Best Deck vs. Price

[JonBarber]

Legacy can become a very pricey format to play. Currently I have Goblins and LEDless Ichorid (two of the most inexpensive decks in the format), but I'd like to expand. What would you say is the next best deck, yet lightest on the wallet? I was thinking maybe Enchantress with a budget landbase? What are your thoughts/opinions?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The best deck vs. Price is generally Rabid Wombat. Usually he just gets frustracted and quits.

[tyleredw]

Legacy can become a very pricey format to play. Currently I have Goblins and LEDless Ichorid (two of the most inexpensive decks in the format), but I'd like to expand. What would you say is the next best deck, yet lightest on the wallet? I was thinking maybe Enchantress with a budget landbase? What are your thoughts/opinions?

Mono-blue Merfolk seems to be the best choice. It's a heavy contender in the format, and the only real expensive cards are Force of Will and maybe Wasteland.

Not only would it be a good choice to get a cheap deck, but buying Force of Wills is going to be a necessity anyway if you want to stay playing any deck with blue later on. It's probably going to be one of the most worth while investments for legacy outside of Tarmogoyf and Duals.

[elgoff]

Advice...

If you want to upgrade into another deck buy yourself a playset of Legacy Stapples" that gonna lead you towards new deck. Ok, you have Goblins and LEDless Ichorid. Get a playset of Lion's Eye Diamond so you can now upgrade a deck to another Dredge list... Then, with that playset in hand your gonna be able to build other deck also. Next bet, CRET Belcher doesn't cost much after you have LEDs. Then you can slowly move to another "Storm" deck like Iggy Pop, ANT, TES even if you don't have FOW you still can build a very competitive deck (Pact of Negation/Duress will do). Exploit LED at is best then move to another "Stapples" like FOW or 'Goyf and move on to other archetype...

Enchantress isn't really cheap either... Argothian, Exploration, Serra's Sanctum, Savannah/Temple Garden, Taiga/Stomping Grounds, + a bunch 3-5$ cards...+Moat!!

Look at other MONO COLORED deck if you wanna for less money. (Mighty Quinn, Mono Green, Elves, Parfait, Mono Black, etc.)

[JonBarber]

Advice...

If you want to upgrade into another deck buy yourself a playset of Legacy Stapples" that gonna lead you towards new deck. Ok, you have Goblins and LEDless Ichorid. Get a playset of Lion's Eye Diamond so you can now upgrade a deck to another Dredge list... Then, with that playset in hand your gonna be able to build other deck also. Next bet, CRET Belcher doesn't cost much after you have LEDs. Then you can slowly move to another "Storm" deck like Iggy Pop, ANT, TES even if you don't have FOW you still can build a very competitive deck (Pact of Negation/Duress will do). Exploit LED at is best then move to another "Stapples" like FOW or 'Goyf and move on to other archetype...

Enchantress isn't really cheap either... Argothian, Exploration, Serra's Sanctum, Savannah/Temple Garden, Taiga/Stomping Grounds, + a bunch 3-5$ cards...+Moat!!

Look at other MONO COLORED deck if you wanna for less money. (Mighty Quinn, Mono Green, Elves, Parfait, Mono Black, etc.)

Thank you, thats really good advice. It makes the format seem a lot less expensive. I was actually thinking of belcher and TES as other future upgrade options, and your comment about LEDs makes a lot of sense.

What do you recommend as the best way of getting ahold of the pricier cards? Trade around for them or just buy them? I could get a playset for less than $28 each on TCGPlayer. Is there a better way to go about it that I'm missing?

And I mentioned enchantress because I priced it out for less than $100 minus the dual lands and moat.

[Otter]

Straight up Gw Enchantress only needs one Savannah, really, but the deck isn't all that great either. You can get a decent version for a hundred bucks, yeah, but you'd be better off just buying four Forces and putting them to use later (i.e. Fish). Unless you really like Enchantess, it's not worth it.

[Volt]

Belcher is a pretty terrible deck, and LEDless Ichorid is arguably as good or better than the LED version. Imo, the only compelling reason to buy a set of LEDs is if you want to build a Tendrils combo deck.

[keys]

Mono colored tribal generally has the best price/performance ratio. (Goblins, Merfolk, Elves)

[Jak]

I hate when people say buy the staples. Sure, that will help in the long run but most people looking to get a deck for Legacy want it now. Not wait months and months until they have enough to finsih their playset of Seas.

IMO, Goblins or Elves is the best choice. No mana disruption, but just good solid beatdown. The best way to stay cheap is to run a mono colored deck and you really can't do that in Legacy outside of aggro.

[dahcmai]

I'd still have to side with picking up Forces and going Merfolk. The deck is flat cheap outside of those and it's easy to expand from having some forces around.

[brattin]

If I was just getting into the format and didn't have a lot of cards, my first plan would be to try and make friends with someone who did, and borrow decks / cards. If you can't find anyone with spare decks, your meta is probably underdeveloped and so you can stomp people with belcher or aluren or sliver aggro or zoo with werebears or whatever other random deck you can think of, and you don't need to worry about getting perfect decklists.

