyf's printing, there was no beater that stood higher than the others, and I Top8 my first big Legacy with a port of Ice Age - 5thEd - Weatherlight 5CG.dec. And no, it wasn't scrubs metagame that allowed me to win with River Boas and Rancors, on my way to Top8 I met several then-DTBs including Solidarity which I defeated on backs of Winter Orb, Pyroblast and River Boa with Rancor.
I miss the metagame where there were really different decks and when not every second play was "fetch, Sea, DRS" or "Tundra, SFM, BSkull" or "Foothills, dual, Goyf". There's really not much space for brewing today, and the deck design is bound by the very powerful and flexible spells that make the decks/games feel alike. It's not bad per se, it allows for some really powerful and broken plays and it makes matches intense. Otoh, brokeness is like seasoning and you cannot live only of that. And if you use it too much, you'll lose taste; speaking of Magic - games become boring and predictable. But maybe this is just me bored of the game/constructed and there's a remedy for too much seasoning: I may rinse my mouth with some limited. (If only sealed deck was more popular. I hate the very idea of draft, it's not like I wanna sit next to the dudes screaming in orgasm "look how brrrokahn, lol lol zat's insane, gimme joint")
See? That's what I wrote about. For further comments on the many different game plans of those many different decks look up the original post. Just forget what's AggroControl saying about Goyf, it's not a blue creature.
Far less than just a few years ago.
edit:
Also, to expand the idea of strategic diversity a bit more, and to make some deck-to-deck comparison, feel free to lol and criticise, but look at this first:
2007/8 ___________________________________ 2014
UGr Fledgling Dragon Thresh _________________ UR Delver
UGr Canadian Threshold _____________________ Rug Delver
UGr Counterbalance Thresh __________________ bUrG
UGr Moon Swans Thresh ____________________ Deathblade
UGw Goyf(less) Thresh ______________________ TNN.dec
NQGw Counterbalance ______________________ Patriot
UGb Confidant Thresh _______________________ BUG
Eva Green/TA _____________________________ TA
I'm surely missing something, also the "2014 edition" are not exactly counterparts to their ancestors, I just sorted them to show that there was a similar "strategical" diversity - with big quotation marks, as those decks are not that strategically different - that we see today. And yeah, I'm only sorting the Threshold archetype and I'm mergin together established with rogue, Stifle builds with Counterbalance based, etc. What. Ever. It should have been an example of past diversity, and I don't think that 2007/8 metagame lacks something compared to today's.
Speaking of other archetypes, we've had no idiot-proof monoblue combo, and the Storm decks were quite less straightforward, at least until printing of the two brutal engines, AdN and PiF. It' not like IGGy Pop, pre-AdN TES or Doomsday were bad decks, but they were definitely more difficult to play then Show and Derp.
There were a bit less Wastelands all over the place, and Decay's nonexistance made 8Tombs-Chalice decks more reliable. Nowadays, when the Stompy decks cannot rely on the opponent being cut of cmc1 spells, and when Wasteland is the most usual land after a generic blue fetch, there's no reason to play already inconsistent deck that dies to well-placed Decay/Waste.
All sort of other non-blue or blue-lite decks die to combo (or at least their potential pilots fear it), so they cannot compete and all the Taigas, Savannahs and Plateaus collect dust while the metagame shifted towards uniformous throng of Deathrite Shamans, Goyfs, Ponders and whatever. It's strange and funny at once when non-blue FBB dual costs 50 % of cracked Revised USea. It tells a lot about diversity. And yeah, while one may say that color diversity makes the same sense as collector's number diversity, it once again says a lot about the (meta)game, card design and similar details. I remember the times when color pie mattered and when it had implications beyond what color of deckbox and sleeves you'll use; it made decks and gameplay diverse, because some colors had this and lacked this, while the other colors had that and lacked that, resulting in, you know, a diverse decks, diverse metagame, diverse gameplay experience...
