[Premium Article] The New Legacy Banned List, and What it Means for You

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19568_So_Many_Insane_Plays_The_New_Legacy_Banned_List_And_What_It_Means_For_You.html

Editor's Blurb:


Monday, June 21st - Legacy has undergone a subtle change this past weekend, with the bannings and unrestrictions from the Powers That Be. Just how will the removal of Mystical Tutor affect the metagame? Even though it doesn’t kick in until July, will the news impact on this weekend’s StarCityGames.com Legacy Open in St. Louis? Stephen shares his initial thoughts

[Smmenen]

Mods, please move this thread to the format discussion forum. Sorry about posting it in the wrong forum!

[DalkonCledwin]

I wish this article hadn't been posted as a premium article, this kind of discussion is something that every person in the Legacy Community should be allowed to read, not just those with premium articles. But that is just my opinion.

[Vacrix]

I thought the same thing at first.
Then again, a discussion will surely ensue from those who could read the article. Then those of us without SCG premium memberships can participate.

[DalkonCledwin]

I thought the same thing at first.
Then again, a discussion will surely ensue from those who could read the article. Then those of us without SCG premium memberships can participate.

This is true, but it would always be nice to know what the discussion's basis is saying before you participate in such a conversation, wouldn't you agree?

[Mark Sun]

I thought Legacy-based stuff was free on SCG (or was that just for a little bit?).

To address the blurb in the OP, at least, if you're heading down to St. Louis this weekend, I would stock up on combo/Reanimator hate while you can for this weekend, as I have a feeling a lot of people will be trying to have one last huzzah with their Mystical Tutors before officially throwing them in the dollar bin. I have a couple of friends already headed down who are without question playing ANT in its perceived final iteration.

[Vacrix]

Agreed. Maybe Stephen should just stop writing such good articles and then we could read them? :P

Anyway, until someone posts about something in the article we might as well start a discussion. ANT and Reanimator died. I think that having both of those decks in the format was a really, really bad thing. Very few people could play them optimally, even though both are very easy to play. I think the rise in popularity of NO Bant happened because it was easy for the CB players to kick the shit out of these decks. CB will likely be less popular now that a significant amount of the combo decks will disappear. Storm player can go back to beating the crap out of aggro without having to face 10 SB slots dedicated to the combo matchup, and players will be less familiar with all the variations this ban will bring to the table in the less popular storm decks like TES, NLS, Solidarity, and SI. Though I think storm got stronger, fewer people will play these decks simply because they require too much time and focus to play optimally.

DnT, Enchantress, and Aeon Bridge look like strong choices for where the meta is headed.

[Mark Sun]

Good point. TES and friends are indeed thought intensive, and even in lower numbers I think you'll still want some dedicated hate (bears) in the SB to improve those matchups. That said, your assessment of DnT, Enchantress, and Aeon Bridge are most likely correct, I've already seen the latter two rise up in popularity (ironically, these three decks you mentioned also take time to learn and play optimally).

I also see dedicated control decks rising in popularity, which makes me sad to see more of Shushers, Chokes, and all that good stuff.

[DalkonCledwin]

first off, tried to figure this out earlier today to no success, but what is NLS?

And I do agree that this change totally nerfed things like ANT and to a lesser extent Reanimator. I think Reanimator will still be present in the future, but it will be far less potent now that it doesn't in effect have 8 entomb's. However Ad Nauseam Tendrils has effectively been nerfed now that it is required to run far sub par tutors in relation to Mystical because now it will be forced to run at least 2 of each of its primary win conditions.

I do agree that DnT, and Enchantress both look like very strong contenders in the soon to develop meta. I am however less familiar with Aeon Bridge. I am assuming it is something to do with Emrakul.

[Mark Sun]

first off, tried to figure this out earlier today to no success, but what is NLS?

Next Level Storm.


Aeon Bridge is a combo deck developed by Nightmare that uses Mosswort Bridge and a Phyrexian Dreadnought as the enabler. And yes, it does have Emrakul in it.

[Aggro_zombies]

Thanks for name-dropping me. I love you too, broski.

