Eldrazi at SCG Philly

[Dice_Box]

Sure, I don't disagree with that. The deck is obviously beatable and often beats itself. I just think lots of people playing "Draw the wrong half of my deck and I do nothing all game, draw the right half and you do nothing all game" decks is bad.

You are more than entitled to that view, but this is not something new. MUD, Stompy, Painter or Lands will all do much the same thing and I think (biased maybe) that Lands is the most powerful on that list. Even if you add Eldrazi I still think Lands is more powerful. More than once I have locked someone totally out of the game with Lands. More than one of those times I did it with Chalice or Sphere and Wasteland lock.

I am not sure what the issue here is. This is not a new concept. Welcome to Legacy, some decks will just stomp you into the ground. Hence their name.

[Tormod]

Turn 1 chalice is actually what gives certain decks a chance to exist in this format. Why do you want to take that away and narrow the number of deck choices available?

[Admiral_Arzar]

Turn 1 chalice is actually what gives certain decks a chance to exist in this format. Why do you want to take that away and narrow the number of deck choices available?

Because blue is love blue is life and if blue doesn't win everything people won't want to play /s

[iatee]

You are more than entitled to that view, but this is not something new. MUD, Stompy, Painter or Lands will all do much the same thing and I think (biased maybe) that Lands is the most powerful on that list. Even if you add Eldrazi I still think Lands is more powerful. More than once I have locked someone totally out of the game with Lands. More than one of those times I did it with Chalice or Sphere and Wasteland lock.

I am not sure what the issue here is. This is not a new concept. Welcome to Legacy, some decks will just stomp you into the ground. Hence their name.

Lands is obviously the most powerful deck on that list by a mile, and the key reason is because it has 8 pure tutors and Loam quickly becomes a de facto tutor. The other decks are T2 and are very high variance. Painter is a little better than the rest...and, surprise, it plays tutors. Anyway, Lands seems like it gets to be one of the Rocks to this Paper in our new game of Rock/Paper/Scissors - so congrats.

[Crimhead]

It's probably a bad thing that these guys could show up with zero knowledge of Legacy and end up with very good records.

it depends how on the odds. If a skilled bit inexperienced player can pick a (relatively) simple deck and have some chance of placing in a small LGS level event, MA be that's good for the format - provided that player still has lower odds of placing than a skilled and experienced player. I started with Burn so I could earn some easier wins while learning the meta.

Remember in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker fluked his way from an internet satellite all the way to 1st placec at the WSOP? It turns out that was very good for the game, which has since exposed in popularity.

For example, what is D&T supposed to do

Disenchant?

IBut this particular deck has the potential to crowd out lots more decks than just the Delver strategy that everyone loves to hate.

Except there were three Delver decks in the top 8 at SCG Philly, including first place. Not a lot of evidence that Shops is pushing out tempo strategies.

Do you guys really want to play Modern?

Never!

I want to play a format teaming with strange decks that attack the game from different angles. The price for this diversity is a lot of lopsided matches, "non-games", and "un-fun" strategies that would cause a Standard player to rage-quit. The flip side is a person can get a real edge through astute meta-gaming so as to be (more often than not) on the winning side of these skewed pairings. Welcome to Legacy!

[iatee]

Turn 1 chalice is actually what gives certain decks a chance to exist in this format. Why do you want to take that away and narrow the number of deck choices available?

There is a difference between the number of deck choices in legacy and the number of viable, consistent decks that reward strong technical play. Some people just want legacy to be a carnival where anything goes, other people are interested in it as a competitive magic format. That is why so many strong players end up playing Miracles - the reward for playing the most difficult deck in magic is that you get to significantly lower your variance, have a strong game across the field etc. etc. If you are a good player, you win a *lot* with Miracles.

The carnivalesque players love Stompy decks or simple combo decks - you don't have to do much, just show up and dump your hand, go home, sometimes you spike wins. Banning Chalice makes life slightly worse for these innocent folk, and hey who knows, maybe because legacy is ultimately not currently a very important format for Wizards the format *should* be pushed for high variance.

