But I feel you're still missing the point. Card choices can be made to mitigate the problem of chalice. Dismember, Grudge, Decay (As in, BUG is more popular again), 2-cost beaters in delver over Goose/DRS; you get the idea.
These are things that if Chalice is a problem, people will innovate around. Cut some Ponders for some 2-mana draw spells? Play EE instead of the sweeper of your choice? You get the idea.
These metagame decisions make the game *before* the game (deck building) more interesting. Much like weighing "Do I run 0 basics, 1 basic, or 3 basics" logic. It's interesting because you're weighing the probability of variance in your opening hands' manabases and your card composition against the variance of your number of 1-drops, number of Wasteland decks, ability to play around mana disruption, and obviously Blood Moon proliferation.
Similarly, having to weigh playing slightly different cards in the deck that are "not as good" but make your Eldrazi matchup more managable is good IMO. That makes trade-offs for people running pure aggro-Delver vs. slower-Delver (having more 2-drops, or some choices that get through Counterbalance/Chalice a lot better.)
You're right that it favors brewers a little bit more; but what it really is is meaning that good players aren't just someone who ran Deck X a lot. It's people who can adjust to the meta-game and be able to play a different set of 60 to similar consistency. IMO, There's nothing lost here because you can adjust 5 card slots and take the MU from "owned by chalice" to "Great." How? Well I mean.. just imagine you're BUG Delver. Swapping Disfigures, a DRS, and a Lily to 2x Gurmag Anglers and 2x Dismember is already a huge leap forward. Against the rest of the Metagame you'll not be much worse for wear; but those times it hurts are why different cards at different mana-costs exist and have trade-offs.
I really feel like being forced to think about deck-choices is not part of the game to you and that's where you have a disconnect with this (entire?) forum. To basically everyone else who's attempted to speak to you, building your deck to adjust to the meta is part of the game, not just some idle franchise that some guy in Italy figured out 3 years ago and was tuned by randomers since. Literally half or more of the game is weighing minor gains/losses to the variance of similar but different cards. The disfigure example is great:
Disfigure:
* Pros: Kills 1-drops at no life loss, even most 2-drops for Tempo advantage.
* Cons: Can't kill Goyf, Angler, or giant Eldrazi, countered by chalice
Dismember:
* Pros: Kills most things in the format. Can be casted by an off-color land and will never be chaliced.
* Cons: Often costs 2-4 life in order to do it in a timely fashion. Is more rare to provide tempo advantage given the penalty of 4 life.
When you take those pros and cons and then start adding in other variables; that is a game with depth. You're acting like game depth only occurs at the table which is why no one agrees with you. As someone who played Junk (and still will sometimes) for years against Counterbalance decks, even MUs that feel fine.. even with 4 Decays, some GSZs with your QPMs, a pulse in there; etc.. you'll just fall to Counterbalance #1 because you didn't have it.
It happens. It always has happened. It happens when you don't draw enough lands or flood out. It happens because you drew Basics against the Blood Moon player or the Blood Moon player T1'd you with Spirit-REB backup. For every game that properly constructed decks in an Eldrazi meta-game get chaliced out, they will instead have a hand like:
DRS, Tarmogoyf, Dismember, Daze, Fetchx2, Wasteland
The idea that Delver hasn't been dealing with this via Thalia decks is flawed. The idea that decks haven't been adjusting to reach that nice 50-50 MUs is flawed. We're just looking at the latest bump in variance as people adjust to a different meta. Yeah, it'll shake up for a bit, but Chalice counts will go down when that doesn't just auto-win because people figured out that 30_1_drops.dec is a poor choice in said meta; and adjust a little bit.
EDIT: Storm players shouldn't be worse for wear either. Play TES instead of ANT if it's a problem. Swap some DRs for Cabal-Rituals. Write off the 10% and attack the rest of the meta becoming slightly less efficient against you to up their Eldrazi percentages. Run E-Bridge in the side and slow-roll them.
