People are coming up with all sorts of reasons for why control isn't viable in legacy.
But I see one and only one clear cut reason why control fell out of favor, the storm mechanic. I am not saying that's a bad thing. I'm not trying to place any value judgments on what happened, I am just saying what I think are the facts.
The storm mechanic lets every combo deck run a one card combo, a combo card that also happens to be impossible to counter except by narrow cards (stifle and trickbind) that do nothing for control outside of the combo matchup.
I think that's all there is to it. Before it was aggro>control>combo>aggro
Now storm combo> aggro and > control. The storm mechanic was exactly the foil combo decks needed against control strategies of all sorts. Throw in a little bounce in the extra slots freed up by having a one card combo and the storm based decks become extremely resilient.
Neither pure aggro nor pure control are viable. The only non combo decks that are viable are aggro control decks.
Think about it, every viable deck in legacy that's not storm based runs a heavy disruption suite along with a fast clock. Every viable non storm deck can be classified as aggro control.
Can you guys think of any exceptions?
Or is my assessment right on the money?
I agree with some of which you said. However, because of Storm combo control is on the rise once again.
TES/Belcher and Goblins pushed Solidarity out of the format, this allowed Landstill to return.
Combo naturally smashes aggro (Goblins) which makes goblins weaker and less played.
With less goblins, decks like Landstill become stronger.
Control's combo matchups really depend on each deck (TES, SI, Belcher, ect..) and which build. Because there are soo many viable combo decks its hard to hate on combo as a whole.
Ichorid rocks control, and the only answers to it are even more narrow than Stifle. I'm no Spring Tide player, but I've seen current incarnations kill with Stroke as often as I've seen them kill with Freeze.
And you're forgetting Goblins. Between the mana denial of Wasteland and Port, the tempo generating and counter-dodging Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey, and the bombs like Ringleader and Seige-Gang that can turn a game around, decks like Landstill have a hard enough time keeping what is "supposed" to be a good match under control.
Lots of things beat control in Legacy.
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It's really easy to build a control deck that will crush aggro decks. It's really easy to build a control deck that will crush combo decks. It's really easy to build a control deck that will crush other control decks.
It's really hard to get two archtypes crushed, much less three.
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Control is viable in Legacy. In fact, the most important control deck in Legacy (Landstill) is becoming more popular because of the rise in Combo decks.
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So if Landstill comes back, does that mean Solidarity will appear again? That's a control deck...Originally Posted by Xero
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No. Solidarity is combo with controllish attributes.
I would guess not, unless their was a rediculous Landstill explosion. Solidarity still has to contend with Aggro-Control decks and other combo decks.
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First, Storm spells are not a '1-card-combo' as such because they force they require that the deck is essentially one big engine. You might as well call sufficiently huge creatures a 1-card-combo.
Goblin Charbelcher fits the term a lot better.
Storm combo decks with a lot of disruption tend to be outclassed by their non-storm competitors. Storm needs an engine that's either large or plain terrible, while there are some very compact combos out there that will do an adequate job.
If you run a lot of disruption, but dilute your engine you don't care if the win condition is counterable or not: Your opponent would need to attack your business spells instead of waiting for your win condition anyway.
In short, it's not a matter of storm decks not needing a lot of disruption, it's a matter of them sucking at implementing it.
Control strategies simply don't always work as they should; storm spells being uncounterable is but one example.
Goblins runs 8 1-drops that pansify any counter-based strategy if they resolve.
You can sweep the board and still be clobbered by hordes of goblins/zombies+ichorids next turn.
If High Tide has permanents at all, they will have served their purpose already. They are more than adequate at dealing with counters... an uncounterable win condition is just the icing on the cake.
Control decks need to take a more proactive route these days. I believe that is possible without turning into either Aggro/Control or Prison, but few people even try.
Control (meaning mostly any slow deck with countermagic in it) doesn't really lose to Storm. It's a worse matchup than something like Fruity Pebbles might be, sure, but still quite positive. What control loses to is Solidarity and (to a lesser extent) Goblins, both of which are fucking obnoxious. Solidarity is a combo deck which autowins against asstonsofcountermagic.dec, which is quite simply ridiculous, while Goblins is an aggro deck which (again, to a lesser extent) wins against many variations on asstonsofremoval.dec (Truffle Shuffle and some versions of Landstill, for example, but not Rifter).