[GundamGuy]

the reward for playing the most difficult deck in magic

I've not seen doomsday put up good results lately.

[Gheizen64]

Heh, I used this exact point earlier. One drop into Daze on the play and I win. That same keep on the draw against a mystery opponent, they have a Chalice, I lose. The dice roll determines the game winner.

The difference being that Delver into daze has been legal forever and apparently wasn't a problem, while chalice T1 which DOES NOT present a clock like Delver into daze is a problem? After delver adapted by playing pyro, AD, anglers, the deck is already favored vs chalice lists. Eldrazi (possibly) killing RUG (which play 30 1-drops) is seen as degeneration of the format? Lay down please.
Eldrazi as of now is killing maybe combo, RUG, and weakening miracle a bit.

Dice deciding games has almost always been true in magic and even more in legacy, the format where stupid combo could take G1 from you quite a bit and that forced you to play blue more than not. Now that there's another deck that predate on most combo, those combo could be hated from the meta just enough that not everyone has to play blue... the sky is falling. Even if you don't consider fast combo, MUs are random (essentially a dice) and can put you in terrible situations like anything non blue vs combo or anything aggro/tempo vs lands.

All this discussion is essentially a player saying that blue shouldn't have unfavorable or volatile MUs, like fuck off. Non blue decks have had those forever, boo-fucking-hoo

[Megadeus]

ITT: People are learning what happens when chalice of the void gets played at a rate greater than 5% of the meta

[Admiral_Arzar]

ITT: People are learning what happens when chalice of the void gets played at a rate greater than 5% of the meta

I know and it's GLORIOUS. I wasn't ready for either the awesomeness of this deck or the salt of its reception.

[Tammit67]

Sure, I don't disagree with that. The deck is obviously beatable and often beats itself. I just think lots of people playing "Draw the wrong half of my deck and I do nothing all game, draw the right half and you do nothing all game" decks is bad.

I agree with you, but I'm unsure if the deck is overly strong enough to warrant a banlist addition. In the meantime it will be annoying/fresh change of pace depending on your point of view

[Tormod]

There is a difference between the number of deck choices in legacy and the number of viable, consistent decks that reward strong technical play. Some people just want legacy to be a carnival where anything goes, other people are interested in it as a competitive magic format. That is why so many strong players end up playing Miracles - the reward for playing the most difficult deck in magic is that you get to significantly lower your variance, have a strong game across the field etc. etc. If you are a good player, you win a *lot* with Miracles.

The carnivalesque players love Stompy decks or simple combo decks - you don't have to do much, just show up and dump your hand, go home, sometimes you spike wins. Banning Chalice makes life slightly worse for these innocent folk, and hey who knows, maybe because legacy is ultimately not currently a very important format for Wizards the format *should* be pushed for high variance.

lol, You totally avoided the question and ranted on, Straw man much?

[iostream]

Well, I'll bring the dice.

If you want games where powerful plays in the first 1-2 turns never determine the outcome of the game, you should exclusively play Limited or Standard, wherein the length of games are much longer and the die roll is much less consequential. Part of what makes Eternal formats what they are is the possibility of high impact plays on turns 1 or 2, and this is part of the fun of the format. It forces players to think about what they're doing in the early turns way more than in other formats, and to account for the probabilities of backbreaking plays much more carefully when assessing mulligan decisions. By the way, that's going to exist no matter what. Last time I checked, the Storm/Reanimator/S+T god hands that can turn 1 you through disruption are still legal.

I personally love that Eldrazi is a deck in Legacy. I think it will be a terrific format policeman similar to Dredge or Storm. It will force people to think harder about how they build their decks and provide an incentive to play new cards that interact well along that axis. It makes Legacy a little more like Vintage, and that's an awesome thing in my book.

[maharis]

Disenchant?

