Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of really good underplayed decks available right now? Too many to really get a handle on in fact. I have tried building enough of my own decks to know when something stinks. I have been proxying decks a freaking buttload recently. And it seems like a lot of the choices we have right now are very good.
In no specific order:
1. Terrageddon - not a terribly strong game against combo, but occasionally has the tools to beat Solidarity, and it is really good against all those aggro-control decks out there. Does anyone actually own Ravages of War?
2. BWG control - There are a few different ones, and all have good points. Personally I like Truffle Shuffle's kill conditions best, TheBGwRock and Dirt also worked well for me though. These decks all need a better solution for graveyard stuff. Life from the Loam with or without Wasteland kills them.
3. HanniFish - Just good aggro-control. It's got actual card advantage coupled with Brainstorms etc, and is still capable of delivering fast beatings. I think this one may be better than Threshold in this role.
4. Death and Taxes - I have played this deck a lot. It has no pushover matchups, but it also has no bad matchups. It has a fighting chance all around. Very consistent. Excellent for a long tournament.
5. Slivers - It's sorta like threshold only better against Goblins. Still waiting for someone to do something with it. Still...waiting...
6. Anusien's Pyoclasm/ERA - despite the derision, it is a good metagame deck.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the decks I have tested enough to see that they have a wide gap between support and quality.
Those decks have not seen much play in the states, but they are all very good. This got me thinking about the GP, and how many non-Legacy players are likely to look here for deck ideas. They are not going to be able to make informed decisions unless they first read through several hundred posts on each deck. That's not realistic, and they may just take Goblins and Thresh out of frustration. Why doesn't this site have a spotlight section for good decks that do not fit the stark rules for LMF?
Sure it's useful to say what is going to show up. But players also want to know what else is good out there, and Legacy really has no place to find this out. This is the most popular site for Legacy info, so why not do something valuable with that position and inform incoming players with what they actually want to know?
my 2c.
Other decks that warrant a look at include Ubermadness (heavily underplayed), Traditional Control Madness (played even less), and 5/3 variants (not played at all). 5/3 Probably stands the best chance out of all three at making a splash in the current metagame. It is however, much better when on the play, and can often times scoop to its own horrendous draws.
-Steve
Originally Posted by Pinder
How come it needs to be a holiday to bang noobslayer's sister?
First of all hello to the source community, this is my first post after 1 year of read-only status
I agree with this topic because here in italy and europe, as I can see from our deck-breakdown and some info about our tournaments, many players are leaving the "legacy-metagame-defining decks", solidarity, threshold, and goblins.
Ok, they are still played and of course they are viable and strong deck.
BUT
At the end of this first "post rotation" season of extended format, I noticed many players trying to port extended deck into legacy. Sometimes simply substituting the ravnica dual lands with original dual (unlimited white bordered).
Sometimes replacing extended cards with stronger cards available in extra-extended-expansions.
Think about "life from the loam".
It's a very strong card in extended, and this year in extended there was "aggro-loam" RGB, adopted also by Kenju Tsumura, one of the strongest players in the world.
Now we can replace birds of paradise with the much stronger and sinergic mox diamond!!!
Terrageddon is GW but it's only an example, also the RG version is very strong, with seismic assault, 4 lightning bolt and 3 lava dart (creatures are nimble mongoose, mongrel, terravore and kird ape for example). It can easily beats both goblin and threshold decks.
Another deck that saw less play, but it's strong it RW rifter. Very strong matchup any deck except combo.
Yesterday I made a 36 people tournament and the meta was combo.
I used a trinket solution deck with 4 counterbalance 3 top, 4 sword to plow 4 fire ice, and I faced life.deck (GWB), belcher and aluren!!!
To be short my opinion is that some new cards can shake up the metagame, and this is a very good news!
they are
1) empty the warrens
2) counterbalance
3) life from the loam
and I consider that as time passes, extended format will shift more and more away, so Legacy will take the role of extended, october 2008 there will be a strong cut to extended (out goblin, out orim ,out soo many cards, out of fetches!!!! it's crazy!!), so people will play more and more legacy because their 2007-extended season deck are viable in legacy simply changing the lands!!
My 2 euro cent
There's so much inovation but many deack ideas just perished somewhere in the forums and where never seen again :D
Some had really good concept. eg i loved Über madness.
Everyone seems to forget about B/w confidant. But when they do that, maybe, one day, a Sinkhole on their 1st land, then Vindicating their 2nd, will teach them to keep land-light draws...*grumbles*
B/w Confidant isn't really bad. It wins control, and though is less than favored against Goblins game one, post board it is fine. Furthermore Jitte can be adopted to shore up the match. Way, way up. So, why isn't it played?
