[article] Attacking is Miserable [Archive]

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 03:53 AM

I think it's a good thing the domination of combo finally comes to light. Here in The Netherlands, ANT has dominated since the printing of Ad Nauseam and even before that combo was a very popular and strong archetype here. I think it's a good thing that you can win via various strategies, and personally, I would like as many strategies as possible be equally viable. But that is simply not the case. At the moment, as it stands, winning via Tendrils of Agony is simply the strongest win possible, followed by winning via Elspeth. This indicates that either Combo or Control which (eventually) wins through the attack phase are the strongest ways to go. The fact that winning via Tendrils is stronger than winning via Elspeth is because Combo kicks Controls arse. It has done it for quite a while and will continue to do so.

The old Rock-Paper-Scissors idea that Combo beats Aggro beats Control beats Combo is no longer the case. Combo wins against most non-Counterbalance or non-Force of Will tempo decks. And even against those decks it stands a pretty good chance: remember, CounterTop is only really active on turn 3 (turn 1 Sensei's Divining Top, turn 2 Counterbalance, turn 3 you have mana to activate Top). Combo often has the chance to win before that, meaning CounterTop isn't a sure Combo-win. It may be Combo's hardest match-up, but when looking at a field with Qasali Pridemages, Elspeths and lots of tribal like Goblins and Merfolk, it's not a very attractive deck to play. The other decks that have a chance against combo are the blue based aggro decks like Tempo Thresh, Merfolk and Bant Aggro. But also these have a hard time, an even harder time than CounterTop to beat Combo, as Combo utilizes cards like Orim's Chant, Silence, Xantid Swarm and Duress to make sure they can go off. To make things worse, Combo utilizes Carpet of Flowers against blue based decks, generating massive amounts of mana to pump into Ad Nauseam, Ill-Gotten Gains, Tendrils of Agony or whatever little extra they could use.

Another problem against Combo is that alot of people who don't play it, don't play it because they don't have it, don't understand it, don't want to understand it or simply hate it. Resulting in the fact that half the field doesn't know how to properly play against Combo. Everyone knows how to tackle a few creatures, but what do you Thoughtseize when you see a hand of Underground Sea, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor? The answer depends on the situation ofcourse, but while you may instantly see that the Infernal Tutor is likely to cause alot of trouble here, your average just-came-in-from-standard-player might have heard rumors about how broken LED is, and that it should be banned and pick that one instead. Doesn't matter, because if a Combo player has such a hand you're very likely to lose that game anyway.

I'm not saying Combo should be gunned down at the next bannings, but by all means, something has to be done. In The Netherlands, nonblue decks like Goblins, The Rock or Zoo often pack maindeck Combo hate (in the form of Thorn of Amethyst, Gaddock Teeg, Ethersworn Canonist and even Orim's Chant), because otherwise you know you could never win a tournament. When you reach a point where you have to pack maindeck hate against a certain archetype, that archetype has crossed the line and something should be done. I won't go deeply into what should be done because this thread will probably turn into a banning-discussion, but I think we can all point out a few cards that simply give Combo too much unfair advantage.

Antonius

04-07-2010, 05:22 AM

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 05:29 AM

Prison decks like Angel Stax, Armageddon Stax, Dutch Stax, Dragon Stompy, Demon Stompy and Faerie Stompy have run their course. They hit a wall when Qasali Pridemage was introduced and now are alot less attractive to pick up. They're still viable, but are only played by those lonesome cowboys who love Stax or Stompy. Therefor these decks are as good as neglectible when discussing Combo in the metagame.

In a way, you could say that Qasali Pridemage is partially responsible for Combo to become so dominant. The card helps decks like The Rock and Zoo to become stronger, which are very good match-ups for Combo (incidentally The Rock crushes CounterTop, which is a relative bad match-up for Combo). The card also helps various Bant decks with being able to fight Prison decks, making sure Prison decks are less and less played, which is also a good thing for Combo.

Cthuloo

04-07-2010, 05:47 AM

I think its worth noting that the author didn't discuss how Stax or other Chalice decks figure into this equation. I would have thought that they would be considered another "pole" of the legacy metagame

The situation of chalice aggro decks is particularly interesting, since they're non-force aggro decks that have a decent to good combo matchup. Maybe what we can learn from this is that aggro players should start maindecking chalice, like people do in Vintage. Anyways I think combo still isn't as scary as the author depicts it. Dredge and reanimator can still be stopped by the right amount of hate (and this of course means more than a singleton Jotun Grunt in the board). Zoo is of course a favourable matchup for ANT, but not an auto win. Gaddock forces the ANT player to search for a solution, and this buys the zoo player time to beat, making Ad Nauseam less attractive, and Doomsday very difficoult to set up (you've got to Silence the Zoo player to avoid being burned to death, and then prepare a pile that wins on the same turn while fighting the hate). Of course it's not enough to turn the matchup, but it give's the Zoo player a fighting chance.

But even given that combo is a very bad matchup for aggro decks, I don't see why aggro shouldn't be playable. Goblin has a good matchup against merfolk, merfolk has a good matchup against countertop, countertop has a good matchup against combo and combo has a good matchup against goblins. So, if it's not a triangle, it's at least a square. Of course a Goblin player should be really skilled and lucky to make a top8 after having to beat 4 combo decks in a row, but the same can be said of the combo player who meets 4 countertop in a row (and the second occurrence is probably more likely to happen...).

Edit: just to add that I really liked the article, anyways. It's well written and defends such a controversial position very well.

Antonius

04-07-2010, 06:02 AM

maindeck chalice isn't feasible for most aggro decks, though. In fact, chalice owns most aggro decks unless they can get the previously mentioned pridemage to remove it.

jazzykat

04-07-2010, 06:03 AM

While the author took some dramatic license with the tone of the article I'm pretty sure his point about forcing the opponent to become irrelevant is correct in both the description of current strategies and the assessment of its power level.

I believe that Combo is harder to play because 1 mistake going off with AdNT is often the game, where a mistake with an Aggro deck doesn't mean you automatically lose. I tend to agree with Skeggi's generalizations

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 06:43 AM

Maybe what we can learn from this is that aggro players should start maindecking chalice, like people do in Vintage.Excuse me? The only decks in Vintage that run maindeck Chalices are Stax and Workshop Aggro. And they work alot better in Vintage because they have Workshops. We don't. But unbanning Workshops for Legacy doesn't seem like a good deal either :wink:.

Anyways I think combo still isn't as scary as the author depicts it. (snip)Gaddock Teeg(snip Of course it's not enough to turn the matchup, but it give's the Zoo player a fighting chance.
This is a common misconception. If you put an experienced ANT player against an experienced Zoo player, the ANT player will win 99% of all match-ups. ANT simply has too many outs against Gaddock Teegs, Ethersworn Canonists and whatever else the Zoo player would like to throw at the ANT player (perhaps even Thorn of Amethyst).

But even given that combo is a very bad matchup for aggro decks, I don't see why aggro shouldn't be playable. Goblin has a good matchup against merfolk, merfolk has a good matchup against countertop, countertop has a good matchup against combo and combo has a good matchup against goblins. So, if it's not a triangle, it's at least a square. Of course a Goblin player should be really skilled and lucky to make a top8 after having to beat 4 combo decks in a row, but the same can be said of the combo player who meets 4 countertop in a row (and the second occurrence is probably more likely to happen...).
Is it a square? Let's see:

CounterTop vs ANT: 80-20
Random Prison deck vs ANT: 70-30
Bant vs ANT: 50-50
Tempo Thresh vs ANT: 50-50
Merfolk vs ANT: 50-50
Dredge vs ANT: 40-60
Eva Green vs ANT: 40-60
The Rock vs ANT: 30-70
Goblins vs ANT: 30-70
Zoo vs ANT: 30-70
Aggro Loam vs ANT: 20-80
Landstill vs ANT: 20-80

In this list of 12 archetypes, only 2 have a possitive match-up against ANT, there are 3 with a 50-50 chance and 7 archetypes with a negative match-up. While the deck with the best anti-combo match-up has a 50-50 chance against Bant, Zoo, Tempo Thresh, Eva Green and Random Prison deck, it has a bad match-up against all the other decks on the list.

JamieW89

04-07-2010, 07:19 AM

Combo (ANT) might be the best to play right now, but I don't mind it as long as a very large percentage of the players seem to play the aggro decks (zoo, goblins, merfolk).
In fact, aggro has been boosted alot over the past few sets compared to control. I'd love to see some good new blue spells being printed which will properly restore the "Power Triangle" of Combo > Aggro > Control > Combo.
Although I wouldn't be against the banning of AdN and maybe LED. Combo would still be possible without them, and would still have the upper hand against aggro decks, it would just have a harder time control, as it should be.

Eldariel

04-07-2010, 07:24 AM

I'm not saying Combo should be gunned down at the next bannings, but by all means, something has to be done. In The Netherlands, nonblue decks like Goblins, The Rock or Zoo often pack maindeck Combo hate (in the form of Thorn of Amethyst, Gaddock Teeg, Ethersworn Canonist and even Orim's Chant), because otherwise you know you could never win a tournament. When you reach a point where you have to pack maindeck hate against a certain archetype, that archetype has crossed the line and something should be done. I won't go deeply into what should be done because this thread will probably turn into a banning-discussion, but I think we can all point out a few cards that simply give Combo too much unfair advantage.

Uh? This has been the case for Extended since the limelight of Mind's Desire, pretty much; aggro has needed some MD cards against combo to compete if it can at all afford them. I don't see why it's really wrong for Legacy-players to have to try and find ways to interact with more unfair decks too, to buy some extra percentages.

Also, it's not like Storm (let's be honest, ANT is the worst of that pile) has off-the-charts EV. It's got legitimate bad match-ups. Some people just sideboard so heavily for it that it loses to that; something that's not really possible against e.g. aggro. Zoo has good MUs against most of that MU pile you pasted, quite possibly with better EV than Storm. Good match-ups and bad match-ups exist; I don't see how this is newsworthy. Metagame exists too for that very reason and shifts and the optimal deck to play varies based on what others are playing and there's the art of picking the right deck at the right juncture.

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 08:05 AM

Cthuloo

04-07-2010, 08:06 AM

Excuse me? The only decks in Vintage that run maindeck Chalices are Stax and Workshop Aggro. And they work alot better in Vintage because they have Workshops. We don't. But unbanning Workshops for Legacy doesn't seem like a good deal either :wink:.

To my knowledge is not uncommon to play Chalice set at zero to gain time to play your hate bears, but I might be wrong. Of course I wasn't speaking about workshop aggro, which is more akin to stompy/stax (depending on the build) :wink:

This is a common misconception. If you put an experienced ANT player against an experienced Zoo player, the ANT player will win 99% of all match-ups. ANT simply has too many outs against Gaddock Teegs, Ethersworn Canonists and whatever else the Zoo player would like to throw at the ANT player (perhaps even Thorn of Amethyst).

I tested a bit with ANT, although I am by no mean an experienced player of the deck. If ANT is on the draw and can't win on turn one, it takes a bit to get rid of Gaddock (particularly g1 where you usually have very few answers maindeck). If the zoo player can put pressure he/she has a chance, I'm not saying the matchup is even, but is more like 70%-30% than 99%-1% IMHO.

Is it a square? Let's see:

CounterTop vs ANT: 80-20
Random Prison deck vs ANT: 70-30
Bant vs ANT: 50-50
Tempo Thresh vs ANT: 50-50
Merfolk vs ANT: 50-50
Dredge vs ANT: 40-60
Eva Green vs ANT: 40-60
The Rock vs ANT: 30-70
Goblins vs ANT: 30-70
Zoo vs ANT: 30-70
Aggro Loam vs ANT: 20-80
Landstill vs ANT: 20-80

In this list of 12 archetypes, only 2 have a possitive match-up against ANT, there are 3 with a 50-50 chance and 7 archetypes with a negative match-up. While the deck with the best anti-combo match-up has a 50-50 chance against Bant, Zoo, Tempo Thresh, Eva Green and Random Prison deck, it has a bad match-up against all the other decks on the list.

This makes ANT probably the tier 1 of the format, but still not an unbeatable monster. Some matchups (not all, I admit) can be heavily modified by a strong sideboard plan (like people already do for dredge). [Is it that bad for aggro loam? I never tested the matchup, but the deck maindecks chalice, has a strong LD plan and big beaters... I would be glad to hear some more details about this :) ]

- Zoo, Goblins and Dredge can bring in chalice of the void to set at zero. This should buy time to drop more hate (gaddock or canonist for zoo, pillar for goblins - ok, I know it's hard for gobbos) or simply win (dredge). Mindbreak trap is also an option, though less effective, IMHO.

- Merfolk, Thresh can bring in more counters (and maybe substitute pierce for snare in the maindeck for the latter), Bant can board more counters, canonist, and teeg.

- Eva green could board in 4 Sadistic Sacraments, more discard, Oppression. Considering it has dark ritual to power them out, it shouldn't be so hard to at least even the matchup. (As a side note, I find this approach (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=34165) also pretty interesting)

- Landstill can (and already does) bring in countertop (alongside with the usual canonist and mage)

What it's true is that people should start to rethink to their board. One year ago Countertop was dominant, and everybody was playing 3+ krosan grips in their board. Even now, almost every board contains 3-6 pieces of grave hate. It should probably contain also 4+ pieces of storm combo hate. If ANT becomes really that dominant people should start to maindeck some answers (many zoo lists already maindeck teeg). I don't think we're at this point, though. Combo is strong, really strong, but still manageable. If it doesn't receive some extra help (via unbannings or new cards) I think the format can handle it, like it handled Countertop before.

EDIT: I spent a long time writing the post, and some of my points were anticipated by eldariel.

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 08:15 AM

To my knowledge is not uncommon to play Chalice set at zero to gain time to play your hate bears, but I might be wrong. Of course I wasn't speaking about workshop aggro, which is more akin to stompy/stax (depending on the build)
It is: usually it's stronger to play Moxen and Lotus yourself and play Null Rods.

If ANT is on the draw and can't win on turn one, it takes a bit to get rid of Gaddock (particularly g1 where you usually have very few answers maindeck).
As a Zoo player, you shouldn't have to run Gaddock Teeg maindeck. After sideboarding, ANT has no problems getting rid of Gaddock Teeg using Chain of Vapor, Deathmark or Slaughter Pact. If it has to, it can Tutor/Brainstorm for these cards.

This makes ANT probably the tier 1 of the format, but still not an unbeatable monster. Some matchups (not all, I admit) can be heavily modified by a strong sideboard plan (like people already do for dredge). [Is it that bad for aggro loam? I never tested the matchup, but the deck maindecks chalice, has a strong LD plan and big beaters... I would be glad to hear some more details about this :)
No, not unbeatable, but since people realise its potential it's gaining popularity and we'll all have to run maindeck Combo hate. I personally don't think that's healthy for a format. And while Aggro Loam does have maindeck chalice, you don't always know you play against Combo game 1, and if you do, mulling to that Chalice and a Mox can be devastating to your hand. Not a good match-up for Aggro Loam; maindeck Chalice doesn't solve everything.

BreathWeapon

04-07-2010, 08:21 AM

Snored thru' most of the article, wake me up when Combo Winter in Legacy actually happens - the only thing in print that was relevant in the last x years was Ad Nauseam and Simian Spirit Guide before that, stop the chicken little BS.

Cthuloo

04-07-2010, 08:30 AM

As a Zoo player, you shouldn't have to run Gaddock Teeg maindeck. After sideboarding, ANT has no problems getting rid of Gaddock Teeg using Chain of Vapor, Deathmark or Slaughter Pact. If it has to, it can Tutor/Brainstorm for these cards.

Well, it may take some time to build mana to go off and tutor what you need to get rid of teeg. Zoo is a very fast deck and may need to keep you busy searching for no more than 2-3 turns. Of course if the ANT player already has a perfect hand and only needs to search for a removal, there nothing the Zoo player can do. But this can't happen always :tongue:

No, not unbeatable, but since people realise its potential it's gaining popularity and we'll all have to run maindeck Combo hate. I personally don't think that's healthy for a format.

Well, this is an interesting point. I don't really know what to answer; after all, one of the reasons behind the decline of countertop is that people are running maindeck answers to counterbalance. On the other hand I have to admit that it would be pretty boring if every decklist should start with 4x combo hate.

Cabal_chan

04-07-2010, 08:35 AM

I think you've made a mistake here. See, Tarmogoyf isn't blue because Wizards R&D didn't want players to make the wrong play and accidentally pitch it to Force of Will. (www.instantrimshot.com)

Chuck Norris CAN pitch Tarmogofy to FoW.

For the article itself...I'm not so much a fan of things that try to run off a sensationalist tone. Sounds more like someone trying to make a big fuss over combo when there really isn't one. Maybe next time.

eq.firemind

04-07-2010, 08:35 AM

No, not unbeatable, but since people realise its potential it's gaining popularity and we'll all have to run maindeck Combo hate. I personally don't think that's healthy for a format.
+ 100500. MD Teegs in Zoo smell baaad.
And think of this: we have 2 types of unfair DTB: GY-based (Dredge, Reanimator) and Storm-based.
But what if we will also have Snot and Pimple - the other 2 good unfair noninteractive decks that need special hate? Let's pretend each of theese 4 decks are good enough to take 10% of metagame each (ANT already took much more in some areas).
Now your most fair tier deck (Zoo) needs to pack 4 GY-hate, 4 Storm hosers, 4 anti-Snot and 4 anti-Pimple to have a chance to win tournament (and some md cards that can clash with 4 unfair strategies 'cause 4 SB cards are not enough - yeah, like that fucking Teegs in Zoo). But oops, the sideboard is limited with only 15 cards and it needs something else for the rest 60% of the field.
Legacy is not broken because of existing combo decks, but with all that massive cardpool each new set adds and adds the probability of new powerfull unfair deck (most likely comboish). And the format with 4-5 such decks will be unfun to say at least.

Glorfindel

04-07-2010, 08:53 AM

followed by winning via Elspeth
Which DTB uses Elspeth (regularly)? Or am I missing the irony here?

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 08:59 AM

Which DTB uses Elspeth (regularly)? Or am I missing the irony here?
There's no irony. There are various non-DTB decks wich use Elspeth as a win con. They use it because it's more reliable than alot of other win conditions. The fact that she doesn't fit in every deck doesn't make her a less good win condition. Ofcourse, Tarmogoyf, Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape, Steppe Lynx get the job done alot faster, but aren't as reliable and take up more slots. It's all a matter of perspective.

On a side note, there are alot of Bant decks that use Elspeth (with or without CounterTop). Why? Because after Tendrils, she's the best win condition. Here in The Netherlands there are even a couple of Zoo players who use her. Personally I think that's a bit too slow and mana intensive, but it clearly demonstrates the power of Elspeth.

But we're drifting...

Cthuloo

04-07-2010, 09:15 AM

+ 100500. MD Teegs in Zoo smell baaad.
And think of this: we have 2 types of unfair DTB: GY-based (Dredge, Reanimator) and Storm-based.
But what if we will also have Snot and Pimple - the other 2 good unfair noninteractive decks that need special hate? Let's pretend each of theese 4 decks are good enough to take 10% of metagame each (ANT already took much more in some areas).
Now your most fair tier deck (Zoo) needs to pack 4 GY-hate, 4 Storm hosers, 4 anti-Snot and 4 anti-Pimple to have a chance to win tournament (and some md cards that can clash with 4 unfair strategies 'cause 4 SB cards are not enough - yeah, like that fucking Teegs in Zoo). But oops, the sideboard is limited with only 15 cards and it needs something else for the rest 60% of the field.
Legacy is not broken because of existing combo decks, but with all that massive cardpool each new set adds and adds the probability of new powerfull unfair deck (most likely comboish). And the format with 4-5 such decks will be unfun to say at least.

I definitely agree. In fact I made a very similar point in the thread about menedian's article. I think that the meta is ok right now, and there's room to pack enough hate to beat combo. I'm not sure if this will still be the case if wizards unban some of the broken combo cards or prints new combo enablers.

morgan_coke

04-07-2010, 09:19 AM

Well, according to the first week of Legacy Daily Events on MTGO, combo isn't remotely a problem, with Goblins and Zoo being the top finishing decks while no Combo deck got to at least three $ finishes over seven events. But while it may not be a problem, the fact that non-blue decks largely can't interact with combo doesn't make for fun games. (non-blue decks beat combo with prison effects/prevent spell x effects, which is non-interactive).

jrsthethird

04-07-2010, 09:26 AM

I must say, in a combo heavy meta like The Netherlands it's easy to come to this conclusion, and I understand people in other countries have trouble coming to the same conclusion. But let me just say this: the Dutch Legacy meta is more advanced than any other meta in the world. Why? Because here in The Netherlands, there is a tournament within travel distance at least 2 times a month. For April alone there are 7 tournaments scheduled, while most of them will have about 20 attendants, there are 2 or 3 which will have a turnout of over 32. In March there were 9 tournaments with about the same turnout. If you know a place where there's more competative Legacy play, I'd like to hear about it.