But even if all the meta does is stay stagnant and get run over by Eldrazi randomly, sure.. you made your point I guess; but that means only that the format is more open and diverse than it was, which IMO, is a good thing.
Originally Posted by Nestalim
- At no point did I suggest that tuning a deck takes no skill. I'm one of the more active posters on the D+T thread and play/advocate a pretty avant garde build. In fact, I would say that due to the relatively small player base / fact that pros don't spend much time trying to break the format, there are probably has an unusual number of 'brewer discoveries to be made for T1 decks' - stuff like Abrupt Decay in Lands etc.
- Because legacy's t1.5/t2 is already enormous I don't think adding another deck to the format is some huge virtue, especially when in practice it plays the same as the other Stompy decks.
- Even from the deckbuilder's POV, 'more open and diverse' means that it is *harder* to be consistently rewarded for your nuanced deckbuilding decisions. At the same time, Eldrazi is a deck that makes it harder for to be consistently rewarded for your play decisions. As such, its existence as a T1 deck will be a negative for both skillful deckbuilders (less of a chance of being rewarded for any out-of-game decision) and skillful players (who get to lose to a greater % of games with no meaningful in-game decisions.)
- The skill of predicting the metagame and building accordingly generally is most rewarded in *very* unsolved metas (e.g. Pro Tour, set's just released, a huge part of the game is predicting what people will show up with.) Once the meta has been solved/semi-solved, you can just copy the list of a top player who did well last week, especially in a very slowly changing format like legacy. In 2016 it really isn't hard to find a well-tuned version of a T1 deck online somewhere.
- If you want to be rewarded for metagaming and deckbuilding, standard will always be a better format. If you want to be rewarded for high technical play, legacy has generally been one of the better if not the very best format. Cards are powerful enough that one mistake often loses the game, you have to have a deep knowledge of lots of cards / lots of decks, every zone is interacted with and you have to have a strong knowledge of the rules. That's why I think it's a shame anytime a caveman deck is consistently good - you kinda get to just ignore all of that.
- Another nuance that's legacy-specific - decks are expensive. Some people have playsets of blue duals and the ability to play whatever deck's currently favored, other people own Storm, and now Storm is much worse but you know what, they're gonna play Storm. Does Shardless have a much better Eldrazi matchup? Yes. Are all of those players gonna drop 2k to have a better matchup against 10% of the field? So that they can win some prize points at an SCG classic?
- This is related to the above - beyond the naturally wide and chaotic t1.5/t2, budget constraints + fun players add additional matchup variance. Because of this, knowing how to play one deck inside out has always been a better strategy than trying to earn your wins through your metagaming skill. I think that's great and a lot of the decks are deep enough that you can play them for years and still have things to learn. Whereas Eldrazi...
That's pessimistic. Your deckbuilding decisions shouldn't be only based on the DTB section; so being punished for making bad ones because you've overcompensated is fine.
How? Because keeping a hand full of 1-drops and no FoW against a chalice deck isn't a play decision?
This is an assumption you need to prove. I don't know how many times I have to expose assumptions and fallacies on your part before you stop spouting BS.
Your premise was unproven and thus you can't use this conclusion. Further, see my first point and previous post. Spamming 1-mana spells and getting chalice'd are play decisions you have made that are bad, and thusly you've made decisions that a more skillful deckbuilder wouldn't make. What don't you get?
Yeah but it's currently a T1 deck. So adding a "real" deck to the format is good. This isn't like the people playing Cheeri0s or Worldgorger which can't hardly get wins in a developed meta. This is about a deck that cruised through an SCG, several times. This isn't the same as the Maverick-Die-Hard or the DGA die-hard. This is a T1 deck as much as we probably think that it's a lame deck. I don't think it's a cool deck or particularly interesting; but it's good apparently.
Oops, you contradicted yourself. Is legacy semi-solved or is it hugely diverse? If it's hugely diverse and we see things like Junk, Food Chain, and Aluren occasionally take Top 8s; that would tell me it's the latter; but that would contradict your whole argument so I guess you would like to argue that it's semi-solved and just ignore the myriad T1.5 decks that get tops.