Last edited by Bed Decks Palyer; 08-13-2014 at 04:13 AM.
How about a year later?
Quick Countertop or Threshold decks, Dredge, Stax, and Loam. Is that really that different from now? I do think there are less good cards/more cards to check off when building a deck now, like Decay, DRS, SFM, Tarmo, Top, etc.
I'm just going to leave this link to data posted on this very forum here.
The tl/dr is that:
560 decks played brainstorm
282 didn't
That card has an absurd power level.
~Jeff
Guess all those decks with Brainstorm do the same thing right? Like beat Loam apparently.
I'm not sure if it's that different. All I'm saying is that the past metagames weren't that flat as people tend to say. And I'm also saying that today's metagame isn't much more richer than that of past...
Not exactly, they don't do the same. Also, isn't there some thorn again?
What do have the BS decks in common is that they are your Deck of Choice if you wanna win consistently over the longer tourney. Something non-blue decks are quite lacking. Also, some of those BS decks do quite the same, see all the UGxx Tempo Delver decks; they are not that diverse as people say. Flip Delver, support it with Mongoose/DRs and attack for twenty clearing path with removal. It's not a bad or children's strategy, it's legitimate, and there are differencies between Tempo Delver and Midrange Delver and/or w/e the plan or color combination. But it's not strategically diverse in away how Angel Stax, Counterslivers, Zilla Stompy, NQGw, IggyPop, Tog, MUC, Burn, Goblins and Landstill were.
Two things I wanted to say:
- not all Delver decks are distinct from each other, there's little diversity between bUrg DRS Delver and say RUG Mongoose Delver.
- not all metagames of past were poor compared to that of today.
Saying that BS leads to diverse metagame is false. BS has nothing to do with diverse metagame.
Saying BS is op is legitimate opinion and one that has quite some supporters.
Saying that BS is op doesn't necessarily mean that it should be banned. Btw, maybe it should.
Saying that BS should be banned doesn't necessarily mean that meta will flatten.
Saying that Delver decks are same doesn't mean that BS decks are the same.
Saying... etc.
Seriously, there are lots of arguments thrown around without much sense and much logic, people jump from one idea to another, they burn heaps of strawmen and hardly ever try to understand what exactly do they defend/oppose. Not that I'm not guilty of the same, I guess I am. No matter what, this thread is a mess and I'm going to take a short pause.
Assuming I'm understanding this pidgin English correctly, we were talking about Imperial Painter, Lands, 12 Post, and Jund Depths, and you're saying that there aren't people who can't play them because they don't own $150 or $300 or $700 cards in Imperial Recruiter, Candelabra of Tawnos, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale?
I'm going to carefully lay this out, and I'd appreciate it if you'll tell me if you agree or disagree with each point, without ignoring the substance and again resorting to trolling.
a.) Imperial Painter, Lands, 12 Post, and Jund Depths are almost certainly played by a small fraction of the number of players that play frequently-placing decks like Thresh, Team America, etc at tournaments.
b.) You believe that even if these decks were played at the same frequency, they'd place noticeably less than current top decks.
c.) If the same deck has many more pilots in one tournament than another, there will probably be more high finishes in the tournament with more pilots.
d.) As seen in the TMI links I posted (albeit from several years ago, but such human tendencies surely haven't changed), there are many frequently-played and oft-placing decks that actually have poor win percentages and average finishes. There are also many rarely-played decks that actually have excellent win percentages and average finishes. Some of the decks in the latter category didn't often top 8 because of low representation, but once more players picked them up, started racking them up even though the actual decks didn't really change.
e.) If it's true that Imperial Painter, Lands, 12 Post, and Jund Depths are indeed rarely played, and it's true that they have a good win percentage and average finish on par with decks to beat, they would display a "deck to beat" number of top finishes if they had the appropriate number of pilots.
