Legacy's past
Back in the summer of 2004, September 1st to be exact, the lists for "1.5" and "Type 1" were split. Before this "1.5" was thought to be the bastard child of "Extended or 1.x" and "Type 1", when the lists split and the dust was cleared there was a new format, Legacy. When the lists were split many people were angry and outraged at what Wizards did to "Their format". While people couldn't all agree on if the change was for the better or worse they all knew Legacy was here for good and it wasn't leaving.
September 20th, 2004 the changes were now active to the format and people were now terrified of combo decks. Many terrified people grabbed all the Null Rods and other artifact hate cards that they could find and held them as guns. While people stalked their local metagame with these cards in their maindecks and sideboards they never ran into these ghost combo decks but a sudden surge in control such as Blue Bull Shit and Landstill sporting their favorite new toy Fact or Fiction. People feared a dreaded "Combo Winter of 2004" with all the new broken cards such as Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petals and Moxen, but it was a warm winter and the combo was no where to be found.
As the year went on people were coming to realize that Landstill, ATS and the combo deck of the format Solidarity (Which didn't abuse any of these new profound unbanned cards) were powerhouses in the new metagame. "Gaea's Blessing all round" people would say as they shoved them in their sideboards for David Gearhart lookalikes and "Tormod's Crypt for all" for the disgusting card advantage that ATS was creating. Landstill was slowly being pushed out of the upper tier from not being able to deal with the combo deck and only having a decent match-up versus ATS.
Soon little green men swarmed over the format from its cousin Extended, these men were swarming metagames everywhere and weren't planning on leaving. These little green men and their Wastelands, Rishadan Ports, Lackeys and Aether Vials were the final straw for the decline of Landstill in the metagame. The crowds screamed "Ban the Lackey, No! Ban the ringleader" but Wizards heard no screams. Goblins was crushing the format and forced people to play removal on turn one in the forms of Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt. During this period of time, both Solidarity and ATS were slipping on the radar but ATS was free falling without a parachute.
A few members of The Source, were brainstorming what it took to stop the hordes of little green men from overwhelming the format, it took cheap large creatures, multiple answers for a turn one Goblin Lackey and free countermagic. When people got their innovation and homework done there was Threshold/Gro/and NQG.
Big Arse 2 happened in Syracuse, NY in 2005, people played all day and when it came down to it there wasn't a Goblin player in the top 2!? There was a Gro player without the "Gro" in his deck but instead Meddling Mages. After big Arse 2 there was a solid three decks that formed a triangle that finally seemed like it was never going to go away. Threshold, Vial Goblins, and Solidarity were all claiming tickets for Christmas Town and they were not giving them away.
A year pasted and this triangle remained unbroken, Vial Goblins still the best deck in the format and Threshold still close on its tail. With newer sets coming out and newer cards such as Rite of Flame, Empty the Warrens, Jotun grunt, Counterbalance and many others Solidarity found its self the slowest and weakest of the Brady bunch and slowly drifted back to tier 1.5. Soon predictions of a "Combo Summer" would appear.
Present Legacy
Currently combo is thriving in the new metagame, pushing Goblins on its butt and is slowly starting to send those little green men back to the hills. Although, with Threshold's newest toy Tarmogoyf and Counterbalance/Top it's trying to hold the combo down keeping the little green men in the bay's of Legacy. With combo's newest toy Empty the Warrens being everywhere many decks are currently packing cards such as Engineered Explosives and maindeck Pyroclasm. As effective answers for Combo, Threshold AND Goblins many cards such as stifle are now being used because it counterspells Goblin Ringleader as well as Tendrils of Agony and Empty the Warrens. Decks like Faerie Stompy and Red Death are thriving being able to deal with the upper tier with positive match-ups.
Legacy's Future
With more and more combo coming into the format there will be a surge of control decks making those Goblins in the bay come back for seconds, and maybe thirds. Combo will continue to become stronger and stronger with newer sets, because what's fun and cool in standard is broken and obscene in Legacy. Threshold will continue to do well, but slowly have less and less numbers. There will be a new competitor that creeps up from behind in the form of Ichorid decks. I believe the format will become faster and faster and eventually resemble the former Vintage before Flash and the banning of Gifts Ungiven.
What do you believe the future of Legacy is?
***Flash never happened(Wink, Wink) so it wasn't included.
There was no Goblins in the top 2 of BA2 because it wasn't considered a top deck yet. The top decks at the time were Landstill, some Survival variant, and possibly Goblin sligh. It'd be another couple months before Goblins became the new deck to beat, although it was building momentum. I don't think it had even added Ports then.
And Threshold was not clearly part of anything until Philly. While it was pushed and developed by NoVA for a while, and saw some play, it wasn't really recognized as tier 1 until the Grand Prix and it's 3 top 8's (and look at how underdeveloped some of those lists are).
Solidarity's been off and on popular for a while. It'll be really good for a while, then people will talk about how it sucks, it'll suck for a while, then it'll dominate some tournament... Solidarity is highly dependent upon having the right metagame to do well in, much more so than Threshold and Goblins.a
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Wasn't Threshold just a direct port of Birdshit with out the Null Rods?
Any way, I have a really strong feeling that aggro-control-combo, aggro-prison and prison are going to have to show up at some point in the future, Goblins, Goyf, Discard, Control, Storm and Ichorid shouldn't be that difficult to shake up with something innovative.