Recently, Belcher and TES have pushed Solidarity out of the metagame and significantly diminished Goblins, and accordingly, Landstill has seen a marked uptick in popularity and success.
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Why are some members of the Legacy community stuck in the narrow-minded perception that control isn't viable in Legacy? Landstill, Loam, and controllish Survival builds T8 all the time.
This is true. For as much as people talk about Control's depressing situation in Legacy, it sure does seem to be T8ing quite a bit. With the way some people are laying out the format, why play anything but Goblins and Storm combo?
Ya know, Goblins doesn't draw 3 Wastes, 2 Ports, 3 Lackeys, 2 Vials, 2 Ringleaders, and 3 Siege-Gangs in every opening hand in every game, which is apparently how people think every Goblins match plays out. And sometimes Combo doesn't have a strong enough hand or Control's is just better and they lose. Control also has a leg up against aggro-control. I'd say Control is just fine in Legacy, and the tournament results have been proving this.
And Control beats lots of things in Legacy, so the cycle continues.Lots of things beat control in Legacy.
Agreed. Everything loses to something.
For example, my 4C Landstill handles both Goblins and Storm Combo (Not flawlessly, but favorably), despite the two being somehow mysteriously hailed as the reason Landstill is unviable. It also smashes through most blue-based aggro control, most black-based aggro control, can edge through most other combo decks, and demolish most random jank anyone can come up with.
However, if I come across a match with another Landstill deck (That runs Wasteland, Decree, or one of 6 billion other ways to win a Landstill mirror), or a control deck with a stronger lategame, I capitulate completely. I have very little hope, if any.
Similarly, just like some combo decks lose to different things than other combo decks (Cephalid Breakfast isn't thrilled to see Goblins, but Epic Storm certainly is!), different control decks lose to different things. Some Landstill lists are designed to smash control mirrors and combo decks and capitulate to goblins and certain other aggro. Some control decks aim to beat control and aggro, like most mono-white or white-based ones, while struggling against combo. And some, like 4C Landstill, aim to beat Combo and Aggro, and lose to control.
I think the mark of a strong control deck in Legacy is being able to handle two of the three archetypes very efficiently, or to decimate one completely and be fair against the other two. And I think many of the current control decks do that quite well.
I completely agree with this, but I would say it's because they don't WIN. Control decks have 0 T1's in the T8 thread (US at least).
Once again, i'm not defending this view, just pointing out one of the ways it is perpetuated.
I've never seen him so upset....or ever before.
I couldn't agree more.
In the US thread, perhaps. But in the European? Control galore.
And after playing in The Source tournament, I don't for a minute accept any notions that the US has a superior player base on the average. Nor do I accept that the metagame should fundamentally be all that radically different. We all have access to the internet, ebay, and we're all building decks using the same cards. It's still Legacy.
Then why IS it different?
(Edit: Maybe I should expand. I would guess it's different because of less combo and Goblins.Any chance that is true? Do they play control better? Do they enter control in higher numbers? Or is it just an amazing anolmoly that the control decks that never win a big event here, win big events there?)
I've never seen him so upset....or ever before.
I thought it was that they have a higher combo presence, so therefore an even higher aggro-control presence, which pushes Goblins out, but makes for a good environement for Control. That's what I've heard anyway.
I disagree here, not that we have a better player base or whatever. But in the fact that it's the same, the two metagames are dramatically different. For instance, the European metagame lacks combo for whatever reason. Here in America (or atleast the east coast) it's combo summer (as I predicted). It's hard to relate metagames that are dramatically different.
Anyone who's ever watched the anime Dual or read similar sci-fi stories is familiar with the concept that Parallel Universes are often created by a choice. In Dual, the choice is whether or not the artifact found at the construction site is pocketed or thrown away.
In Legacy, I personally think it was the choice to give up on UW Landstill. The American Legacy community gave up on it, The European Legacy community didn't. What you see might be two alternate realities of the evolution of Legacy's metagame based on whether or not Landstill was present for quite some time.
In any case, as communities like The Source grow and span continents and people from across the world share tech, eventually the two metagames should balance back out. After all, it -is- still the same game, same rules, same card pool.
Chess used to have its openings and midgame theories vastly divided by regions, but the vast sharing of modern chess information thanks first to books and then to the internet has diminished this. While Magic is a vastly more complicated and intricate game and will thereby take longer to undergo the same process, this is still the most likely course of events.
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