If you want to amass versatile cards which you can put in a lot of decks, so when you get bored of one deck you can switch to another, (i.e. you want to seriously get into legacy and own your own collection), go for it, buy forces and wastes. You can make pretty good approximations of a lot of good decks once you get forces. I traded for most of the stuff I got, but it's hard to find good deals without putting in money on things like forces, goyfs, and duals. You can easily get by with fetches and a single dual of the appropriate colors--I wouldn't bother buying a full set of any dual, until you're sure you're going to like the deck for a long time. If you need fetches, Zendikar has fetches. Buy a box of Zendikar, draft with friends, keep the fetches, trade anything else of value for more fetches. It's probably not too hard to trade new fetches for old ones.

On the other hand, if you just want one deck for legacy, goblins is pretty cheap, enchantress is pretty cheap, whatever. But I figure that isn't the case, because you already have a couple good decks.

Playtest on MWS or something to see if you actually like playing the deck you're thinking about buying cards for.

Short version:
1) borrow cards whenever you can, it's easier than you'd think.
2) if you want to really get into legacy, don't just buy one narrow deck, buy things that fit in multiple decks (goyfs, as expensive as they are; forces; fetches, duals, wastes).
3) trade for anything worth less than $10, it's easier than you'd think (lftl, confidants, knight of the reliquary, counterbalance, top, merfolk lords, standstills, and so on)
4) ghetto versions of decks are almost as good as fully built versions--I won tournaments back in the day playing aluren combo, replacing duals and fetches with cipt fetches and extra basics, flash counter (such a bad card) instead of force of will, and noble benefactor over intuition. I'm not saying it was a good build by any stretch of the imagination--I'm just saying in a meta where not everyone is playing perfect copies of archetypical decks, games can be pretty luck dependent, and you can win tournaments with some luck, some skill, and some terrible uncommons. And if everyone is playing perfect decks, just borrow one.

[Malchar]

Force of Will is a very stable investment, especially if you take your time and shop on Ebay. If you don't like them, you can certainly sell them for about the same price you paid. Besides, they're useful in so many other decks.

[MMogg]

I hate when people say buy the staples. Sure, that will help in the long run but most people looking to get a deck for Legacy want it now. Not wait months and months until they have enough to finsih their playset of Seas.

IMO, Goblins or Elves is the best choice. No mana disruption, but just good solid beatdown. The best way to stay cheap is to run a mono colored deck and you really can't do that in Legacy outside of aggro.

I don't think people are implying buying all the staples or really expensive staples, rather, ones that are playable in multiple decks, like Aether Vials, Wastelands, etc. Like elgoff's advice of investing in LEDs, which can used in multiple tier 1 decks. In a similar way, Stax and Stompy have a lot of overlap when it comes to the more expensive cards.

To the OP, I think it also depends who you'll be playing against. If you are playing in a not very competitive environment, you can get away with sub-optimal card choices while you save up for better ones.

My personal advice is to also consider 75 cards, not just 60. You have more games sideboarded than not sideboarded, so keep in mind sideboards and potential overlap of cards when choosing what deck to play next.

[Brad Herbig]

If I were getting into Legacy now with what I know now, I would definitely start off with mono-blue merfolk. Between Forces and Wastelands, you will already have some extremely solid Eternal staples (as in Vintage too, if you ever want to get into that), and it is a solid deck with good card availability.

[JonBarber]

I like the responses. Everyone raises some good points. From the sounds of it, Merfolk is a pretty clear choice for the next deck to build. I do plan to keep playing legacy for a long time, and staples sound like the way to go. I also happen to go to school in Rochester, which is a very large city, meaning the meta is pretty competitive. For now Goblins and Ichorid are doing me well, but I think merfolk is a good way to head.

[AngryTroll]

The best deck vs. Price is generally Rabid Wombat. Usually he just gets frustracted and quits.

Awesome.


Force of Will, Jitte, and Mutavaults are all rather expensive, but the rest of the cards for Merfolk aren't too bad.

Affinity, Dragon Stompy and Burn are cheap to build, but aren't in the same league as Ichorid or Merfolk.

[brattin]

I'd like to make some of the points I already made again, and also hopefully to clarify some things I forgot or left out.

I think merfolk is a good idea of a deck to buy, as forces, wastes, standstills, possibly stifles if you run them, and jittes are all things you will continue to use. I think it's also flexible--you can choose to run shackles, back to basics, fetchlands with or without a splash (seems bad to me) cold-eyed selkie, snakeform or pongify (does anyone do this?) wake thrasher, extra lords, that guy from zendikar who gets a counter when your opponent shuffles, mind harness, whatever. The standard decklist isn't necessarily the best one for your meta, even if it is developed, and non-canonical card choices aren't necessarily bad calls.

I want to say again that you can play with screwed up manabases and it won't necessarily be a big problem--you could do UWb landstill with u/r and w/b fetches, one tundra, one scrubland, one plateau, one uw rav dual and basics, and even though it looks like shit and sometimes you'll get mana screwed and sometimes the life loss from the rav dual will be relevant, it's gonna happen a lot less often than you'd expect. I think it's kind of a flaw in this site that we focus so much on the best decklist. I think it'd be cool for each archetype to have a list of suboptimal choices for people who don't have access to the best cards (or the "best" cards, where it isn't clear). I think some of the most fun of magic is figuring out how to patch holes in decklists. I played against a kid recently who splashed black in his zoo deck for confidant and putrid leech, because he didn't have grim lavamancers, and the deck still trounced my fairly tricked out ugr tempo thresh deck. His manabase was not a pretty sight, and tempo thresh is supposed to take advantage of bad manabases, but he still owned me.