We have monthly tournaments with at least 70+ people every month within driving distance, as well as a bunch of smaller weekly/bi-weekly/monthly events scattered around. What's your point?

4eak

04-07-2010, 09:31 AM

@ BreathWeapon

the only thing in print that was relevant in the last x years was Ad Nauseam and Simian Spirit Guide before that, stop the chicken little BS.

Perhaps I define combo more broadly than you, but I consider these to be some other relevant additions to the combo-side of Legacy in the past X years:

Unbanning of Entomb
Unbanning of Dream Halls
Iona (Dread return or Reanimate/Exhume)
Errata of Carpet of Flower
Painter's Servant
Progenitus
New Fetchlands
Silence
Ponder (slightly older)
Angel's Grace

That isn't to say these are on par with Ad Nauseam's effect on a particular combo deck, but they are still quite relevant.

I'm also not saying we are in a combo winter; I do, however, think it would be wise to consider carefully how even the expectation of combo as just a portion of a competitive tournament will end up warping the metagame. Most forms of pure aggro and dedicated control have become obsolete, in part, because they have such stunningly awful matchups against the many types of combo in Legacy. Combo, even in small numbers, warps a metagame by a much wider margin than any other strategy.

Now, I'm hardly afraid of change (I generally welcome it in a competitive setting actually), and the thought that one archetype might heavily influence the metagame or an unbanning might upset the balance to which I've grown accustomed is not a problem for me. I am, however, quite concerned about the balance of a format when several large strategies have become extinct. The concern that combo is perhaps too influential, in the way it obsoletes not just a few decks, but entire swathes of the strategy-wheel, appears valid.

I think we should admit that general strategy selection isn't as "wide-open" as many Legacy commentators might lead their audiences to believe. I'm concerned that pure aggro and control strategies are dying (not just a few decks, but almost all of them), and to be fair, I'd be concerned if aggro-control and pure combo strategies were dying instead.

peace,
4eak

Tacosnape

04-07-2010, 09:41 AM

Whining about combo is stupid.

This.

Plenty of methods to deal with ANT have been outlined.

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 09:47 AM

We have monthly tournaments with at least 70+ people every month within driving distance, as well as a bunch of smaller weekly/bi-weekly/monthly events scattered around. What's your point?
The point is, that once your meta evolves, the power of ANT should become more clear to you.

On a sidenote, I've looked up all tournaments in Pennsylvania in March, there are 5 of which the lowest number of attendants is 9 and the highest is 32. Am I searching the wrong area? I'm just comparing this (http://webapp.wizards.com/tournaments.aspx?gamecode=6&eventcode=0&status=All&startdate=2010&startdate=3&startdate=1&enddate=2010&enddate=3&enddate=31&countryid=151&regionid=&marketingareaid=&city=&postalcode=&distance=&action=search&brandid=1) to this (http://webapp.wizards.com/tournaments.aspx?gamecode=6&eventcode=0&status=All&startdate=2010&startdate=3&startdate=1&enddate=2010&enddate=3&enddate=31&countryid=&regionid=208&marketingareaid=&city=&postalcode=&distance=&action=search&brandid=1).

Watcher487

04-07-2010, 09:58 AM

Maybe I missed something here, but wasn't this the guy that proclaimed that Dredge was too good for the format?

While I do believe that combo has gotten better lately, it's not the be-all/end-all of the format. Combo can not win every game on turn 1, so interaction is definatly possible in a match. If that wasn't true we would not be talking about ANT being amazing-broken-sex machine, it would be Belcher.

mchainmail

04-07-2010, 10:21 AM

+ 100500. MD Teegs in Zoo smell baaad.
And think of this: we have 2 types of unfair DTB: GY-based (Dredge, Reanimator) and Storm-based.
But what if we will also have Snot and Pimple - the other 2 good unfair noninteractive decks that need special hate? Let's pretend each of theese 4 decks are good enough to take 10% of metagame each (ANT already took much more in some areas).
Now your most fair tier deck (Zoo) needs to pack 4 GY-hate, 4 Storm hosers, 4 anti-Snot and 4 anti-Pimple to have a chance to win tournament (and some md cards that can clash with 4 unfair strategies 'cause 4 SB cards are not enough - yeah, like that fucking Teegs in Zoo). But oops, the sideboard is limited with only 15 cards and it needs something else for the rest 60% of the field.
Legacy is not broken because of existing combo decks, but with all that massive cardpool each new set adds and adds the probability of new powerfull unfair deck (most likely comboish). And the format with 4-5 such decks will be unfun to say at least.

Why is Gaddock Teeg maindecked a bad thing? Zoo is hurt by X spells (EE for 1, Chalice for 1, etc.) and 4 mana spells (sweepers like Wrath, Armageddon, Smokestack, Natural Order, Force)

It interferes against a lot of the format, there's no reason Zoo shouldn't have it maindeck.

DrJones

04-07-2010, 10:26 AM

I'm more worried about Reanimator than about ANT, because ANT is much, much easier to hate, and sometimes loses to itself. Having to pack maindeck answers against combo it's not much different that having to pack maindeck answers against aggro or against control. The problem is that combo is good, the non-blue cards against combo are so bad, the blue cards are so good, and they unfortunately create more resilient combo decks.

I would be happier with better non-blue cards, worse blue cards, and worse combo decks. Better blue cards and non-blue cards alone unbalance the format towards blue, and worse blue cards without worse combo decks unbalances the format towards combo. By the way, the red trap that does damage equal to the number of cards in hand is incredible against ANT.

Eddy Wally

04-07-2010, 10:26 AM

Somebody asked about the matchup aggroloam has against ANT. I played with loam for a year and a half, before I switched recently. Basically, it's almost unwinnable. I used to play chalice maindeck, but that rarely helped. If you don't see AND chalice AND mox, together with at least two lands, in your starting hand, it's nigh impôssible to win. Because chalice did little for me against other decks, I put it in the side after a while, and considered ANT an autoloss (I thought it'd be better to focus on the decks I could reliably beat). A few months ago, in one of the big tournaments in Mol, I knew there'd be quite a few ANT decks, so I made my list hyper-aggro to defeat other decks faster than usual (I had more creatures and more spot removal than other aggroloam decks, but no sweepers; which made the mirrormatch quite fun and easy), and put four chalice and four ethersworn canonist in the sideboard. I was paired against ANT for sure, and that time I won, but only because I got very good opening hands.

Point being: you can beat ANT, but you have to warp your deck to the point that it can hardly be called aggroloam anymore. It was basically a GRwb deck with big beaters which could do some fun tricks with loam, if I happened to draw it.

Link Ramirez

04-07-2010, 10:29 AM

Combo can not win every game on turn 1, so interaction is definatly possible in a match.

But that does not invalidate the "Attacking is Miserable" statement. You don't need to do any combat math.
Creatures could also read:

Tap: deals x damage

Interaction comes down to mulligan into hate on the one side vs mulligan/tutor into anti-hate on the other side.

mogote

04-07-2010, 10:30 AM

Maybe I missed something here, but wasn't this the guy that proclaimed that Dredge was too good for the format?
Three weeks ago he said:
If you are not playing Dredge in Legacy, you are doing it unbelievably wrong. (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/18948_Ideas_Unbound_Legacy_Dredge.html)

If combo is as strong as some claim why didn't it make up more than 25% of the GP Madrid day 2 metagame?

Nightmare

04-07-2010, 10:32 AM

jazzykat

04-07-2010, 10:33 AM

Combo is seriously powerful. However, I recall everyone was screaming about CB/Top+Tarmogoyf a while back. People will wisen up.

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 10:51 AM

Something all of you who are deriding the title of the article are forgetting:

Journalism is by definition sensational. If he didn't make bold claims, you'd be saying "We've heard all this before. Yawn."

I, for one, feel like a lot of what Max said NEEDED to be said, by someone. He's 100% correct - if you're trying to play fair in Legacy, you are doing it wrong.
This. 99% of people in this thread latched onto the word "combo" and thereby totally missed the point of the article, which is that decks that show up to a tournament expecting to win creature wars are going to be outgunned by all the decks that show up and don't give two shits about getting into creature wars. Sure, combo is one of those, but there's also Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order into something that can't be blocked and wins in two swings, Reanimator, etc.

4eak

04-07-2010, 11:09 AM

This. 99% of people in this thread latched onto the word "combo" and thereby totally missed the point of the article, which is that decks that show up to a tournament expecting to win creature wars are going to be outgunned by all the decks that show up and don't give two shits about getting into creature wars. Sure, combo is one of those, but there's also Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order into something that can't be blocked and wins in two swings, Reanimator, etc.

Perhaps this is just me, but I consider "Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order...Reanimator, etc." to be forms of combo (some more dedicated than others). Enchantress and Lands are combo-prison decks. Natural Order and Reanimator are combos for game-breaking bombs and silverbullets of magnitude. Not all combos are equal, of course.

The discussion should highlight the diversity of combos, and the difficulty in finding appropriate answers to them all simultaneously (which, only some forms of permission can do with consistency). This will edge out several large strategies in general, as they have no way to interact with the diversity of the combos played in Legacy.

peace,
4eak

Cthuloo

04-07-2010, 11:13 AM

Perhaps this is just me, but I consider "Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order...Reanimator, etc." to be forms of combo (some more dedicated than others). Enchantress and Lands are combo-prison decks. Natural Order and Reanimator are combos for game-breaking bombs and silverbullets of magnitude. Not all combos are equal, of course.

The discussion should highlight the diversity of combos, and the difficulty in finding appropriate answers to them all simultaneously (which, only some forms of permission can do with consistency). This will edge out several large strategies in general, as they have no way to interact with the diversity of the combos played in Legacy.

This is a very good point, IMHO. I know one shouldn't quote oneself, but It's easier than to rewrite the whole thing with different words: here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17017-[Premium-Article]-Six-Cards-to-Unban-in-Legacy-(VOTE!)&p=443835&viewfull=1#post443835) I made a similar point.

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 11:16 AM

Perhaps this is just me, but I consider "Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order...Reanimator, etc." to be forms of combo (some more dedicated than others). Enchantress and Lands are combo-prison decks. Natural Order and Reanimator are combos for game-breaking bombs and silverbullets of magnitude. Not all combos are equal, of course.

The discussion should highlight the diversity of combos, and the difficulty in finding appropriate answers to them all simultaneously (which, only some forms of permission can do with consistency). This will edge out several large strategies in general, as they have no way to interact with the diversity of the combos played in Legacy.
Maybe. But they're totally non-interactive in different ways. Storm combo doesn't care if you attack because attacking won't win the game fast enough anyway. Enchantress and Lands both make it so you can't attack, while NO and Reanimator make attacking irrelevant because you're extremely unlikely to win a race against something that fat and that fast.

EDIT: Never mind, actually read your post instead of skimming it. Even so, fair decks in Legacy are at an inherent disadvantage because of all the unfair things you can do and all the ways you have to stop the fair decks from doing their thing.

jrsthethird

04-07-2010, 11:56 AM

The point is, that once your meta evolves, the power of ANT should become more clear to you.

On a sidenote, I've looked up all tournaments in Pennsylvania in March, there are 5 of which the lowest number of attendants is 9 and the highest is 32. Am I searching the wrong area? I'm just comparing this (http://webapp.wizards.com/tournaments.aspx?gamecode=6&eventcode=0&status=All&startdate=2010&startdate=3&startdate=1&enddate=2010&enddate=3&enddate=31&countryid=151&regionid=&marketingareaid=&city=&postalcode=&distance=&action=search&brandid=1) to this (http://webapp.wizards.com/tournaments.aspx?gamecode=6&eventcode=0&status=All&startdate=2010&startdate=3&startdate=1&enddate=2010&enddate=3&enddate=31&countryid=&regionid=208&marketingareaid=&city=&postalcode=&distance=&action=search&brandid=1).

I'm located 2 hours south of the New York border, 20 minutes from New Jersey, and about an hour away from Delaware/Maryland. The Philly-area Legacy scene sucks but I can at least find a small local tournament if I want. In NY there is a monthly tournament that regularly gets 80 or more people, and they are starting a league of sorts in June where you can qualify for a bigger tournament next year. Your list looks impressive though, but you still sound arrogant.

How did you find that search feature? I tried searching their website for like 10 minutes and couldn't find it. Their interface for searching tournaments is horrible; I don't want a map that takes forever to load, I want a fucking list where you can search by format or something...

RogueMTG

04-07-2010, 11:59 AM

... But let me just say this: the Dutch Legacy meta is more advanced than any other meta in the world. Why? Because here in The Netherlands, there is a tournament within travel distance at least 2 times a month. For April alone there are 7 tournaments scheduled, while most of them will have about 20 attendants, there are 2 or 3 which will have a turnout of over 32. In March there were 9 tournaments with about the same turnout. If you know a place where there's more competative Legacy play, I'd like to hear about it.

I suppose that depends on what your definition of an "advanced" meta is. Are you sure it's not just a stagnate meta? It sounds like it's just the same 20-40 people playing the same tournament over and over with the same results.

Lately around here we've been having monthly tournaments of 80 to 100+ people. More people, more teams, more innovation, a few people keep consistently placing well, but the meta shifts all the time.

menace13

04-07-2010, 12:04 PM

First off, ANT is currently the best deck in the format. The power of Legacy ANT is so high that it's even more powerful than any Vintage Storm Combo deck, simply because ANT can play 4 Black Lotus, 4 Demonic Tutor, 4 Mystical Tutor, 4 Brainstorm and 4 always-on-color Moxen in the form of Lotus Petal. If you are not in awe by the raw power of Legacy ANT, I dare to say you simply have not witnessed its full potential yet.

I agree, there should be bad match-ups and there should be good match-ups, but ANT has too many good match-ups and not enough bad match-ups that it's getting rather rediculous.

I must say, in a combo heavy meta like The Netherlands it's easy to come to this conclusion, and I understand people in other countries have trouble coming to the same conclusion. But let me just say this: the Dutch Legacy meta is more advanced than any other meta in the world. Why? Because here in The Netherlands, there is a tournament within travel distance at least 2 times a month. For April alone there are 7 tournaments scheduled, while most of them will have about 20 attendants, there are 2 or 3 which will have a turnout of over 32. In March there were 9 tournaments with about the same turnout. If you know a place where there's more competative Legacy play, I'd like to hear about it.

Get over yourself!!
The Dutch meta is not the world's most evolved, such a stupid thing to say as if Madrid didn't just take the cake!

As if there are not Legacy tournaments everywhere with results posted almost instantly for anyone to view or discuss online at anytime-more tournaments firing does not = higher evolved meta. By your definition MTGO is the world's most evolved meta as more dailys will fire than any Country could hope to compete with, while also being easy to attend-no flights,trips just log n play-.

Lolz @ more powerful than any VINTAGE...Ant does not play 4 Demonics. Infernals are worse. Sure Vintage does not get 4 Brains,Mysticals,Petals,Led, but they get Tinker,Recall,Y Will-possibly best card in combo-,Bargain,Necro,Jar,Sol Ring,Mana Crypt/Vault,Time Vault,Timetwister,Desire,Windfall,Mana Drain,etc.

AnT is very powerful, But it is not alone by and far the best deck in the format.

Forbiddian

04-07-2010, 12:06 PM

Meh, Zoo's been putting out a lot of results. I wouldn't have such a problem with this article if it had been supported by facts, but instead he's just making the claim, "You can't afford to have a bad combo matchup" in spite of recent events.

I'd say the myth is actually the opposite: The MYTH is that you have to be able to do something broken or stop something broken in order to see success in Legacy.

When Zoo and Goblins and to a lesser extent Ichorid, which all have bad storm combo matchups but pretty good matchups against most of the rest of the field, are putting out results (although Ichorid doesn't have any results, I'm just humoring the author), you have to rethink your claims about what must and what must not happen in order for a Legacy deck to be successful.

Zoo and Goblins haven't been doing that great -- they make up like 15-20% of the metagame and only have about that much Top 8 representation, but that's certainly respectable with a >50% win ratio and a pretty conclusive demonstration (Madrid) that Zoo can win over the long haul.

Forbiddian

04-07-2010, 12:12 PM

When you reach a point where you have to pack maindeck hate against a certain archetype, that archetype has crossed the line and something should be done.

I maindeck Swords to Plowshares all the time. And no, I don't think Goblins is out of hand just because I'm packing some maindeck hate that's dead in a number of matchups.

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 12:37 PM

Your list looks impressive though, but you still sound arrogant.
Yeah I re-read it and it does come off as arrogant. Sorry about that. I'm not trying to say 'we are better look at the numbers, your opinion means nothing, i am god all i say is true'. I meant to indicate that we have a very avid Legacy community in The Netherlands, which came to a point where Storm combo turns out to be the best deck; where decks like The Rock can pack all the combo hate they want: we tried Orim's Chant, Duress, Thoughtseize, Ethersworn Cannonist and Gaddock Teeg all in the same deck and still lost to combo. Edit: check out the combo-hate I played in The Rock when I ended up in the top8 at the Dutch Nationals. Guess to what deck I lost. Yup, combo...(incidentally, notice the 3x ANT in the top8) (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=31220)

How did you find that search feature? I tried searching their website for like 10 minutes and couldn't find it. Their interface for searching tournaments is horrible; I don't want a map that takes forever to load, I want a fucking list where you can search by format or something...Go to webapp.wizards.com and press 'events' on the left.

Are you sure it's not just a stagnate meta? It sounds like it's just the same 20-40 people playing the same tournament over and over with the same results.
The meta changes like crazy lately, but one thing remains the same: the power of ANT. Somehow we can't seem to create a balanced meta where it isn't (multiple times) in every top 4/8.

Lolz @ more powerful than any VINTAGE...Ant does not play 4 Demonics. Infernals are worse. Sure Vintage does not get 4 Brains,Mysticals,Petals,Led, but they get Tinker,Recall,Y Will-possibly best card in combo-,Bargain,Necro,Jar,Sol Ring,Mana Crypt/Vault,Time Vault,Timetwister,Desire,Windfall,Mana Drain,etc.

AnT is very powerful, But it is not alone by and far the best deck in the format.
Have you ever tried building the same consistent strong ANT deck Legacy has for Vintage? I did: it's impossible. Infernals are worse than Demonic Tutor, I know that, but with LED, you're basically running 4 Black Lotus and 4 Demonic Tutor. It's that broken. There's no way a Vintage Storm deck can be as strong as Legacy ANT. Try it. If you find it, please send me a list.

I maindeck Swords to Plowshares all the time. And no, I don't think Goblins is out of hand just because I'm packing some maindeck hate that's dead in a number of matchups.
Those are 4 cards that, for instance, can tremendously help a Control deck hold off an Aggro deck. But because of the speed of Combo, you cannot rely on merely 4 hate-cards. You need ALOT more, because only 1 won't cut it, and you also need them in your opening hand right away, so you have to mull to them.

Rico Suave

04-07-2010, 01:24 PM

Stop comparing Vintage ANT to Legacy ANT. Vintage ANT is worlds beyond Legacy ANT in terms of sheer power; there is really no comparison. If you have trouble differentiating between the two, try casting Yawgmoth's Will some time.

KrzyMoose

04-07-2010, 01:25 PM

There are three decks I'd ever consider playing in this format - Zoo, Dredge, and whatever the best Storm deck is.

While, sure, the Zoo vs Tendrils matchup is pretty bad, Zoo smashes every other deck in the format (except Lands, I suppose, but even that matchup doesn't really scare me).

I do agree that the format is not truly wide-open (in fact, I made a claim a while back that I believed Legacy had fewer tier 1 decks (and even fewer truly competitive decks) than Standard and Extended. That's not the case right now, since both Standard and Extended are one (Jund) or two (DDT and Zoo) deck formats).

Patrick

04-07-2010, 01:29 PM

This is what I posted on the SCG forums, and nobody cared there either:

"@ the author:

How long have you been playing Legacy, and about how many tournaments have you played in? I see several things wrong with your article:

1) Your opening statements.

"There is a persistent myth that Legacy is a wide-open format with dozens of different strategies and decks, and that you can play more or less anything you want. That claim is just not true."

I cannot think of a format more wide open then Legacy, with at least 11 archetypes being capable of winning any tournament with 30 or more players. Compare this to Vintage (Oath, Tezz, Dredge, Workshop) or Standard (often a Rock, Paper, Scissors). There are so many engines and non-linear strategies in Legacy that you are dead wrong. You literally can play anything you want.

"The best Legacy decks are deliberately configured to interact with their opponents as little as possible"

This is an odd thing to see you write, if only because you advocate Counterbalance later in the article. While the Counter-Top interaction is unfun and time consuming, it is interaction. Counterbalance decks often run disruption in the form of Daze, Force, Stifle, Spell Snare, Wasteland, Fire/Ice. These are all very interactive cards.