You really just talk out of your ass don't you? I'm sorry, but seriously. In what world is deckbuilding in a format with 700 cards with Three good decks and 1 good beater better than deckbuilding against a highly diverse metagame with 17,000 card choices. Even if you limit it to only "good legacy cards" you're looking at 1,000's of playables. I play a multitude of decks, archs, and creations and generally do as well as I normally do. Yeah I have deep knowledge of the format so I obviously do better when I have a more powerful deck like Delver, but experimenting in Bant or whatever, doesn't mean I'm punished as long as I don't play against myself.
Obviously you're speaking from the "player skill" side of instead of the "brewer" side of it, the dichotomy you decided existed, so telling me; a brewer; what I'd rather play is obnoxious. Speak for yourself and don't tell people what I, or those like me, give a shit about, because you have no clue. Obviously brewers are in legacy and not standard because they think brewing in legacy is better than "brewing" in standard (good luck when a 4/5 idiot was the entire format for two years, and before that MonoB was the entire format, and before that Thragtusk was the entire format, and before that..) Obviously people like myself think that brewing against the diverse meta-game while understanding likely MUs is fun.
Yeah, but the storm players can, for little money, convert to TES and just goblin the Eldrazi player out. ANT may be more consistent and that kind of thing and deal with some decks disruption better; but it's better against Shardless, D&T, Eldrazi, and similar because it can just spew 14 goblins T1. They could become more degenerate and play Belcher or Oops while spending about a dual-land. This isn't any different than the Die-Hard deck X player, either adjust to the meta with your semi-subpar deck or swap decks.
Again, where were you when Jund got shit on? Seriously!? How is this different?
None of your arguments work without contradicting yourself.
Formats can be solved on top and still have a diverse t1.5 bubbling underneath. I don't think Legacy is as solved as it was pre-Eldrazi, but I would be very surprised if the consensus best deck is anything other than Miracles or Lands a few months from now. Junk, Food Chain and Aluren were T1.5 decks that could T8 any given tournament a year ago, and they'll be T1.5 decks that can T8 any given tournament a year from now. Such is the life of a T1.5 deck.
You've been talking about two entirely different things and confusing the two. One of them is 'the ability to play with a large spectrum of cards/decks because you enjoy that aspect of the game' ('brewing'), the other is 'the ability to be rewarded with wins for making skillful deck decision choices' ('deckbuilding'.) There's more room to get wins off your deckbuilding skills and meta-calls in a constantly-evolving standard. There's more room to 'brew' in legacy.
Legacy's large meta actually narrows your ability to make skillful deckbuilding decisions because it's hard to predict your matchups with any reliability. People tuning their T1 decks for a large sea of T1.5 decks are pressed into playing cards that are broadly good and rarely rewarded for bold meta-calls.
I don't see how you can make the case that there's more "depth of gameplay" in an inbred format where one deck is winning nearly twice as much as the next 3-4 best decks combined. If you're defining "high technical play" as depending on knowledge of other decks, the card pool, and the rules, how is a more open format with a greater number of viable decks worse?
I find it hard to believe that there's a large portion of the Legacy community that makes their deck choice simply based on how difficult the decisions are. If that were the case, why haven't all these gentleman scholars been turning out in huge numbers with DDFT? Where were these guys when Zoo was the best deck? Sneak/Show? Omitell? RU Delver?
I think it's more likely that most people either play what they think has the best chance of winning the most games, and the rest play a pet deck because they just like certain cards or interactions. We just happen to be at a point in the development of the meta where people who thought they were squarely in the first group are having to decide if they really are, or whether they're attached enough to certain cards to move into the latter.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
Miracles has never been winning twice as much as the next 3-4 best decks combined. It's been a great choice for a long time because it had a paucity of very bad matchups not because it crushed everything. There is always a multiplier effect for a 'best deck' as not only is it 'the best deck' but a lot of the strongest players will also move to it, which means it wins even more than it would if it were distributed to people randomly.