Second, I think that combo is now functionally a non-entity anymore. ANT was as popular as it was because it's the most forgiving and easiest to learn of the extant Legacy combo decks. Belcher can win on turn one, sure, and sometimes you get to live the dream and Belch the other guy out. But sometimes your opponent is playing blue, and sometimes you just lose because you're playing the most unstable combo deck in the format. And sometimes - well, a friend of mine played Aggro Loam at SCG L.A. and faced Belcher round one. He kept a decent opener (three lands, Mox, Pulse, Crusher, Loam) and his opponent opted to make Goblin tokens. My friend topdecked Mox #2 and Pulsed the opponent's dorks - and won against a combo deck that had successfully gone off on turn one. With those kind of possibilities, I don't think Belcher has what it takes to be the format's premiere combo deck.

Solidarity is dead, and has been for years. Even when it was good, its fundamental turn was roughly the same as Goblins', so it could still lose to a fast draw from an aggro deck.

TES is the best positioned to take over the combo niche, but it has a much steeper learning curve, and even the deck's creator doesn't regularly dominate with it. Very few people can play the deck well, and I doubt many of the now deckless ANT players will be able to learn it by Columbus - hell, most of them couldn't even navigate their own decks.

I also think blue is effectively Tier II at this point. Zoo and Lands could already beat blue decks by either outmaneuvering them, or overpowering them. Those two decks just lost one of their worst matchups, so I'm not sure what's standing between them and running roughshod all over the blue players at Columbus. Like, a blue deck using counters is strategically inferior to a Zoo deck. If you're in a topdeck war and roughly even on the board, which of these "next three draws" is more likely to win the game: Nacatl-Bolt-Land, or Daze-Force-Land? Zoo is straight gas, and just plows over anyone who doesn't also draw straight gas.

Monolith doesn't really help most of the decks people think it helps, because as this Brian fellow pointed out, those decks are bad. Like, now Stax can drop turn one Trinisphere! Wow. I'm so scared.

[Vacrix]

Second, I think that combo is now functionally a non-entity anymore. ANT was as popular as it was because it's the most forgiving and easiest to learn of the extant Legacy combo decks. Belcher can win on turn one, sure, and sometimes you get to live the dream and Belch the other guy out. But sometimes your opponent is playing blue, and sometimes you just lose because you're playing the most unstable combo deck in the format. And sometimes - well, a friend of mine played Aggro Loam at SCG L.A. and faced Belcher round one. He kept a decent opener (three lands, Mox, Pulse, Crusher, Loam) and his opponent opted to make Goblin tokens. My friend topdecked Mox #2 and Pulsed the opponent's dorks - and won against a combo deck that had successfully gone off on turn one. With those kind of possibilities, I don't think Belcher has what it takes to be the format's premiere combo deck.

Solidarity is dead, and has been for years. Even when it was good, its fundamental turn was roughly the same as Goblins', so it could still lose to a fast draw from an aggro deck.

TES is the best positioned to take over the combo niche, but it has a much steeper learning curve, and even the deck's creator doesn't regularly dominate with it. Very few people can play the deck well, and I doubt many of the now deckless ANT players will be able to learn it by Columbus - hell, most of them couldn't even navigate their own decks.
Pretty good analysis. I think that Belcher and Solidarity are really on the same level. Neither is dead but neither is powerful enough to be 'the format's premiere combo deck' like ANT was. Belcher will do well in some metas and Solidarity will do well in others. I wouldn't venture to say that Solidarity is dead though. Merely glancing over the high frequency of Zoo decks in large tournaments would discourage me from ever playing it at a large event, but its a great deck to take to a heavy blue meta (like my local meta).

Also, I agree that shitting Goblin tokens is a pretty dumb when you could be storming out for the win. I think SI might see some more play. QSI fell out of the lime light when AdN hit the combo scene, but its completely unaffected by the MT ban. SITES is also a very fast list packing Burning Wish and a D4 engine. (for those interested in those lists, read the SI primer).

[Aggro_zombies]

I think SI might see some more play. QSI fell out of the lime light when AdN hit the combo scene, but its completely unaffected by the MT ban. SITES is also a very fast list packing Burning Wish and a D4 engine. (for those interested in those lists, read the SI primer).
Except basically no one in the broader Legacy metagame knows about these decks.