2) You say attacking is miserable. Opposite of Vintage, Legacy is the format where creatures can be played. Lands is currently the poster deck for dealing with attacking creatures. Lands is designed to crush aggro decks like Zoo, Goblins, Merfolk, and to lesser extents Elves, Affinity and other sub tier decks.

Early in the article where you propose ANT plays Sea, Tutor then goes off turn two, while a Zoo player drops a Nacatl. Yes, the Zoo player was never in this game, but the same is true for any deck that didn't have Force or Daze in it's opener. Imagine a situation where the ANT deck can't cast Ad Nauseam until turn 3. The Zoo player casts Nacatl, casts another creature and attacks for 3, and on it's third turn attacks for 5-6 and has 1, or hopefully 2, burn cards in hand. This leaves the Ad Nauseam player less than 10 life to find enough Storm. Most matches find a balance of these two extreme opposites.

3) Your view on Legacy control decks.

"Non-Counterbalance control decks could conceivably become a pole... before setting up Counterbalance-Top and essentially locking the other guy out completely" I didn't want to copy 2 paragraphs there, but I'm now talking about those two.

Since the inception of Legacy (Then type 1.5) as a format, there has been a control deck, Landstill, that has filled all the rolls you correctly identify need to be filled. Landstill has answers to aggro decks (Swords, Explosives/Ruins, Wrath of God, Humility), enough countermagic to stop combo decks (Force of Will, Counterspell), and enough card advantage engines to stay competitive in the mirror (Brainstorm, Fact or Fiction, Jace, Eternal Dragon), as well as enough lands to play all of these cards, typically 23-24 and Dragon.

Landstill outclasses Counterbalance as the premier control deck of Legacy for a few reasons. First, to win the game Counterbalance needs to resolve a Tarmogoyf and keep him around long enough to attack the opponent to death. A control deck should never have to rely on vanilla creatures to win games. The Control Deck Finisher Hall of Fame (CDFHOF for short) includes Serra Angel, Morphling, Blinding Angel, Exalted Angel and Baneslayer Angel. These creatures all outclass Tarmogoyf (relative to their time periods in some cases) by leaps and bounds. Morphling has shroud, and all the other ones have huge toughness, flying, and some way to mitigate the aggro deck's momentum (lifelink, skipping combat). Tarmogoyf just attacks on the ground.

Next, you attack Fact or Fiction. Control decks in Legacy have a plan. Survive until you have 4 lands, then cast 4cc spells that win the game (Wrath of God, Humility, Moat, Elspeth, Jace). Fact or Fiction is also one of these cards. Almost always, it reads "3U, Instant: Draw 4 cards." Sometimes 5. This has the added bonus of many people not understanding how to seperate FoF piles. If you're creating piles and you aren't conscience about the fact that the Landstill player is playing Crucible, Academy Ruins, Cunning Wish or whatever, you'll end up giving them lenient piles.

Control decks should never lose to aggro decks, and Counter-Top has the painful ability to lose to a turn 2 Pridemage. Daze can be played around, and Force of Will costs the deck extra cards to deal with single attackers. Counter-Top isn't a solid control deck, it's that hybrid Aggro-Control. It boils down to a heavy reliance on the combat step, something that a control deck shouldn't have to do (though, many do. As I said before Legacy is the format of creatures and attacking. Mishra's Factory has probably won thousands of games for control players everywhere.)

To recap:

Decks don't need Force of Will to be playable in Legacy.
Attacking is a viable strategy in Legacy.
Counterbalance is not the be-all-end-all of Control strategy.
Combo decks are not overpowered. Chalice of the Void, Daze, Force et. al. keep these decks in check.

Thanks for reading."

menace13

04-07-2010, 01:29 PM

Yeah I re-read it and it does come off as arrogant. Sorry about that. I'm not trying to say 'we are better look at the numbers, your opinion means nothing, i am god all i say is true'. I meant to indicate that we have a very avid Legacy community in The Netherlands, which came to a point where Storm combo turns out to be the best deck; where decks like The Rock can pack all the combo hate they want: we tried Orim's Chant, Duress, Thoughtseize, Ethersworn Cannonist and Gaddock Teeg all in the same deck and still lost to combo. Edit: check out the combo-hate I played in The Rock when I ended up in the top8 at the Dutch Nationals. Guess to what deck I lost. Yup, combo...(incidentally, notice the 3x ANT in the top8) (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=31220)
Go to webapp.wizards.com and press 'events' on the left.

The meta changes like crazy lately, but one thing remains the same: the power of ANT. Somehow we can't seem to create a balanced meta where it isn't (multiple times) in every top 4/8.

Have you ever tried building the same consistent strong ANT deck Legacy has for Vintage? I did: it's impossible. Infernals are worse than Demonic Tutor, I know that, but with LED, you're basically running 4 Black Lotus and 4 Demonic Tutor. It's that broken. There's no way a Vintage Storm deck can be as strong as Legacy ANT. Try it. If you find it, please send me a list.

Those are 4 cards that, for instance, can tremendously help a Control deck hold off an Aggro deck. But because of the speed of Combo, you cannot rely on merely 4 hate-cards. You need ALOT more, because only 1 won't cut it, and you also need them in your opening hand right away, so you have to mull to them.

I may have also come off as a dik, my apologies, tone is very hard to read into online and i am not that way at all. Also you Dutch do play a hella lot of Eternal.

Vintage has 2 storm archetypes, although many decks use Tendril,Moxen and Y Will-Drain Tendrils and TPS(ANT is slowly gaining popularity) are the most popular.
TPS:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=33877
Drain Tendrils:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=33954

Looks pretty powerful, to me at least.

Agreed one does need more than 1 Piece of combo hate or varied strats to deal with it( too many ways to answer just 1)

paK0

04-07-2010, 01:37 PM

Meh, Zoo's been putting out a lot of results. I wouldn't have such a problem with this article if it had been supported by facts, but instead he's just making the claim, "You can't afford to have a bad combo matchup" in spite of recent events.

This.

Madrid was made up of
3 Combo (2 ANT, 1 Reanimator)
3 Zoo
1 ProCountertop
1 ProBant

Zoo is just too good right now to make such a claim! Combo is strong and all over the place, but it is not as format warping as some claim it to be. Sure, once a deck gets played you need to pack hate. Fist people cried about CB/Top. Then they started packing Grips and now its actually fine. Obv you will have to adjust decks to the meta, if people see 20% combo and don't prepare for it they DESERVE to loose.

bruno_tiete

04-07-2010, 01:46 PM

The article is in contradiction with recent results.

That said there is a few things in the thread I wanted to point.

1- While it's easier to hate on Zoo and to know how to play against it, it also gives the pilot an easier ride, specially through long tournaments. Crafting piles or trying to stay alive or even playing long, drawn-out games all day long can exaust a player. It's a double edge sword: You get fast rounds, time to relax and eat and light decision-making sprints, while the broken non-interactive players are busting their heads every single turn.

2- Shouldn't resourceful hard-to-play decks with mindnumbing decision trees reward those who master it instead of choosing the "play dudes and attack" strategy?

3- The idea that combo cards are introduced into legacy faster than cards for other archetypes is false. Zoo is fetchlands+ old burn+ duals + Alara beaters. Pridemages, Nacatls, Lions, KotRs, Path to Exile. Add BBE and Baneslayers and you are playing Standard.

4- The "everything is combo" stance is as useful as "Every card is a Timewalk". OMFGBBQ Combo is running rampant!!! Two of the main "combos" in the format must be Nacatl plus Fetchlands and Counterbalance plus Top.

Treat things for what they are, shall we? If so many decks are screwing with the combat phase but Zoo is still a powerhouse (as shown in actual tournament results), does that mean it's inherently broken? I guess not.

jbmulder

04-07-2010, 02:11 PM

Something all of you who are deriding the title of the article are forgetting:

Journalism is by definition sensational. If he didn't make bold claims, you'd be saying "We've heard all this before. Yawn."

I, for one, feel like a lot of what Max said NEEDED to be said, by someone. He's 100% correct - if you're trying to play fair in Legacy, you are doing it wrong.

Ridiculously true.

I know that the author plays combo so this doesn't really apply, but I keep thinking about this (as it applies to combo, aggro, and control):

"Dear Professor Oak,

Squirtle is way broken. Please nerf him.

-Charmander

P.S. Bulbasaur is fine."

I don't know if the author is right or wrong, but it was a fun read.

Finn

04-07-2010, 02:29 PM

I think recent results are affected by the type of player attending the 5k events (Standard players with a borrowed deck). I'm not the guy, but I wonder if anyone has bothered to look at recent results with the 5k events ignored. Even then, when you get Goblins winning and plenty of coverage to tell the world about it, more players are going to be packing that deck. So it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

-Imported Standard players can't be bothered to learn strange/difficult Legacy decks.
-Few strange/difficult Legacy decks arrive at the tournaments.
-A more recognizable linear deck takes the trophy.
-Readers pay attention to this.
-More people play those decks in all tournaments.
-Few strange/difficult Legacy decks arrive at the tournaments.
...and so on...

Also, there are non-dedicated hate cards that play only a minor role by themselves, but a major role taken as a whole, which can and do make "unfair" combo matchups winnable. You just need a lot of them.

Counterbalance
Wasteland
Stifle
Chalice
etc.

I suggest to Skeggi that he make up something original to take down ANT, but only as a side effect. A need of this sort is a perfect opportunity to create a new deck. I would love an opportunity like that.

frogboy

04-07-2010, 02:36 PM

The point of the article was not "the sky is falling look out for the combo decks!" The point was that the non-Force aggro decks are totally kold to a million archetypes and there's very little they can do about it. Are you seriously going to maindeck Gaddock Teeg? Are you going to cut some of your one drops that you aren't playing enough of anyway, or Pridemage? Or are you just going to cut Bolt or Sylvan Library? Do you know how minimal Teeg's impact on the game actually is?

I'm not real sure where everyone got the idea that Chalice at zero automatically kolds Tendrils, but, like, it doesn't. Getting to five with Rituals and Tomb isn't that hard. Neither is finding Hurkyl's Recall or Burning Wish or whatever. Doomsday piles can be constructed that skip it entirely. Chalice at one is harder to beat and it still isn't super difficult.

More than twice as many people played Zoo in Madrid than played Tendrils. Yes, obviously some of them made top eight. Where they lost to the combo decks.

The format is not remotely close to equilibrium because of how underplayed Tendrils is. It's interesting that in the only region where it is a significant portion of the metagame (the Netherlands) it is crushing it.

If combo is as strong as some claim why didn't it make up more than 25% of the GP Madrid day 2 metagame?

Because it was only 6% of the day one metagame so it only grew to 10%.

The discussion should highlight the diversity of combos, and the difficulty in finding appropriate answers to them all simultaneously (which, only some forms of permission can do with consistency). This will edge out several large strategies in general, as they have no way to interact with the diversity of the combos played in Legacy.

This is very well said.

edit:
A need of this sort is a perfect opportunity to create a new deck.

It's pretty hard to build a metagame foil for a format where there are multiple totally broken linears plus Counterbalance plus Daze aggro decks. It's way more effective to just execute your own powerful gameplan instead, which was sort of the point of the article that I probably should've stated better.

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 02:40 PM

People who think Legacy is wide-open need to dig under the surface a little bit. The format is very clearly tiered right now, and your chances of making top 8 if you don't bring a Tier I deck are fairly low.

Tier I: Counterbalance with NO, Zoo, Storm
Tier 1.5: Goblins, Dredge, Reanimator, Enchantress, Loam decks, Merfolk
Tier II and below: basically everything else

Really, there are very few good decks, but there are, like, eight million Tier II ones, so people assume you can just show up to a Legacy tournament, play whatever you want, and do well. The truth is, you'll probably end up with a bad to decent record unless the Pairings Gods bless you with great fortune and you lucksack your way into the Top 8. The perception that Legacy is some sort of wide-open field ripe for the breaking is artificial, and the fact that commentators and writers continue to espouse that viewpoint does newer players trying to get into the format a grave disservice. In legacy, you play a good deck, or you scrub out, or you sacrifice a bunch of virgins the night before and get super lucky.

An aside: Zoo is only Tier I here because it's popular: it's easy to pick up, straightforward to play well, and has a bunch of auto-win matchups that also happen to be popular decks. However, it also has auto-lose matchups that also happen to be popular decks, including the Loam decks like Lands, Enchantress, Storm, etc - in other words, decks that aren't interested in fair fights with dorks. Storm doesn't dominate the format because the blue decks hold it down, and Zoo decks that pair up against blue in the first few rounds will likely win and then dodge Storm all the way to the top tables. Zoo decks that don't meet blue decks in the first few rounds either auto-win against jank decks or get paired up against decks that are bad for them and scrub out.

The point here is that there are a lot of very viable ways to control combat in this format, either by ignoring it, locking it down, or tilting it heavily in your favor by cheating the biggest monster into play. All of the best decks aside from the aggro decks have a way to do something unfair, which doesn't help Zoo at all.

That was the point of the article. The metagame is very Rock-Paper-Scissors right now, but rogue decks that can dodge bad matchups can make it to the top tables and make the format appear more open than it really is. Goblins is probably not as good as people are claiming it is right now, considering how it's been around since forever and is only now putting up a good result again (MTGO doesn't count for a large variety of reasons).

Grollub

04-07-2010, 02:42 PM

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 02:45 PM

I don't know if this has been addressed, but why is it "legitimate" to run creature hate in the maindeck but not combo hate? It's not like control players are complaining about being "forced" to play cards that halts creatures like Swords to Plowshares...
Because in any given round you're much more likely to see creatures than Tendrils, and the hate cards for those decks don't really overlap.

4eak

04-07-2010, 02:47 PM

Zoo and Goblins aren't pure aggro decks w/out FoW, btw. They clearly fluctuate between aggro-control-combo roles depending on the hands they draw and their opponents.

@ Nightmare and Aggro_zombies

I, for one, feel like a lot of what Max said NEEDED to be said, by someone. He's 100% correct - if you're trying to play fair in Legacy, you are doing it wrong.

EDIT: Never mind, actually read your post instead of skimming it. Even so, fair decks in Legacy are at an inherent disadvantage because of all the unfair things you can do and all the ways you have to stop the fair decks from doing their thing

I could be interpreting this article very differently from you both. I just want to make sure we are agreeing to the conclusion here.

The article prescribes combo decks for those who wish to win in the current metagame. That prescription isn't an advocation of the metagame itself though. The conclusion I draw from the article is that the metagame is imbalanced or too limited, perhaps not living up to some expectations, and needs to change. I believe the myth that Max is debunking is some variation of this:

Legacy is a wide-open format with dozens of different strategies and decks, and that you can play more or less anything you want.

The article explains why this is not true. You should play combo in the current metagame because the metagame itself is imbalanced and/or limited. That doesn't mean you should really want to play combo though. The main issue isn't that combo is awesome; the real issue is what is wrong with why combo is so good in this metagame.

Many might argue that Legacy is ideal. I don't think "unfair" is the new "fair".

peace,
4eak

Antonius

04-07-2010, 02:56 PM

I'm surprised that eva green and other black archetypes aren't better vs combo. I thought that shoving hymn/duress up there pretty much raped them.

another thought: there's be a lot of talk about unbanning Mind Twist. How would that affect combo? With all of its rituals and fast mana ANT is probably the best deck equipped to power out early twists, but then random control decks--ie, Landstill--could also use twist with counter backup to rape the combo player's hand. I imagine that twist would also make eva green and other black variants way better vs combo

but yeah, I agree with those who recommend building a new deck. With that kind of meta, it seems like its due time for another obscure deck to come out of no where and get catapulted to the limelight. When was the last time that happened? Lands in St Louis? Enchantress at SCG LA?
I think NO/Survival elves or Combo elves should be the next. The archetype is so good but just hasn't put numbers up yet.

Grollub

04-07-2010, 02:57 PM

Because in any given round you're much more likely to see creatures than Tendrils, and the hate cards for those decks don't really overlap.
So it's justified to run hate against popular decks, but not against the less popular? The hate cards against combo are generally good against every variation of this decktype, and some even have uses beside that match-up: Chalice vs Zoo and such.

There's plenty of tools to fight combo and graveyard decks, people just need to use them maindeck rather letting their combo matchups start at 0-1 (my latest MUD variation uses Leyline of the Void for instance in maindeck, and I'm loving it; dredge is now winable game 1 and with Helm in the board I'm very happy about being able to play aggro-lock-combo game 2 and 3 if need be).

The article explains why this is not true. You should play combo in the current metagame because the metagame itself is imbalanced and/or limited. That doesn't mean you should really want to play combo though. The main issue isn't that combo is awesome; the real issue is what is wrong with why combo is so good in this metagame.
While it's probably not the intention of the article I rather think he addresses that legacy players generally doesn't want to maindeck hate against combo decks, for only God knows why (people ran maindeck blasts during the day of Academy, various cards to combat Trix and so on and so forth).

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 03:11 PM

The point with maindeck Combo hate is that it's generally pointless or you run so much that you basically neglect non-combo match-ups. If you run maindeck, say 2 Gaddock Teeg and 2 Ethersworn Canonist you're not even close to being able to beat Combo game 1 unless you're lucky. If you don't know you're playing against Combo, you won't mull to these cards or drop them asap. The problem with Combo is that you have to know you're playing against it, because all the Combo hate is only effective before your opponent goes off; a single Force of Will simply won't do the trick. Aggro on the other hand, is predictable. You see when it's winning and you can respond to board position. You don't need to know up front if you're playing against Aggro because you'll know as soon as that Tarmogoyf hits the table.

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 03:16 PM

So it's justified to run hate against popular decks, but not against the less popular? The hate cards against combo are generally good against every variation of this decktype, and some even have uses beside that match-up: Chalice vs Zoo and such.

There's plenty of tools to fight combo and graveyard decks, people just need to use them maindeck rather letting their combo matchups start at 0-1 (my latest MUD variation uses Leyline of the Void for instance in maindeck, and I'm loving it; dredge is now winable game 1 and with Helm in the board I'm very happy about being able to play aggro-lock-combo game 2 and 3 if need be).
I don't know about you, but my maindecks are only sixty cards. I'd rather focus on the matchup I'm more likely to run into than have a bunch of cards for a deck that's <10% of the meta but which are bad to dead everywhere else.

DukeDemonKn1ght

04-07-2010, 03:17 PM

But let me just say this: the Dutch Legacy meta is more advanced than any other meta in the world. Why? Because here in The Netherlands, there is a tournament within travel distance at least 2 times a month. For April alone there are 7 tournaments scheduled, while most of them will have about 20 attendants, there are 2 or 3 which will have a turnout of over 32. In March there were 9 tournaments with about the same turnout. If you know a place where there's more competative Legacy play, I'd like to hear about it.

So let me get this straight: You guys have more Legacy than I could shake a stick at, legal um... "medicinals", cute girls, and free healthcare?

What's the immigration policy like?

Nightmare

04-07-2010, 03:19 PM

The article prescribes combo decks for those who wish to win in the current metagame. That prescription isn't an advocation of the metagame itself though. The conclusion I draw from the article is that the metagame is imbalanced or too limited, perhaps not living up to some expectations, and needs to change. I believe the myth that Max is debunking is some variation of this:

I think we're coming to a similar conclusion from different directions, which I'm fine with. You seem to be saying the gist is:

If you play combo, you will be more successful.

I read it slightly differently, saying:

If you play fair, you're likely to be less successful.

What you define as a "combo" deck is subject to debate, but the fact of the matter is, the decks seeing the most success are doing something that isn't fair. Max defines these things with examples such as CB/Top lock; Dredge "drawing" 12+ cards in a turn; Belcher/Tendrils winning on turn 2-3, Reanimator putting hard-to-remove fatties into play on turns 2-3, etc. When you compare that to "Wild Nacatl. Bolt you, swing, Grim Lavamancer," you can see that there's a significant difference between the two.

Phoenix Ignition

04-07-2010, 03:27 PM

Seems like someone is applying for a position at Fox News... I thought the sky was falling from Reanimator being too good? Or was it because zoo kept winning? Or wasn't it something like Tarmogoyf being overpowered?

Are we still scared of goblins too? I really can't remember...

I also thought UW Tempo was the best deck in the format!?!? (Lol... no I really didn't)

I, for one, feel like a lot of what Max said NEEDED to be said, by someone. He's 100% correct - if you're trying to play fair in Legacy, you are doing it wrong.

This is the only worth while part of the article to read and most of us already knew it. But most decks don't play fair. NO-> Progenitus, Countertop with Tarmogoyfs, Reanimator with duress + FoW capability, Dredge getting to draw 6+ cards a turn, Loyal Retainers -> Iona in survival of the fittest, the list really could go on and on.

