The Vintage/Legacy Experiment

[Kevinandhobbes]

With me being both a Vintage and Legacy player, I started to wonder if there was any overlap between the two formats. Obviously there is a lot of overlap in strategies and some decklists, etc. But the real thing that I started to wonder about was what if you took a Legacy deck into the Vintage metagame and vice versa?

At first I tried decklists that were straight ports from one format to the other. Obviously a full Vintage deck performed very well in Legacy and the Legacy decks performed poorly in Vintage. So I took the next logical step with decklists that had slight differences in order to make them better for the format they were entering. This was mainly from Legacy to Vintage, and the results were surprising. The Legacy decks were not horrible, they simply seemed to be underpowered. But the hallmarks of Legacy, consistency and undercosted power, were still very evident.

So, taking the next step, I wanted to bring a Vintage deck into the Legacy metagame. Seeing as most to all of the viable Vintage decks are too powered to port or they already have equivalents, I wanted to take the Stephen Menedian suggested Meandeck Beats:

Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
4 Null Rod

Creatures
4 Gaddock Teeg
4 Aven Mindcensor
4 Dark Confidant
3 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf

Enchantments
2 Choke

Instants
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sorceries
4 Thoughtseize

Lands
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Bayou
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath

Sideboard:
1 Choke
4 Planar Void
3 Diabolic Edict
2 Krosan Grip
3 Swords To Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Obviously some changes have to be made and I suggest:

Artifacts
4 Lotus Petal
4 Null Rod

Creatures
4 Gaddock Teeg
4 Aven Mindcensor
4 Dark Confidant
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf

Enchantments
2 Choke

Sorceries
4 Thoughtseize

Lands
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Bayou
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Savannah
2 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath

I believe that this is the most straight-forward build possible in order to port this deck between formats. I was trying to ask the community, does this build/any possible build of this hold any merit to be viable in Legacy? Should I test this deck against a gauntlet and simply see what happens? This is probably not an optimized build for Legacy, what might be possible builds? If this deck preforms well, will it create a new archetype?

Discuss.

[lorddotm]

The thing is, Null Rod isn't as powerful as it is in Vintage (although you can't really lose to affinity) The same goes with Choke. Blue dominates the Vintage metagame more than it does the Legacy Metagame, intact the Legacy metagame is shifting away from Blue and more into Goblins and Zoo.

The extra speed provided by Lotus Petal or EES is not worth it since decks don't have the broken starts they do in Vintage.

If I were to run this kind of deck, I would run something like this:


4 Gaddock Teeg
4 Aven Mindcensor
4 Dark Confidant
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Tombstalker

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thoughtseize
4 Vindicate
3 Sensei's Divinging Top
2 Duress

Lands
1 Forest
1 Swamp
3 Bayou
4 Veredant Catacomb
1 Savannah
2 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath

[Silent Requiem]

What exactly are you trying to prove? That decks from a format with a wider card pool and more broken cards are better than decks with a more limited card pool?

There are, of course, metagame differences. In Vintage you know that you will be facing moxen, so cards like Gorilla Shaman go from unplayable to playable. When moving down to Legacy, those "niche" cards that prey on the metagame will become less useful.

Some strategies are more affected than others. Solidarity, which is currently still viable (barely), cannot rely on mana accelleration, and is therefore not even remotely viable in a metagame that is totally dependent on mana accelleration.

You need to be quite specific in what you are trying to prove before anyone can make specific comments.

-Silent Requiem

[Otter]

Though Vintage and Legacy share all but maybe thirty cards, those thirty really make a stunning difference. Vintage is all about exploiting ridiculously broken resources like Will, Vault, Workshop, Manadrain, etc. If you can shut off those engines with some disruption and apply a light clock, you win. Nobody is packing creatures to oppose you or removal other than the occasional Darkblast or something to pick off problems.

All of the broken resources are banned in legacy, so the resource of choice is efficient creatures. Namely, beating you to death with Tarmogoyf. It's the completely opposite approach to magic -- instead of using creatures to back up absurd spells, legacy is using spells to back up absurd creatures. All the decks are very well-prepared to fight a creature-war because outside of storm combo, the fastest route to victory is smashing with Tarmogoyf, so every deck NEEDS outs to creatures.

A deck like this is trying to attack resources that legacy doesn't care about. You can drop all of the Null Rods, Teegs, and Mindcensors that you like, but your opponent is just going to drop a Goyf and bash you to death. If your guys pose a threat at any point, they'll get blown off of the board and you don't have the disruption necessary to prevent it.

The other problem with a straight-out G/W hate list is that legacy actually has diversity. "Innovation" in vintage is swapping out 2-5 cards. I don't say that to belittle the format or the people who make 2-5 key swaps, if you make the right few changes to a list and win out, that's certainly worthy of note but lets be realistic -- pretty much all the decks that aren't workshop have a bunch of blue and black broken cards, tutors, and Will. When so much of the format is running off of the same core that it's pretty easy to put together a list of cards that can hate on the majority of your opponents.

Legacy's diversity makes such direct hate difficult, since things like Merfolk, Goblins, ANT, and Landstill all have completely different gameplans. Playing hate against the format in legacy is more like maindecking Chalice of the Void than Aven Mindcensor.

