Preparing for Eternal Masters: Five Budget(ish) Options for Legacy
Ever since MtGGoldfish's No Reserved List Legacy article, I've pretty much stopped reading their content. While they're good at covering some of the other formats, that article was uninformed and had very irritating consquences (i.e. everyone who doesn't play Legacy thinks we should ban the reserved list).
With today's EMA spoilers, they wrote about getting into Legacy on the cheap. I figured I'd toss it up here. Thoughts?
Breezed through it. Yeah, it seemed okay. I liked that they prefaced it by saying that 'budget' in Legacy terms is not the same as for standard/modern.
I think they should have just gone with that stance though and probably not made it a 'budget' article then. I don't know how helpful it is to even imply that they can compete in the format with a $300 deck. (I guess "compete" is a stretchable word but I think most people would grow tired of Legacy pretty quickly if they only had Manaless Dredge to play, ever.)
I think it would be more helpful to maybe look at crossing over from Modern. Already have a Merfolk deck in Modern? Well there's a Merfolk deck in Legacy that's pretty decent and it doesn't contain a single reserved list card. It still commands a hefty price of around $1200 but that's due to Forces, Aether Vials and Cavern of Souls among a few others and you already own a lot of those cards from your modern deck.
Already own playsets of cliques, snaps and all the blue fetches from playing Modern? Well yeah sure, buying blue duals is expensive as shit but you can get away with only running a couple initially and be close ish to a viable blue control deck. You're still missing forces and jaces to build miracles but hey... EMA.
Agreed completely. A lot of people are scared off by Legacy's pricetag, but those people seem to assume they're gonna have to buy an entire 75 card deck. In many cases, owning a competitive Modern deck is a strong launchpad for building a good Legacy deck. Of course, I think this is compounded by a lot of converts wanting to only play Miracles and other decks with blue duals; if they were open to it, it'd be much easier to hop over from Modern Jund, Junk, etc into the Legacy equivalent.Originally Posted by nevilshute
Which I think leads to another issue: non-Legacy players don't seem very aware of all the interesting and fairly-competitive options the format has. There's more to Legacy than Force of Will and Brainstorm, and MtGGoldfish might do a better service to its readers by highlighting those decks.
This article seems like an extension of that idea. I didn't see a single RL card in these "budget" decks.
I liked how they presented Burn in there, showing a budget version with a clear path to upgrade into a fully powered version.
The problem I found with this and a lot of "budget" Legacy deck discussion is that it funnels players into dead end decks. You build budget Belcher and then what, you power it up? To what? It's still Belcher.
Real budget discussion should focus on dollar cost as compared to doors opened. Sure Force of Will might be pricey, but that goes a long way towards a lot of things.
Buying into budget Dredge, beyond Cabal Therapy, the high dollar cards are Ichorid, Golgari Grave-Troll and Bridge from Below. What does that get you? Even if you spring for LEDs, you're closer to some kind of Storm, but you're still stuck with these dead end cards.
The problem with this line of thinking is it assumes the new player is going to spend $200~$300 and that's it. They'll never continue investing, they'll never pick up new cards slowly over time.The rule of thumb for selecting a budget Legacy deck is pretty simple: avoid Wasteland decks and Force of Will decks.
A good budget Legacy deck should have a long term plan, Shocks now, Duals later. Maybe start as RG Zoo now, RUG Delver later. Otherwise new players will plop down what to them seems like a good amount of cash for maybe at best an even tournament record. More than likely they'll be glorified buys to most players and leave wholly dissatisfied and with very little in usable cards to anything else.
I wasn't sure how I felt about the article. I enjoy reading his little thought experiments, but I don't think of how it reads to someone who isn't well-versed in the format to begin with. I can understand the outcry of "BAN ALL RESERVED LIST" after the No-RL Legacy article, for instance.
Top, FOW, Karakas, and Jace are in EMA, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Counterbalance at Rare either. Might be fun to force it in draft if you open the Top and are passed CB, but I don't see it dominating there even if you're lucky enough to assemble it. Everything else besides duals is legal in Modern (hell, even Standard, with Nahiri and Mentor...almost) and transitioning Miracles players can build the deck competitively with Shocklands and make the duals the absolute last thing they acquire. You play enough basics to play around the disadvantage, and I think it'll really only cost you games if you're in a Burn-heavy meta.
That's the key point missing from the article. I think he should revisit it after EMA spoilers are completely out with good Modern transition lists.
Prepare for EMA by buying a crappy version of a tier 2 Legacy deck!
I for one am a fan of this article. Yes, these may not be perfect decks, but they give newbies a reasonable "launch point" into the format. The new players that pick up these decks will feel the drive to win more and upgrade their decks over time, and I think overall they will get hooked into the format.
The issue with the article is that the highlighted decks don't really have upgrades. Sure you can get fetches and goblin guides for your burn deck. But you're still playing the same deck.
I agree with an above poster that creating a more budget deck that can transition into something else is better. For example: begin with The Gate. Gives you wasteland, thought seize, jitte, and nothing much else is too expensive. Pick up fetches and scrublands, you have Deadguy. Pick up blue duals and forces, you have Esper stoneblade. Pick up tops and counter balances after that now you have miracles.
I think a lot of this perception is due to a couple of things. First, when you go to a store that proxies Legacy, for the first few weeks all anyone does is try to play the T2 combo decks that only lose to FoW and most stores don't ride it out past that phase, so people think that that's what Legacy is like (it doesn't help that decks like Oops all spells are cheap too).
Next, the SCG Legacy coverage is biased pretty heavily towards advertising the whole format as cantrip+FoW. So people think that that's the format.
Last, the format is biased towards blue cards and every deck needs some combination of removal/discard/counters (or the ability to race), since counters are in many cases the best of those 3 options, people gravitate towards blue decks even though other decks are viable.
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