That said, if your metagame is developed, try and borrow stuff.

And none of this is relevant if you're building merfolk, which you probably should.

From a non-expert perspective, I'd say fetches around 18, duals 20-40, goyfs 40, forces 20, chrome mox 15, explosives 15, mox diamond 25, wasteland 12--these are all prices you can expect to stick around. That was phrased badly, let me try again. If you buy these cards, at close to these values, you can expect to make a profit whenever you get rid of them. I think it is possible to get these cards at these values, and if you do you won't regret it. They're all good in a bunch of different decks, and are all unlikely to be banned, and are unlikely to dip far below the prices I've listed.

I'm'a quit here, before I become less coherent.

Good luck!

EDIT: I wouldn't get LEDs for 28 each--LED ichorid isn't that much more fun, and storm combo, while a beating, is frickin hard to play. Test it a lot on MWS or whatever first-- you might not be good enough to play it, or you might just not enjoy it. They aren't good in much else. Also, I don't really expect them to stay that high. I got one for $3, a long time ago, and 3 for $8 each, two years ago. I rarely use them. People, I feel, rarely are looking to trade for them. I think they're only so high because they're old, kinda like natural order, dreadnought, grindstone, et cetera. Not amazing cards, just not really replaceable by anything else.

[mchainmail]

One caveat for Brattin's statement: Explosives and Goyfs should theoretically become cheaper after people stop playing Extended (after the PTQ season, in april or so)

[paK0]

One caveat for Brattin's statement: Explosives and Goyfs should theoretically become cheaper after people stop playing Extended (after the PTQ season, in april or so)

Unlikely


Things that are etablished in Legacy usually hold their value even after they rotate out, see Onslaught Fetches.

[Malchar]

With all due respect, LED is a rather volatile card. I see it as heavily broken and it "just happens" to be useful in decks like Dredge and ANT. I wouldn't be too surprised if it gets banned in the future (possibly due to a new combo that's too abusive). I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong with LED or these decks. However, if you're only going to invest in a few select cards, things like FoW and Wasteland are more important. These cards appear in a variety of different types of decks, rather than solely combo decks. These cards, along with cheap things like Swords, Daze, and Lightning Bolt are like the primordial removal spells. These kinds of things are staples in basically any deck that has the same colors. Besides, while lots of combos get their exciting start in a LED shell, the more refined versions always seem to ditch LED and assume a more conservative blue base.

[mchainmail]

Unlikely


Things that are etablished in Legacy usually hold their value even after they rotate out, see Onslaught Fetches.

I don't want to speculate too heavily on Tarmogoyf, however I doubt he will stay above $40 after the demand of extended season is over. Is it going to be a $30 card? Probably, for a very long time.


On topic: I would suggest Dragon Stompy as a fun, cheap deck to play. It probably costs $200 tops, with City of Traitors being the only expensive hard-to-find card ($12 each) and Ancient Tomb ($4) while the rest of the deck is still extended legal!

[paK0]

Well, it it is normal that Extended Cards peak at some points of Extended Season, but i guess Goyf will hardly fall under the price it has once it rotates out.

[MMogg]

Well, it it is normal that Extended Cards peak at some points of Extended Season, but i guess Goyf will hardly fall under the price it has once it rotates out.

Yeah, I'd imagine this is accurate. The thing about Tarmogoyf – and correct me if I'm wrong – is that he is the first over-powered, under-costed creature in Legacy that is used in multiple decks across most if not all colours. Adding to this, he's a recently printed card, so who knows if he will someday end up in a core set reprint or something. The bottom line is his future price is very speculative due to the fact that he is kind of an anomaly, whereas something like Force of Will has over a decade of solid playability and there has been no power creep to replace it. It's a solid choice, no speculation necessary.

[Cenarius]

Goblins, Merfolk and Elves are all decks you don't want to put money in. First, your deck will have a life-expectancy. After a while it will be so boring to play the deck over and over again. Second, those decks are very metagame dependant. We saw that already with goblins who totally disappeared, and with the rise and decline of merfolk. You'll need deck that are metagame undependant.
I'm not saying you should start with Landstill or something. I'd rather advise you to start playing a combo deck. Probably TES is the best choice since it does not play Duals/Fetch etc. so it's fairly easy (cheap) to build it. You'll have to bleed for Lion's Eye Diamond's but that's just a cost you'll must bear. Each deck has expensive stuff. So why would I advise a Combo deck?
First, once you'll start playing you're pretty weak at the beginning. You don't have much knowledge about the deck. After a while you'll see yourself growing and growing. Second, Combo has probably against 60% of the metagame a walkover/buy. I do not say that every combo player should or will get top 8's, its just easier in comparison with Goblins/Elves/Merfolk since those decks are pretty inconsistent. THEY DON'T PLAY BRAINSTORM.
Third, when you play with a combo deck every game is different from eachother. It's a puzzle which you'll have to solve.
So if you want a deck that keeps enjoying you, that is strong and which is more of a challenge, you should play TES or ANT (which is better).

I do not play combo myself, but about 7 out of 10 people in my team play combo frequently.