[MMogg]

To some degree this is a near impossible experiment since Vintage is really in a league of its own. I could see doing an experiment even of Extended vs. Legacy as opposed to Vintage vs. Legacy. Even you (OP) said, "Obviously a full Vintage deck performed very well in Legacy and the Legacy decks performed poorly in Vintage." Then what exactly is the experiment? :confused: Is the real question you want discussed and answered regarding how different the metagames are minus particular cards? Again, such a question is pretty much unanswerable. Imagine Legacy with no Counterbalance, Force of Will, Tarmogoyf, StP/PtE, Aether Vial . . . cards don't have to be ridiculous to influence heavily a metagame. Even if those few cards I mentioned were banned tomorrow, the Legacy meta would shift dramatically. That's why I say this experiment is both unclear and perhaps even contrived/unrealistic.

[DrJones]

This man just made the discovery of the art of porting decks. Congratulations! We have been doing this for years with decks from extended and standard.

[elof]

For referance, I used to play alot of vintage but have switched or entierly to Legacy now (last I played vintage was right before Flash (and alot of other cards) got the ax). I have however played in an online vintage tournament and my list was a BANT-list I found on deckcheck. It had:
4 Meddling Mage
4 Cold-Eyed Selkie
4 Nobles
4 Qasalis
3 Tarmogoyf

In legacy, playing maindeck MMage and Selkie and only 3 Goyfs is very stupid. In vintage playing 4 Goyfs is almost overkill, it's definitly a card I never want 2 off on my starting hand. Also, maindeck Selkies tells you alot about the format as well, it's obviously great against blue decks (and this is true for legacy also) but it's also decent against stuff like stax, since they have so very few creatures. Basicly, you can't play creatures that are just big (like Tarmogoyf) because then you will be out-smoked by Smokestack, Tendril'sed to death by storm or never getting an untap phase thanks to Key+Vault.

[Skeggi]

Seeing as most to all of the viable Vintage decks are too powered to port or they already have equivalents, I wanted to take the Stephen Menedian suggested Meandeck Beats:
The reason Meandeck Beats doesn't have a port to Legacy is because Meandeck Beats is packed with Vintage-hate. It's what the deck is all about. It's impossible to port.

[Ch@os]

The T2 - Legacy Experiment :tongue:

[(nameless one)]

not all legacy decks fail in vintage...

my buddy borrowed my mono-red goblin deck in a vintage event and it did well. however, he did maindecked Chalice of the Voids, Null Rods and Goblin Recruiters

[Jeff Kruchkow]

The T2 - Legacy Experiment :tongue:

This deserves more attention. I specifically remember a kithkin T2 port making like top 4 at a legacy tourney a while back.

[santeria]

This deserves more attention. I specifically remember a kithkin T2 port making like top 4 at a legacy tourney a while back.

the only reason something like kithkin would do well is because nobody would be expecting it or have any specific hate for it.

[Kevinandhobbes]

So I started testing this against a pretty big gauntlet of decks, and it's not doing too badly. Some of the cards obviously miss a lot of the time (Null Rod), but overall, it doesn't actually do that badly. So far it looses pretty hardcore to zoo and goblins; is about even with Merfolk and U/R/G Tempo Thresh; and outright beats ANT. I am just starting testing on CBTop.

Lorddotm - I will start testing this list after finishing with the original port. Since I'm only testing against the current DtB list, it won't take too much time.

Silent Requiem - The main reason that I'm looking into this is because I think that it's interesting. And I have wanted to try something like this just to see what happened.

Otter - I completely agree. But I think that it's interesting to see if there is a resource attacking creature deck out there that could be viable that's not already established.

MMogg - I think it's an interesting experiment to see if the Legacy/Vintage metagamed decklists can perform inside the other meta. And while most of them can't, a few can do well, such as Goblins (thanks (Nameless One)), Elves!, and even Survival Elves performed well. And Bant Survival actually. I actually think that you raise a very good question of your own. And the aforementioned "point" of the experiment is simply because it's interesting and might lead to insights on either format.

Elof - I think that the main point that you're making is that the metagames are completely different and some strategies that work well in one are not necessarily going to work in the other. I agree.

Skeggi - This is very possibly true. But I don't think that anyone's tried yet.

[MMogg]

I think it's an interesting experiment to see if the Legacy/Vintage metagamed decklists can perform inside the other meta. And while most of them can't, a few can do well, such as Goblins (thanks (Nameless One)), Elves!, and even Survival Elves performed well. And Bant Survival actually. I actually think that you raise a very good question of your own. And the aforementioned "point" of the experiment is simply because it's interesting and might lead to insights on either format.

Fair enough. I suppose, thinking about it more deeply, I kind of feel this runs contrary to the spirit of Magic. Everyone knows of some casual players who put sub-optimal cards into their decks because they screw over their friends' decks. For example, maybe someone plays True Believer because his friend plays targeted discard or something. Metagame card choices have always been a part of Magic from the kitchen table level to the Pro Tour and so trying to play a deck with maindeck Null Rods in Legacy is like the kid playing True Believers getting stomped by Stompy.

So, interesting as it may be, I think the experiment can only be an academic one without much real world application or insight into a certain metagame. Let's face it, playing a deck not tuned to a particular metagame can mean disaster and that goes for decks ported from one format to another or even decks within a format that aren't metagame tuned.

So I guess the question I'm wondering most is, has it led to any surprising insights into either format?