Any combo deck that takes ANT's place is going to be worse than ANT in some way. ANT was the combo deck with the most consistency, resiliency, speed, and ease of play. It became the best (or at least, most played) combo deck because all the alternatives were worse than it in at least one of those four areas. Some of those decks may see some more play now, but none of them will hit the sweet spot ANT did.

I'm really looking forward to hearing the explanation for this in the article on Friday, even though I have a feeling I already know what it is...

[DalkonCledwin]

I'm really looking forward to hearing the explanation for this in the article on Friday, even though I have a feeling I already know what it is...

I would be interested in hearing your opinion on what you think the reasoning was for banning mystical tutor. Even if it is just that, an opinion. And I know some people will moan and ache about people listing their opinions. But until that article is posted all we have to go on is opinions. And even after it is listed, we may not have a definitive fact of the matter explanation.

[Vacrix]

Agreed! I'd rather that combo not hit a sweet spot. With Mystical Tutor gone, we have a very well defined continuum (as Rico Suave mentioned in the ANT thread)

Resiliency<-------Solidarity-------------Rev614-------NLS------TES------QSI-----ANT (dead)-----------Belcher-------SITES---------Pact SI----->Speed

Slow<--------------Turn 4-------------------------- Turn 3------------------------------------- Turn 2------------------------------------------Turn 1--->Fast

Fortunately, all of those decks (Belcher as the exception) are difficult to pilot well. I think most of these decks are optimized to the point at which your play skill determines your consistency. Spring Tide could probably also go on that list but I don't even know if anyone plays it anymore.

[Aggro_zombies]

I would be interested in hearing your opinion on what you think the reasoning was for banning mystical tutor. Even if it is just that, an opinion. And I know some people will moan and ache about people listing their opinions. But until that article is posted all we have to go on is opinions. And even after it is listed, we may not have a definitive fact of the matter explanation.
Well, as I said in the thread discussing the banning, it feels to me like the DCI didn't do the research. They decided after Madrid that combo decks using Mystical Tutor as setup were too good because they beat the aggro decks and won the whole thing, so the DCI just said, "Mystical Tutor is standing in the way of people bashing each other with guys, so it has to go."

Personally, I think Zoo is more boring to play against than combo. Like, at least with combo, there's that "Is he actually going to get it or will he fizzle?" moment. With Zoo, it's just "RAWR BASH BURN RAWR," rinse and repeat until someone dies.

EDIT: I mean, I realize people like Zoo more because it feels like what they're doing matters - like they're playing the game. But depending on what you're playing, what you're doing may actually be totally irrelevant - if you're a blue deck, for example, you're basically down a match once pairings are called. It's just that Zoo isn't polite enough to inform you of that as quickly as combo does because it's full of rabid animals and pyrotechnic effects instead of sophisticated engines.

EDIT 2: It may also have something to do with all of the pros going, "ZOMG REANIMATOR IS TEH BEST DECK EVAR" all over the place. I mean, yeah, Reanimtor is good (especially if you play it correctly), but it's not the number one bestest deck ever in the whole wide format, as Pat Chapin and others believe. It's likely that the format would have adjusted to compensate for Reanimator's presence by Columbus, which would have made it much harder for non-pro and pro players alike to get anywhere with the deck.

[death]

Rev614 [Shelldrazi] may also be dead as well unless you replace Mystical with 4x Personal Tutor. Even then it loses its ability to find the mana sources if needed.

[DalkonCledwin]

Rev614 [Shelldrazi] may also be dead as well unless you replace Mystical with 4x Personal Tutor. Even then it loses its ability to find the mana sources if needed.

I believe Emidln (that is the user name on salvation of the guy who is primarily responsible for creating Rev614) has suggested running Lim Dul's Vault in place of Mystical Tutor in that deck at the least. I don't know if it is a perfect replacement for all decks, but in Rev614 where neither Ad Nauseam nor Reanimate are present it seems like a solid card choice.

Aggro-Zombies, I think you may be right about their decision making process. However if it was about them doing too little research, then they won't admit to it in all likelyhood. Or at least will likely state that it was based off of tournament reports, while not specifically stating which ones. If however it is based off pro analysis, they again may not state it due to not wanting to appear to have appealed to favoritism or some such.