[o13g]

Goblins, Merfolk and Elves are all decks you don't want to put money in. First, your deck will have a life-expectancy. After a while it will be so boring to play the deck over and over again. Second, those decks are very metagame dependant. We saw that already with goblins who totally disappeared, and with the rise and decline of merfolk. You'll need deck that are metagame undependant.
I'm not saying you should start with Landstill or something. I'd rather advise you to start playing a combo deck.

O.O

I would like to note that credibility of this post is severely compromised with a notion of Combo decks being less meta-dependent than Merfolk.

[Cenarius]

I think you misread my post. With metagame-dependent I mean that Merfolk could only be playable when a lot of blue decks were in the metagame. After Merfolk reaching several top 8 results, people started to become aware of the rising power. They started playing Goblins/Zoo or other decks, that Merfolk can't handle.
TES/ other Combo on the otherhand has fairly good %'s against the whole metagame. Combo exists for several years, with different metagame's, and keeps getting great results.
You always have bad days when you meet 6 countertop/tempo threshold deck's but good players are always capable of winning. Opponents can always screw or in most cases make horrible mistakes.
So, to conclude: TES/ANT/DDANT is Metagame-dependent on the day itself (though when you're a good player you're less affected), whereas Merfolk/Goblins/Elves are Metagame-dependent on more global shifts. However not my whole post went about metagame-dependency. There are more things than meets the eye when talking about Combo decks.


So I think your credibility of understanding the metagame is in doubt.

[paK0]

So you are saying if you have succes with Merfolk people will start to switch to decks that beat Merfolk but if you have succes with combo they won't?

[luckme10]

While I agree in a sense that I don''t believe merfolk specifically "has the distance for legacy," the non merfolk "shell" of the deck is a great collection of legacy agro/control staples and can be seen in many other tribal decks, which can then be used for building other decks. The ultimate cost of building merfolk lies not the merfolk themselves (the most expensive merfolk is like $2.50), but the legacy staple shells, which will more likely continue to be viable after merfolk leaves.

To say combo doesn't have a build in life expectancy while agro does is outlandish. Goblins has been a legacy staple from the beginning, and continues to be a viable threat. While Combo has gone through the fall of solidarity and the rise of TES and ANT based decks.

Combo may be a more viable choice these days as people are switching to a more heavily agro based builds, but that is dependent on today's metagame as much as anyone else. Merfolk evolved in response to threshold/countertop dominance based decks and is now a lesser choice due to zoo. Likewise, combo was impacted by the prevalence of countertop in legacy but is has taken a backseat to aggros more dominant metagame comprising format. I actually think combo becomes a better metagame choice by the day.

If this is an opinion that mirrors the ultimate viability of tribal in legacy I believe that thread has already been made.


"Global Metagame" Control<Aggro<Combo<Control...

[BreathWeapon]

Dredge, it's not even close.

[Tacosnape]

It's worth noting that with Top 8's consisting of a lot of Dredge, ANT, and 38 Lands that Dragon Stompy could actually become a viable contender again. It's got decent Merfolk and Countertop matchups, too. Just gets completely raped by Zoo, but hey.

That said, in power level for your dollar, Dredge wins, with Merfolk a close second.

[Nidd]

Dudes, he already has Dredge, or do I fail at reading the OP?

[Piceli89]

"Global Metagame" Control<Aggro<Combo<Control...

That's just an inaccurate summary. Better say this these days:

Control > Aggro if it's not too fast and it's a good control
Control> Aggro-Control
Aggro> Aggro-Control usually
Aggro-Control>Combo
Combo> Aggro
Combo>Control

That's how I see it now in Legacy. Things like Zoo sometimes manage to beat Landstill if they can play wisely and not overextend, breaking the "Control rules Aggro" law. On the other side, Combo crushes pure non-chalice based control (Landstill again), and straight aggro.
Aggro-control, of course, always has average MUs against the rest, from 40 to 55 i would say (except for Ichorid of course). That's still a pretty strong generalization, though.
Of course i picked the "best" (to me) archetypes representing the kind of deck, i.e. Zoo for Aggro, Landstill for Control, Blue-based Goyf deck for aggro-control, and ANT for combo.

That said, to be in topic, I'd suggest NOT to buy staples, but to aim, after some goldfishing and testing on mws, to start from building an entire deck that can over all these points:

1) it should, first of all, get you fun. That's pretty subjective, of course, but I think most of the ppl will agree that "a fun deck" is one that can offer various situations to solve, and also offers several possibility of playstyle approach. On the basis of this reasoning, for example, Burn is not a fun deck because it requires you only to be able to do math basic functions to make it operate, and it just reduces its gameplay to "tap R, burn. Tap R, another burn. Are you still alive? Ok, let's go on.Tap R, burn", ecc ecc. No flaming intended for the burn players, but it's the truth.

2) it should be quite consistent and provide a good range of decent-to-good matchups. Few bad MUs are accepted, of course, as long as they are not unwinnable or are like 25-75 and they are not too many. Of course this is metagame-related: it's stupid to build Enchantress even if it meddles you, if your meta is dominated by combo.
But still, that's pretty relative, because you can tune your deck so that it can heavily recover its bad MUs post sideboard.

3) It should offer a certain range of flexibility and "toyability" with it, which is the possibility to modify the Maindeck not only in meta-prevision (f.e., to play firespout maindeck if the meta is very aggro), but also to play it in a different way. Furthermore, if it revolves around a card, it'll be pretty much easy to invalidate it, or even to have it destroyed by Bannings (you think it's a thing that won't happen, but we don't know what's in WotC's mind).