That's really the only thing that the article should be saying, I got lost at why he was arguing against the banning of tarmogoyf (old topic), and trying to say that if you don't play FoW in an aggro deck you're doing it wrong. There are still plenty of blue decks to keep decks like goblins and zoo still winning major tournaments.

morgan_coke

04-07-2010, 03:33 PM

Actually, doesn't the article point out that there really is a rock/paper/scissors thing going on right now?

I mean, if you map it out you get:

Zoo/Goblins > Merfolk/CBGoyf

Merfolk/CBGoyf > Storm/random combo

Storm/random combo > Zoo/Goblins

I dunno, but that looks fairly balanced to me.

jrsthethird

04-07-2010, 03:38 PM

The only thing I see as being really unfair is ANT/Belcher winning consistently on turn 2/3. Everything else can be played around. This is most likely a bias because I'm not a blue player, but it seems like ANT is really hard to disrupt even when you draw multiple hate cards post-board. Also there's almost no chance for interaction between the Storm player and the opponent.

CounterTop relies on exploiting an interaction
Dredge can be beaten by unorthodox plays (Bolting your own guy, for example)
Iona is not fair but a metagame shift can handle her.
Natural Order requires an inherent 2-for-1 card disadvantage when countered/removed, and there are enough ways to remove Progenitus (easier to kill than Iona IMO)

Regardless, until Storm combo takes over half the Top 8's of a significant number of tournaments, I'll just suck it up to a bad matchup and move on.

Shugyosha

04-07-2010, 04:06 PM

I must say, in a combo heavy meta like The Netherlands it's easy to come to this conclusion, and I understand people in other countries have trouble coming to the same conclusion. But let me just say this: the Dutch Legacy meta is more advanced than any other meta in the world. Why? Because here in The Netherlands, there is a tournament within travel distance at least 2 times a month. For April alone there are 7 tournaments scheduled, while most of them will have about 20 attendants, there are 2 or 3 which will have a turnout of over 32. In March there were 9 tournaments with about the same turnout. If you know a place where there's more competative Legacy play, I'd like to hear about it.

North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. If I like I can play two 40-60 players (sometimes more, never less) Legacy tournaments each month. These tournaments exist for years. There are also plenty weekly Legacy tournaments to choose from. The one I play sometimes usually has around 15 players. I fact I think there are fewer players at weekly tournaments because there are so many. Combo ist definately a DTB, nothing more, nothing less.

AngryTroll

04-07-2010, 04:15 PM

I think Max is absolutely correct here (as well as his Dredge article from a few weeks ago).

If you play fair, you're likely to be less successful.

...[T]he fact of the matter is, the decks seeing the most success are doing something that isn't fair. Max defines these things with examples such as CB/Top lock; Dredge "drawing" 12+ cards in a turn; Belcher/Tendrils winning on turn 2-3, Reanimator putting hard-to-remove fatties into play on turns 2-3, etc. When you compare that to "Wild Nacatl. Bolt you, swing, Grim Lavamancer," you can see that there's a significant difference between the two.

Dredge and ANT are two of the most "unfair" decks in the format. If you have the time to practice with either one of those decks so that you can beat the hate...why would you play a "fair" deck like Zoo?

Artowis

04-07-2010, 05:03 PM

I mean granted Max could have been clearer on certain points, but his overall idea is basically just what Zvi always advocates. "Never Play Fair"

Too many people got hung up on him pumping up combo and missed the whole, 'attacking with 3/3's seems kind of miserable in a format with turn 3 kill / lock decks and control decks with soft-lock engines'.

SpikeyMikey

04-07-2010, 05:19 PM

Well, it may take some time to build mana to go off and tutor what you need to get rid of teeg. Zoo is a very fast deck and may need to keep you busy searching for no more than 2-3 turns. Of course if the ANT player already has a perfect hand and only needs to search for a removal, there nothing the Zoo player can do. But this can't happen always :tongue:

Well, this is an interesting point. I don't really know what to answer; after all, one of the reasons behind the decline of countertop is that people are running maindeck answers to counterbalance. On the other hand I have to admit that it would be pretty boring if every decklist should start with 4x combo hate.

Almost as boring as if every decklist should start with 4xStP. Or if every deck had to pack answers MD to artifacts and enchantments. Yet somehow, we manage to squeeze those things in and the game hasn't gotten boring.

AnT is a very slow combo deck with an FT only 1 turn ahead of what Solidarity had years ago. On the other hand, aggro's FT has increased dramatically. To top that off, AdN is horrible against most aggro leaving them with IGG as their main out and IGG is vulnerable to the same yard hate that everyone packs against Dredge/Reanimator/Lands/yada yada.

Also, I get real irritated when people use random matchup percentages to illustrate their point. Oh, it goes 80/20 against x. Guess what? I track actual game and match records for my decks and even matchups that I consider autowins don't always hit 80%. If I'm still posting 70% against something after 30-40 games, I'm ecstatic.

Skeggi

04-07-2010, 05:25 PM

AnT is a very slow combo deck
Say what?

frogboy

04-07-2010, 05:38 PM

@Nightmare, 4eak: My points are twofold:

First, when you are playing a deck like Zoo or Goblins, you aren't doing anything particularly powerful, which is a problem.

Second, when you are playing a deck without Force of Will, you can't stop the other guy from doing anything powerful, which is a huge problem if you can't kill him first.

Because the aggro decks without Force of Will can't goldfish particularly fast relative to the rest of the format *and* because they can't slow the other guy's goldfish, they are awful deck choices.

I mentioned Tarmogoyf and Top because a while ago people thought that Tarmogoyf was the reason that aggro decks sucked.

@morgan: The R/P/S analogy is super bad. If you consider combo decks "rock" then you really have like nine different rocks to throw at the pair of scissors, and paper can't cover all of them at once.

@SpikeyMikey: High Tide was a turn four-ish combo deck. Tendrils routinely kills on turn two or three and has turn one capacity. Elaborate on your claim that the fundamental turn of aggro decks has increased, because their goldfish has not. The card Ad Nauseam is very good against aggro decks unless they are on the play, drew specifically Wild Nacatl plus a second creature plus two burn spells, and you didn't have a turn two kill. In that scenario, for Ill-Gotten Gains to perform poorly, they have to board in Tormod's Crypt against a combo deck, which is pretty atrocious, or you can just kill them with Doomsday.

At some point there is going to be an article on why all of the hate cards that people are clinging to like goddamn teddy bears are not actually going to protect them from things that go bump in the night.

majikal

04-07-2010, 05:42 PM

Brad Herbig

04-07-2010, 06:53 PM

Combo is hard to play well. Aggro isn't really. I play combo because it is more of an intellectual challenge than beating with doods is, and I am sometimes rewarded because of it. I mean, I don't think Solidarity is good in the current metagame, but I still goldfish it just for the challenge. You don't have to be an asshole to enjoy outwitting your opponent.

Piceli89

04-07-2010, 07:05 PM

The thing about ANT is that you have to be a special kind of asshole to enjoy playing it, and an even more special kind of asshole to master it. So you can literally count on the vast majority of your ANT opponents being terribad with it. When this changes, there may be cause for alarm, but as it stands now, the very nature of the deck itself is what keeps it in check. And I'm okay with that.

Ahah, while we're not all "special kind of assholes", though I find that what you just said is the reason why ANT is not the "to ban! to ban!" deck. I always said and always will say that it'll carry on being a strong deck as long as ignorant people-who seem to have joined this thread, also- mull aggressively to find an hate bear because they're sure that "ANT always kills on the second turn". This is fucking untrue, since the nature itself of a combo deck often wants you to open quite shitty hands unbalanced on cantrips or on mana acceleration, where you get at topdeck mode and can even be raced by, say, a Goblin god-hand. I had people against me at tournaments mull to 5 and telling me explicitely "i have to get the t1 chalice or against you I'm pretty done", while I was laughing to them in my mind.
On the other hand, I've seen the usual netdeckers copypasting a random list from Deckcheck and then getting furious because at a tournament they sucked hard, and then they came over with something like "bleah that deck is a shit, it only depends on how luck you have while flipping on Ad Nauseam".

People should learn how to properly fight it and properly know how it works, rather than whining about its "brokeness" or "unfairness" and praying Wizards to ban LED or AdN.
Play 4 Mindbreak Traps sideboard, if you really want. At least they're unexpected.

Pastorofmuppets

04-07-2010, 07:21 PM

Arbitrary wall of text
Play 4 Mindbreak Traps sideboard, if you really want. At least they're unexpected.

you just want us to do that because of your Silences, you sly dog.

Piceli89

04-07-2010, 08:03 PM

you just want us to do that because of your Silences, you sly dog.

It's time to honor your signature, too. :)

alderon666

04-07-2010, 08:27 PM

AnT is a very slow combo deck with an FT only 1 turn ahead of what Solidarity had years ago.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/4160/sl703370.jpg

What?
Turn 1 Lackey
Turn 2 swing putting Goblin Warchief into play, playing Goblin Matron for Earwig Squad?

OH NOES! My slow combo deck must be in trouble!
Or maybe I'll just Brainstorm at EOT and win on my turn 2!

Too bad, your criiters are so cute!

majikal

04-07-2010, 08:37 PM

What?
Turn 1 Lackey
Turn 2 swing putting Goblin Warchief into play, playing Goblin Matron for Earwig Squad?

OH NOES! My slow combo deck must be in trouble!
Or maybe I'll just Brainstorm at EOT and win on my turn 2!

Too bad, your criiters are so cute!
Well... did you? Your picture only tells the first part of the story!

You don't have to be an asshole to enjoy outwitting your opponent.
Goldfishing your deck in front of your opponent != outwitting your opponent. Sure, you can throw some Jedi mind tricks in there and outwit them that way, but you might as well, you know, play Magic with them at that point, and who wants to do that?

SpikeyMikey

04-07-2010, 08:48 PM

alderon666

04-07-2010, 08:49 PM

Well... did you? Your picture only tells the first part of the story!

Yes, I did. I had something like a bunch of mana (no LED), BS and Mystical. EOT BS, upkeep Mystical for another Ritual, play Petal/second land, play all the mana and Infernal into Ad Nauseam and win.

He had no chance despite having the most broken start that the deck could have. I suppose a Wasteland could have been a problem, and Thorn of Amethyst would delay me enough for him to win (probably). But he didn't have it... easiest match in the championship by far.

Michael Keller

04-07-2010, 08:50 PM

I stopped reading after the first sentence. That is an absolutely preposterous claim.

Aggro_zombies

04-07-2010, 09:10 PM

If you think that AnT is such an unbeatable monster, why isn't it posting monster #'s at major events?
This is largely due to other factors, like pilot play skill, experience playing against blue hate, etc. Length of a tournament may also be an issue as you'd have to be able to concentrate and problem solve for much longer.

DukeDemonKn1ght

04-07-2010, 09:18 PM

Honestly, this is one reason that I love Merfolk so much. I still get to play an aggro deck, but it's an aggro deck that gets blue toys to play with. So basically, you become a little less consistent in your level of aggressiveness in order to not be a sitting rape victim to ANT and all that whatnot like you would be if you were running Zoo.

Humorously enough, Merfolk's biggest problem tends to be other decks that play more fair than it does, like Zoo or Goblins (although I consider Goblins more capable than Zoo of producing broken plays, despite that it's probably the worse deck compared to Zoo right now- interestingly enough.)

SpikeyMikey

04-07-2010, 09:22 PM

You guys can mock all you want, it doesn't bother me a bit. I've been around the block a time or twelve and seen *truly* format dominating/warping decks like Megrim/Jar, Tinker, Counter-Rebels, Affinity, the original T1 Dragon, etc. Dragon is perhaps a bad example because a lot of people played bad versions and Entomb was restricted before it got truly format-warping, but the version I ran packed more disruption and as fast or a faster clock than modern AnT.

In any case, AnT isn't even close to as busted as any of those decks. As far as aggro goes, if you don't think that it's faster, you haven't been paying attention. Compare modern Naya Zoo to San Diego Zoo or modern Fish to Ux aggro control 4 years ago when Nimble Mongoose was the epitome of aggressive cheap critters. The FT has decreased by 3 to 4 turns.

MEATROCKET

04-07-2010, 09:33 PM

Really, why is everyone so opposed to running maindeck hate? Look at some Vintage aggro decks, where maindeckable creatures are things like Canonist, Teeg, Mindcensor (SUCH a beating), Pridemage, Shusher, Kataki, Gorilla Shaman, etc. Some have even maindecked Choke, and they almost always run Null Rod.

I'm not saying that these same cards are what Zoo or whatever should be playing. I'm just saying that Zoo players have to realize that they either have a bad match against combo, or that they can make some changes. Just don't cry about it. It's how the format works.

majikal

04-07-2010, 09:35 PM

You guys can mock all you want, it doesn't bother me a bit. I've been around the block a time or twelve and seen *truly* format dominating/warping decks like Megrim/Jar, Tinker, Counter-Rebels, Affinity, the original T1 Dragon, etc.
It's kind of counter-productive playing the old-timer card on an Eternal forum, don't you think? :eyebrow:

umbowta

04-07-2010, 11:21 PM

It's kind of counter-productive playing the old-timer card on an Eternal forum, don't you think? :eyebrow:

I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Were you addressing some point or were you just trolling?

troopatroop

04-08-2010, 12:14 AM

I think Piceli just made my point for me. AnT has the *capability* to go off turn 1 or 2 but I wouldn't call it consistent in any sense of the word until turn 3., i.e. a turn faster than Solidarity. I've gone off turn 2 with Solidarity, but realistic fish was 4-5. AnT is slow in the sense that Tendrils could be as fast as Belcher, but chooses not to be for reasons of resilience and consistancy. That's what made AnT different from previous storm incarnations; it packs 8 protection spells plus reliable removal main. But it's far slower than it could be. As long as CB is in the format to keep Tendrils decks honest, it can't cheat and pack more accel and draw without autolosing to blue.

If you think that AnT is such an unbeatable monster, why isn't it posting monster #'s at major events?

ANT was in a very good position to win GP Madrid, Flipping the 1 out that killed Do Anh at 4 life, Tendrils. If he'd flipped anything else, he wins the biggest Legacy tournament ever. Consistent top 8's in major tournaments overseas, and a very consistent turn 1-2 Goldfish. I'd say you're lucky to get to turn 3 against Storm. That's much much faster than Solidarity could ever dream of being. That deck wants to build up Islands.

SpikeyMikey

04-08-2010, 12:48 AM

Look, my point was that AnT doesn't compare to those other decks. I'm not playing a game of "my epeen is bigger than your epeen". There are plenty of people out there that have been playing longer than me. I started playing in Urza's and really started playing competitively in Masques and didn't hit the Eternal scene until just before Invasions came out. I'm just saying, I've seen them all and against that list, AnT doesn't scare me. Is it a legitimate deck? Yes. But I remember hearing this same "sky is falling" talk when the Legacy banned list split from the T1 restricted list. People went nuts about Legacy Long. OMG, Tendrils is going to rape the format, if you're not playing Tendrils, better pack 4 FoW and 4 MD Null Rods! It wasn't just a few crackpots, it was 90% of the people on this site. It's all they talked about. While everyone was going nuts about how busted 4 Chrome Mox/4 Petal/4 LED was, I was quietly building this eventual DTB called San Diego Zoo (ok, little epeen there). Because people were overstating Tendrils' consistency and speed, and I knew that a deck that ran it's mana base off of 12 card disadvantage cards and somehow still needed to generate a storm of at least 9 was destined for the scrap heap.

Now I'm not saying that AnT is the same as the failed attempts at a 1.5 Long, but my point is that people are overstating AnT's abilities. It's a competitive deck. I'm not saying that I don't expect to see it in T8's. Hell, if I'd have had the cards (or the money to buy the cards), I'd have played it at Chicago, because I think it's a strong deck. But Troop, the thing is, placing in T8's does not make a deck wildly busted. If you want to say AnT > format, show me some T8's that are 5+ AnTs. Because the way it places now is not any better than any other Tier 1 deck. So I'm not going to rush to throw AnT together on Workstation, because it's a good deck, but it's not breaking the format wide open, no way, no how. It's not knocking aggro right off the map. Zoo is still a Tier 1 deck, with or without the presence of Tendrils.

mogote

04-08-2010, 03:21 AM

Because it was only 6% of the day one metagame so it only grew to 10%.
Ok, here's the GP Madrid metagame breakdown for day 2 (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpmad10/day2#2). The problem is that there's no real data available for day 1. The sample data from the day 1 coverage (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpmad10/day1#12) is obviously incorrect. Is there another source I'm not aware of?

Anyway, these figures show that fair aggro decks can still compete in Legacy.

Aleksandr

04-08-2010, 03:37 AM

"Fundamentally, the problem with most of Legacy's aggressive decks is that it is nearly impossible to use creatures with generally combat-oriented abilities to generate favorable interactions against most of Legacy's combo decks."

Sea Drake
Ponder/BS/Top/Mystical/pass
SoFI, lose eight, drop CotV@0, go
in response: jaw dropage

Skirk Prospector
Ponder/BS/Top/Mystical/pass
Prospector -> E. Squad

Dark Ritual, Thoughtseize + Hymn
Mox
Goyf
desperate search for land
take four
desperate search for land
Deed away your sole mana producer, take five, good luck with AdN

Tomb, Mox, Trinisphere
scratches his head
CotV@1
vomits
CotV@2
gg

City, Mox, Magus
Island, Top
Song, Slogger
upkeep spin Top, play Mountain
beat down

I've seen them all. Yawn...
My most favourite was mulligan to four (no-landers, not that I am tard to mull into FoW), open with Turn1 Trinket Mage ->CotV@0, Turn 2 Cotv@1, Turn 3 SoLS + equip. Mage went the distance with me safely above twenty life.

BreathWeapon

04-08-2010, 03:49 AM

ANT was in a very good position to win GP Madrid, Flipping the 1 out that killed Do Anh at 4 life, Tendrils. If he'd flipped anything else, he wins the biggest Legacy tournament ever. Consistent top 8's in major tournaments overseas, and a very consistent turn 1-2 Goldfish. I'd say you're lucky to get to turn 3 against Storm. That's much much faster than Solidarity could ever dream of being. That deck wants to build up Islands.

Consistent T1 wins is a big, big stretch, you'll have inconsistent T2 wins and consistent T3 wins with non-TES storm when it's at its best.

Cthuloo

04-08-2010, 04:41 AM

Some answers to those who quoted me:

I'm not real sure where everyone got the idea that Chalice at zero automatically kolds Tendrils, but, like, it doesn't. Getting to five with Rituals and Tomb isn't that hard. Neither is finding Hurkyl's Recall or Burning Wish or whatever. Doomsday piles can be constructed that skip it entirely. Chalice at one is harder to beat and it still isn't super difficult.

I think you were referring to me, but this is not what I stated. I know very well that ANT can win through Chalice at zero, at one, and even both given enough time. But that was my point: Chalice at zero prevents t1 wins (ok, you can have 3xritual, but that's a bit unlikely to happen) and makes t2 wins difficoult, buying time to drop other hate or simply beat face. Anyways, this was not my main point, and this thread wasn't meant to discuss the efficiency of combo hate, so I'll stop here.

Almost as boring as if every decklist should start with 4xStP. Or if every deck had to pack answers MD to artifacts and enchantments. Yet somehow, we manage to squeeze those things in and the game hasn't gotten boring.

Boring was probably not the correct word for what I was trying to say. Anyways, reconsidering it a bit I agree with you. People bastardize decks to maindeck answers all the time. Goblin is probably the best example: monored Goblin is the fastest and more consistent version, but the strongest ones are those with a splash for stp/disenchant/grip/weirding/etc. There's probably no problem whatsoever in zoo maindecking combo hate. Extended zoo already plays blue (and I don't think it does because Meddling Mage speeds up its clock).

Rico Suave

04-08-2010, 06:25 AM

If you think that AnT is such an unbeatable monster, why isn't it posting monster #'s at major events?

I'm not going to claim that ANT is an unbeatable monster. I think it's perfectly reasonable in its power level. I still feel it is the best deck though, but being the best doesn't mean it will always win.

It is true, the deck does not put up impressive numbers for how much hype the deck receives on the internet. This is due in large part because the deck is extremely difficult to play correctly. Even Saito, one of the most well respected and skilled pro players/deckbuilders in the game, expressed in his GP Madrid report that he was concerned with his ability to pilot the deck effectively.

I think the problem here is that most players are simply nowhere near the level to play this deck correctly. I would consider myself to be very experienced with it, and even I wouldn't claim to be able to pilot the deck to 80% of its full potential.

Quite frankly there are a lot of bad players in Legacy, or simply players who don't wish to invest the time necessary to become truly good at the format. The latter is perfectly understandable, especially given that a lot of Legacy players at the SCG 5k events are probably there primarily for Standard anyway.