I would attribute it's under-played state directly to the meta-breaking strides enchantress has had recently. That, and it doesn't have blue in it, or any kind of prision elements.
Actually being serious, though. It's state in games is really hard to determine.
-It isn't aggro - what is it, like eleven creatures? And, without open mana, each of them is no bigger than a 2/2. I'll admit that shade can get nasty, but I'm going only on face value.
-It isn't control. Or, at least, not traditional control. It's hand rape combined with land destruction. But, to me at least, control means permission. If you can't just say "no" to some main component in any deck, you're in trouble.
-It isn't combo. Don't even try to argue this one. Maybe if Anwar was playing it.
That said, it has piss-poor answers to 1st turn lackey (unless you're playing swords maindecked). I suppose ritual-> plague is pretty good. But that can't happen often. YOu don't have to play goblins in this format, but you sure as hell have to be able to beat it in order to play a different deck.
The E.P.I.C. Syndicate: I mean, if they play a lullaby for babies they should at least play the Monster Mash when somebody dies.
I can only assume I'm misreading this statement and it doesn't in fact mean "It beats control." I don't think I've ever had a control deck in my repertoire that wasn't 60/40 or better against *.Dec packing Hymn and Sinkhole.
Well, Blue control *would* have a hard time, since once I take out their counters and stick a Bob on the board I can laugh in their face and watch them scramble to remove him. Unless you mean Loam control, which I haven't exactly seen often...
Against Turn 1 Lackey I personally play Carnophage. It beats, too, and blocks. It carries Jitte(16 creatures lets me run the dastardly equipment). AND it doesnt die to Fanatic, and isn't white so you don't need to fetch a Scrubland......
If you are interested in trying underplayed powerful decks, I strongly advise trying...
Vadka Pox
3 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Wasteland
3/4 Mishra's Factory
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
2 Cabal Pit
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
4/3 Pox
4 Vindicate
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Crucible of World
3 Nether Spirit
2 Phyrexian Totem
Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Engineered Plague
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Infest
It's a skill intensive but extremely potent build of a deck I put close to an year's worth of work testing and tweaking. And if you play it properly, you will win the majority of your games. As a bonus, it absolutely thrashes aggro control decks of all forms, esp Threshold, and can usually ensure that Solidarity never get's past their third land. One strike against it is that though anyone can win with the deck some of the time, it takes a lot of practice to play optimally, especially to someone inexperienced with pox. You always have be able to anticipate two to three turns ahead of time, be very familiar with the manabase of every archeatype, keep track of how many cards you and your oppoenent will end up with in hand and how many lands in play the turn that you want to pox and how to maximize pox, when to top, what hands to throw bck and essentially be able to come up with a gameplan based on your opponent's very first turn. It's only other drawback is that preboard, it can have a hard time against decks that run large numbers of creatures (more than 22), but that changes post board. And if you are playing in meta with a high density of decks made up of mostly creatures, you can easily put the Ghostly Prison or Infest in the maindeck in place of Duress of Divining Top, and the preboard game falls to your favor as well. Right now, I'm trying to see if there's any other white sideboard options against aggro.
Last edited by Clark Kant; 04-03-2007 at 10:12 AM.
There may or may not be a significant change in the board soon - including the way we recognize competitive decks. Hopefully the members will be pleased with the (eventual) changes and the possible downfall of the Big Three.
Changes? Sounds fun! A possible downfall of the Big Three is very exciting, though I've gathered that they been in a slow decline for a while.
There's also the less played decks that win, such as Enchantress and Landstill.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
Solidarity and Thresh yes, Goblins no. The former two have better varients in their respective areas - strong aggro-control and storm combo. Solidarity is basically being obsoleted by TES and maybe IGGY, both of which have better kill conditions and faster goldfish times. There are a lot of new Thresh-like decks floating around now, including Slivers, Hanni Fish, and ERA, to name a few. All of these decks combine Thresh's strong creatures with its traditional permission elements while not being vulnerable to common hate used for Thresh. Goblins, however...I think as long as people are bringing up needing legitimate answers to a turn one Lackey, it's safe to say that Goblins is still a primary concern in the meta.
Basically, if I had to predict the three strongest decks (not most numerically popular, but the most objectively strong decks) post-Columbus, they would be Goblins (still), TES/Iggy, and Slivers. jamest can back me up here.