[frogboy]

Well, as I said in the thread discussing the banning, it feels to me like the DCI didn't do the research. They decided after Madrid that combo decks using Mystical Tutor as setup were too good because they beat the aggro decks and won the whole thing, so the DCI just said, "Mystical Tutor is standing in the way of people bashing each other with guys, so it has to go."

I mean, look at Menendian's breakdown on Madrid and look at how the Mystical Tutor decks outperform the rest of the field every step of the way.

[DalkonCledwin]

I mean, look at Menendian's breakdown on Madrid and look at how the Mystical Tutor decks outperform the rest of the field every step of the way.

Oh scratch what I just said as I thought you were referencing that article he just posted (didn't even occur to me that you meant another article).

Yes, I think we all can agree that Madrid was dominated by decks that utilized Mystical Tutor in one fashion or another. However the problem with basing a decision on a single tournament is that that is I believe what is called a "biased sample" or something very similar. It is not a big enough pool of information in the grand scheme of things to make any judgment call about whether a card is over powered or whether a given strategy is dominating enough to warrant a banning. As such I think that things need to be evaluated from across several tournaments. That is where websites such as deck check come in really handy.

And as a note of interest, going by sheer numbers of decks present at Grand Prix Madrid there were combined only 175 Ad Nauseam Tendrils and Reanimator decks (don't know how many of said decks ran Mystical Tutor). On the other hand there was a deck present that had over 200 decks within its own archetype all on its own. That deck was Zoo, with 225 versions of the deck present. If you want to talk about dominating the field, I think Zoo qualifies. But I doubt that the DCI is going to ban anything in Zoo on the basis that it is an inherently more interactive deck than either Ad Nauseam Tendrils or Reanimator.

[Vacrix]

Even so, Reanimator and ANT haven't been dominating the top tables of every tournament. The metagame adapted to fight back.

It was dumb having those 2 decks in the meta game. Hardly anyone could pilot them well but still they were really powerful. It was almost like giving a kid a grenade. Some kids knew how to use it. Some didn't. Either way, you had kids running around with grenades. Not happy. I much preferred the metagame where storm was a rare matchup. Very few people would play these decks and they would always be fun matches to watch. AdN was like turning storm on auto-pilot. You didn't have to do any work. All you had to do was basic fucking math and not kill yourself. Yet people did.. I'm SO happy Mystical Tutor is gone. My only regret is now I can't play casual Kobolds w/ Glimpse of Nature. :[

[frogboy]

@Dalkon: Tendrils has been dominating the Netherlands for months, and to discount the results from the largest tournament of all time that saw a Mystical v. Mystical final due to a lack of sample size is more than a little disingenuous. Sure, a lot of Zoo decks made day two, where they got crushed by all of the people playing loam decks and combo decks after they started getting paired against Silvergill Adept.

[Aggro_zombies]

Even so, Reanimator and ANT haven't been dominating the top tables of every tournament. The metagame adapted to fight back.

It was dumb having those 2 decks in the meta game. Hardly anyone could pilot them well but still they were really powerful. It was almost like giving a kid a grenade. Some kids knew how to use it. Some didn't. Either way, you had kids running around with grenades. Not happy. I much preferred the metagame where storm was a rare matchup. Very few people would play these decks and they would always be fun matches to watch. AdN was like turning storm on auto-pilot. You didn't have to do any work. All you had to do was basic fucking math and not kill yourself. Yet people did.. I'm SO happy Mystical Tutor is gone. My only regret is now I can't play casual Kobolds w/ Glimpse of Nature. :[
The issue here is that we've now lost an important boogeyman for the format. Combo is essentially dead in that most people who could play it, won't, or won't play it well enough to stay out of the 0-X-drop bracket.

I mean, Storm was less of an issue than Reanimator. I realize that you, as a storm pilot, would be unhappy with incompetent combo players, but in most cases they were pretty innocuous in terms of the wider metagame - basically, the same as bad Dredge pilots. If you didn't know the matchup and didn't have the hate, they'd get you, but if you did then it wasn't an issue. Reanimator was a deck that people with half a brain and playtesting experience could destroy tournaments with, although that hasn't happened of late because many of the recent Reanimator pilots seem to have lacked one or the other property. Regardless, most of the hate people were packing was laughably ineffective. Karakas? Inkwell. Crypt, Relic, and Faerie Macabre? Needle and Show and Tell. Bounce? Counters already in the main, but Spell Pierce is a fine backup. I mean, the deck was this close to being completely idiot proof, which is kind of scary.