In any case, I never said that a large portion of the legacy community makes their deck choice simply based on how difficult the decisions are though I do think that good players given two equally strong decks will often prefer the more decision/interaction-dense option (broadly speaking 'the blue deck' / 'the control deck'), as it gives them the most ability to leverage their skill. That's been true throughout Magic's history, and it's not limited to legacy. Spikes always love blue and there's a reason for it.
I think it's a happy coincidence when a deck like Miracles is the best deck instead of SnS/Eldrazi/etc. and the format is in a good place when those type of decks are on the fringes rather than in every t8.
Sorry, that was poorly worded. I should have said twice as much as the next best deck(s), as it has on multiple occasions. Before that it was BUG Delver. Before that it was RUG Delver. My point is still that a meta with one or just a handful of dominant decks (that share a core of the same cards) directly flies in the face of these "depth of play" and "technical play" arguments if you're saying deck/format/card knowledge has anything to do with that. You have far fewer matchups and interactions to consider and practice than a wide-open meta.
Again, I think you're looking at decisions within a single match as the only expression of skill in Magic, and that anything that adds variance is generally bad. If that's the kind of experience you want, "ModernChess andVintageGo already provide these kind of environments."
Well, I think you're wrong. First, there is no such thing as "two equally strong decks", there are no two decks that are evenly matched against the rest of the meta and each other. Skilled players will make skilled deck choices. Remember when all of team CFB was on Reanimator for a GP (Atlanta I think)? Was that really the most interaction-dense option at the time? No, it just had the best percentages against the decks they expected to play against. That's how good players choose their decks.In any case, I never said that a large portion of the legacy community makes their deck choice simply based on how difficult the decisions are though I do think that good players given two equally strong decks will often prefer the more decision/interaction-dense option (broadly speaking 'the blue deck' / 'the control deck'), as it gives them the most ability to leverage their skill. That's been true throughout Magic's history, and it's not limited to legacy. Spikes always love blue and there's a reason for it.
The top tier didn't get to 80% Blue decks over the last 5 years or so because everyone suddenly decided to start leveraging their skill. WotC printed a bunch of objectively powerful cards that just worked a lot best in a shell full of cantrips and counters. Snapcaster, Delver, Jace, Terminus, Griselbrand, Emrakul, Pyromancer, Mentor, SFM. In general, the more powerful individual cards get, the more powerful the cantrip shell gets. It's not about leveraging skill, it's just about consistency. We've also had top-tier decks that were consistent because they were highly redundant, like Merfolk, Zoo, Burn, and now Eldrazi.
That's your opinion. I'm glad to see Miracles get knocked down a peg, because I don't believe it's the "skill-intensive" circlejerk you'd like to believe. Yeah, there are a lot of really tight games, but I've also seen plenty of top-decked Termini and blind Counterbalance hits. It has plenty of mindless games between the soft lock and Terminus-as-reset-button. Same for whatever Delver flavor of the week is popular. Blind flipping Delver and cantripping into a counter can make a loose keep look pretty solid in short order.I think it's a happy coincidence when a deck like Miracles is the best deck instead of SnS/Eldrazi/etc. and the format is in a good place when those type of decks are on the fringes rather than in every t8.
Personally, I think the format is in a better place when there's no one clearly dominant deck, and when the top tier isn't static for years at a time. I don't want it to rotate like Standard, but I like a good ebb and flow to the dominant strategies. I also think a rock-paper-scissors meta is healthy and enjoyable, and I'd say I'm not alone, since last time someone asked, most folks around here said their favorite period in Legacy was the Merfolk/Zoo/NO-RUG era. Nothing was super dominant, and there was a shitload of Tier 1.5 decks.