Originally Posted by wastedlife
My hope is, as long as we all play nice and don't go crying to WotC every couple of weeks, they won't print anything too format warping. Vintage didn't get gay until Mirrodin block, after WotC got sick of hearing how they didn't care about T1 and printed a bunch of Stax cards. I don't want to see Legacy turn into T1, then I'll have to move to playing in a format where I can't use my dual lands :(
I personally see Legacy choking itself out in the next five or so years. One criteria for banning older cards was their price. In five years the price of duals will sky rocket to beyond what most persons are willing to pay. Not to mention other cards like Force of Will.
To keep Legacy strong, WotC will have to do three things...ban ban ban, watch what they print and REPRINT. Yes you heard me say it right....reprint. WotC needs to reprint some of the staple cards, the newer players need to be able to get them affordably to draw any kind of crowd to Legacy.
Thats my two cents.
P.S. Storm was a really bad idea on WotC's part
I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.
dual lands are hardly unaffordable, storm was a great move on Wizards part... if they hadn't made it then combo would be nonexistant as we know it right now (belcher would stil exist, but just have belcher).
without stom, the format would be all creature decks (aggro and midranged aggro).. control would be pushed out of the format, except for certain ones like rifter (which would then get first in ever tourney, since it rapes aggro).
that's just how I see it.
EDIT:
it was a good deck, but it needs a very good pilot to do well... unlike goblins, where anyone can pick it up (including people who have never played our format before) and do well. I don't play it anymore because there are a lot of cards tat have been printed recently that makes it impossible to play... It was good though, maybe not as good as hyped to be, but still good.I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.
I recall reading a thread on MTGsalvation about Wizards printing some cards that won't be used for Standard play, but will be valuable to older players, it's doubtful that it will be duals and Force of Wills, but...one can certainly hope!
I think that Combo decks will be running around for a while. The only decks that will be able to survive are the ones that can answer first turn 10-12 tokens and/or a possible first turn belcher activate. After this I think that the format might slow down and control decks that have good matchups against combo (landstill, gro).
Of course, all of this could change. It really depends on what gets printed in Lorwyn...
Do people think its going to become slower or faster like old vintage? I've heard alot of different opinions and answers.
The format will, or should be maintained so that it will be slower than vintage at all times. More cards will guarantee faster format, eventually speeding the for mat to the Vintage-ish extent. However, Baned list should be maintained so that the format is reasonably slow.
EDIT: The reason that I think the for mat should be kept slow, is that the legacy was meant to be the format(or so it seems to me) where the power level is kept reasonable enough to allow great diversity. A format where the fundamental turn is 3 or less is not suitable for that, in my opinion.
She said, "You're broken."
"So is your face." replied the Tarmogoyf.
If they don't intervene, it's obviously just going to get faster with time. And I do think they should intervene. This may be arbitrary and subjective, but in my mind, Legacy should be the format where Survival of the Fittest is playable.
SummenSaugen: well, I use Chaos Orb, Animate Artifact, and Dance of Many to make the table we're playing on my chaos orb token
SummenSaugen: then I flip it over and crush my opponent
I'd like to see the format slow down just a tad, but I think players are reaching some innovation by pushing the format's envelope. Combo has gotten a little bit faster and ridiculous (not in a bad sense), and the rest of the format needs to catch back up.
I think they should keep an eye on the format though. Because if it just becomes faster like old Vintage, then why wouldn't players just take the next step and play Vintage and open themselves up to whole other world of broken. I enjoy Legacy like it is, but I think I'd enjoy it either way, unless it just got stupid, then I'd play Vintage.
Coming from both formats, the fundamental turn in T1.5 is faster than the fundamental turn in T1 after the restriction of Gifts Ungiven. Unrestricted LED in Belcher and Ichorid give us faster combo decks and our aggro-control-combo decks are just as fast as their aggro-control-combo decks from what I've seen (not that other people bother with aggro-control-combo in this format for whatever reasons).
I think the fact that not all of the deck's in our format have Force of Will means our format is faster as well; Not in terms of the fundamental turn, but in terms of people's willingness to watch the opponent goldfish them and then go to game 2 with delusions of winning a match. I enjoy playing Goblins, Affinity or Zoo as much as the next person, but running aggro and hoping U/g/w Tarmogoyf keeps combo in check is quite a gamble. At least aggro-prison and B/w or B/r can coin flip against the decks that are setting the fundamental turn.
I don't think the speed of our format is a sign of whether or not the format is "broken" tho', that speed comes with a Counter Spell = Mind Twist attached to it for Storm combo and Leyline of the Void is a ball breaker for Ichorid. I'm more afraid of aggro-control-combo owning the entire format because it's fundamentally superior to every other archetype except aggro-prison.
That's still thinking in the old mindset.
Before, all a control deck had to do was counter the critical combo piece and you can take all the time in the world to win. Before, a deck with a decent amount of countermagic has extremely good odds against a combo deck. But storm makes it so that you can't just counter the key combo piece. The stuff that you can counter (draw, acceleration), the combo decks run lots and lots of. Storm decks can even ignore counters altogether with Xantid Swarm. And they can bounce back hate cards pretty easily too.
The best any deck can do is slow down storm combo and win before it can combo out. A deck can't take too long a time to win like control typically does will not have a big advantage over combo decks like they did in the old days.
MaRo was right in saying the storm was the most broken mechanic they ever printed, and a probably the biggest mistake they made in recent memory.
The biggest foil to combo decks aren't control decks but aggro control decks that combine a fast clock cards that slow combo down. And with the exception of bwg thres, many aggro control decks still have a disadvantgae versus storm based combo.
Last edited by SuckerPunch; 07-21-2007 at 05:39 AM.
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