I don't appreciate the collateral damage done by the ban decision. If the DCI had wanted to stop Reanimator, they could have just admitted they fucked up and re-banned Entomb. Storm combo is more of an issue in Europe than America, so just looking at GP Madrid and assuming the worst is pretty loose. If they looked at the Top 8 results of all the SCG events this year, they would have seen that both Force of Will and Tarmogoyf showed up far more often than Mystical Tutor. Mystical also enabled a bunch of funky Tier II strategies like Nightmare's Mossnought-Emrakul deck. Why mess with all of that? Storm and Reanimator could be targeted with surgical precision by banning Ad Noz and Entomb, respectively (Menendian says as much in the article, for those of you who can't read it).

This just feels so...unnecessary. Like, yeah, all of the cool kids in Magic think Zoo is just a dumb little kid's deck and that all Legacy players suck and that if REAL Magic players played Legacy, it would be all storm decks, all the time, but the point is that the real metagame is reasonably healthy and diverse, with an aggro deck currently on a winning streak.

Whatever. What's done is done, and now that combo is gone I might even play Aggro Loam in Columbus (assuming I go).

[Hanni]

Aggro Loam sounds like a solid choice.

[Aggro_zombies]

Aggro Loam sounds like a solid choice.
Quick, thank him! He name-dropped you, too (and Bryant Cook).

EDIT: It's kind of a toss-up for me between Lands and Zoo. I think those two are the best decks in the format post-ban, although something like Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry would be more enjoyable for me to play. I just don't have the playtesting and support structure to learn the deck in time and don't want to spend the tournament getting raped by Zoo (since it will require me to severely budget my summer to get out there).

[Nizmox]

I also think blue is effectively Tier II at this point. Zoo and Lands could already beat blue decks by either outmaneuvering them, or overpowering them. Those two decks just lost one of their worst matchups, so I'm not sure what's standing between them and running roughshod all over the blue players at Columbus. Like, a blue deck using counters is strategically inferior to a Zoo deck. If you're in a topdeck war and roughly even on the board, which of these "next three draws" is more likely to win the game: Nacatl-Bolt-Land, or Daze-Force-Land? Zoo is straight gas, and just plows over anyone who doesn't also draw straight gas.


QFT

Removing combo from the picture puts Lands and Zoo in a very good position. Given that Zoo was already definitely a DTB, how is this a good thing? A number of people have talked about the banning making the format more diverse, but I seriously think thats misguided. There are already many decks that supposedly have a horrible combo matchup and still seem to place well in tournaments.

Reanimator was a problem, but it became a problem when Entomb was unbanned, why they didn't admit their mistake reban it is beyond me. I think people total overestimate how easy it is to win with ANT. Even with a skilled pilot, hate cards have a massive impact on your ability to win. Far more so than they do against Dredge which can successfully play around hate in the hands of a skilled pilot. It's also funny that no one seems overly concerned about dedicated 4+ sideboard cards to beating dredge but it's unfair to have to include sideboard cards to beat ANT (admittedly anti-graveyard is useful in other matchups also).

In my opinion Legacy now feels much less like a much less Eternal format. Part of being an eternal format is allowing decks such as combo because you simply can't play them anywhere else. Combo decks are typically highly skill intensive and Eternal players tend to enjoy playing these types of decks. And why not when they aren't ruling the format? If we wanted to play Zoo we could have played it in Extended!

EDIT: I also feel that ANT to an extent held other 'Combo' type decks in check, Enchantress being a classic example. With ANT removed, I believe Enchantress will be a much more prominent deck and the good news? If you hate playing against ANT, you're going to hate playing against Enchantress too (It's called Solitaire for a reason)!

[Hanni]

Quick, thank him! He name-dropped you, too (and Bryant Cook).

I got name dropped? I don't have Premium so I can't read it... what did I get namedropped for? I haven't played in a real tournament in like 3 years.

[Rune]

QFT
EDIT: I also feel that ANT to an extent held other 'Combo' type decks in check, Enchantress being a classic example. With ANT removed, I believe Enchantress will be a much more prominent deck and the good news? If you hate playing against ANT, you're going to hate playing against Enchantress too (It's called Solitaire for a reason)!