The Eldrazi deck itself is inconsequential. The fact that it's shaking up the top Tier and making people actually stop and think about what they sleeve up for an event is what I like. Unfortunately, I think you're right that Miracles will just adapt and continue to dominate.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
Even with Miracles as the best deck, how much of the field in total was ever on it? I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it can't be more than 20%. There was no point in the recent Miracles-era where you could go to a large legacy event and not expect to face a wide variety of decks.
If Rock-Paper-Scissors is the experience you want, why don't you play Rock-Paper-Scissors, the very best Rock-Paper-Scissors environment? Nobody wants Magic to be exactly Chess. Some of us want it to go more in the direction of Chess, some of us want it to go more in the direction of Rock-Paper-Scissors. It's going in that rocky direction with Eldrazi and I'm personally disappointed, other people aren't and they have their reasons. It makes sense for people who get different things out of the format to disagree about whether something is good or bad, which is why I've said multiple times that's there's no 'right' here.
Sure, not all blue decks are particularly difficult and a lot of them are also high variance and fairly straightforward (SnS, Reanimator, Omni etc.). Top-tier decks are consistent decks, blue decks in legacy have the most consistency, so everyone plays them, but especially spikes. In Modern they have less consistency, so they're not the obvious choice the same way.
In any case you missed my point which wasn't that legacy-went-blue because of spikes, but rather that spikes have gravitated towards interactive blue decks *across Magic* and for 20 years now. The reason for that beyond 'counterspells and cantrips are fun' is that the decision-dense decks benefit good players who will make good decisions. If you think you make better decisions than your opponent, you want to maximize the total number of decisions that will be made in any given game.
I beg to differ. Spikes don't go for blue b/c it lets them make a great number of decisions but b/c it lets them answer anything thrown at them with relative ease. As soon as you manage to circumvent their ability to interact you can quite easily overtake them with a deck that has very little decision making (i.e. game 1 vs. Manaless Dredge, for instance).
The only reason that such decks aren't tier 1 is that there are cards that say "You cannot do a thing" for 1 mana. Imagine what were to happen if the field got a 1 mana artifact that said "Your opponent cannot cast blue spells". Grafdigger's Cage for blue. I think the world suddenly would be too small to withstand all the outrage that'd ensue.
I mean 'making decisions' and 'answering anything thrown at you' are just different ways of talking about the same thing. Force of Will 'answers anything' but requires you to make a difficult and punishing decision in the process, that's why it's one of the most well-designed cards in the game. It's kinda a shame that they don't have more playable pitch cards for other colors.
In any case, why is the ability to answer anything thrown at you anything but a good thing? Threats vs answers is a core dynamic in the game. The argument should be that other colors should be given more room to interact consistently (I think this is true) rather than 'Blue is unfair because it has that ability.' By pushing the game to be more and more creature-based over time, as Wizards has, they've been effectively doing this, as creatures are the easiest thing to interact with.
Manaless Dredge wins by being hard to interact with g1, but once you start interacting with it, it falls apart. Nobody hates Grafdigger's Cage because it's a very fair card that anyone can play that just says 'People can't do exactly one variant of unfair things.' If you want to beat it, you can play a deck that does other things too (e.g Elves can still Glimpse into a million Elves) or play ways to interact with it (putting some lands and spells in your deck is a good place to start.)
Chalice comes close to being a Grafdigger's Cage for blue spells and that's exactly why I think it's eventually going to be banned.
Didn't Eldrazi's existence created an environment for more decks (less rock-paper-scissor) to be viable than Miracle/Storm/Delvers (Brainstorm dominance triangle) pre Eldrazi?
More decks means more rock-paper-scissors since you have less ability to dedicate space to beating any given deck, so you're more dead to a bad matchup. That's been the problem with modern for a long time, and it's compounded when the decks are linear decks that beat you quickly, like Eldrazi.
Legacy-legal blue spells with cmc = 1: 283
Legacy-legal blue spells with cmc > 1: 2093
Cast different spells?