4) This will be blown out by critics, but to me a good deck should have the tools either to refuel its hand, or to provide card quality. On the long run, you can distinguish a good deck from a bad one because the second one will die because of its inconsistency and because it operates too much on the casuality factor when opening the hand, without the possibility to "correct" luck or misluck. I have a friend who splashed its Stax with Blue for TfKnowledge because, rightly, he feels that Chalice-Trini decks often lose to themselves and their shitty hand even before losing to the opponent. And those TfK often, very often make the diference in turning upside down certain situations. Of course this is an example and you can disagree, but I hope you have reached the point.

5)Finally, you have to like it a lot so that you can play it exaustively without getting bored, become a very good pilot, and, eventually, win tourneys with it and earn new cards. That's the basis of my reasoning: you cn pretty much buy some staples and have a good basis for more than one deck, but sometimes to me it's just better to pick up a deck with which you are sure that you'll get through and enlarge your staples-pool in the form of competitions-rewards. I saw lots of good players who started from having only one deck built making top8s and , slowly, fueling their binder with fetchlands, duals and utilities, instead of paying X hundreds of dollars (or euros) to buy them.

That said, you should watch out on the basis of these points which is the deck that can cover them and that you like a lot, and of which you have the certainty that has the stuff to be a good contender in your meta, if it's going to become your first deck. You can even build Berserk Stompy and throw in all the cash for the 4 Berserks which are played only there, if you believe that's a good call and it is suited for you, it's flexible and has potential to do well.
Naturally it's a bit of gambling to guess which could be the perfect choice for you, but that's what MWS is here for: you can test really every Legacy archetype (just take the lists from Deckcheck or from here), guess what does for you and then proceed to build it IRL.

[Pulp_Fiction]

Honestly man, just build what you want. Look into whatever deck you want to build and start collecting cards. You already have the best budget deck in the format, non-LED Dredge, and IMOP it is a lot better than the LED versions. Just keep playing Dredge and Goblins, just spend the money and don't worry about budget versions. You will be a lot less satisfied with a budget version of a deck than you would be with your ideal build.

Figure out what kinds of cards you need, buy some of the staples for those archetypes and you will be ready. Don't just buy the most important staple cards in the format, buy the ones for the decks you want to build. For example, if you don't need Force of Will, don't waste money on it. I have been playing Legacy for a long time now and have never wanted nor needed a playset of FoW, but thats because I don't play decks that run it, not for budget reasons, but because I don't want to play them.

[Enigma]

Personnaly, I started playing Goblins and then went to Ur Dreadstill, which I just had to buy 3 duals, my FoW, Fetches and Dreadnoughts (that were only 15$). Then I bought my Goyfs and Trops to go UGr, then my Tundras to try some UGW Threshold, they my Seas, Confidants and Thoughtseizes to go with the 4C Thresh list. So for me it started with buying FOW, Fetches, only 3 Duals and wastelands.

Now I only play blue, but I can build whatever deck I want because I have all my duals and all my fetches.

P-M

[sauce]

you could also build mono red burn, its not terrible, its cheap and is pretty metagame independent.

[Cenarius]

So you are saying if you have succes with Merfolk people will start to switch to decks that beat Merfolk but if you have succes with combo they won't?

This is going to look a bit like economics :D.
Legacy consists out of 3 shifts. A global shift and a national shift and a cardbased shift. Let me begin with the last.
A cardbased shift appears when some rediculous card(s) get(s) printed in a new set. People start playing the card(s) in new or existing decks etc.
This brings me to the next shift. The global shift. When new cards get printed, and start getting played in a deck, they change the deck. They change for instance the matchup against certain decks. People will pick up the deck, and start getting good results (the metagame did not respond to the change). This is a perfect example for Merfolk. Then people start taking measures and at some point the deck seems not viable anymore in the new metagame.
A national shift is just a shift based in a country or area within a country (since America is freaking hugh-ass). The national metagame can differ from the global shift/metagame.

When people started to get results with Merfolk, people became aware of it. People started playing Zoo and other decks that Merfolk can't handle, suddenly Merfolk is in decline. Wonder why? The metagame shifted, and there are probably other decks that might do better or benefit from the shift.
Combo is a different story except that it first was Solidarity. Combo, only when a good player plays it, has so many walkovers. No other deck has that, since its consistency is not good enough or it's just not powerful enough.
There is another big difference.
Merfolk is a lot easier to play than combo. Therefore there are a lot more Merfolk players than Combo. It might look that Merfolk is a good deck to play, having a lot of top 8's an half year ago. However an half year ago there were about 15 players on every tournament. The chance that one would reach top 8 is fairly high.
Combo never had much players and never will get many players.

"To say combo doesn't have a build in life expectancy while agro does is outlandish. Goblins has been a legacy staple from the beginning, and continues to be a viable threat. While Combo has gone through the fall of solidarity and the rise of TES and ANT based decks. "

With life expectancy I mean the following:

"You'll be enjoyed to play the deck even when you're testing it frequently for over an half year."

Hopefully some things became clear. I would advise to play TES/ANT.

[Sigar]

No affinity love? The deck is underrated and pretty cheap to assemble.

[brattin]

Affinity is cheap, but contains no cards that are good in other decks (other than jitte, afaik).