You keep making it sound like that these less often played decks are the best decks. And that players aren't playing the best decks because card availability, preference, and misinformation. All of which blatantly undermine the community collective of information sharing that forums and groups represent. Maybe if this was before the internet you would be right. To you it is as if these decks are secretly the best decks or at least on par with the most widely played ones. They're not. They're pet decks. Otherwise they would be far and away the most popular choices to take down events. The argument that not enough people are playing these decks actually serves to illustrate the flaws of not playing Brainstorm. The card that most of the player base is gravitating towards. I believe it that is because they aren't as good. You believe they are and it's due to ignorance, and card availability. Hope that was simple enough for you?
I don't feel like arguing with the conclusions you proceed to draw since they are pretty much "because I think it is this way". But the premise itself is also kinda arbitrary, I'm not saying that you are wrong. But I also don't know whether you are right. Funny enough, especially for the ~10 months it took Maverick to catch on in the US, this is the exact kind of attitude that delayed its acceptance into the meta.
Also, if you feel you have a superior argument, childish comments like "Is that simple enough for you?" only hurts your cause and credibility. I can see that you might be frustrated with what you think are people that "just don't get it" - but keep in mind that people might be thinking the exact same about you. Unless people find a common ground of analysis, we're never really getting anywhere. I'm not talking about data.
The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
1. Discuss the unbanning ofLand TaxEarthcraft.
2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
4. Stifle Standstill.
5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).
Right, it does take some time for a deck to catch on. People slowly come over after exposure of seeing the lists place in events, players supporting the lists on forums and in events. But the decks in question have all been around for 2+ years now.
That was made in response to his "I cant understand your pidgin English"
This whole thread is mind boggling and completely ignorant. Everyone has a different opinion no matter what the circumstances are. When HulkFlash was legal for a very brief period, there were people arguing that it was fine. Same with Misstep and Survival. All the arguments disregard every other opinion because everyone is always right no matter what. You're all just wasting your time trying to convince people this or that when there's literally a zero percent chance of that happening when it comes to magic. Everyone has this preconceived notion in their head that they know what's best for the format, and that's why I don't bother arguing with people on the internet about something that doesn't even matter. Every single person in this thread could say "BAN BRAINSTORM!!!" and it would have no effect whatsoever.
Lets just play draft guys, but we'll ban pack rat and umezawa's jitte.
Team Hammafist-We don't take kindly to those who don't take kindly."Got any trade boogas?"
Brainstorm is an instant speed draw 3. It's completely broken at 1cc and will be included in the vast majority of lists that can potentially run it. That you have to put 2 cards back isn't a limiter on how broken it is except in late game hellbent top deck situations and even then you got to dig 3 cards deep for the best card you'd see over the next 3 turns and at instant speed at the end of the opponent's turn. Want to win a game where both players are hellbent? Go look at the top 3 cards in your pile for a win-con. Ok, so now look at the potential value in being able to hide cards on top of your deck or shuffle away bad cards when you need to.
For a list not playing Brainstorm the initial mulligan decision can be very tough. Got 2 good cards and 2 questionable ones alongside two lands including a fetch and whatever functions as slow card filter for you? Probably should throw that back. If your slow card filter is instead Brainstorm that's a great hand.
Anybody arguing from any standpoint other than Brainstorm is a great meta-defining card is being intellectually dishonest in the process. Either that or they just don't understand how long tournaments work out.
In fact I got the same trouble trying to understand what this means:
It isn't like card availability by majority of players was accidently oops no Brainstorms guess I go play these other decks that are just as good if only more people played them.
Deck choice is a decision made. The players choose to play their non brainstorm decks same as some players choose to play with Brainstorm decks. The premise that most players didnt sleeve up the best decks because they dont have access to the cards is a lie. Does everyone have every card? No. Are all pros playing decks they dont want to play in GPs? No. If these other decks were so much better and outperforming as data from 2010-2011 suggests. Which, mind you was at a time when Brainstorm hovered around 50%. Then clearly those decks would have been popularized by now as strong finishes were racked up in events consistently. Reading GP top 8 profiles, how many of the players were wishing they played another deck? Does availability play some part? yes. A large part? I would wager no.