It just so happens that a deck like ANT highlights mistakes whereas a deck like Zoo covers them up. This is a pretty big reason to play a deck like Zoo over ANT, even if ANT itself is the better deck. Being able to effectively play through the tournament is very important and I have known very capable players to choose Zoo over ANT precisely because of this reason.

Grollub

04-08-2010, 06:51 AM

I'm not going to claim that ANT is an unbeatable monster. I think it's perfectly reasonable in its power level. I still feel it is the best deck though, but being the best doesn't mean it will always win.
I kind of agree, ANT is the best deck. But only under certain circumstances:
a) It's played correctly.
If even Saito has concerns about being able to do so, I think it's fair to assume only a handful can do so - and in this case wouldn't be fair to generalize and say ANTs "true powerlevel" is only 80% of it's theoretical?
b) Combo is "underhated"
What others and I have been saying earlier, as mentioned by the dutch guy (sorry, name eludes me) Goblins run Thorn of Amethyst maindeck to stand a chance for instance -- despite the Thorns being less than spectacular against the majority, a deck need to evolve if it wants to stay in the tier 1 group. As I've mentioned earlier the days of Academy, Trix and Tinker (Jar to some degree -- emergency banning etc) the viable aggro and control decks ran plenty of countermeasures.
c) Metagame haven't caught up
Bandage as a measure against Goblins anyone? I mean what the hell? You need an entirely different deck, if you're that desperate...

What I'm trying to say is ANT and non-belcher combo is good (Playing Belcher is just a coin-toss that can be skewed in the opponents favor with hate), no doubt about it, and will trash decks that are not prepared. Rather than keep trying to fight Goliath with your sling shot and pray for a miracle, build a mech and smash him to bits...

DrJones

04-08-2010, 06:57 AM

What I'm trying to say is ANT and non-belcher combo is good (Playing Belcher is just a coin-toss that can be skewed in the opponents favor with hate), no doubt about it, and will trash decks that are not prepared. Rather than keep trying to fight Goliath with your sling shot and pray for a miracle, build a mech and smash him to bits...I'll do it if you pay me the thousand of dollars that costs building Canadian Thresh. Until then, I'll patch my deck with 50$ in cards.

SpikeyMikey

04-08-2010, 07:23 AM

I'm not going to claim that ANT is an unbeatable monster. I think it's perfectly reasonable in its power level. I still feel it is the best deck though, but being the best doesn't mean it will always win.

This I can accept. Tier .99, a hair ahead of the rest of Tier 1. :P I don't necessarily agree, but I find that acceptable and the difference is so subtle that it's not worth arguing.

It is true, the deck does not put up impressive numbers for how much hype the deck receives on the internet. This is due in large part because the deck is extremely difficult to play correctly. Even Saito, one of the most well respected and skilled pro players/deckbuilders in the game, expressed in his GP Madrid report that he was concerned with his ability to pilot the deck effectively.

I think the problem here is that most players are simply nowhere near the level to play this deck correctly. I would consider myself to be very experienced with it, and even I wouldn't claim to be able to pilot the deck to 80% of its full potential.

Quite frankly there are a lot of bad players in Legacy, or simply players who don't wish to invest the time necessary to become truly good at the format. The latter is perfectly understandable, especially given that a lot of Legacy players at the SCG 5k events are probably there primarily for Standard anyway.

Then it's not the best deck. If the deck is so hard to play that no one can play it to 100% potential, and the best pilots in the world are playing it to 80%, then 80% is where it's powerlevel is. Because who gives a f*** about 100% potential if none of your opponents can ever actually reach it? Potential /= results.

It just so happens that a deck like ANT highlights mistakes whereas a deck like Zoo covers them up. This is a pretty big reason to play a deck like Zoo over ANT, even if ANT itself is the better deck. Being able to effectively play through the tournament is very important and I have known very capable players to choose Zoo over ANT precisely because of this reason.

This is false. I used to hear this same argument about aggro in T1, often in conjuction with "the best players play blue". The idea that aggro rewards mindless play is silly. I can't speak for Zoo from experience, because I don't play Naya Zoo on any sort of regular basis. But I played Sligh in T1 for several years, and I learned that while there are less decisions per game, making the correct decision can be equally important. I learned to pick up a lot of games that the mindless player would've left out there by playing my threats in the correct order, learning what constituted over-extending, etc. In fact, I even wrote an article about it on SCG (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/3538_Playing_Aggro_The_Subtle_Errors_You_Can_make.html). It's not a great article, but I've been advocating the idea that aggressive decks can be skill intensive for years.

Parcher

04-08-2010, 10:55 AM

I agree that there are too many unfair decks in Legacy to correctly choose play a fair one objectively. And that except for an unparalleled consistancy, that Zoo is indeed a fair deck. Here's the part I can't get to make sense.

If AnT and Dredge are the most overpowered and unfair decks in Legacy. And if they are, as these experts claim, simply too difficult for the vast majority of the idiots who populate Legacy tournaments to play correctly. Since even when these do show up in any measurable number, they rarely win. And if Zoo is so much easier to play, and only beats these unfair decks when they either 1) are piloted by the unending sea of retards who play Legacy, or 2) have a misstep due to their inherent inconsistancies that Zoo can exploit. And if most people avoid them additionally due to the toll that using your brain over the course of a tournament on such complicated ineractions is too taxing. And any four-year old with decent motor skills can pilot Aggro; then why wouldn't any non-Legacy Genius/Expert/Writer want to play Zoo at tournaments? It sounds like every advantage goes in that direction.

02Drop

04-08-2010, 11:49 AM

This. 99% of people in this thread latched onto the word "combo" and thereby totally missed the point of the article, which is that decks that show up to a tournament expecting to win creature wars are going to be outgunned by all the decks that show up and don't give two shits about getting into creature wars. Sure, combo is one of those, but there's also Enchantress, Lands, Natural Order into something that can't be blocked and wins in two swings, Reanimator, etc.

If this is the point of the article, then I feel the article is largely irrelvent. Anyone in tune enough with competitive Legacy or Magic in general knows that combo just gets attacked for a turn or two, sculpting its hand, then goes off. I don't feel that "Combo doesn't care about creatures and will largely outrace aggro" is worthy of an article. Combo beats Aggro. Aggro beats Control. Control beats Combo. There's always exceptions, but stripped down to the core, its rock-paper-scissors.

markbris

04-08-2010, 11:53 AM

If AnT and Dredge are the most overpowered and unfair decks in Legacy. And if they are, as these experts claim, simply too difficult for the vast majority of the idiots who populate Legacy tournaments to play correctly. Since even when these do show up in any measurable number, they rarely win. And if Zoo is so much easier to play, and only beats these unfair decks when they either 1) are piloted by the unending sea of retards who play Legacy, or 2) have a misstep due to their inherent inconsistancies that Zoo can exploit. And if most people avoid them additionally due to the toll that using your brain over the course of a tournament on such complicated ineractions is too taxing. And any four-year old with decent motor skills can pilot Aggro; then why wouldn't any non-Legacy Genius/Expert/Writer want to play Zoo at tournaments? It sounds like every advantage goes in that direction.

Nailed it. I think this pretty much explains why things are the way they are.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 12:00 PM

Whining about combo is stupid.
Seriously, sure combo is strong, but this guy has obviously had some kind of bad experience with combo because he is blowing it WAY out of proportion. Personally, I think that legacy right now is in a very healthy balance.

If combo is so strong, then why does it perform SO poorly?

Saying 'people can't play it well' is not a sufficient answer since the DCI doesn't respond to hypothetical metagames.

Skeggi

04-08-2010, 12:03 PM

Combo performes really well. Apparently it doesn't in the USA. In Europe and Japan, it does very good.

Grollub

04-08-2010, 02:09 PM

If combo is so strong, then why does it perform SO poorly?
Combo perform just fine...

Saying 'people can't play it well' is not a sufficient answer since the DCI doesn't respond to hypothetical metagames.
DCI shouldn't respond anyway, the metagame is fine as it is right now. ;)

SpikeyMikey

04-08-2010, 02:47 PM

Combo performes really well. Apparently it doesn't in the USA. In Europe and Japan, it does very good.

To my mind, that's a numbers game. People seem to have a difficult time acknowledging what a huge role luck plays in a tournament setting. But even if you're posting 70% against the field you're not making day 2 over a 10 round day 1 on averages alone and nobody posts 70% against the field or even against a large percentage of the field. There's not necessarily a large difference in playskill or deck viability between a guy that's 6-4 and a guy that's 8-1-1. All it takes is one bad game to throw an otherwise winnable match and dump you into unfavorable pairings. Of course, it works the other way too, an early loss could dump you into a lower bracket where the pairings are more favorable and you could go 9-1.

So what's my point? If you've got 6 copies of a deck in a tournament, you're more likely to have someone that's piloting that deck and having incredible luck. Beautiful openings, amazing topdecks, good matchups, etc. A large showing of a deck that goes 55% against the field is more likely to yield T8 spots than a lone deck that goes 65% against the field. So a field dominated by AnT will see more successful AnT decks than the matchups would lead you to believe and a field dominated by Zoo will lead to more successful Zoo decks.

Honestly, for my money, the best deck in the format is probably Fish, but the deck hates me and doesn't draw well for me. But I've seen other people melt face with it and some draws are just unbeatable. Fish isn't entirely fair (they cheat costs with vial, allowing them to dump critters on the board while still playing control), but it's certainly not combo.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 02:51 PM

Combo perform just fine...

DCI shouldn't respond anyway, the metagame is fine as it is right now. ;)

What was the last 200+ player tournament that a combo deck won?

Genericcactus

04-08-2010, 02:55 PM

Frogboy's claim that zoo can't beat combo decks is baseless. I agree that Zoo cannot beat storm and that it would be a waste of board space to try do so. However, with graveyard hate, Ichorid becomes a very winnable matchup. Lands is also unfavorable, but a very aggressive start can get there. Price of Progress out of the board (which is also relevant in other matchups) wins the match when it resolves. I'm not sure we're talking about the same deck if you consider Enchantress to be unfair, but Pridemage is > the deck, along with Grips out of the board.

Whatever discrepancies that exist in regards to these matchup percentages are irrelevant, however, because combo isn't played nearly as much as the two decks that zoo should almost always beat: Countertop and Merfolk. In a large 8-10 round tourney, if a zoo player is likely to play Storm/Ichorid/Lands/Enchantress (with only Storm being unwinnable) more than twice then zoo probably isn't a wise choice. Luckily for zoo (and the format) that doesn't happen and hasn't happened since Ad Nauseum was printed. "Fair" decks are played because they are consistent. Zoo punishes bad draws and can conceivably win every single matchup outside of Storm. Storm can't even beat the (arguably) most played deck, Countertop!

jrsthethird

04-08-2010, 03:30 PM

frogboy

04-08-2010, 03:38 PM

What was the last 200+ player tournament that a combo deck won?

Please with this. Do Anh was 80% to win Madrid when he cast Ad Nauseam in game three.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 03:41 PM

Please with this. Do Anh was 80% to win Madrid when he cast Ad Nauseam in game three.

That didn't answer my question.

There have been, how many SCG Opens now, and how many ANT decks have made top 8, let alone win? How many Zoo decks have made top 8?

Facts are facts.

walkerdog

04-08-2010, 03:43 PM

That didn't answer my question.

There have been, how many SCG Opens now, and how many ANT decks have made top 8, let alone win? How many Zoo decks have made top 8?

Facts are facts.

How many were played vs how many Zoo at these events? That's a pretty important fact too, right?

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:00 PM

Ad Nauseam has been, at many of the SCG opens, one of the most popular archetypes. Yet it's performance is dismal.

I pretty much whole heartedly agree with the person on the SCG forums who posted:

Max is wrong and all the data confirm it. The data I refer to are the results from all the large 5Ks from this year and last and the two post-flash legacy GPs. Saying the format is underdeveloped and it's STILL just waiting to be broken is ludicrous. The last two Legacy GPs have been enormous. Combo has not dominated them. Combo has been a reasonable component of the decks that finish well. The 5ks have had pretty good attendance too and combo has actually done horribly in those. I do think pilot error has a lot to do with this and ad naseum is underrepresented in top 16s because of this, but whatever. If it were that broken, people would win with it anyway, like they did with flash (Sadin didn't even know how his deck worked at the start of GP Columbus and he won the whole thing).
Is it going to take a legacy pro tour to motivate a pro to ACTUALLY break this format? Are GPs really not enough motivation? I doubt it. I think the real reason the data make the format look balanced is because it is. Legacy is only broken in Max McCall's imagination.

And if you don't believe me, just read my or Jared Sylva SCG analysis articles, or, take a look at monthly stats that someone on these forums had been compiling. They were aggregating all of the 32+ player tournaments all over the world, and consistently show that Zoo is a top performing deck, if not THE top performing deck.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 04:04 PM

Yet it's performance is dismal.

Zoo is not exactly tearing up the 5ks, either.

Note that the premise of the article is "attacking without Force of Will is an awful strategy" not "Tendrils is the best deck in the format."

Phoenix Ignition

04-08-2010, 04:07 PM

Please with this. Do Anh was 80% to win Madrid when he cast Ad Nauseam in game three.

This, if the percentage is true, shows how the deck really isn't the best in the format. If it lands its :3::b::b: sorcery it only has a 80% chance of winning? From reading these forums I know it's probably higher than 80% chance to win, but if 80 were true that means you lose to yourself 1 out of every 5 times you cast your game winning spell. Even your game winning spell only winning 90% of the time takes it's toll across just a few tournaments play.

wcm8

04-08-2010, 04:09 PM

Zoo does what Magic is supposed to do. Every other deck is either worse or cheats.

If you don't want to play against unfair decks, play limited and shut up. Otherwise, pick a deck you like and be prepared to have a bad matchup.

Disagree with first point, agree with second (sort of).

I don't think combo or graveyard strategies are "cheating". Even Alpha had animate dead, so it's not like using the graveyard is something new. I'm not much of a fan of the dredge mechanic as it's used by Ichorid decks, but you're still ultimately using the attack phase to win and there are a multitude of sideboard options that screw it over. Unfortunately, combo doesn't really lose to sideboard cards as easily.

I think Combo itself is fine, and the storm mechanic can be fairly utilized. What makes these and other 'combo' decks arguably broken is the enablers -- namely tutor/search cards that make their games more consistent. Any card that allows you to get the exact pieces you need to win the game that turn should be regarded wearily... At this point, I think Mystical Tutor is just as broken as Vampiric.

walkerdog

04-08-2010, 04:10 PM

Ad Nauseam has been, at many of the SCG opens, one of the most popular archetypes. Yet it's performance is dismal.

I pretty much whole heartedly agree with the person on the SCG forums who posted:

And if you don't believe me, just read my or Jared Sylva SCG analysis articles, or, take a look at monthly stats that someone on these forums had been compiling. They were aggregating all of the 32+ player tournaments all over the world, and consistently show that Zoo is a top performing deck, if not THE top performing deck.

While you do good work most of the time, saying, "if you don't believe me, read my analysis" is kind of funny.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:11 PM

Zoo is not exactly tearing up the 5ks, either.

Note that the premise of the article is "attacking without Force of Will is an awful strategy" not "Tendrils is the best deck in the format."

That's too hyperbolic to agree with. "awful' strategy? If you mean, attacking without force of will is not capable of winning a tournament, I completely disagree. Look at what Goblins just did.

Winning tournaments and/or making top 8 is the only metric that matters.

Also, it depends on what you mean by attacking. I think land is a premiere strategy, yet it wins by attacking with man lands.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:12 PM

While you do good work most of the time, saying, "if you don't believe me, read my analysis" is kind of funny.

I don't mean read my opinions -- I meant read the SCG data stats that I compiled when SCG sent me decklists following SCG opens. That's what Jared Sylva does.

Fuzzy

04-08-2010, 04:17 PM

Note that the premise of the article is "attacking without Force of Will is an awful strategy" not "Tendrils is the best deck in the format."

And "People Playing Zoo/Goblins are stupid"?

frogboy

04-08-2010, 04:18 PM

This, if the percentage is true, shows how the deck really isn't the best in the format. If it lands its :3::b::b: sorcery it only has a 80% chance of winning? From reading these forums I know it's probably higher than 80% chance to win, but if 80 were true that means you lose to yourself 1 out of every 5 times you cast your game winning spell. Even your game winning spell only winning 90% of the time takes it's toll across just a few tournaments play.

I mean, if you have one extra mana this is no longer true.

If you mean, attacking without force of will is not capable of winning a tournament

All-in Red wins tournaments. That doesn't make it a good deck choice. Do you see where this analogy is going?

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:22 PM

I mean, if you have one extra mana this is no longer true.

All-in Red wins tournaments. That doesn't make it a good deck choice. Do you see where this analogy is going?

It does? If you mean it wins 8 man events, that is not relevant.

Does it win major, large-scale events like SCG Opens or GPs? Goblins does, and just did. All in red? I've never seen that happen.

When I aggregate quarterly Vintage stats, I only count tournaments with 33 or more players and a top 8 playoff, so that the stats I collect reflect 6 rounds of swiss and a top 8 competition. When I say: win tournaments, I mean tournaments that matter, tournaments where winning means something and tells us something about an archetypes strength.

To cite a small tournament where burn won is not relevant to the conversation.

Again, you say that attacking without Force of Will is awful. But any deck that wins a GP or a 150+ player tournament, cannot, by definition, be 'awful.' And the use of that label is by definition either wrong or hyperbolic. In either case, I disagree with its application.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 04:31 PM

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 04:35 PM

Guys, you're all fucking missing the point here. Well, except Nightmare and 4eak.

The point isn't that combo is broken, or that Zoo and Goblins are somehow inherently bad decks. The point is that they're only fair decks. Legacy is a format full of ways to do unfair things, and fair decks tend to be really badly prepared to win unfair fights. Think of trying to punch a guy in a bar fight and having him pull a pistol on you and shoot you in the head. You may be the best heavyweight prizefighter ever, but you're not going to beat some guy who shows up with ranged weapons that kill you in a couple shots. You're fighting fair, and he sure as hell isn't.

That's not to say that Goblins or Zoo are bad (though I think Goblins winning is an anomaly. Remember when Stax won a 5k in the fall? Yeah, bad deck). They're just not doing anything particularly broken in a format chock-full of ways to do broken stuff. Sure, there's lots of Disney-esque chances for the underdog to go and defeat the Bad Guys with nothing but pluck, daring, and really lucky pairings, but at the end of the day there's not a lot of reasons to gun for a lovely narrative when you could just do something broken instead. That is the point of the article.

In a format with a relatively small core of people who play it regularly and a large influx of people who jumped on the bandwagon recently, of course decks with fewer complicated in-game decisions are going to be doing better. Zoo is popular because there's not a lot of hidden interactions you have to figure out: what you see is what you stomp with.

Artowis

04-08-2010, 04:35 PM

But any deck that wins a GP or a 150+ player tournament, cannot, by definition, be 'awful.'

lol, what? Of course it can. PV used to point this out in his post-tourney articles ALL THE TIME. People get butthurt about it, but he's almost always correct with his analysis and they were just mad to be called out. Bad decks can and do win. It's what happens when you play a game with enough variance in it.

Part of the problem with saying the tournaments tell the tale is that only a certain amount of people involved even get a 2nd chance to play in big Legacy tourneys here. With a PTQ season you'll almost assuredly have 2-3 chances at the bare minimum to try and adapt or make an impact. With Legacy this isn't true for half the country and even for the people who could switch it up may be constrained by monetary values. Even if you learned something and wanted to change decks before the next Legacy tourney, there's no guarantee you'll be able too since the price differences between decks are pretty large.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:37 PM

AIR has some PTQ wins in Extended.

Would you prefer I use the term "weak domination" and bore everyone to tears with game theory? The point is that decks that attack and don't contain Force of Will are terrible deck choices because they have very few good matchups and a whole lot of matchups they can't win barring their opponents game lossing themselves into oblivion.

It doesn't matter how many good or bad matchups a deck has in theory. It only matters whether the metagame repesents those matchups, and in what proportions. The fact that there is a theoretical bad matchup in no way prevents a deck like Zoo from winning tournaments. In fact, Zoo has plenty of excellent matchups, which is why its a better than average performer, and has won mutlple SCG Opens.

It can be inferior to other strategies, making it an awful deck choice.

And those strategies, which you judge to be superior, may actually have a harder time winning the tournament.

The bottom line is that your claims seem to have no emprical support and are based largely on your theory.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:48 PM

lol, what? Of course it can. PV used to point this out in his post-tourney articles ALL THE TIME. People get butthurt about it, but he's almost always correct with his analysis and they were just mad to be called out. Bad decks can and do win. It's what happens when you play a game with enough variance in it.

Part of the problem with saying the tournaments tell the tale is that only a certain amount of people involved even get a 2nd chance to play in big Legacy tourneys here. With a PTQ season you'll almost assuredly have 2-3 chances at the bare minimum to try and adapt or make an impact. With Legacy this isn't true for half the country and even for the people who could switch it up may be constrained by monetary values. Even if you learned something and wanted to change decks before the next Legacy tourney, there's no guarantee you'll be able too since the price differences between decks are pretty large.