Yeah, I agree with much of what aggro zombies said about the big three as he, jamest, and myself have talked in depth on this very topic. Solidarity just cannot keep up with the blazing speed and resiliency to combo hate and counterspells that TES offers. Similarity, Counterslivers has almost all the upsides of Thresh (super efficient creatures, cantrips, free countermagic) along with being completely immune to graveyard hate and having an extremely positive matchup against goblins. I cannot see any reason why I would play Solidarity over TES or Thresh over Counterslivers at a tournament. Goblins, on the other hand, will always be the premier aggro deck of the format, and if somehow Slivers and TES take over the metagame, I'm sure that Gobos will still find someway to adapt and remain in the top tier.
Kronicler
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I also think that there are a lot of Survival decks besides SA variants that should be seeing more play or have been forgotten. GWB (Rock) Survival is a really resilient deck and I guess has been seeing play in Europe, but I've not seen it played once in a US tournament. RecSur although weak against GY hate has the ability to play out in a combo-aggro style, or play a versatile toolbox strategy while ignoring mana restrictions. (Haven't seen a recent tuned list, though.) I believe the latter also has a good opportunity to get some play in while the graveyard-hating-on-gro thing has died down a bit.
And of course, my Survival deck which is only played by one person anywhere, actually has a decent combo game for a Survival deck (not wasting slots on discard) and has great match-ups in the current general metagame. /shameless plug
Although I have little experience with the deck, Counterslivers seems really strong and has been putting up lots of results on magic-league, lately (and numbers, too).
QFT. I played against EATS the other day, and it's pretty fucking good.
Wait, we have results somewhere? No freaking way, for serious?
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I think maybe you guys are overestimating those claims a fair bit.
For Solidarity: In the right hands, this deck doesn't simply fold like traditional combo. In fact, I'd say it only really takes about a solid month of play before you can competently take it to a tournament. It's not being made obsolete by TES at all. In fact, they fill entirely different niches in the meta game. Solidarity is Combo-Control. It doesn't scoop to one counterspell because it's packing nine in the main deck. It pilots fantastically through all sort of hate, and has very few debatable slots. It's one of the few decks in this forum that has next to no main deck variation from list to list. TES can infict win much faster than Solidarity, but short of Xantid Swarms, it's more vulnerable to counterspells and tranditional combo hate. Also, IGGy is terrible.
Gro: I don't know about you, but with TES surging in popularity, this deck is going to be around for quite some time. It's also very powerful, and can be tuned to almost any metagame, short of every deck packing chalice. This deck won't just fade away. While I don't see this deck as suddenly benefiting from some new tech like other decks may, short of a few matches, it's just about on par with all the other aggro-control decks. The only difference here is it's actually put up multiple results at major legacy events.
-Steve
How come it needs to be a holiday to bang noobslayer's sister?
I have both Bardo Thresh and Meathooks built, and honestly, right now I would rather play Meathooks. I have a lot more practice with Thresh, so I play it better than Meathooks, but Meathooks really does have almost all of the advantages of Thresh, while dodging graveyard hate and having a faster clock. Maindeck Mages in Thresh is still one selling point for Thresh, but Meathooks is a lot faster and still has the Mages in the sideboard.
The matchups where Thresh is much better than Meathooks are relatively rare. Against Pernicious Deed, Wrath, and Damnation, Thresh has the advantage. However, Meathooks is packing just as many counters, and has Stifles as well for Deed. Thresh's biggest advantage is that it can drop Mongoose on turn one and ride it to victory in some matchups, while Meathooks really needs multiple creatures in play to win.
I see TES as taking IGGy's spot, but not replacing Solidarity. As far as other decks that are competative but not seeing much play, there are plenty to choose from: Salvagers' Game, RGbSA, other Survival lists (EATS, etc), Terrageddon, HanniFish, and even decks like Angel Stompy can storm a tournament. I will be very curious to see what happens at the GP.
I don't think that the metagame is as simple as Tier 1, Tier 1.5, Tier 2+. There are a few decks right at the top (Gro, Solidarity, TES, Slivers, Goblins), but then the rest kind of smear on down through 1.1, 1.15, 1.2....etc.
InfoNinjas
In the last Legacy Trial on Magic-League, 2 of the top 4 were Counter Slivers (one of them placing first, the other third). While Magic-League is by no means a perfectly accurate representation of the current Legacy meta, it certainly proves that Meathooks has a lot of potential.
At Magic-League,
In a May 26 Trial tournament, "WUG Slivers" took second.
In an Apr 02 Trial Tournament, there's a CounterSliver deck in the top 4, and one took 1st. Beyond that, I don't see any other lists. The three mentioned are pretty much identical to the one you and your team worked on, barring any minor tweaks.
Edit: Got beaten to it. Curse my schizo wireless connection.
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