Again, I recommend against storm combo, because:
1) you already have a good combo deck (ichorid)
2) LEDs aren't good in much else, and are hard to get, and probably not worth it
3) personally, I don't think it's fun to play, or play against
4) it's bad against counterbalance, and your metagame is theoretically developed

On the other hand, it's probably the best deck in the format.
The versions which have overlap with other good decks are the versions which run fetches and duals, and if you were gonna buy blue fetches and duals I'd recommend a different deck anyway.

It's a good point, though, that you shouldn't buy forces if you don't want to play forces. If you want to play survival and rock and zoo and aggroloam and that kind of thing, you can buy other staples.

My vote's still for Merfolk.

[edgewalker]

I have to go with merfolk too. Although the merfolk themselves, FoW, stifle, daze, etc etc will never lose their power in Legacy. Also, merfolk has a decent match-up against most of what you'll see at a tournament. (big or small) It has a better chance against the other decks that are present in the top8 than any other "budget" deck, and let's be honest, if you're goal isn't to win a competition, or at least top8, you're doing it wrong.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

+1 on the Merfolk suggestion, as long as you enjoy playing with counterspells. However, it's not quite as clear-cut as some folks are making it, in that the deck has trouble against most decks that use some amount of red (ie Zoo, Goblins, and to some lesser extent Burn.)

It's a fun deck, it has a lot of good matchups, and it's relatively cheap to build. But, imho, the best version of the deck splashes white right now, which means fetches and some Tundras. It depends on your meta, because the mono blue version is in fact better against some decks than the splashed version. But the white splash shores up a lot of the problems with the deck (no point removal, problems against red cards, artifact/enchantment removal, etc.) I myself am trying to track down some Tundras at the moment, so between those, FoW, Wastelands, Mutavaults, and fetches, the version that I personally would reccomend based on an unknown, reasonably well-developed meta... It isn't all that inexpensive any more.

Although you could always run a decent ghetto mana base with Wanderwine Hub, so I wouldn't caution you against the deck if you like its playstyle. I personally <3 that shit like no other, so I'm glad to get folks on the bandwagon.

[beastman]

The best deck vs. Price is generally Rabid Wombat. Usually he just gets frustracted and quits.

Damn. You beat me to it.

[JudasKilled]

Goblins, Merfolk and Elves are all decks you don't want to put money in. First, your deck will have a life-expectancy. After a while it will be so boring to play the deck over and over again. Second, those decks are very metagame dependant. We saw that already with goblins who totally disappeared, and with the rise and decline of merfolk. You'll need deck that are metagame undependant.
I'm not saying you should start with Landstill or something. I'd rather advise you to start playing a combo deck. Probably TES is the best choice since it does not play Duals/Fetch etc. so it's fairly easy (cheap) to build it. You'll have to bleed for Lion's Eye Diamond's but that's just a cost you'll must bear. Each deck has expensive stuff. So why would I advise a Combo deck?
First, once you'll start playing you're pretty weak at the beginning. You don't have much knowledge about the deck. After a while you'll see yourself growing and growing. Second, Combo has probably against 60% of the metagame a walkover/buy. I do not say that every combo player should or will get top 8's, its just easier in comparison with Goblins/Elves/Merfolk since those decks are pretty inconsistent. THEY DON'T PLAY BRAINSTORM.
Third, when you play with a combo deck every game is different from eachother. It's a puzzle which you'll have to solve.
So if you want a deck that keeps enjoying you, that is strong and which is more of a challenge, you should play TES or ANT (which is better).

I do not play combo myself, but about 7 out of 10 people in my team play combo frequently.

None of that makes sense......

goblins is cheap but with the rising popularity of zoo a bad choice.
Merfolk will always be comepetative because it preys on vlue decks and can even beat regulat aggro. It seems the only competative cheap option. + if you played lorwyn block you should have a huge chunk of it anyways. FoW is what 30$? Hell my type 2 doran deck was worth 1300 at one point. Just trade/buy some stuff.

[JACO]

Legacy can become a very pricey format to play. Currently I have Goblins and LEDless Ichorid (two of the most inexpensive decks in the format), but I'd like to expand. What would you say is the next best deck, yet lightest on the wallet? I was thinking maybe Enchantress with a budget landbase? What are your thoughts/opinions?Do you have any fetchlands or staples from Extended or Standard with which to build on? You could tailor your next deck or card acquisitions around what you already have (for example, if you have 4-8 fetchlands of specific color combinations, etc), and what you'd like to play in the future. Let us know and I can recommend you more based off of what you already have and own besides Goblins and LED Ichorid. In your Goblins deck do you have fetchlands/Wastelands/Ports?

[JonBarber]

I'm loving the discussion being formed here!


Do you have any fetchlands or staples from Extended or Standard with which to build on? You could tailor your next deck or card acquisitions around what you already have (for example, if you have 4-8 fetchlands of specific color combinations, etc), and what you'd like to play in the future. Let us know and I can recommend you more based off of what you already have and own besides Goblins and LED Ichorid. In your Goblins deck do you have fetchlands/Wastelands/Ports?

I played A LOT of type II about 3 years ago (Kamigawa Block and such), and then stopped playing for a few years. I'm now getting back into it, and I've found legacy to be a much more appealing format than standard. But, unfortunately I'm left to build up the staples from scratch.