If a metagame is composed (for whatever reason) such that a deck that you may call 'bad' is capable of or well positioned to win a tournament (based upon emprical evidence, not theory), then I'll play the 'bad' deck any day. My goal is not to play a deck that some internet talking head thinks is 'good',' according to whatever silly standard they may have about some notion of 'fairness,' but to play a deck that is well positioned to win tournaments, since that's the only thing that matters.

To the extent that those decks win tournaments, I think anyone who says that those decks are 'awful' is just wrong and is beating their head against a brick wall because their 'theory' doesn't matter one bit to the metagame.

Trying to come up with counterfactuals: well, if 'only the metagame were more developed,' or 'if only there were more consecutive tournaments,' or 'if only people had more skill with deck X,' is simply irrellevant.

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 04:49 PM

If a metagame is composed (for whatever reason) such that a deck that you may call 'bad' is capable of or well positioned to win a tournament, then I'll play the 'bad' deck any day. My goal is not to play a deck that some internet talking head thinks is 'good',' according to whatever silly standard they may have about some notion of 'fairness,' but to play a deck that is well positioned to win tournaments, since that's the only thing that matters.

To the extent that those decks win tournaments, I think anyone who says that those decks are 'awful' is just wrong and is beating their head against a brick wall because their 'theory' doesn't matter one bit to the metagame.

Trying to come up with counterfactuals: well, if 'only the metagame were more developed,' or 'if only there were more consecutive tournaments,' or 'if only people had more skill with deck X,' is simply irrellevant.
...aren't you an internet talking head?

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:54 PM

...aren't you an internet talking head?

Aren't we all?

I said: what some internet talking head thinks ACCORDING to some standard of fairness, etc.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 04:54 PM

I mean, part of the argument is that Zoo/Goblins aren't positioned particularly well for any given tournament (exceptions being Day Two of Madrid, I suppose) and are getting there by strength in numbers more than anything else.

also, re: winning: The aggro decks got Orlando. Broken linears got the rest, unless you seriously want to take the position that Dallas was a win for Zoo on the merits of it's strength against Loam.

If Chris Woltereck just went to all of the Opens there is no way we'd be having this conversation.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:55 PM

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 04:57 PM

I mean, part of the argument is that Zoo/Goblins aren't positioned particularly well for any given tournament (exceptions being Day Two of Madrid, I suppose) and are getting there by strength in numbers more than anything else.

This is actually untrue in many cases. I'd have to look back at the % of the field versus % in top 8, but there was one SCG Opens in Dec/Jan where there were like only 5 Zoo decks, and it made top 8 well above its representation in the field.

People are making claims that aren't founded in the data. Support your arguments with relevant empirical data, and I'd be far more likely to believe what you say. But I've paid close attention to the data, and what you are saying is just untrue.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 05:02 PM

Brief looks at T16 lists from St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Dallas show one, one, and two Zoo decks in the top sixteen, respectively.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 05:06 PM

Exactly.

Parcher

04-08-2010, 05:06 PM

If Chris Woltereck just went to all of the Opens there is no way we'd be having this conversation

Except when he loses in the Open to Zoo.

junkdiver

04-08-2010, 05:08 PM

Goblins took Orlando because it never came up against combo all day, had a sideboard packed full of goodies against lands, and came up against lands twice. The player was also skilled, I am not trying to take that away from him, but on the subject this is pretty relevant.

I agree with Max to some extent, but would generalize and say: Attacking without disruption/counters/chalice/trinisphere etc is in fact miserable if you plan on playing combo more than once in any given tournament.

At least if you pickup a deck like Merfolk you have a chance against pure aggro decks, and your sideboard options can help, but the same is hard to say for the pure aggro decks. At least I feel like it is.

Artowis

04-08-2010, 05:11 PM

Also, great logic there.

PV says it's true. You say he's true. Therefore, it must be true.

Saying a deck that wins a major tournament is bad is hyperbolic, or wrong. It's not 'bad.' It's not 'awful.' It may not be optimal. It may not be great. But it's definitely not bad. That's absurd.

Yes his ANALYSIS OF THE DECKS WAS USUALLY CORRECT. I forgot this is internet land and instead of naturally inferring something you want to be intentionally dense. Replace PV with 'people good at Magic' then.

Why can't a winning deck be bad exactly? Can I call said deck bad if it only makes the finals? The top eight? Or do I need it to be a complete unmitigated failure before I can say anything mean about it? Oh, but I guess if I use more flowery language like 'unoptimized' suddenly it's A-OK?

...

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 05:17 PM

Aren't we all?

I said: what some internet talking head thinks ACCORDING to some standard of fairness, etc.
As opposed to you, who uses tournament results as an absolute standard of fairness without factoring in confounding variables like pairings, pilot play skill, opponent play skill, how good the pilot is at performing over long periods of uninterrupted time, how information availability affected meta composition, how card availability affected meta composition, how decks perform when played by people with only a passing familiarity with them, how focus on Top 8 performance skews deck choice, how the apparent meta shifts as you more from the low to the middle to the high tables, etc?

Look, it's impossible to make value judgements without a reference point. You can deride the other guy's metric all you want, but that doesn't make your metric any better. If there were a perfect system, everyone would use it and everyone would play the best deck (except for scrubs who decided they didn't want to for some asinine reason).

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 05:26 PM

As opposed to you, who uses tournament results as an absolute standard of fairness without factoring in confounding variables

That's not true. I don't actually have a standard for 'fairness.' I think that the idea of fairness is more or less inherently subjective and more perceptual than real. I have no problem labeling decks contextually strong or 'good.' But fair? Some people might think that decks like Dredge are unfair because they are fast and hard to disrupt using normal maindeck disruption. I don't. I think they are very fair, since they are relatively easy to hate out with targeted silver bullets. Some people may think that 'unfair' decks are decks that win on turn two. I think that most turn two decks are very fair, since they are easily to disrupt with cards like Force, Daze, Chalice of the Void, Mindbreak Trap, etc.

like pairings, pilot play skill, opponent play skill, how good the pilot is at performing over long periods of uninterrupted time, how information availability affected meta composition, how card availability affected meta composition, how decks perform when played by people with only a passing familiarity with them, how focus on Top 8 performance skews deck choice, how the apparent meta shifts as you more from the low to the middle to the high tables, etc?

Quantitative analysis overcomes those problems by creating large sample sizes. Baseball statisticians don't discount a person's batting average because most of those hits were off weaker pitchers and vice versa for pitchers. A hit is a hit. And a win is a win.

Look, it's impossible to make value judgements without a reference point. You can deride the other guy's metric all you want, but that doesn't make your metric any better. If there were a perfect system, everyone would use it and everyone would play the best deck (except for scrubs who decided they didn't want to for some asinine reason).

My objection to this article is not that his metrics are different, it's that they are almost entirely theoretical. Theory is not a metric -- it's anti-emprical. That's what I quoted that person who said that the data refutes his claims.

The reason that people don't follow statistics is because statistical analysis of a magic metagames reflects what 'has' happened, not what is going to happen. It's only indicative of what's happened in the past, and because magic metagames are constantly evolving, that doesn't mean that those stats hold true for the future. However, to the extent that someone is making a claim about the format, it should, at a minimum, be able to explain past statistics. Max's claims don't.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 05:33 PM

Yes his ANALYSIS OF THE DECKS WAS USUALLY CORRECT. I forgot this is internet land and instead of naturally inferring something you want to be intentionally dense. Replace PV with 'people good at Magic' then.

Fallacy of appeal to authority.

If a host of Harvard economists told us that the economy was going to bounce back this year, but GDP falls, who is right?

If PV and every other great player said that Zoo is a bad deck, but it wins the next SCG Open, who is right?

It's like the old Richard Pryor joke: his wife walks in while he is having sex with another woman, and he says: who are going to believe: me, or your lying eyes?

People - esp. some pros -- have specific ideas about what is good and bad, usually because they have overdeveloped sense of theory, from their individual playtesting. That's what we play tournaments, and not simpy give the trophy to the smartest person who tests the most. That's why Wizards R&D is often wrong.

Large scale Magic metagames tell us what's best/good: the decks that win. I trust RESULTS over anyone's theoretical claims any day of the week.

Why can't a winning deck be bad exactly?

Because it won. And winning is the only good standard for measuring whether something is good or not. This isn't rocket science.

Can I call said deck bad if it only makes the finals? The top eight? Or do I need it to be a complete unmitigated failure before I can say anything mean about it? Oh, but I guess if I use more flowery language like 'unoptimized' suddenly it's A-OK?

...

Since when is speaking or writing carefully 'flowery'?

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 05:36 PM

Quantitative analysis overcomes those problems by creating large sample sizes. Baseball statisticians don't discount a person's batting average because most of those hits were off weaker pitchers and vice versa for pitchers. A hit is a hit. And a win is a win.
But analysis of Magic tournaments is significantly more difficult to boil down to a statistic because there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on before round one even starts which will affect what decks are even in contention for Top 8. Information availability is one issue, while card availability is another, and far bigger one. There's also the fact that most people make deck selections based on the composition of the Top 8 and assume they can dodge known bad matchups because those decks didn't make Top 8; then they show up and get totally massacred because their bad matchups are a much bigger percentage of the field than the Top 8 makes it seem. Choosing decks just because they won is an awful way to go about it: why aren't people playing Dragon Stompy and mono-white Stax all over the place, then? Those decks won Worlds and a 5k respectively, so they must be good, right? Except for the part where they aren't.

Saying a win is a win and the mathematical gymnastics proves it is to ignore the psychological end of the matter. You don't change your batting style because the last several games have seen 45% of the pitchers using a certain pitching style, but players will and do switch decks based on what they see.

My objection to this article is not that his metrics are different, it's that they are almost entirely theoretical. Theory is not a metric -- it's anti-emprical. That's what I quoted that person who said that the data refutes his claims.

The reason that people don't follow statistics is because statistical analysis of a magic metagames reflects what 'has' happened, not what is going to happen. It's only indicative of what's happened in the past, and because magic metagames are constantly evolving, that doesn't mean that those stats hold true for the future. However, to the extent that someone is making a claim about the format, it should, at a minimum, be able to explain past statistics. Max's claims don't.
There's nothing wrong with theoretical articles. Max's points are based on matchup statistics: deck A versus deck B results in deck B winning X% of the time. What he then does is say that decks where the value of X is biggest for the largest number of contenders are better choices. It just so happens that most of these decks are designed to be non-interactive in ways Zoo and Goblins aren't built to handle.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 05:40 PM

But analysis of Magic tournaments is significantly more difficult to boil down to a statistic because there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on before round one even starts which will affect what decks are even in contention for Top 8. Information availability is one issue, while card availability is another, and far bigger one. There's also the fact that most people make deck selections based on the composition of the Top 8 and assume they can dodge known bad matchups because those decks didn't make Top 8; then they show up and get totally massacred because their bad matchups are a much bigger percentage of the field than the Top 8 makes it seem. Choosing decks just because they won is an awful way to go about it: why aren't people playing Dragon Stompy and mono-white Stax all over the place, then? Those decks won Worlds and a 5k respectively, so they must be good, right? Except for the part where they aren't.

Saying a win is a win and the mathematical gymnastics proves it is to ignore the psychological end of the matter. You don't change your batting style because the last several games have seen 45% of the pitchers using a certain pitching style, but players will and do switch decks based on what they see.
.

Absolutely that's not true. In baseball, pitchers and batters are constantly trying to outduel each other psyschologically by making tiny adjustments. Each batter and each pitcher has their own style and approach, and this is even m ore true the more elite you become. You don't think that there are hundreds of other variables that affect those stats that are on the back of every baseball card? Coaches adjust liineups based upon pitchers, relief, etc. there are hundreds of confounding variables.

Or take drug testing by the FDA. They take samples to measure whether a drug is safe, yet they can't control perfectly for hundreds of confounding variables, such as a person's genes, past exposure, sleeping patterns, etc.

Your criticisms are true of quantitative analysis generally, but they are considered statistically valid.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 05:42 PM

Baseball statisticians actually don't use RBIs because hits are not hits and runs are not runs.

The amount of data that exists for Legacy tournaments is not remotely close to the number necessary to run any sort of inference testing, and is far too confounding to draw any sort of real information from it.

I think that most turn two decks are very fair, since they are easily to disrupt with cards like Force, Daze, Chalice of the Void, Mindbreak Trap, etc.

Most of those cards just make the combo decks turn three decks and put their owners down a card.

winning is the only good standard for measuring whether something is good or not.

Nassif won GP Chicago. Look at his sideboard.

My point is that you are less likely to win with the fair decks. Another point is that the broken decks are winning more tournaments than the fair ones. My final point is that there isn't a whole lot the fair decks can do about it.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 05:45 PM

Baseball statisticians actually don't use RBIs because hits are not hits and runs are not runs.

? A batting average is Hits/ At Bats.

Whether the hit was against Fausto Carmona or Zach Grienke is irrellevant to that stat.

The amount of data that exists for Legacy tournaments is not remotely close to the number necessary to run any sort of inference testing, and is far too confounding to draw any sort of real information from it.

That's not true at all. There are hundreds and hundreds of top 8 stats over dozens of statistically significantly sized tournaments that can tell us plenty. For SCG, I've compiled plenty of data about matchups in past articles alone, let alone Sylva's data, and other data.

Most of those cards just make the combo decks turn three decks and put their owners down a card.

Nassif won GP Chicago. Look at his sideboard.

My point is that you are less likely to win with the fair decks. Another point is that the broken decks are winning more tournaments than the fair ones. My final point is that there isn't a whole lot the fair decks can do about it.

I thought your point was that decks that attack without Force of Will were awful?

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 05:54 PM

Absolutely that's not true. In baseball, pitchers and batters are constantly trying to outduel each other psyschologically by making tiny adjustments. Each batter and each pitcher has their own style and approach, and this is even m ore true the more elite you become. You don't think that there are hundreds of other variables that affect those stats that are on the back of every baseball card? Coaches adjust liineups based upon pitchers, relief, etc. there are hundreds of confounding variables.

Or take drug testing by the FDA. They take samples to measure whether a drug is safe, yet they can't control perfectly for hundreds of confounding variables, such as a person's genes, past exposure, sleeping patterns, etc.

Your criticisms are true of quantitative analysis generally, but they are considered statistically valid.
Yeah, but in one case known information is definitive and in the other you totally control for it.

Sure, there's base variation. But there's a difference between saying, "A win is a win," and saying, "Decks perform well consistently whereas other decks turn out to be flavor-of-the-week. Therefore, some decks are just inherently better than others." Dragon Stompy and White Stax won tournaments - big tournaments - but that doesn't stop them from being much worse as decks than Counterbalance with Natural Order, or Tendrils.

Why do you think half the decks in the format pray they don't run into combo? Because combo fucking runs them over. Zoo basically cannot win against Tendrils; a Zoo player that meets Tendrils in the first three rounds is likely to lose. Zoo basically cannot beat a Lands player who knows how his deck actually works; a Zoo deck that meets Lands in the first three rounds is likely to lose. There are lots of "Zoo basically cannot beats" out there, even if there are lots of "Zoo basically goldfishes" as well. The point of this article is that there's no reason to play a deck that pretty much autoloses to all of the format's boogeymen when you could just play the boogeyman and goldfish the popular decks. You should know this, as someone who places such a high premium on statistics.

Setting up a theoretical framework over a statistical basis and then using it to address questions of tournament preparation is OF COURSE going to be divorced from tournament results. He's saying, "Look, these decks are popular. They do one thing, and they do it well: they attack. If you play a deck that stops that, or doesn't care about that, you autowin against one-trick-horse decks that show up and just expect to red zone everyone to death." There's a reason that using a Zerg Rush was bad in Starcraft: you devote a bunch of resources to it, and if the other guy is even remotely prepared for it, it fails and then you're in a bad spot because you micromanaged your Zerglings instead of climbing the tech tree and now the other guy is sending his doods in to slam your ass for it. Nice way to fail your all-in, broski.

Zoo and Goblins are exactly the same way. The point of the article is that you should play the decks Zoo and Goblins auto-lose to because playing Zoo and Goblins means you'll autolose to decks that aren't impressed by guys turning sideways. It's got fucking nothing to do with what won the last SCG Open and everything to do with individual matchups.

EDIT:
I thought your point was that decks that attack without Force of Will were awful?
Yeah, because Force of Will gives you some protection against the kinds of cards other decks use to make attacking irrelevant. Being an attack deck without Force is like banging a Thai hooker without protection: sure, you might not get a million venereal diseases, but if she's got them you are going to be very, very sorry.

paK0

04-08-2010, 05:58 PM

Your problem seems to be that you label anything unfair that does not have much interaction during the combat step.

There was a time Kird Ape was banned, so dropping a 3/3 Turn 1 could be considere pretty unfair.

And therory can only be backed up by results, thats all there is too it. If Zoo makes strong showings it means it is a good deck(we're not talking about a one-shot here, it puts up results consistently). Playing a deck that is theoretically better does not help when the other one takes home the trophy. I think Tendrils is hyped.

Jund is the best in Standart they say. Yeah, but Jund actually wins every 2nd big tournament. In Legacy this is far from off, Tendrils is a contester, maybe even a T1 one, but to be the best deck I think it takes more than to look good on paper.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 05:58 PM

I thought your point was that decks that attack without Force of Will were awful?

I thought the rest of it was pretty implicit, but it seems I should be more clear in the future.

statistically significantly sized tournaments

The arbitrary standard of "six rounds is a real tournament" doesn't actually extend to any sort of actual math. I wrote an article for ChannelFireball a while ago about the number of games you need to achieve any sort of confidence. Your articles are fine for what they are, but they're not particularly rigorous. Spaniel trolled Sylva's forums on this point for a while, and while he wasn't particularly polite about it, his argument was valid.

Whether the hit was against Fausto Carmona or Zach Grienke is irrellevant to that stat.

Sabermetrics essentially exists because batting average is a poor predictor for runs scored. Similarly, RBIs isn't a useful statistic for inference testing because of the confounding variables associated with having runners on base. There is probably some sports nerd on these forums who can elaborate on this further.

edit:
There was a time Kird Ape was banned, so dropping a 3/3 Turn 1 could be considere pretty unfair.

You're referencing a format where you could play Dark Ritual, Necro, and Mana Vault. Trust me when I say that Kird Ape on the banned list was not the main factor holding aggro decks back.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 06:01 PM

Yeah, but in one case known information is definitive and in the other you totally control for it.

Sure, there's base variation. But there's a difference between saying, "A win is a win," and saying, "Decks perform well consistently whereas other decks turn out to be flavor-of-the-week. Therefore, some decks are just inherently better than others." Dragon Stompy and White Stax won tournaments - big tournaments - but that doesn't stop them from being much worse as decks than Counterbalance with Natural Order, or Tendrils.

Why do you think half the decks in the format pray they don't run into combo? Because combo fucking runs them over. Zoo basically cannot win against Tendrils; a Zoo player that meets Tendrils in the first three rounds is likely to lose. Zoo basically cannot beat a Lands player who knows how his deck actually works; a Zoo deck that meets Lands in the first three rounds is likely to lose. There are lots of "Zoo basically cannot beats" out there, even if there are lots of "Zoo basically goldfishes" as well. The point of this article is that there's no reason to play a deck that pretty much autoloses to all of the format's boogeymen when you could just play the boogeyman and goldfish the popular decks. You should know this, as someone who places such a high premium on statistics.

Setting up a theoretical framework over a statistical basis and then using it to address questions of tournament preparation is OF COURSE going to be divorced from tournament results. He's saying, "Look, these decks are popular. They do one thing, and they do it well: they attack. If you play a deck that stops that, or doesn't care about that, you autowin against one-trick-horse decks that show up and just expect to red zone everyone to death." There's a reason that using a Zerg Rush was bad in Starcraft: you devote a bunch of resources to it, and if the other guy is even remotely prepared for it, it fails and then you're in a bad spot because you micromanaged your Zerglings instead of climbing the tech tree and now the other guy is sending his doods in to slam your ass for it. Nice way to fail your all-in, broski.

Zoo and Goblins are exactly the same way. The point of the article is that you should play the decks Zoo and Goblins auto-lose to because playing Zoo and Goblins means you'll autolose to decks that aren't impressed by guys turning sideways. It's got fucking nothing to do with what won the last SCG Open and everything to do with individual matchups.

If I were a Zoo player in an SCG tournament, I would take great confidence in the fact that ANT decks perform badly. With each win, your chances of facing a combo deck diminish. I would not be very concerned about the presence of ANT in the field at all, past the first two rounds.

