The future of Legacy?

[bruizar]

Icouldnt bare another delver matchup either. I switched to the standard stream and i dont even play thatformat

[Admiral_Arzar]

How much interaction is there between Living Death vs Affinity? How much interaction is there between Bogle vs Living Death?

MUs among Affinity, Bogle (auras), Living Death, Reanimator, and Ad Nauseam, I just don't see it. They all do their own thing, and then that's the match result.

Are you suggesting that Omni-tell is not interactive? It has counters and lighting bolt, hello? I question your understanding of interaction. Who's being a hater and an illusionist here?

Living Death interacts with every deck that has creatures and/or nonbasic lands, at least assuming you consider playing Wrath effects and a bunch of land destruction interactive. I didn't see you address anything in my actual post, you just went off on this worthless tangent about "interaction" with an example that's obviously horribly flawed. Nice job.

Legacy is dying as a spectator sport. Playing it is a different animal. I played against 7 different decks in an SCG 5k IQ and not a single Delver of Secrets. Only 3 decks playing Brainstorm. That's probably due to card availability.

But of course, none of the non-Brainstorm lists were represented in the top 16 of that tournament. People show up with their deck, hope to have fun, go 2-3 or whatever, and there's your diverse format. And since the blue lists are better, they win, show up on coverage, driving more people to play them (hello) and push out the interesting decks.

It would be better if different kinds of decks than cantrip-into-wincon were viable, but c'est la vie right now.

Yup. The diversity of Legacy is largely illusionary, at least once the chaff gets filtered out and the wheat rises to the top tables.

I love it, this line gets spouted out so frequently. Thing is, if you pimped out Pod you'd be rolling in money now since the Abzan Collected Company deck runs all of the same creatures along with Chord of Calling. Like it's almost the same thing, just running Collected Company instead of Birthing Pod.

Anyone with half a brain saw that Collected Company was going to be insane, and that the cards from Pod were easily playable in any kind of successor list. Anyone who fire-saled all their Pod stuff...well, I stand by my previous remark.

[Piceli89]

How much interaction is there between Living Death vs Affinity? How much interaction is there between Bogle vs Living Death?

MUs among Affinity, Bogle (auras), Living Death, Reanimator, and Ad Nauseam, I just don't see it. They all do their own thing, and then that's the match result.

Are you suggesting that Omni-tell is not interactive? It has counters and lighting bolt, hello? I question your understanding of interaction. Who's being a hater and an illusionist here?

Just for the sake of actually answering your first questions, Living End vs Affinity comes down to see Ravager in time before the board sweep happens. As for Bogles vs Living End, it is a hideous matchup for the first deck given it can't avoid its creature being nuked by LE.

The decks you just mentioned are the non-interactive part of the format- arguably the worst one, if you will. Luckily, though, on broad scales these decks tend not to do well consistently. They burst in single events (or certain period given metagame circumstances) to wane shortly after. Amulet Bloom also used to fit this description, but somehow it managed to fool its buyers about its consistency and made it to the rank of SCG-endorsed "quality picks" for the format.

Anyways.

If you define 'interactive' spending your counterspells to protect your three-cards combo then ok, Omnitell may fit the description. I don't believe, though, that this creates interesting games (at least for the person sitting on the other side of the table). The variety of axis Magic is a good game for gets basically reduced to a subset of 'right' cards to find in time with your cantrip spells to not die by the hand of a broken set of cards. 'How many Pyroblasts and Flusterstorms do I have to assembl in my hand to beat their own?'

The same argument can be applied for every other combo deck in the format. The difference with Modern combo decks, in my opinion, is that the Legacy ones are on an entirely superior class of consistency and dangerousness, which in turn cuts off playability of other very-interactive (and non-blue) decks to basically nothing, unless you accept their inferior capability of card selection and inherent clunkiness (or you built anti-meta decks like Chalice decks for that matter, which is something I find to be hardly enjoyable).

In a nutshell, that is why Legacy is bound to shrink more and more into a trifecta of Delver decks, Miracle/Stoneblade and the various combo decks. Shards may change, sideboard slots and metagame circumstances (Pyroblast md) as well, but the situation is pretty much the one described. Of course one could point the recent success of 'outdated'/oddball decks like Aggro Loam and MUD as a counterargument, but once again, number-wise it doesn't really constitute a valid proof to break the rule.

I am not trying to imply that Modern is in a better shape and, by no means, a better choice. The overabundance of linear decks is putting a damper on the format there, too. You can't prepare for everything and too many decks have such strong openings that it makes you regret having paid for the tournament at all- turn three Tron, Bogles voltroning up, Affinity puking their hand on turn one, but also turn xyz Twin my dork as soon as you skip a beat. This is broken Magic, much as in Legacy, and broken Magic is bound to leave a bitter taste in your mouth a good number of times for its intrinsic nature. The natural consequence of this trend is that you are likely to pick one of these decks yourself to destroy them before they destroy you, unless you are so confident (and/or rich) to pick BGx or URx.