I consider myself to be a pretty good pilot, and personally find combo to be my favorite format to play, second being aggro or aggro/control. The two decks I'd be leaning towards most are Merfolk and TES. I have all of the rainbow land base for TES, and find it a very fun deck to playtest on MWS. I consider Belcher to be very fun to play, and figured it would be a very easy transition if I built TES.

[Nidd]

Belcher is quite nice for some games on MWS, but I, for myself, wouldn't want to pilot it through a tournament. Too inconsistent.

Nice to hear you want to play Storm Combo, but I hope you're aware that a variant like TES seems to have more problems against Blue than ANT. You will want to pack some Silence or so against Blue.

[JonBarber]

Belcher is quite nice for some games on MWS, but I, for myself, wouldn't want to pilot it through a tournament. Too inconsistent.

Yeah, I guess thats pretty true.



Nice to hear you want to play Storm Combo, but I hope you're aware that a variant like TES seems to have more problems against Blue than ANT. You will want to pack some Silence or so against Blue.

I am aware of that. But my meta only has two people running blue (if I'm remembering correctly) and one of them just had half their deck stolen, including their FoW. The rest is tons of zoo, survival, enchantress, etc. Therefor TES seemed like the best idea. I also liked the additional challenge involved with piloting TES.

[Koby]

Belcher is quite nice for some games on MWS, but I, for myself, wouldn't want to pilot it through a tournament. Too inconsistent.


Playing Belcher has more to do with your confidence in percentages than consistency. And I don't mean just the deck own win percentages either - more broadly speaking, the chance of you encountering a blue deck. Nightmare matchup is indeed FOW + Daze, but that's what Xantid Swarm is for.

[beastman]

I am aware of that. But my meta only has two people running blue (if I'm remembering correctly) and one of them just had half their deck stolen, including their FoW. The rest is tons of zoo, survival, enchantress, etc. Therefor TES seemed like the best idea. I also liked the additional challenge involved with piloting TES.

Belcher would be stupid good in this metagame. If nobody plays blue, there is no reason for you not to play belcher.

[Forbiddian]

I'm loving the discussion being formed here!

I played A LOT of type II about 3 years ago (Kamigawa Block and such), and then stopped playing for a few years. I'm now getting back into it, and I've found legacy to be a much more appealing format than standard. But, unfortunately I'm left to build up the staples from scratch.

I consider myself to be a pretty good pilot, and personally find combo to be my favorite format to play, second being aggro or aggro/control. The two decks I'd be leaning towards most are Merfolk and TES. I have all of the rainbow land base for TES, and find it a very fun deck to playtest on MWS. I consider Belcher to be very fun to play, and figured it would be a very easy transition if I built TES.

Play NoGoyf. If you have Jittes from playing Kamigawa block, it's cheaper as Merfolk, has better matchups, and has more staples for the price, like:

Tundras, a set of blue fetches, Brainstorm, and Swords to Plowshares, which can go to your next deck (in addition to all the cards that Merfolk has that will cross over).

[Aleksandr]

Monoblack aggro is a very easy deck to start and one can convert it to Eva Green once he gets some staples (duals, Goyfs, fetches). It destroys control and has a good game against most of combo, with proper sideboard and lots of removal, it has solid game also against aggro. (I'm talking about a low-budget deck, not that MBA rules metagame.) Perish/Nature's Ruin takes any amount of opposing Goyfs and somehow dodges Counterbalance.

Otoh, why playing this over TES, if you already have those rainbow lands. But LEDs are not that cheap.

Interesting idea is to build both TES and LED Dredge, as the only really expensive cards are LEDs :really: and you can switch the decks from time to time. Both of them are combo (which can be a bit boring, but otoh you wrote that you like combo decks), but every one has its each strategy and must be answered differently. The only downside is their vulnerability to blue decks (namely TES, not that much LED Icho - but while LEDless eats blue decks alive, LEDfull eats them cooked*), hate (Ichorid) and mulligans.

* I mean: having you DA countered after you throw away your entire hand can hurt.

[JACO]

I'm loving the discussion being formed here!



I played A LOT of type II about 3 years ago (Kamigawa Block and such), and then stopped playing for a few years. I'm now getting back into it, and I've found legacy to be a much more appealing format than standard. But, unfortunately I'm left to build up the staples from scratch.

I consider myself to be a pretty good pilot, and personally find combo to be my favorite format to play, second being aggro or aggro/control. The two decks I'd be leaning towards most are Merfolk and TES. I have all of the rainbow land base for TES, and find it a very fun deck to playtest on MWS. I consider Belcher to be very fun to play, and figured it would be a very easy transition if I built TES.
Jon, if you can afford it, I would recommend acquiring or trading for a playset of Lion's Eye Diamonds first. You can use them in the faster versions of Dredge, you can use them in Charbelcher, and you can use them in Ad-Nauseam Tendrils (ANT)/NLS/TES variants. Almost all of the other cards in Charbelcher are really cheap (except the 1-2 dual lands), and that deck would probably be really explosive in the metagame you described above. ANT is then where I'd move after that, because it is a bit pricier but a more resilient combo deck against nearly everything. It will require buying fetchlands though, but once you have acquired Deltas, Strands, and a few blue dual lands (pricey!) you'll then be ready to also shift into blue decks. So that way you can slowly acquire staples along the way while still being extremely competitive in your metagame (Belcher, then ANT/Doomsday hybrid, then whatever else you want to play).

