[Free Article] Legacy: Attacking is Awesome!

[voltron00x]

This is a counter-point article to Max McCall’s “Attacking is Miserable”; while I enjoyed that article, I respectfully disagree with Max’s view of Legacy, and try to explain why I don’t think aggro decks are “miserable” even in a format that can be as fast and unforgiving as competitive Legacy.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19248_The_Long_Winding_Road_LegacyAttacking_is_Awesome.html

[morgan_coke]

Nice take on the format and the competing strategies that help define it.

I do have a question about the Thopter/Sword deck though. Why isn't Tezzeret a 1-2 of in there? He finds all of your combo pieces, finds disruption, provides mana, and is another win condition on his own.

[alderon666]

"Suggesting that decks do poorly because their pilots are terrible, or unskilled, is relatively ridiculous. In order to state this with any degree of accuracy (beyond the typical “Magic players are all terrible”-type of statements), we’d have to have access to the skill levels of all of the players of a given deck and measure that relative to the rest of the field. For a tournament with hundreds, or thousands, of players, how anyone can make that type of assertion with a straight face is beyond me. What the field might look like if every Storm player were at LSV’s level isn’t helpful, because there’s only one LSV (thank God for the rest of us)."

Doing well at a tournment takes a combination of skill, good deckbuilding, good deck choice and finally some extent of luck.

Players that start at a new format don't just jump into Supreme Blue or ANT. They choose/borrow an easy/cheap deck, while good players tend towards more complicated and controlish decks.

I think that the poor perfomance of Dredge can be justified by the argument of "A lot of bad players play Dredge", on the other hand the poor performance of ANT is probably justified by the complexity of the deck and its vulnerability to CB.

I think that attacking still is miserable, because no one likes to lose to turn 1/2/3 kills and never having a chance.

[voltron00x]

Nice take on the format and the competing strategies that help define it.

I do have a question about the Thopter/Sword deck though. Why isn't Tezzeret a 1-2 of in there? He finds all of your combo pieces, finds disruption, provides mana, and is another win condition on his own.

I have Tezz in the sideboard at the moment. There's no mana acceleration in the deck, so its a bit slow outside of games against other blue decks.

[voltron00x]

"Suggesting that decks do poorly because their pilots are terrible, or unskilled, is relatively ridiculous. In order to state this with any degree of accuracy (beyond the typical “Magic players are all terrible”-type of statements), we’d have to have access to the skill levels of all of the players of a given deck and measure that relative to the rest of the field. For a tournament with hundreds, or thousands, of players, how anyone can make that type of assertion with a straight face is beyond me. What the field might look like if every Storm player were at LSV’s level isn’t helpful, because there’s only one LSV (thank God for the rest of us)."

Doing well at a tournment takes a combination of skill, good deckbuilding, good deck choice and finally some extent of luck.

Players that start at a new format don't just jump into Supreme Blue or ANT. They choose/borrow an easy/cheap deck, while good players tend towards more complicated and controlish decks.

I think that the poor perfomance of Dredge can be justified by the argument of "A lot of bad players play Dredge", on the other hand the poor performance of ANT is probably justified by the complexity of the deck and its vulnerability to CB.

I think that attacking still is miserable, because no one likes to lose to turn 1/2/3 kills and never having a chance.

How is going 0-2 drop with ANT after losing to Merfolk twice any more miserable than going 0-2 drop with Zoo after losing to ANT twice?

[junkdiver]

Great article by the way I really enjoyed it. I will note it's funny how both articles (yours and Max's) both hated on goblins :P The point is well made however, as the goblins matchup grid is kind of grim I suppose, but clearly not as grim as people seem to think.

One thing I would say to this:

How is going 0-2 drop with ANT after losing to Merfolk twice any more miserable than going 0-2 drop with Zoo after losing to ANT twice?

(and this is based on the general conscensus I see on the threads here, not my experience because I am pretty much a newb)
Is that at least the ANT player had like a 45/50- 40/60 matchup and could play cards that mattered like duress/chant, where as the zoo matchup against ANT is like 30/70-35/65 and you are purely trying to outgoldfish them with little hope.