Yes, if Wizards killed tier 1 combo decks because they think they are too non-interactive, then they are utterly stupid and have no clue that decks like Enchantress, Lands or Stax exist. On average, you will probably have something like 2 turns to interact with these decks before they reach their goal, which is to create a gamestate where the opponent can no longer interact. Non-interactive prison decks will be really scary now that combo, to some extent, is out of the picture. Owning powerful anti-creature cards like Moat and Tabernacle almost seems risky to me now that WotC has shown us that they couldn't care less if you have invested a lot of money in a deck that is no longer viable because of their bans. Is something keeping our dumb, overpowered type 2 creatures from constantly winning, and are we too lazy to print a solution? BANHAMMER

[Silent Requiem]

Reanimator was a problem, but it became a problem when Entomb was unbanned, why they didn't admit their mistake reban it is beyond me.

Actually, if they were indeed out to tone down ANT and Reanimator, then banning Mystical was absolutely the right thing to do.

What Wizards has effectively said is NOT that combo has no place, but that combo should be tricky to play, and that the tradeoff for avoiding interaction with your opponent is increased interaction with your deck. Mystical Tutor made combo too easy to play.

They didn't ban Entomb because they think Entomb is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did not ban Ad Nauseam because they think Ad Nauseam is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did ban Mystical Tutor because it is a force multiplier that makes otherwise reasonable cards and strategies too powerful and consistent.

For the record, I own 4 Mystical Tutors and I don't think it needed to be banned. But if Wizards felt that combo was getting too consistent or easy to play then it was exactly the right card to ban, and I would much rather they ban Mystical Tutor than the actual combo cards.

-Silent Requiem

[jazzykat]

I own 6 or 7 mystical tutors but whatever about value. What about mid range rock decks since there is less combo to really worry about. Rock decks and Aggro Loam were awesome vs. just about everytyhing but combo.

[DrJones]

The tinker decks from extended had Mystical Tutor in them. Tinker got banned.
The Hulk flash decks had mystical tutor in them. Flash got banned.
Reanimator had mystical tutor in it. Entomb... wait, wah?

It looks like they have banned the wrong card. Or maybe they have banned a piece of the skeleton of some kind of broken combo archtype. Probably both things are correct, and we will see new bannings soon.

[Shimi]

Let's assume that combo(not belcher like decks which are too inconsistent) is slower than Zoo and Goblins so it will down in popularity(will have worst aggro MU but better blue decks MU cause of less hate) and will also have less merfolks in meta.And reanimator is slower and more inconsistent because the bullet creatures are no more fast enought to steal the game from merfolks , zoo and goblins.

Less merfolks but more Zoo and Goblins seems bad(but not so bad) for Blue aggro-control decks(which will pack more aggro hate and maybe some board sweppers).

Less combos means that Lands(who can deal with aggro) and has chances against blue aggro-control are better, also Enchantress is good for the same reason.

If you are looking for a deck which have a decent Zoo , Goblins MU , that can really battle against Lands(with sideboard help), and have Enchantress and Blue aggro-control favorable MUs then you should play BGW decks.

So my opinion is that Zoo , Lands and BGW are the best choices but you should be prepared for CounterTop decks(running Progenitus or Firespout),Merfolks(it is cheap so many people has no other choice),AggroLoam(it is a good choice) and some SnT Decks(DreamHalls , and Emrakul cheated in play).

[paK0]

Who is this Brian Guy?

Well, I like the bannings, might give Zoo a shot again (not an issue in America, but in Germany playing Zoo was a good way to get into Side Event Drafts rather quickly).

Reanimator was existent over here, but was busy playing in the lower brackets, it never really made a showing.

So powerlevel wise, the ban was not necessary, but I still like it. And just because Combo has been around for so long doesn't justify its existence.


On another note on the topic: Has anyone seen the interview in the last edition of The Magic Show. Towards the end AF said that they don't want Combo to be a pillar, more of a nice deck that needs a specific metagame to succeed. I'm not sure weather he was talking about Standart or Magic in general but it is still pretty interesting.