[Gocho]

Buy the deck that you want to play. If you buy another deck an don't like it you waste your money and your time.

I bought a dredge deck and finally I sold it to buy ANT. I'm more happy now :wink:

Choose an archetype (Aggro-Control, Combo, Stax, etc...) and buy the common expensive cards (FOW+Tarmogoyf, LED+Chrome Mox, Trinisphere+Tangle Wire+Smokestack, etc...), if you have the common expensive cards you can complete many decks for little money.

[JonBarber]

Buy the deck that you want to play.
Belcher and Tendrils are definitely the decks I want to play.



Jon, if you can afford it, I would recommend acquiring or trading for a playset of Lion's Eye Diamonds first. You can use them in the faster versions of Dredge, you can use them in Charbelcher, and you can use them in Ad-Nauseam Tendrils (ANT)/NLS/TES variants. Almost all of the other cards in Charbelcher are really cheap (except the 1-2 dual lands), and that deck would probably be really explosive in the metagame you described above. ANT is then where I'd move after that, because it is a bit pricier but a more resilient combo deck against nearly everything. It will require buying fetchlands though, but once you have acquired Deltas, Strands, and a few blue dual lands (pricey!) you'll then be ready to also shift into blue decks. So that way you can slowly acquire staples along the way while still being extremely competitive in your metagame (Belcher, then ANT/Doomsday hybrid, then whatever else you want to play).

Thats what I was thinking. Obviously my best move is to get ahold of some LEDs. How do you recommend going about acquiring them? The cheapest I've found them online is ~$25. And I doubt theres a lot of people in my meta interested in trading their's off. Do I bite the bullet and just buy a playset for $100, or do I scout out and try and trade them, or wait until theres some kind of deal online?

[JACO]

Thats what I was thinking. Obviously my best move is to get ahold of some LEDs. How do you recommend going about acquiring them? The cheapest I've found them online is ~$25. And I doubt theres a lot of people in my meta interested in trading their's off. Do I bite the bullet and just buy a playset for $100, or do I scout out and try and trade them, or wait until theres some kind of deal online?$23-25 is the going price, unfortunately. You can try to trade for a set (like get rid of whatever cards you don't plan on using, to put towards the LEDs so it's not such a large cash outlay), or you could just try to wait until you find some rando selling them for $20 (less likely). MOTL (http://forums.magictraders.com/Ultimate.cgi?) is a great site to trade on if you can't find anything locally.

[Irish_Mafia]

I have recently went through this same dilema, I was going to build Stax or Merfolk and then I decided to dump my Type 2 stuff(having Baneslayers helped) and get legacy stuff as it will be a relatively safe investment. I mean I have played a decent amount of legacy but just borrowed it from my friends who have huge collections.

So my advice is: A. Make a friend that has the cards and can let u play the deck and win to accumulate staples. (I know PTG in 'cuse has the dual land events). or..

B. Test the shit out of a deck while you save up cash and buy the list when your sure thats what you want to play.

GL!

[Sevryn]

B. Test the shit out of a deck while you save up cash and buy the list when your sure thats what you want to play.

I agree with this, play something that will make you happy. Force of Wills might be the best investment for Legacy on paper, but if you don't like playing blue decks you will find yourself unhappy even though you made the 'right' move. I wound up buying a bunch of niche cards to put together an enchantress deck, almost none of which can be used in another deck. I'm very happy :smile: .

[santeria]

why arent goblins and LEDless dredge working for you ?

[baghdadbob]

B. Test the shit out of a deck while you save up cash and buy the list when your sure thats what you want to play.



QFMFT! I flopped alot of money into several decks and they ended up being pathetic and barely playable. Make sure what your building is playable. I would suggest maybe G/w aggro cards and lands.

Windswepts
Goyf's
:rolleyes:

[JonBarber]

why arent goblins and LEDless dredge working for you ?

They are working great, and I love playing them. But it gets old playing the same two decks all the time. I also want to improve my versatility in playing. Having multiple Tier 1 one decks will also give me the advantage of being as competitive as possible against the current meta.

[Irish_Mafia]

QFMFT! I flopped alot of money into several decks and they ended up being pathetic and barely playable. Make sure what your building is playable. I would suggest maybe G/w aggro cards and lands.

Windswepts
Goyf's
:rolleyes:

Yeah, I just got rid of my baneslayers for Goyfs and then bought forces and shit, I currently have Bant Top put together.

[Eksem]

I would think it's pretty unanimous. LED-less Dredge is the best deck for your svenska krona (or whichever currency you use), while Merfolk is the probably best choice for building a deck with great winning odds/money down ratio since you get a lot of Legacy staples in the process.

The Mono Black Aggro-route is also a pretty nice choice and the one that I myself took when getting into the format. First MBA, transforming it into Eva Green, transforming that into Team America and then building a Can *****-deck.

[JonBarber]

Merfolk is the probably best choice for building a deck with great winning odds/money down ratio since you get a lot of Legacy staples in the process.

Personally I haven't had too much fun play testing Merfolk. It doesn't require nearly as much thought as combo, and I don't find it as fun as Goblins. I'm not much of a control player, so therefore I think I'm going to stray away for Merfolk for the time being.

[Eksem]

Merfolk is a nice "general" tip, but as stated by others earlier in the thread you should probably get a LED playset and go for building ANT.