It strikes me as especially strange that you're relentlessly defending the place of Brainstorm decks in the meta, because IIRC you've actually argued for the banning of Brainstorm because of how much more consistent the cantrip cartel is than anything else in the format. Am I remembering that wrong, or was there a change of heart somewhere along the line?
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
So, in theory, I think Brainstorm is a little too strong and shouldn't be in the format. It is format warping, and it always will be. In practice, banning it would cause riots and lots of people would actually quit legacy. I don't think increasing the number of Chalice mines you step on is a good way to stop Brainstorm - does anyone ever actually side out their Brainstorms? Even *against* Chalice it is often a good card, as you can dig for a counterspell or shuffle away 1-drops.
And now there is a force in the meta which actually creates a downside to unabashedly including Brainstorm in your deck. And they didn't have to ban the card (so no riots, no one quitting).
Cheese,
iatee plays D&T which thrives on a cantrip meta and creates the interactive games he enjoys to play. He has made it clear that all Magic games should be of the type he enjoys or it is bad for the game. Maindeckable Chalice in the meta threatens his Magic utopia, but gives him ample fodder to complain... so he does that.
I am pretty open about the type of Magic I like and that this is personal preference, and I don't think everyone should have the same preferences.
But it is pretty out in the open that Wizards has pushed the game towards more interaction over the years, and they make these decisions based on market research on what players respond well to not on 'iatee's opinions on the source'.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...eneral-is-that
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...-love-ur-combo
Okay, this is where I am trying to understand (or confused)
If MORE decks means MORE rock-paper-scissors?
Does it mean: LESS decks means LESS rock-paper-scissors?
In a smaller meta, doesn't it means players will put more focus on the few decks they are going to play or fight against? So while you have MORE ability to dedicate space to beat an given deck, your opponent is also trying to do the same thing? Thus the good match up is still good, bad match up is still bad?
Am I missing something?
More decks means *more* rock-paper-scissors, everything else being equal, because with a very wide meta you can't patch up all your weak spots with a 15 card sideboard. e.g. I think my current deck is a little soft to burn, but I can't afford to spend SB space to patch it up since the slots are valuable and burn-hate is very specific.
Generally if you already have a good matchup you won't be using sideboard space to make that good matchup an even better matchup so the good matchups get worse and the bad matchups get better after board. This is not true across the board, but it's true as a generalized statement.
I just have to say I really liked this paragraph. (I think) This is what I was attempting to describe in one of my ranty posts on here.
@iatee
I really do get what you're saying.. but I think the whole problem is your perspective. As D&T you're never on the opposite side of Mirran Crusader as BGx. You never get RiP'd or have to side out your beaters to avoid it. You think that your topdecked meta-considerations that insta-gib someone with a single card are intelligent but that the Eldrazi players are morons. That is a high horse I'm happy to kick in the knees.
You sit there and talk about how it's so bad for the blue players and the blue players don't care.
Just you and whatever guys are salty after just getting hosed by chalice.
You're mad that Colorless got a boost and aren't X/2s.
You're mad because your deck full of protection has to reconsider it's choices.
You're mad that Eldrazi will move some of the blue to other decks from chalice, despite being perfectly happy to go:
T1->Vial
T2->Vial->Mom, Waste
T3->Vial->Thalia, Port, Port you
It's no wonder you won't drop it despite seemingly everyone disagreeing with you. It's no wonder that because blue players will exist and have fun, but shift to things like TNN and midrange strategies to get unhosed by Chalice has you so upset.
Those poor blue players. What will they ever do if they aren't being hosed by Thalia + Vial + Cavern, as if you think you're not favored in that scenario.
I think Ace/Homebrew has crowbarred open the logic behind this so we can let it die. There's nothing to fix with his logic; it makes perfect sense with some perspective.
Enough sense for me anyway
This kind of problem exist in Legacy for a long time though. Too many decks, not enough answers. Actually Eldrazi or not, DTB is always consist about 5-8 decks. So you could always make a sideboard plan based on DTB?
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