The fact that the ANT v. Zoo matchups is greatly in favor of ANT, which the statistics bear out, is virtually irrellevant to me because I don't expect to face it. I expect that, on average, I will win my first couple of rounds, and then bypass the Combo bracket altogether.

And, what's more, the more I win, the more I'd feel confident about winning, since I'll be facing Merfolk and other blue decks that Zoo stastistically does well against.

You can't isolate a matchup and say: don't play those decks. Dredge and ANT decks do very poorly, as a general rule, at the SCG tournaments. For that reason, it makes sense to play decks that are soft to them, if those decks are strong against other 'good' decks, like Merfolk and CounterTop.

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 06:12 PM

If I were a Zoo player in an SCG tournament, I would take great confidence in the fact that ANT decks perform badly. With each win, your chances of facing a combo deck diminish. I would not be very concerned about the presence of ANT in the field at all, past the first two rounds.

The fact that the ANT v. Zoo matchups is greatly in favor of ANT, which the statistics bear out, is virtually irrellevant to me because I don't expect to face it. I expect that, on average, I will win my first couple of rounds, and then bypass the Combo bracket altogether.

And, what's more, the more I win, the more I'd feel confident about winning, since I'll be facing Merfolk and other blue decks that Zoo stastistically does well against.

You can't isolate a matchup and say: don't play those decks. Dredge and ANT decks do very poorly, as a general rule, at the SCG tournaments. For that reason, it makes sense to play decks that are soft to them, if those decks are strong against other 'good' decks, like Merfolk and CounterTop.
So? Basically what you're saying is, "A deck is not good because if I get lucky with my pairings I won't have to face it." Okay, sure. But what if you don't get lucky? What if you lose to ANT/Lands/Enchantress/Aggro Loam/Dredge in round 1? What happens if you get stuck in the crowd of bad matchups running the middle tables? Nice strategy.

Keep in mind that storm combo is not the only deck Zoo loses to. Enchantress and Lands do quite well in the 5ks, and they also goldfish Zoo decks.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 06:12 PM

I thought the rest of it was pretty implicit, but it seems I should be more clear in the future.

The arbitrary standard of "six rounds is a real tournament" doesn't actually extend to any sort of actual math. I wrote an article for ChannelFireball a while ago about the number of games you need to achieve any sort of confidence. Your articles are fine for what they are, but they're not particularly rigorous. Spaniel trolled Sylva's forums on this point for a while, and while he wasn't particularly polite about it, his argument was valid.

Two things:

1) 6 rounds actually does have a logic behind it. If you are looking at top 8 data, having 6 rounds means that a player must have actually played 5 tournament matches. With a 5 round tournament, a player can win 3 rounds, draw the final two, and make top 8. But I've never claimed that that makes a 'real tournament,' it just gives more confidence that that deck can win against more decks, on average. If the data were there, I'd love it to be more rigorous, and choose something like 128+ players. But there are very few Vintage tournaments of that size, and not enough Legacy tournaments.

2) There is someone who posts on these forums who does aggregate all of the legacy tournament data, in a very rigorous way. I can't find the link, but I think he uses bimonthly touranment data.

morgan_coke

04-08-2010, 06:14 PM

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 06:16 PM

So? Basically what you're saying is, "A deck is not good because if I get lucky with my pairings I won't have to face it." Okay, sure. But what if you don't get lucky? What if you lose to ANT/Lands/Enchantress/Aggro Loam/Dredge in round 1? What happens if you get stuck in the crowd of bad matchups running the middle tables? Nice strategy.

Keep in mind that storm combo is not the only deck Zoo loses to. Enchantress and Lands do quite well in the 5ks, and they also goldfish Zoo decks.

My example was illustrative, but it's not about luck, it's about math. It's about odds. It's about metagame positioning with a recognting of metagame dyanmics.

You play the odds. If you know with a great deal of certainty that ANT is going to do poorly, based upon the fact that it generally does, than it's not luck that you won't face it. If the 'auto,loss decks" like Belcher, ANT, etc make up less than 20% of the total field, your chances of facing them in round one is less than 20%. And with each tournament victory, your chances of facing them diminishes.

That's why Zoo decks win, and have won. And, that's why they are a perfectly reasonable choice, despite what the author of this article claims.

Rico Suave

04-08-2010, 07:03 PM

Then it's not the best deck. If the deck is so hard to play that no one can play it to 100% potential, and the best pilots in the world are playing it to 80%, then 80% is where it's powerlevel is. Because who gives a f*** about 100% potential if none of your opponents can ever actually reach it? Potential /= results.

You have to keep in mind that even if ANT is not played to its full potential, it is still better than anything else. I'd wager most players aren't even at 50%, which is why the deck fails so often in tournament play.

This is false. I used to hear this same argument about aggro in T1, often in conjuction with "the best players play blue". The idea that aggro rewards mindless play is silly. I can't speak for Zoo from experience, because I don't play Naya Zoo on any sort of regular basis. But I played Sligh in T1 for several years, and I learned that while there are less decisions per game, making the correct decision can be equally important. I learned to pick up a lot of games that the mindless player would've left out there by playing my threats in the correct order, learning what constituted over-extending, etc. In fact, I even wrote an article about it on SCG (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/3538_Playing_Aggro_The_Subtle_Errors_You_Can_make.html). It's not a great article, but I've been advocating the idea that aggressive decks can be skill intensive for years.

I never said Zoo can't be skill intensive. The difference is one small mistake with Zoo results in a slightly worse game, but one small mistake while playing storm loses the game entirely. And this is further compounded by having to make a lot more decisions in any particular game than any Zoo deck will ever face.

DrJones

04-08-2010, 08:09 PM

Zoo is a good deck choice. In fact, it's the one putting the most results in Top 8 according to the data I have. The article seems to imply that attacking is a bad strategy when combo decks totally crush you, that you should fear combo decks and play Force of Will. And that's the mistake in the reasoning.

Right now, you shouldn't fear the combo decks that kill you in turn 1 and 2 in legacy. You should fear the decks that run Force of Will.

That's because these are the decks that time and time again take 3-5 Top 8 slots in every tournament. Combo decks like ANT that depend on a key spell are horrible against Force of Will, as shown by the AnT pairings on Smmenen's 50 legacy decks article. In fact, the more lopsided the power between cards in your deck, and the more dependant on "key cards" you are, the worse you will do against permission/tempo decks. However, if all your cards are about the same power level, and they are independent of each other, permission will become "yet another removal spell" instead of backbreaking pain.

Combo is not played much not because it's hard to play correctly, but because it loses to FoW, and FoW is played a ton in a lot of succesful decks. And FoW is not played due to fear of combo, but because it's stupidly powerful. Players won't stop playing FoW if no one plays combo.

So the article should better read "playing combo is bad unless you are playing Force of Will". At least attacking has a chance against blue.

frogboy

04-08-2010, 08:15 PM

Players won't stop playing FoW the day no one plays combo.

I board out Force of Will against almost every single noncombo deck because paying a life and a Brainstorm to counter something stupid like Qasali Pridemage is not an awesome way to win games.

GtF

04-08-2010, 08:32 PM

I board out Force of Will against almost every single noncombo deck because paying a life and a Brainstorm to counter something stupid like Qasali Pridemage is not an awesome way to win games.

This just demonstrates why attacking is reasonable in legacy. It makes those maindeck force of wills that are so prevalent that much less good.
The format is clearly at a pretty good equilibrium between combo, counterbalance, and zoo/attack decks/, with lots of other decks in between as viable metagame calls. It is one of the most diverse metagames I have ever seen in any format. It is by far more diverse and open than extended or standard (and probably vintage too). The results that show this aren't some outlier tournament, like a couple of 30-mans that a guy won twice with dredge. They are two massive GPs and a host of 5Ks. You can look at Top 8 decks OR you can look at total matches. Either way you look at it, almost any way you look at it, you get the same results. The only way you can conclude anything else is if you don't look at it at all.
If you claim all results are null and void, then yes, you can talk people into believing that combo dominates legacy. But it still won't be true when you actually sit down to play, and you'll wish you played "fair" cards like 3/3s for 1 and 4/5s for 2.

walkerdog

04-08-2010, 09:03 PM

Meekrab

04-08-2010, 10:37 PM

I guess I disagree a little with the idea that Zoo is fair, at least totally. How is playing a 3/3 for one mana fair? Similiarly, cards like lightning bolt, Goyf, and PoP aren't exactly fair either. Path is straight cheats when all you need to do is kill your opponent and remove any blocker that W can. Like, taken part-by-part, zoo might be a little fair, but on the whole, it is a pretty unfair deck, if only in it's consistency.
One mana for a 3/3 is fair because other decks in the format are paying 1U, Discard a Stifle for a 12/12 trampler or BB for a 5/5 flyer. And I sorta just laughed out loud when you tried to argue that Lightning Bolt isn't a fair card. Granted, it exerts upward pressure on the minimum quality of creatures that can be reasonably played (basically anything that costs 2 better have an ass of >3 or be really broken, like Dark Confidant) but a metagame full of storm combo, reanimator, chalice aggro etc, "unfair" decks exert downward pressure on the viability of any strategy that just plays cheap men, removes your blockers, and attacks. Zoo happens to be really really efficient at that strategy, which is why it remains good, while other decks that do largely the same thing are in the New+Developmental forum.

Aggro_zombies

04-08-2010, 10:45 PM

I guess I disagree a little with the idea that Zoo is fair, at least totally. How is playing a 3/3 for one mana fair? Similiarly, cards like lightning bolt, Goyf, and PoP aren't exactly fair either. Path is straight cheats when all you need to do is kill your opponent and remove any blocker that W can. Like, taken part-by-part, zoo might be a little fair, but on the whole, it is a pretty unfair deck, if only in it's consistency.
No, Zoo is just hyper-efficient. Decks that are unfair are decks that win on turns 2-3 (storm), "draw" six or more cards every turn (Dredge), prevent the opponent from playing most of his spells (Counterbalance, Iona), lock the opponent's mana out while destroying or negating all of his creatures thanks to the use of a green Ancestral Recall (Lands), or pay :g: to draw 2+ cards and put a 4/4 Angel into play while preventing the opponent from attacking or even targeting anything (Enchantress) - just to name a few. I fail to see how a one mana 3/3 is in the same league as ignoring your opponent for two turns and then just winning.

Smmenen

04-08-2010, 11:01 PM

No, Zoo is just hyper-efficient. Decks that are unfair are decks that win on turns 2-3 (storm), "draw" six or more cards every turn (Dredge), prevent the opponent from playing most of his spells (Counterbalance, Iona), lock the opponent's mana out while destroying or negating all of his creatures thanks to the use of a green Ancestral Recall (Lands), or pay :g: to draw 2+ cards and put a 4/4 Angel into play while preventing the opponent from attacking or even targeting anything (Enchantress) - just to name a few. I fail to see how a one mana 3/3 is in the same league as ignoring your opponent for two turns and then just winning.

I would say the opposite. Dredge and Storm are very fair because they are susceptible to silver bullet strategies. In the former case, Dredge's ability to win decreases as you increase the amount of hate. A single card, like Leyline of the Void or Ethersworn Canonist can stop Dredge and Storm, respectively. Similarly, Enchantress is fair since a single card can wipe out its entire board: Reverent Silence, etc.

As I said before, "Fair" is inherently subjective. It's much harder, I would argue, to 'hate out' zoo than Storm or Dredge or Enchantress. Some of the best cards, like Moat, don't even work because of Pridemage.

My point is that 'fair' is an inherently subjective determination and mostly perceptual rather than empirical.

walkerdog

04-08-2010, 11:57 PM

Meekrab

04-08-2010, 11:58 PM

I think this is just a case where Smmenen uses 'fair' to mean a totally different thing from just about everyone else in magic, because he's used to Vintage where every deck is 'unfair'.

Smmenen

04-09-2010, 12:24 AM

I think this is just a case where Smmenen uses 'fair' to mean a totally different thing from just about everyone else in magic, because he's used to Vintage where every deck is 'unfair'.

Ha! I'm being a little bit contrarian to make a point. Of course I don't think Zoo is less fair than Dredge or ANT.

My point is that fairness is subjective and relative.

Let's say your are playing counterbalance-Goyf. Which deck would you feel is more fair, if you were paired against it? A Merfolk deck with Back to Basics and Aether Vial, or Belcher?

Me, I'd rather face the Belcher deck. It can win on turn one, but I have Force of Will and Daze, and plenty o good sb hate. The Merfolk deck uses cards like Aether Vial, which seems far more unfair when I'm playing Counterbalance. The best I can do to hate on it is a 5 mana creature.

Beyond decks that are truly ridiculous (like Flash), fairness is largely subjective and perceptual. Most people have ideas that fast combo decks are unfair, but in legacy, those combo decks don't do very well in the US (caveat: historically, at least), and are largely susceptible to single bullet strategies, which they have to spend enormous resources combating, unsuccessfully.

There are no decks even remotely as broken as Flash in Legacy.

wcm8

04-09-2010, 12:46 AM

There have been "unfair" strategies since Alpha, what with the Power 9, Channel/Fireball, etc. Even ridiculous card drawing engines have been around for quite some time, eg: Necropotence. I think dredge is the only deck where the strategy is wildly different from the way typical Magic is played, since you can function without any lands and are essentially playing/drawing into or from the graveyard. Combo still revolves around playing lands, drawing cards, and casting spells, albeit in a very narrowly constructed way that hopes to kill early. The deck is very finely tuned to go off early, but individually none of the cards are extremely 'unfair'.

Zoo is capable of winning on the 4th turn unimpeded, and doesn't suffer nearly as often from a bad opening 7 as many other decks. Sure, it gets screwed by some decks, but that's the price you pay for consistency. You will see Zoo get into the top 8 a lot, because there will likely won't be as many games when the pilots had to mull down to 6/5. That's a huge advantage to the deck, whether or not it has a great matchup vs. certain other strategies.

Regarding 'fairness': Playing Iona with mana is fair. Playing Iona on turn two with Exhume is hard, but arguably fair. However, tutors make this happen much more consistently, and I think if any cards could be considered "unfair" in Legacy, it's the cheap tutors. Mystical, Infernal, Entomb, etc.. Especially since Legacy does not have a restricted list, combo decks like Reanimator or ANT are able to get their strategies going almost just as consistently as a deck like Zoo. Randomness is part of the game, and having multiple cards that eliminate that portion of the game are more broken I feel that the combo itself. Especially if it only costs 1 and is an instant. Reanimator would arguably be a 'fairer' deck if instead of Entomb it only had Buried Alive (but then, it would also be far, far less competitive). Diabolic tutor is a 'fixed' version of Demonic. It's not really the mechanic so much as the cost/benefit ratio.

However, you are playing Legacy, and if you want a more 'fair' format, as others have suggested you should play Limited or Standard.

Vacrix

04-09-2010, 01:04 AM

If combo were as dangerous as its made out to be, then WoTC would give Stax another Trinisphere. Its not. GP Madrid is a testament to the format's balance.

Besides, ANT and Belcher are dumb combo decks that require little skill to play. I honestly wish WoTC never printed Ad Nauseum. It has made Storm combo far too easy to play. It used to be one of the harder decks in the format to play. Thats no longer the case. Sure its not unfair, but its dumb when a noob makes it to top8 just because he can do a little addition with Ad Nausuem.

majikal

04-09-2010, 01:12 AM

Besides, ANT and Belcher are dumb combo decks that require little skill to play. I honestly wish WoTC never printed Ad Nauseum. It has made Storm combo far too easy to play. It used to be one of the harder decks in the format to play. Thats no longer the case. Sure its not unfair, but its dumb when a noob makes it to top8 just because he can do a little addition with Ad Nausuem.
ANT is extremely skill-intensive, not so much in that it requires skilled interaction with your opponent, but in the sense that you can just as easily kill yourself as win with it. Not many people can play the deck well for this reason.

SpeedOfDark

04-09-2010, 01:26 AM

All the talk about "fairness" is utter nonesense. Its a subjective word that everyone perceives to mean different things. If you want to argue, at least be specific and use terms like "deck interaction" or "goldfish speed."

Personally, I don't see any problem with combo in legacy at the moment. Nor do I think it will become a significant problem any time down the road. If it did, WotC could just print some stronger combo hate. For example, imagine a 1 mana creature with shroud and rule of law's rules text? ;p

Vacrix

04-09-2010, 01:34 AM

ANT is extremely skill-intensive, not so much in that it requires skilled interaction with your opponent, but in the sense that you can just as easily kill yourself as win with it. Not many people can play the deck well for this reason.

Saito's list is extremely narrow in it's function and far more linear than NLS. With Saito's ANT you count to at least 5, maybe 7, then try to win. Ideally, you cast a discard spell before then, but if not, you don't really have much of a choice as you'll quickly lose if you don't go off. In some ways, it's like Belcher, but a turn slower with more resilience to mass removal.

Try playing with Doomsday piles and then tell me that ANT is skill intensive. I believe that decks as powerful as storm combo shouldn't be easy to play. Generic ANT lists are a step up from Belcher. Sure you can draw too many cards playing Ad Nauseum, and you can forget to attack while playing Zoo or Goblins. The point is that Ad Naueum leaves far more room for error, like Belcher, making it a much more dangerous card. Doomsday is arguably more dangerous than Ad Nausuem. The difference is that its significantly harder to play with. Draw4's in SI are also an amazing draw engine and you can kill yourself playing with them too, but chaining Draw4's together is much more difficult than resolving one draw 10.

frogboy

04-09-2010, 01:37 AM

Ha! I'm being a little bit contrarian to make a point. Of course I don't think Zoo is less fair than Dredge or ANT.

My point is that fairness is subjective and relative.

I'm trying to phrase this without sounding like a jackass, but I didn't realize what you were saying. I, and I imagine most people, take "fairness" to mean a strategy that isn't trying to cheat or break any fundamental rules. It got coined a few years back when Flores kept trying to play Ravenous Baloth in Extended. I misconstrued your meaning of "fairness" and thought you were being willfully obtuse; perhaps others did as well. It might be easier for you to convey your thoughts in the future while avoiding terminology that is generally accepted to have a different connotation than what you are trying to say.

I see your point. I think our perceptions of the effectiveness of most bullets varies, though.

also, edit: re: Tendrils and being skill intensive: If Saito doesn't think he's playing a deck at maximum proficiency, neither is some child who just picked up the deck.

editing again for v-v-v-value:
Zoo is capable of winning on the 4th turn unimpeded, and doesn't suffer nearly as often from a bad opening 7 as many other decks.

This might be a better conversation for a different thread, but when I play Zoo in Standard and Extended I feel like I can't ever win a game if I don't have a one-drop. Legacy Zoo only plays twelve, and Lavamancer is hardly a respectable clock. I find Zoo quite susceptible to variance in opening hands for this reason. Like, turn one Nacatl forces your opponent to play completely differently from turn one Lavamancer, or even Ape.

Vacrix

04-09-2010, 01:43 AM

Tendrils and being skill intensive: If Saito doesn't think he's playing a deck at maximum proficiency, neither is some child who just picked up the deck.
I heard that Saito fucked up and killed himself twice. When he had the win, he kept drawing. Hardly proficient sir.

hungryLIKEALION

04-09-2010, 02:00 AM

This might be a better conversation for a different thread, but when I play Zoo in Standard and Extended I feel like I can't ever win a game if I don't have a one-drop. Legacy Zoo only plays twelve, and Lavamancer is hardly a respectable clock. I find Zoo quite susceptible to variance in opening hands for this reason. Like, turn one Nacatl forces your opponent to play completely differently from turn one Lavamancer, or even Ape.
Not to sound snarky, but maybe you just suck at playing Zoo. ;p I've won a set of Seas and a set of Trops with Zoo at large tournaments, and while I am no longer playing the deck currently, I feel that the fact that it is constantly top 8ing and winning events should be more than enough to prove that it's an easily viable choice.

frogboy

04-09-2010, 02:17 AM

Not to sound snarky, but maybe you just suck at playing Zoo. ;p I've won a set of Seas and a set of Trops with Zoo at large tournaments, and while I am no longer playing the deck currently, I feel that the fact that it is constantly top 8ing and winning events should be more than enough to prove that it's an easily viable choice.

There is no way this is not going to devolve into some sort of e-peen contest, but suffice it to say I am not a drooling moron and have played beatdown decks before.

hungryLIKEALION

04-09-2010, 02:25 AM

There is no way this is not going to devolve into some sort of e-peen contest, but suffice it to say I am not a drooling moron and have played beatdown decks before.

Given that there was a ;p there I think you'd be able to interpret that I did not, in fact, think you were a drooling moron who has never played beatdown decks before.

I do, however, think you don't know what unplayable means, given that you're calling one of the most successful archetypes in the format such.

Amon Amarth

04-09-2010, 05:06 AM

Time was you could change decks during a tournament between the Swiss and the top8. Mike Long saw that everyone in the top8 was playing Necro, so he switched out his black deck for a red green deck with black vises, stone rains and howling mines. Guess who won the top8?