[Fons]

Good article. I am sad to see Mystical Tutor go especially since I have 4 Foil ones, but I think that less people playing ANT and Reanimator will be better overall.

[morgan_coke]

I DID NOT appreciate the random Slide hate in the article. Slide had a good matchup vs. reanimator between mana denial, Crop Rotation, Extirpate, Swords, Consuming Vapors, and of course, Slide itself. ANT wasn't great, but between Chant, Canonist, Extirpate (it counters Mystical by forcing a shuffle) and Teeg, it was a long way from bad. Probably 45-55, which was a net bonus for Slide because ANT kept several bad matchups down. Bah, humbug.

The most annoying part of this decision is the huge number of people online who have now started playing blue/x.control.dec. Which isn't too tough to beat, but does take a long time to do so.

I understand how at first glance to a new player, or someone who might be familiar with the format but hasn't played it a lot, it seems like the broken/unfair decks are too good. But really, they're not. Because they're all so fragile, and in Legacy, there is SO much good hate for like, EVERYTHING. Also, because the card pool is so big, ALL the decks have access to good cards for their strategies, which means ALL the decks are good (or at least good-ish). This means that if you're playing something powerful but fragile and inconsistent, you can get destroyed by pretty much anything if it draws right. Thus, consistency is one of the single most important aspects of building a deck to survive tournaments, and not just to win a single game. Belcher is the best example of this. Huge power level. Huge speed. Huge explosiveness. Still loses to non-blue stuff (including itself) all the time.

As much as I like Slide, and as good as I am with the deck, I can admit that there are strategies and hate that can simply obliterate the deck. (Hint: it's not Leyline). It's the same with any deck, precisely because of the large format and card availability.

On a completely different note, the guys talking in the article about Legacy were extremely condescending towards the existent community. Also known as the dudes who pioneered the format and made it so there'd be something to talk about. There was also some real lack of format knowledge on display. EX: I am 95% certain Bant Survival is a real deck, and that you can indeed play Survival effectively in Legacy.

And finally, a car example to explain how consistency is both important, and underrated. Take a Maserati vs. a Camry. Now, the Maserati is faster, shinier, and better looking for picking up chicks. But it breaks down once a week and you have to remove the radiator to change the oil. The Camry isn't a flashy, but it always works, runs forever, and takes you wherever you want to go. And because the Camry is about 1/3 of the cost of the Maserati, you can own a much nicer house to go along with it. As well as wear nicer clothes, etc. This is largely similar to the relationship between a consistent deck, like Zoo and an elegant/complex deck, like ANT. Zoo has more flexibility in its tweaking and always works, ANT has severe constraints because of its all-in design, and sometimes it just breaks down for no reason.

[Aggro_zombies]

I DID NOT appreciate the random Slide hate in the article. Slide had a good matchup vs. reanimator between mana denial, Crop Rotation, Extirpate, Swords, Consuming Vapors, and of course, Slide itself. ANT wasn't great, but between Chant, Canonist, Extirpate (it counters Mystical by forcing a shuffle) and Teeg, it was a long way from bad. Probably 45-55, which was a net bonus for Slide because ANT kept several bad matchups down. Bah, humbug.
Welcome to the "I'm the only person who plays this deck, thinks it's the best deck ever, and can't understand why there's no one else on my bandwagon yet" club.


The most annoying part of this decision is the huge number of people online who have now started playing blue/x.control.dec. Which isn't too tough to beat, but does take a long time to do so.
If you were playing Zoo, Lands, or Merfolk, these decks would be byes.


On a completely different note, the guys talking in the article about Legacy were extremely condescending towards the existent community. Also known as the dudes who pioneered the format and made it so there'd be something to talk about. There was also some real lack of format knowledge on display. EX: I am 95% certain Bant Survival is a real deck, and that you can indeed play Survival effectively in Legacy.
Welcome to how the pros see Legacy. Did you read Pat Chapin's article today as well? He implies pretty heavily that Legacy players were too stupid to figure out how good Mystical Tutor decks were, which is something all the pros knew and just weren't telling the poor bemused Legacy kids. The fact that decks like Zoo performed well is less a sign that they're legit decks and more a sign that little kids play the format and aren't grown up enough yet to play Tendrils or Entomb.