All this talk about brainstorm, and probably any talk about banning/unbanning seems quite useless to me, simply because wizard doesn't care at all about legacy and i wouldn't be surprised if the banlist will never ever change until the end of the world, even if they print a one cost colorless mana instant that says "you win the match" in the next commander set.
We just have to accept that they care about modern, so legacy will eventually die or become quite an absurd format because they will never do anything to make it better/healtier. I'm sad about this, but i think it is the bitter reality.
I think at this point the arguing is less about convincing the other people debating and more about not letting arguments stand uncontested. As far as I know, the only time that the DCI has acted based on player outcry in the absence of extreme domination of some sort is the restriction of Trinisphere in Vintage ca. 2004. I could have missed some others when I was on hiatus (roughly late 2009/early 2010-2013), but in the Trinisphere case the question wasn't whether or not something need to be restricted, it was whether to restrict Trinisphere or Workshop; I can recall very few people saying that absolutely nothing was wrong, and it definitely took a large player outcry to move the needle. At least in my case, I want to make sure that if anyone with decision making power reads these forums to get an idea what players think (at least back in the early 2000s, the practice was fairly common) they know that there isn't anything approaching a consensus about Brainstorm needing a ban.
I'd guess that it probably determines (at least to some extent) 1-2 decks/top 8, depending on the location of the tournament, etc. I definitely think in areas where Legacy isn't very popular, people who decide to buy in in order to play on the SCG circuit (or something similar) will tend to choose to buy the cards for whatever top performing deck appeals most to them rather than buy in on some sort of rogue or highly meta-dependent strategy, which makes sense because you want your expensive Legacy deck to stay good if everyone starts playing 3-4 basics and only 2 colors, or graveyard hate, or whatever. Most of the top decks are going to be blue based because that's what already succeeds, so more people buying into blue-based decks leads to more blue-based decks showing up in large events, giving the deck a higher representation at any given large event, which exacerbates the consistency issues of the nonblue decks when it comes to top 8 representation by taking the more consistent decks and making them more likely to top 8 just based on how many show up. The self-fulfilling prophecy angle is relevant here.
The issue that the nonblue decks tend to cluster at the bottom does have something to do with consistency issues, but it probably also has something to do with playskill and dedication to the format as well. Say that to a first approximation, the consistency that Brainstorm provides is worth something like one match win over the course of 9 rounds over a baseline deck with no Library manipulation. It's probably less than that, and cards like Top (in Painter) likely mitigate some (but not all) of the discrepancy. SCG Syracuse had 7 blue-based decks in the top 8, but decks 8, 9, 10, and 16 didn't run blue at all and two of the remaining blue-based decks (TES, which I generally think of as a BRug deck and is something that would be killed by a Brainstorm ban, and High Tide, which I hope we can agree is not the sort of blue deck we're talking about) aren't really part of this discussion. It wouldn't surprise me if (for example) the 16th place Elves player picked up one of his losses to another nonblue deck that specializes in killing small creatures (Jund with Toxic Deluge, maybe?) or something like Belcher or Dredge that just races them but probably loses easily to hate or Force of Will. Similarly, how many Death and Taxes or Painter players did the Elves player knock out of contention in the X-1 bracket due to having a lopsided matchup there? How many of the Maverick player's losses were due to the deck being fairly soft to combo? The last point is particularly important when discussing both the number and finish distribution of blue decks: if you can run Force of Will and sideboard coutnermagic to protect yourself from fast combo, why wouldn't you do it? If you think that the ability to fight combo effectively game one doesn't enter into someone's decision when choosing a deck, especially (again) an expensive one, I'd like to know why.
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