Red/Green was a weaker deck overall, but Long picked a better meta deck, and won the tournament. In the top8 field of necro, his "weak, fair" red/green deck was the strongest because it beat necro, which was all he played.

I remember putting up some truly absurd winning %'s during the reign of Affinity/Tooth standard with a red/green deck that did two things: destroy lands and destroy artifacts. Was it weaker in a void than both affinity and tooth? Absolutely. Did it win a lot, making it a better deck? You betcha.

The point of competitive magic IS NOT building the best deck in the abstract. It's building the deck that wins the most. Which is usually going to be the deck thats best against your oppoents' deck.

This.

I think metagaming is being somewhat marginalized here. I believe that it is one of the most important skills a deckbuilder can master. For example, lets look at the oft mentioned Goblins deck from the Orlando Open. He figured Lands was going to be on the upswing and then modified his MD and SB accordingly. This paid dividends as he played against the deck 3 times and won every match, even though his deck was much less "fair". I think the concept of fairness is being really blown out of proportion too. Piloting a deck like ANT, which isn't known for it's small decision trees and ease of play, into a sea of CB and Aggro-Control is going to be in a world of disappoint.

Consistency is one of merits of non-FoW aggro decks. Very few decks can perform as well as Zoo and Goblins round after round. While I wouldn't label pure aggro decks as simple to play, they sure are a hell of a lot less complex to play than some Combo decks. Perhaps I'm biased but I'm partial to decks that don't lose to themselves as well. Randomly losing games and not being able to really do anything about it is a very frustrating feeling.

jrsthethird

04-09-2010, 06:49 AM

Randomly losing games and not being able to really do anything about it is a very frustrating feeling.

This is why I hate combo decks.

pi4meterftw

04-09-2010, 07:07 AM

kinda

04-09-2010, 07:35 AM

You show up to a tournament without playing blue= your own risk. I don't see how people even have the gall to complain about combo when they refuse to run blue, when at the same time people are like: You know what I should do? I should splash green for tarmogoyf! Yeah! Also, red for REB. RAWRAWRAWR

Blue decks seem to enjoy a fair (Landstill, FS) to heavily advantageous (UWT, merfolk, CB/top) match against combo.

And it's not even as if not playing blue is out of the question. Zoo decks adjusted to beat combo might even enjoy a fair match, were it to run things like null rod and thorn of amethyst. Zoo can also burn the opponent out between AdN and tendrils.

The colors aren't equal, nor do they have to be. It's kind of like how it works with people, except this analogy probably won't work for you because most people these days support this ridiculous post-modern "everybody can be right!" philosophy. Of course, all this is only IMO LOLOLOL.

If for some reason, you find this debatable, you should respond quoting this post with logic, as opposed to extrapolations of my reasoning/ other strawman arguments, comparisons (Especially the ridiculous argument where you treat my argument like a mad-libs and replace words. I made my argument with my words, there's no reason to suppose you can do a substitution and get anything meaningful), or opinions. If you really have a legitimate reason I'm wrong, you should be able to state it as cold hard reasoned fact, without having to resort to analogies.

1) I'm glad you've taken a philosophy class, :D.

2) Merfolk/uw tempo harldy have a "heavily advantageous" match against combo...merfolk runs 4 relevant (force of will) and 8 somewhat relevent (cursecatcher/daze) cards that can be played around after duress/seize (a t1 vial can make standstill relevant too)...and normally dedicate no sb slots to combo. ANT runs 6-12 very relevant protection spells plus cantrips/tutors...and sometimes has relevant sb cards.

Ok my point, @ " don't see how people even have the gall to complain about combo when they refuse to run blue"...I would go as far as to say that stax has a better combo matchup than merfolk...especially g1 when the ant player won't know to race and discard is irrelevent as 3sphere and chalice are the first desired plays. Most lists I've seen don't have anti-combo cards in the board except suppression field (which I don't understand)...but 3-4 mb trap forcing the ant player to keep in its discard and not go off w/o protection definately makes the makes the match favorable for stax.

Tinefol

04-09-2010, 07:45 AM

From my experience, Landstill's match up against ANT is nightmarish preboard. They have like all the time in the world to assemble the combo and protection. Postboard it only gets better if you happen to draw into your hate pieces (Canonist/MM) and also have the means to protect them (CS/FoW).

Merfolk are better than Landstill preboard, because of faster clock and Daze/Cursecatcher, but its still isn't that good, maybe slightly favorable. And their S/B adds nothing there. UWT on other hand, has anti combo S/B, the means to protect it, and a good clock.

Smmenen

04-09-2010, 11:09 AM

This.

I think metagaming is being somewhat marginalized here. I believe that it is one of the most important skills a deckbuilder can master. For example, lets look at the oft mentioned Goblins deck from the Orlando Open. He figured Lands was going to be on the upswing and then modified his MD and SB accordingly. This paid dividends as he played against the deck 3 times and won every match, even though his deck was much less "fair". I think the concept of fairness is being really blown out of proportion too. Piloting a deck like ANT, which isn't known for it's small decision trees and ease of play, into a sea of CB and Aggro-Control is going to be in a world of disappoint.

Consistency is one of merits of non-FoW aggro decks. Very few decks can perform as well as Zoo and Goblins round after round. While I wouldn't label pure aggro decks as simple to play, they sure are a hell of a lot less complex to play than some Combo decks. Perhaps I'm biased but I'm partial to decks that don't lose to themselves as well. Randomly losing games and not being able to really do anything about it is a very frustrating feeling.

Very well put.

That's exactly why I wrote the article I wrote this week on the Myth of Power: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17077-[Premium-Article]-Eternal-Issues

Forbiddian

04-09-2010, 11:49 AM

2) Merfolk/uw tempo harldy have a "heavily advantageous" match against combo...merfolk runs 4 relevant (force of will) and 8 somewhat relevent (cursecatcher/daze) cards that can be played around after duress/seize (a t1 vial can make standstill relevant too)...and normally dedicate no sb slots to combo. ANT runs 6-12 very relevant protection spells plus cantrips/tutors...and sometimes has relevant sb cards.

I've never lost to any storm combo deck in a tournament. I'm I think 3-0 (and more if you count the Salvation Tournament, which I don't). Other people have had very similar experiences from what they've been reporting back to me.

Other people are 7-2 vs. Storm Combo (5-1 vs. Black Storm variants, 2-1 vs. Belcher) in tournament reports that they've reported back to me. See http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?15562-[Deck]-UW-Tempo

I really doubt that you've practiced the matchup at all. The people who have all say that UW Tempo crushes the hell out of storm combo (including testing results). I mean, it's to the point where when I go on Magic Workstation and run into Picelli89 (a reasonably well-known Storm Combo player), and he goes, "Damn, ran into the nightmare matchup. Whatever, I don't have any other decks, I'll just see how it goes."

@Smennen: I like your point about fairness, although you are rejecting Frogboy's definition, it's still a strong point: It goes to show that "fair decks" can still have very good matchups against unfair decks. I think Frogboy has a reasonably argument in theory, but we simply DO NOT see the theory acted out anywhere, in any form. Zoo is continuing to perform average. Ichorid is continuing to fail. ANT is also winning, but not very well beyond any other reasonably good deck.

Other people have mentioned that 1U: Make a 12/12 discard a card is "unfair" but then is 1WG: target player pays 1U (and sometimes a tutor), and discards two cards fair either? One of the advantages of Zoo, and why it can continue to win, is that it's very difficult to answer its creatures advantageously. Whereas a Force of Will can take out 3-4+ cards out of Ad Nauseam's hand. It doesn't have any broken combos, but you also can't make big gains by taking out one part of it.

The way magic is balanced, and the way linearity/non-linearity works is that there's a trade-off for trying to do something broken. If you're working an exponential function and someone sets you back a bit, it can stifle your development. If you're more linear, you don't care so much.

In this way, if you try to do something broken (very non-linear, using cards in ways they weren't designed to be used), you open yourself up to answers stopping multiple cards and more (in ways the answers weren't designed to be used, either). The only time that breaks down is when the win condition comes down faster than the answers (which we saw for e.g. Flash Hulk, which could go off on turn 2 very consistently and had answers of its own).

Obviously Dredge plays in an unfair way, being able to "draw" like 3+ cards per turn and then use them without any mana cost. But 0 for a better-than-Timewalk is also unfair (Tormod's Crypt). So is B for a "Your opponent can't do anything except try to answer this spell" (Planar Void). So is 0 for the same effect (Leyline).

The problem that we're running into is that there are only a finite number of board slots, and that decks like Dredge and ANT start out unfair and must be answered by playing unfair spells of your own. So quite possibly (although it DEFINITELY HAS NOT HAPPENED YET from empirical evidence), in the future, it'll be impossible to just "board in hate" since there are too many decks that require hate to answer.

Phoenix Ignition

04-09-2010, 12:08 PM

troopatroop

04-09-2010, 12:42 PM

My metagame is about half countertop, 1/4 merfolk, and 1/4 other decks, and I can tell you that every time someone gets the balls to play Combo they get beaten mercilessly into the 0-X bracket. The deck is not broken.

Sounds like someone should pick up Zoo.

mossivo1986

04-09-2010, 12:47 PM

I think alot of people have to differentiate what combo your playing against. ANT, TES, And fetchland tendrills are all very VERY different decks and the people who are talking about results need to test their skills against better pilots before they shout "well I haven't lost to storm combo in sanctioned events, EVER hahaha." With that said there are some things to note.

1 storm combo can work through some pretty brutal situations, far worse then your daze cursecatcher force hand.
2 the speed of the deck and the consistency of the deck greatly differ from storm archtype- storm archtype. Just because your beating 1, doesn't your beating them all.
3 Storm combo is also REDICULOUSLY difficult to play in alot of scenarios. This is why many people just fail with it. It took me a year of playing Bryant Cook's EDH storm combo list to start crunching the numbers and card selection before I even picked up his archtype, and then to boot I didn't like his archtype, so I moved on to Fetchland Tendrils; for which I happen to like a hell of alot more.
I hope this was helpful.

Pinder

04-09-2010, 01:59 PM

A single card, like Leyline of the Void or Ethersworn Canonist can stop Dredge and Storm, respectively.

I don't know where people keep getting this idea that they can drop a single piece of hate and then sit back and smile, knowing they have the game won. Do people not realize that these decks play ways to remove these things? Sure these things will slow them down some, but unless you're applying fairly significant pressure or backing it up with, I dunno, Force of Will or something, then all it will do is make them win a turn later when they've removed your hate.

Similarly, Enchantress is fair since a single card can wipe out its entire board: Reverent Silence, etc.

You know Replenish got unbanned, right?

Smmenen

04-09-2010, 02:18 PM

I don't know where people keep getting this idea that they can drop a single piece of hate and then sit back and smile, knowing they have the game won.

Just to be clear, I never said that. nor did I imply as much.

Pinder

04-09-2010, 03:01 PM

Just to be clear, I never said that. nor did I imply as much.

A single card, like Leyline of the Void or Ethersworn Canonist can stop Dredge and Storm, respectively.

To be fair, that might not be what you meant, but it certainly looks like it's what you said.

Smmenen

04-09-2010, 03:17 PM

To be fair, that might not be what you meant, but it certainly looks like it's what you said.

I said "can" win the game, not will. Just like COP Red can beat Burn or Moat can beat CounterTop-Progenitus. It doesn't mean that either card will win the game, just that it can. I am aware of the ways in which Combo can beat/address answers. Ditto with Vintage Dredge. Leyline of the Void is answered out of the sideboard with Chain of Vapor/Nature's claim, but that doesn't make it not a silver bullet. Obviously, Silver bullets generally have answers. But we call them silver bullets because of their high degree of effectiveness.

I was careful when I wrote what you quoted not to say that they will always win. I was using precise language.

Also, FYI, a chart that I made from SCG Richmond (240 players):

http://www.starcitygames.com/images/article/03082010menendian5.jpg

From this article: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/18922_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Chapin_Was_Right_A_Legacy_Result_Overview.html

Here's how you read the chart. This chart is top X penetration, meaning the percentage of the archetype in the field to make top x, NOT the % of the Top X represented by archetype. it's a subtle distinction. Let me explain with an example:

Take a look at ANT under Top 64. It says 25%. that means that 25% of the ANT decks in the field made top 64. NOT that 25% of the top 64 was ANT.

SpikeyMikey

04-09-2010, 04:39 PM

I said "can" win the game, not will. Just like COP Red can beat Burn or Moat can beat CounterTop-Progenitus. It doesn't mean that either card will win the game, just that it can. I am aware of the ways in which Combo can beat/address answers. Ditto with Vintage Dredge. Leyline of the Void is answered out of the sideboard with Chain of Vapor/Nature's claim, but that doesn't make it not a silver bullet. Obviously, Silver bullets generally have answers. But we call them silver bullets because of their high degree of effectiveness.

I was careful when I wrote what you quoted not to say that they will always win. I was using precise language.

Also, FYI, a chart that I made from SCG Richmond (240 players):

http://www.starcitygames.com/images/article/03082010menendian5.jpg

From this article: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/18922_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Chapin_Was_Right_A_Legacy_Result_Overview.html

Here's how you read the chart. This chart is top X penetration, meaning the percentage of the archetype in the field to make top x, NOT the % of the Top X represented by archetype. it's a subtle distinction. Let me explain with an example:

Take a look at ANT under Top 64. It says 25%. that means that 25% of the ANT decks in the field made top 64. NOT that 25% of the top 64 was ANT.

But, but, Steve... If top 64 is 27% of all the decks played and only 25% of AnT made T64, that'd mean that AnT is underperforming against the field. It would be a worse than average deck choice.

Smmenen

04-09-2010, 04:47 PM

;)

SMR0079

04-09-2010, 05:32 PM

But, but, Steve... If top 64 is 27% of all the decks played and only 25% of AnT made T64, that'd mean that AnT is underperforming against the field. It would be a worse than average deck choice.

That's his point.

However, Madrid proved that in the hands of the right pilot it's one of the best decks.

Steve,

Those top x percentage graphs are a great resource. I would love to see that kind of data compiled for all of the SCGs other large events combined.

I think your point about metagaming and playing the odds is valid, I posted a similiar responce in the SCG forum. Max's article is still one of my favorites to come out though becsaue he challenges the status quo and offers insights that are masked by tournament data.

jrsthethird

04-09-2010, 06:01 PM

I for one would love to see some more penetration Steve.

Lothian

04-09-2010, 06:13 PM

Attacking has always been miserable in Magic, except in standard.
Can you imagine if balance was un-banned?

The current archetype pie is as good as ever in Legacy and Tarmogoyf was only 4 times in the Madrid top 4, rightly keeping his head for the moment..

Few years back you would have 5 different decks in the top 64.

@Smmenen

I got to know your Type 1 articles for few years now, and I really appreciate your involvement in Magic and your own foray into the Legacy scene. I only wish I was a type 1 player. I have 1 question on the AnT deck for you:

Since AnT is packed with 4 restricted Type 1 cards (Brainstorm, Lotus Petal, LED, Mystical Tutor), do you think AnT Legacy would have any chance against the Type 1 meta?

I am actually wondering if constant un-banning will lead to Legacy over-powering Type 1 (like flash was a funny one, and Entomb has put back reanimator on the top of the pile)

Forbiddian

04-09-2010, 06:32 PM

Since AnT is packed with 4 restricted Type 1 cards (Brainstorm, Lotus Petal, LED, Mystical Tutor), do you think AnT Legacy would have any chance against the Type 1 meta?

If you think for 1 second, you'll realize that Mystical tutor isn't "restricted" relative to Legacy.

You lose 3 copies of Mystical, but you pick up Vampiric and Seal that are much better and Demonic Tutor.
You lose 3 copies of Lotus Petal, but you pick up 5 real moxen (and a lotus).
You lose 3 copies of LED, but you pick up Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc.

The decks in Vintage are much faster, have a lot more consistency, and don't lose as much running into hate as the decks in Legacy. Basically strictly better. Legacy decks survive because the rest of the format is weaker and people don't do things like maindeck Null Rod, etc.

EDIT: At Stephen: I think people would be surprised to see the results if you'd included UW Tempo in your analysis.

SpikeyMikey

04-09-2010, 06:56 PM

That's his point.

However, Madrid proved that in the hands of the right pilot it's one of the best decks.

Steve,

Those top x percentage graphs are a great resource. I would love to see that kind of data compiled for all of the SCGs other large events combined.

I think your point about metagaming and playing the odds is valid, I posted a similiar responce in the SCG forum. Max's article is still one of my favorites to come out though becsaue he challenges the status quo and offers insights that are masked by tournament data.

I would think that the tournament data would be enlightening, not obscuring.

Just to play devil's advocate, how does that prove it's one of the best? Isn't it possible that if he'd been playing another deck he'd have still made the finals but won?

Justin

04-09-2010, 07:24 PM

And it's not even as if not playing blue is out of the question. Zoo decks adjusted to beat combo might even enjoy a fair match, were it to run things like null rod and thorn of amethyst. Zoo can also burn the opponent out between AdN and tendrils.

You are right. Zoo is probably a a 25/75 underdog against ANT, but it is not a completely hopeless matchup. The best strategy is to drop a Nacatl on turn 1 and then just fire off burn spells the rest of the way (unless you have a Gaddock Teeg to play, of course). Lightning Helix is a nice card that can help burn them out and keep your life total above water. I won a match with Zoo against ANT by casting Fireblast after they went down to 4 with Ad Nauseam. I was tapped out and the opponent was pretty stunned.

MEATROCKET

04-09-2010, 07:34 PM

If you think for 1 second, you'll realize that Mystical tutor isn't "restricted" relative to Legacy.

You lose 3 copies of Mystical, but you pick up Vampiric and Seal that are much better and Demonic Tutor.
You lose 3 copies of Lotus Petal, but you pick up 5 real moxen (and a lotus).
You lose 3 copies of LED, but you pick up Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc.

The decks in Vintage are much faster, have a lot more consistency, and don't lose as much running into hate as the decks in Legacy. Basically strictly better.

TPS also gets to play a set of Forces, a Misdirection, and a set of Duresses. Basically, thinking of how well a Legacy deck would perform in Vintage means nothing. It can be fun to play the games out, but it really means nothing.

emidln

04-09-2010, 07:56 PM

Offcolor Moxen (Pearl, Ruby, Emerald) are beyond worthless in Vintage ANT and are much worse than Lotus Petal. There is a reason Vintage ANT doesn't play offcolor moxen.

walkerdog

04-09-2010, 09:22 PM

I guess I just went 2-1 vs ant, 2-0 vs enchantress, and 2-0 vs goblins with zoo on MTGO, and the games that i won, it seems like there were very few outs (ANT could have won G1 with a NUTS hand, but merely a good hand played well would have resulted with them ANTing at ~ 10 life on turn two... not the best odds) for my opponents. That seems fairly unfair to me (in Zoo's favor I mean). I'm not going to say that it dominates everything, as ANT is not a good matchups, and dredge tends not to be either, but I really do think the article's point that attacking/playing "fairly" is bad is incorrect. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it is just okay.

Pinder

04-09-2010, 10:22 PM

I said "can" win the game, not will.
I was careful when I wrote what you quoted not to say that they will always win. I was using precise language.

Ah. The impression I got when you said that a "single" card can win the game is that you meant it would do it singlehandedly, which I think we can both agree is certainly not the case.

emidln

04-10-2010, 12:54 AM

undone

04-13-2010, 08:54 PM

This reminds me of something somewhat funny.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards

It isn't dissimilar to magic. As you get better with an smash your face deck you do better on a linear scale (knowing when to attack counting damage, probability to draw 3 points of burn) . As you get better with combo your power scales exponentially, that said you start weak as a little wimp. In many ways Combo is like a wizard and fighters are like well aggro. Wizards can just randomly die if your immune to magic, (Counterbalance) and if a non wizard fights a wizard at higher levels the magic has to be mitigated by some kind of item or whatever can mitigate the power. Storm combo has the most raw power, the most intelligent storm play will beat anyone who doesn't come with an anti storm card to trounce them. That said you still have to use the item before you die. Those are pretty stringent conditions. But when you consider that learning one is an arduous task and you are woefully underwhelming on the rise to your evil power, and yes combo is infact evil but I like evil ^.^ and cake. It is far more fun to smash face and gain power and exp slowly.

PS: This all may be totally off base but I feel that its the best way to describe aggro vs combo. Combo is better and the more you 'level up' the better you do but greatly disproportional to the aggro 'level up'.

For those that missed the point. People hate that the evil wizard(combo) player is absurdly overpowered but he worked to get there and it was not fun work. Your work was fun and yet you STILL get silly ways to contend with it (teeg cannonist). Also wizards(combo) needs MP(physical stamina) because if they mess up casting a spell they EXPLODE, if the fighter messes up a slash he hits the ground and misses the target.