My very personal opinion is that both the formats are doomed to die. Maybe it will take more for Modern to wane than Legacy because they are trying to incentivize the access to it with reprints, but still those didn't do anything to lower the prices for new players, meaning that Modern as well is bound to become a format played in small local cliques that had access to the cards before they were worth half the price of a car. See Snapcaster, Tarmogoyf and the such. For competitive purposes, these cards are irreplaceable and workarounds in creative fashions usually bring to inferior decks that don't stand much of a chance against very good pilots with very good decks, unless you are either an incredible lucksack or a genius deckbuilder + player combined. I pity every person on Mtgsalvation pouring their time and heart into creating the latest iteration of Superjanky.dec just to be crushed consistently by Thoughtseize into Tarmogoyf. I was there for too many months.

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On the other hand, if you also consider how much Standard is popular, promoted with high-stakes events and relatively cheap (as the only really expensive cards right now are Jace and Nissa), I think that the direction of the formats is already pretty well set up and clear to recognize. It may still take some years, though. The monetary loss of cards rotating is easily offset by selling the chase rares before the next rotation or just winning a single event.

If you want to play powerful Magic that does not fall into degenerate or uninteractive dynamics, I would indeed suggest to put away the usual "Oh I am a Legacy player and my dick is so big" mentality and delve into Standard a bit. The concepts of card advantage, tempo, midrange and such are still present but way more scaled down. Also, building 'indie' decks is still possible and the metagame shifts at a very high speed- which is something that may be enjoyable as it rewards players' capability to interpret local and global trends as well as to deckbuild one level ahead of anybody else.

I used to play Legacy, got tired of it being too extreme and without space for innovation; went to Modern, felt the same shortly after. Started playing Standard, and it's not bad at all.
(Let the haterain fall on me )


EDIT- I also forgot to mention that, in all likelihood, WotC has largely lost interest in keeping a keen eye on the health of Legacy in these very last years and is basically leaving the format to adjust itself throughout new sets coming out, unless anything majorly worrying happens. Given Dig Through Time hasn't reached Survival/Cruise levels of success, it is most likely going to be a staple in the format for another long while.

[Barook]

My very personal opinion is that both the formats are doomed to die. Maybe it will take more for Modern to wane than Legacy because they are trying to incentivize the access to it with reprints, but still those didn't do anything to lower the prices for new players, meaning that Modern as well is bound to become a format played in small local cliques that had access to the cards before they were worth half the price of a car. See Snapcaster, Tarmogoyf and the such. For competitive purposes, these cards are irreplaceable and workarounds in creative fashions usually bring to inferior decks that don't stand much of a chance against very good pilots with very good decks, unless you are either an incredible lucksack or a genius deckbuilder + player combined. I pity every person on Mtgsalvation pouring their time and heart into creating the latest iteration of Superjanky.dec just to be crushed consistently by Thoughtseize into Tarmogoyf. I was there for too many months.

Wizards doesn't really support the format as you'd think. They have zero interest in lowering the price of cards like Tarmogoyf to "protect the secondary market", as Maro said on his blog. They're basically throwing us a bone here and there while they continue to milk us. If one card gets cheaper, the rest of the not-reprinted cards go up - and thus the cycle continues.

EDIT- I also forgot to mention that, in all likelihood, WotC has largely lost interest in keeping a keen eye on the health of Legacy in these very last years and is basically leaving the format to adjust itself throughout new sets coming out, unless anything majorly worrying happens. Given Dig Through Time hasn't reached Survival/Cruise levels of success, it is most likely going to be a staple in the format for another long while.

DTT has already surpassed TC by alot. TC was in about 40% decks during its heydays, DTT has reached 60% already.

"Oh I am a Legacy player and my dick is so big"

I suggest this to become the future Legacy slogan.

[bruizar]

DTT has already surpassed TC by alot. TC was in about 40% decks during its heydays, DTT has reached 60% already.

I warned for Dig Through Time during the speculation thread and argued it is more powerful than Treasure Cruise. It is essentially a one-sided draw 7 where you get to pick the best 2 cards. It is conveniently instant such that you can dig for a Force of Will and something to pitch turning it into a Counterspell in a pinch. Otherwise, it helps you dig for sideboard hate, immediate board state answers or as we've seen, assembling degenerate combo cards. If card quantity was better than card quality, Land Tax and Squadron Hawk would be everywhere, but they are not.

[mishima_kazuya]

The pod banning announcement happened on January, Dragons of Tarkir was released at end of March. In other words, you had no idea what would happen in between. What incentives do you have in keeping a banned deck? Furthermore, why would you put yourself in that risky position financially at the first place? What you're saying is that there is a slight chance in which that Wizard R&D might print an alternative in the next set to save your investment. Can you promise me that sequence of events will happen at every Modern banning? I can promise you Modern banning will happen in the future, Pod will not be the last one.

I didn't pimp out Pod per say.
Like I can use my Japanese Snapcaster Mages and Abrupt Decays in other formats. Or I could use my signed fetchlands in both Legacy and Modern.