You can Disenchant Thought-Knot Seer?

Except there were three Delver decks in the top 8 at SCG Philly, including first place. Not a lot of evidence that Shops is pushing out tempo strategies.

Delver probably doesn't have the worst matchup against this deck because of its ability to Delver-Daze-Wasteland-Force-Boltboltbolt you while flying over. That's my point, though I don't think I made it clearly. If anything, this deck punishes other decks that are good against Delver... decks that can survive the tempo onslaught to get to the late game and go bigger than them. That's because the Eldrazi deck goes even bigger than that even faster. This is exactly what happened in Modern. If it wasn't the most obvious thing in the world that Eye of Ugin is going to get banned, it and Inkmoth Nexus would be tickling $100 as the only things worth doing would be Eldrazi or smash through Eldrazi as fast as possible.

While Legacy will always have people willing to play their pet deck, if this deck gets real, the worst-case scenario is combo decks try out outrace Eldrazi, Delver decks try to beat those decks and tempo out the Eldrazi decks, and Eldrazi decks on sort of a macro level. Your Tarmogoyfs, your Stoneforge Mystics, your Knights of the Reliquary... they will be unplayable. Maybe Miracles is able to ride Terminus through this wave but with Countertop largely ineffective and the blazing clock of the Eldrazi I can't imagine it has such a great matchup.

ITT: People are learning what happens when chalice of the void gets played at a rate greater than 5% of the meta

I am trying to fight the good fight ITT for what I think is the real problem, which is that TKS and reality smasher are stupid cards. I like Chalice and think it should play in the format. I like that I have to think about what kinds of cards I want to play in my deck in case I encounter it. But the Eldrazi deck is so aggressive and the creatures are so hard to deal with that you never even get a chance to look at the Chalice.

At the height of the S&T arguments, I argued it should be banned and not Omni or Griselbrand or Emrakul or whatever because Wizards is perpetually one big dumb idiot away from breaking it all over again. I don't think this is the case with Chalice or sol lands. TKS, Smasher, and even Endbringer and Displacer are so much more aggressively costed than the tradititional MUD wincons, and have twice as many accelerants available. Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin are useless to artifact-based Chalice decks. They will continue to be potentially explosive while having a wide array of foils that can be played in several decks. If the Eldrazi deck becomes oppressive, I hope they'll just take these lugs out of the format rather than going after what I think are defining cards for Legacy: Ancient Tomb, Chalice, and City of Traitors.

[MaximumC]

You can Disenchant Thought-Knot Seer?
I am trying to fight the good fight ITT for what I think is the real problem, which is that TKS and reality smasher are stupid cards. I like Chalice and think it should play in the format. I like that I have to think about what kinds of cards I want to play in my deck in case I encounter it. But the Eldrazi deck is so aggressive and the creatures are so hard to deal with that you never even get a chance to look at the Chalice.

It's hard to have one without the other. Chalice has been around for a long time, but if you play them you cut yourself off of efficient cards, too. Without Mishra's Workship or Moxen, Legacy MUD just hasn't been able to get where it is in Vintage. It has taken the "stupid" TKS and Smasher to actually give Chalice decks a strong enough backbone.

[btm10]

While Legacy will always have people willing to play their pet deck, if this deck gets real, the worst-case scenario is combo decks try out outrace Eldrazi, Delver decks try to beat those decks and tempo out the Eldrazi decks, and Eldrazi decks on sort of a macro level. Your Tarmogoyfs, your Stoneforge Mystics, your Knights of the Reliquary... they will be unplayable. Maybe Miracles is able to ride Terminus through this wave but with Countertop largely ineffective and the blazing clock of the Eldrazi I can't imagine it has such a great matchup.

You realize that the format's best Tarmogoyf deck (Shardless BUG) and best Knight of the Reliquary deck (4c Loam) have favorable Eldrazi matchups, right?

