[Article] Unlocking Legacy - Unique Factors of a Grand Prix Level Event

[GreenOne]

Unlocking Legacy - Unique Factors of a Grand Prix Level Event (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/16999_Unlocking_Legacy_Unique_Factors_of_a_Grand_Prix_Level_Event.html) by Doug Linn

Some help in deck choices for the GP:
- Avoid Decks That Lose to General Hate
- Avoid Losing To Your Own Deck
- Have a Plan Against Outlier Cards and Strategies
- Play Decks That Lose To Cards, Not Entire Decks
- Have a Lategame Backbreaker

I found that the suggestions were good, but pretty obvious and leading to play Blue decks again, for the major part.

[Hoojo]

A great read with a smooth flow.

[FoolofaTook]

So reading between the lines what he's saying is: play Goblins or a Landstill variant at the GP if you want to get to day two. Why do I get the feeling that this exact article, effectively recommending the same two decks could have been written for any Legacy GP type event except for the Flash-Hulk debacle?

[Viscosity]

The most powerful point I read was: "don't play a deck that loses to counterbalance."

[Hoojo]

So reading between the lines what he's saying is: play Goblins or a Landstill variant at the GP if you want to get to day two. Why do I get the feeling that this exact article, effectively recommending the same two decks could have been written for any Legacy GP type event except for the Flash-Hulk debacle?

I think the sole reason he mentions those decks is because they have been consistently good in the format and have a lot of the qualities he mentions, not that he is regurgitating past information.

[Jaiminho]

Very nice article. Still, it's wrong to call Threshold a "Next Level variant".

[Aggro_zombies]

Most of that was common sense stuff, but good nevertheless. I'd add that Life from the Loam decks, especially Aggro-Loam, are not quite as bad against Counterbalance as you may think.

Good article.

[Eldariel]

It was well written, but I disagree on few points.

Glass cannons have classically done well in GP levels and while Legacy is a bit more open than most traditional formats; even if you don't have the Byes, you can easily plan on playing the most established decks all day and bring a wrecking ball by just lucking out the first rounds. You can also afford two-three losses further reducing the need to beat random decks, especially if you feel they aren't likely to Top 8. Of course, you have to have a reason to do so; some deck that really wrecks the top decks consistently, but in event that you do find such a deck, it isn't worth throwing out for a bad Chalice Stompy or MUC match-up. In fact, you should probably ignore those decks with your sideboard and focus on really making sure you'll never lose to the decks you plan on playing against. That's been a successful recipe.

Of course, the other big option is picking a powerful off-the-radar deck and ride it to win over the relative lack of hate, á la Pierre Canali. For example, Pernicious Deeds have seen a huge decline as of late as people opt away from 4c Control-strategies and Rock is only seeing so much play, and thus a deck that doesn't want to see Deeds but is otherwise very solid could be an excellent choice for the PT.


Also, again on the GP, you can afford few losses. Therefore a deck that loses to itself occasionally, provided that it has sufficiently strong match-ups against Goblins, Landstill, Threshold, Dreadstill and ANT, could actually be an excellent choice. If the match is good enough, you'll probably drop one game to mulligans every now and then but can still win the match, and if not, you still can "afford" few losses to Top 8. With 15 (ok, well, 12 with byes) rounds, the probabilities have time to even out and you'll see about the statistical spread of hands you'd expect from a Very Large Number Of Openers. So while you'll probably lose a few games to your own deck with 43 Lands or ANT, given sufficient match-up advantage over the field, you can easily make up for that in percentages.

This is actually more true for GP than a smaller local tournament; provided that you stay in the top tables, the metagame will be pretty predictable, and given the amount of rounds, you'll be drawing much more hands than in your average tournament and thus you'll be less a slave to luck and more to probabilities.

[Shugyosha]

I especially liked the part with the lategame backbreaker. I learned about this concept relatively late in my "MTG career" in an Extended GP (Rude Awakening FTW) and I think its often overlooked. Most lists (other than combo) can host one experimental backbreaker slot.
It doesn't even has to be something for 6+ mana. The 1-off Vendilion Clique I put into Tempo Thresh turned out to be a quite nice backbreaker. Nobody ecpected it but everyone suffered...

[Mordel]

I thought that it was a decent article. It didn't necessarily give me any sort of groundbreaking "omgnews", but it sort of reminded of some of the aspects of attending large events with fairly big potential for having a diverse representation of decks.

As far as I am concerned the article is also good in that it gives an outsider to the 1.5 format some insight as to what's up and might serve to give them a little extra boost in diving into a format that needs more attention.

[bowvamp]

This was an ok read, but I will recommend it when I think that someone is in need of some advice on "backbreaking". That was the most fundamentally awesome part of his post. I feel that every deck needs a backbreaker, it's just that something small can be all you need if the opponent a)can't kill it, and b)can't race it. A good example of this would be Landstill and Mishra's Factory. You hopefully can't kill it because they hopefully have protected themselves well enough. And if you try to race it, you break the Standstill and they kill what you're racing it with. Those "random" matches where both players have exhausted resources seem to come a lot more often when I'm playing Pox, and I may be playing that at Chico so be prepared!

[grahf]

I don't forsee myself playing in a GP anytime soon, but I enjoyed this article nonetheless, as a general guide on smart deckbuilding for a general metagame. One thing that wasn't touched on, at least not directly, was the mental aspect of playing a long tournament. If your deck is extremely complex to play, unless you've practiced enough to pilot it in your sleep, the mental strain of constant decision making will wear you down after countless hours of playing magic. It might be prudent to consider something a little more straightforward.

[Mordel]

I don't forsee myself playing in a GP anytime soon, but I enjoyed this article nonetheless, as a general guide on smart deckbuilding for a general metagame. One thing that wasn't touched on, at least not directly, was the mental aspect of playing a long tournament. If your deck is extremely complex to play, unless you've practiced enough to pilot it in your sleep, the mental strain of constant decision making will wear you down after countless hours of playing magic. It might be prudent to consider something a little more straightforward.

Hells yes. I played an muc deck at a massive ptq in mirrodin/kamigawa once. I was stuck there until like 1 or 2 am playing that shit. Ended up finishing just shy of top ten or something like that, which made me feel completely cheated, but either way I was so brain dead after the whole thing. Trying to out-think asian players all day was crazy-taxing.

[wolfstorm]

So obviously.. the correct deck to take to GP Chicago is Battle of Wits?... Thats what I've taken from this.