Again though, I think the article was great, and this point is I think is often missed:



Saying things like the following will hinder your Legacy results:
• Card availability / price warp the format.
• Decks X, Y, and Z do poorly because their pilots are generally terrible.
• Decks A, B, and C should be unplayable because they lose to minor niche decks D and E, as well as common but poorly-performing decks F and G.

[Malakai]

The article is fine, but I'm sad to see yet another article oriented towards players new to Legacy. SCG used to have a healthy amount of "advanced" discussion of the format and its decks from Coppola, Binswanger, and occasionally Zvi, which is lacking nowadays, and accounts for at least my lost subscription. Of the 3-4 writers still around who discuss the format, you seem to be the best suited and most qualified to contribute advanced discussion.

I realize yours and Smemmen's primary focus has historically been Vintage, and this is welcome. However, this idea of Elias+Anwar writing for "advanced legacy players," leaving Smemmen and Doug Linn to cater to the newcomers...well, that's something I'd renew my subscription for, although I expect that decision is made by the scg administration.

[voltron00x]

The article is fine, but I'm sad to see yet another article oriented towards players new to Legacy. SCG used to have a healthy amount of "advanced" discussion of the format and its decks from Coppola, Binswanger, and occasionally Zvi, which is lacking nowadays, and accounts for at least my lost subscription. Of the 3-4 writers still around who discuss the format, you seem to be the best suited and most qualified to contribute advanced discussion.

I realize yours and Smemmen's primary focus has historically been Vintage, and this is welcome. However, this idea of Elias+Anwar writing for "advanced legacy players," leaving Smemmen and Doug Linn to cater to the newcomers...well, that's something I'd renew my subscription for, although I expect that decision is made by the scg administration.

Just a few quick thoughts on this… there’s a decent amount of content for the advanced Legacy player coming from SCG, although high-level analysis of some decks has been lacking. A few examples: Doug’s work pretty much covers the spectrum from casual to competitive Legacy; I’d say his Blue Lands primer was useful for the competitive Legacy player, for example. Menendian has done some very high-level Legacy articles, both in terms of analyzing specific decks or tournament reports, as well as data mining tournament fields and relating back to ongoing trends. Sylva’s metagame work has been really helpful in painting match-up pictures on an on-going basis. Obviously Max has been writing about Legacy as well. We’ve also seen, on the Premium side from writers not named Menendian, Legacy content from CPhil (on Lands and Belcher) and AJ (with his E. Tutor Thopter/Sword deck), and occasionally from Chapin (who presented some Entomb decks back as soon as it was unleashed in the format), plus occasional feature articles (such as Woltereck’s report on Blue Lands).

A lot of the Legacy content is actually on the free side, so although you don’t need a subscription to get it, there is a lot of high-level stuff you’ll miss from the pro-level players when they choose to play Legacy, or are obligated to do so (AKA Worlds).

With a store local to me now trying to run Legacy events (AU Blue Bell), as well as the upcoming Philly SCG $5K and Legacy Champs, I’ll hopefully be playing more Legacy and have more opportunity to write about something specific rather than at a more intro-level. Unfortunately light play-testing and tournament observation lends itself more to those types of articles. And, as you noted, I’m playing a lot of Vintage at a relatively high level, so I’m more comfortable writing in-depth on that format, at the moment.

Anyway, I appreciate the kind words, and although the Legacy content might not be exactly what you’re looking for, I still hope you’ll agree that it has increased dramatically over the past year both in overall quality and quantity.

[Finn]

Matt, your conversation with Josh and Max was really enjoyable reading. That is about the most intelligent Legacy discussion I have seen on that site in many years. The fact that it was courteous all the way through is amazing to me.

[xTrainx]

First of all very nice read, lots of information, and presenting several counterarguments(to the last article) as to why Legacy remains wide open, why Aggro decks aren't bad.

Second of all, seeing the 'these decks can be found under development on the Source', made me chuckle. Something along the lines of...Hey! I use that site.