[Fox]

There is a difference between the number of deck choices in legacy and the number of viable, consistent decks that reward strong technical play. Some people just want legacy to be a carnival where anything goes, other people are interested in it as a competitive magic format. That is why so many strong players end up playing Miracles - the reward for playing the most difficult deck in magic is that you get to significantly lower your variance, have a strong game across the field etc. etc. If you are a good player, you win a *lot* with Miracles.

The carnivalesque players love Stompy decks or simple combo decks - you don't have to do much, just show up and dump your hand, go home, sometimes you spike wins. Banning Chalice makes life slightly worse for these innocent folk, and hey who knows, maybe because legacy is ultimately not currently a very important format for Wizards the format *should* be pushed for high variance.

Miracles, the most difficult deck? It certainly requires more patience than most decks, but a difficult deck requires knowledge of the rules beyond needing to hold priority and fetch with miracle trigger on the stack. I would also point out that making colossal mistakes is something only miracles will still reward with a win (as a recent example: at scg philly where the miracles pilot totally wraths his entire board to forgetting tabernacle and isn't punished at all). Difficult, no. Tedious and resilient, sure. Less fun (and more time-wasting) to play against than x=1 chalice, absolutely.

Counterbalance is in a series of big blue card-denying enchantments from Ice Age block - play games with Zur's Weirding and Tidal Control, then come and tell us how difficult it is to float wear/tear on top of library without symmetrical effects, paying life, or cumulative upkeep.

Miracles encourages absurd mana curves to beat, so I'm not sure why you're surprised that your deck generated this reaction. Punish people for solid deck construction and of course you're gonna get smashed by questionable mana bases/curves. Just like any other archetype in legacy, you can be a victim of your own success. It's about as absurd as when a fair deck player moan and groans about FoW and cantrips, and is totally oblivious to the fact that their presence protects the fair decks from the charbelchers of the world.

Delver decks should actually be cheering on eldrazi as it protects them from the miracles decks in the room, and chalice is something they can beat whereas counterbalance isn't.

[iatee]

I hope they'll just take these lugs out of the format rather than going after what I think are defining cards for Legacy: Ancient Tomb, Chalice, and City of Traitors.

Aren't you on team no-Brainstorm, which is no doubt a more 'defining' card than all of these?

I would be okay with them banning TKS, and it's easier for them to get away with banning new cards than old cards. But ultimately TKS is just a very pushed creature.

The only (non-ante) creatures on the ban list at the moment are 2 drops that let you immediately rearrange your entire library. It's easier to ban powerful spells and Chalice was already marked as unfair in another format. And banning Chalice doesn't even kill this deck. Who knows, they could ban TKS in Modern and Legacy too, but I would be surprised.

[iostream]

You realize that the format's best Tarmogoyf deck (Shardless BUG) and best Knight of the Reliquary deck (4c Loam) have favorable Eldrazi matchups, right?

In addition to this, since he also mentioned Stoneforge Mystic: I think literally every Stoneforge Mystic deck that exists right now (D+T, Maverick, etc.) also has a favorable Eldrazi matchup. ITT: people who have clearly never tested the Eldrazi deck.

[iatee]

Miracles, the most difficult deck? It certainly requires more patience than most decks, but a difficult deck requires knowledge of the rules beyond needing to hold priority and fetch with miracle trigger on the stack. I would also point out that making colossal mistakes is something only miracles will still reward with a win (as a recent example: at scg philly where the miracles pilot totally wraths his entire board to forgetting tabernacle and isn't punished at all). Difficult, no. Tedious and resilient, sure. Less fun (and more time-wasting) to play against than x=1 chalice, absolutely.

Any Miracles game contains an enormous number of potential lines. That's just how the deck is built. That doesn't mean the deck doesn't get free wins off miracled Terminuses or blind counterbalance flips. Bad Miracles players can win lots of games, but playing Miracles semi-optimally with a ticking clock is one of the more difficult things in competitive magic. This is not a very controversial statement.