I mean, almost all of the pros look down on non-pro players. It's just less on display in a format like Standard, where everyone basically copies what the pros do, or innovates by taking what the pros do as a starting point, or only goes to FNM and therefore doesn't matter.

@Hanni: he brought up points you made in the ban discussion thread. Also, he introduced you as a well-known European player - is that true?

[pippo84]

I enjoyed playing against Reanimator and ANT.
They dominated Madrid? Well the format moves on ad finds answers! Just like what happened at Chicago: CounterTop dominated the field and answers were found.
Playing with or against zoo is really boring. It's really easy to play and I agree with Aggro_Zombies (With Zoo, it's just "RAWR BASH BURN RAWR," rinse and repeat until someone dies.)

[Hanni]

@Hanni: he brought up points you made in the ban discussion thread. Also, he introduced you as a well-known European player - is that true?

No, I'm American. I live in Ohio, about 2-3 hours from Columbus, actually.

[Smmenen]

It was dumb having those 2 decks in the meta game. Hardly anyone could pilot them well but still they were really powerful.:[

ANT and Reanimator are very easy decks to pilot.

Legacy ANT is not even remotely as difficult to play as Vintage Storm Combo decks. And Reanimator is about as intuitive as you can possibly have a deck be. Both decks are fairly linear, and their play sequences can be easily learned and applied.

I don't get the hoopa over how 'difficult' these decks are. Counterbalance decks, like the one Nassif used to win GP Chicago, are much more difficult to pilot than either one of those decks.

Iggy Pop was alot harder than ANT.

[Smmenen]

Oh scratch what I just said as I thought you were referencing that article he just posted (didn't even occur to me that you meant another article).

Yes, I think we all can agree that Madrid was dominated by decks that utilized Mystical Tutor in one fashion or another. However the problem with basing a decision on a single tournament is that that is I believe what is called a "biased sample" or something very similar. It is not a big enough pool of information in the grand scheme of things to make any judgment call about whether a card is over powered or whether a given strategy is dominating enough to warrant a banning. As such I think that things need to be evaluated from across several tournaments. That is where websites such as deck check come in really handy.

And as a note of interest, going by sheer numbers of decks present at Grand Prix Madrid there were combined only 175 Ad Nauseam Tendrils and Reanimator decks (don't know how many of said decks ran Mystical Tutor). On the other hand there was a deck present that had over 200 decks within its own archetype all on its own. That deck was Zoo, with 225 versions of the deck present. If you want to talk about dominating the field, I think Zoo qualifies. But I doubt that the DCI is going to ban anything in Zoo on the basis that it is an inherently more interactive deck than either Ad Nauseam Tendrils or Reanimator.

Wekl put.

And Zoo also had 3 players in the Top 8 of GP madrid, which some people are conveniently overlooking.

[Bahamuth]

ANT and Reanimator are very easy decks to pilot.

Legacy ANT is not even remotely as difficult to play as Vintage Storm Combo decks. And Reanimator is about as intuitive as you can possibly have a deck be. Both decks are fairly linear, and their play sequences can be easily learned and applied.

I don't get the hoopa over how 'difficult' these decks are. Counterbalance decks, like the one Nassif used to win GP Chicago, are much more difficult to pilot than either one of those decks.

Iggy Pop was alot harder than ANT.

I completely disagree with your statement that Counterbalance lists are harder to pilot than ANT. People all seem to be playing the (worse) version of the deck Saito played, which is in principle a quite easy deck. Playing it optimal is much more difficult than playing Counterbalance optimal. ANT can easily lose games to a Thoughseize/Duress cast one turn early, a Ponder not shuffled or general failure on playing Brainstorm correctly (I swear about 95% of the legacy community plays their Brainstorms ineffectively).

There's no reason to compare Legacy ANT to Vintage combo. Of course Vintage combo is harder to pilot correctly than Legacy ANT. On the other hand, decks like DDANT and mainly NLS are harder to pilot that any form of vintage combo. Bringing up another deck that is harder to play doesn't imply the aforementioned deck isn't hard.

[Smmenen]

I completely disagree with your statement that Counterbalance lists are harder to pilot than ANT. People all seem to be playing the (worse) version of the deck Saito played, which is in principle a quite easy deck. Playing it optimal is much more difficult than playing Counterbalance optimal. ANT can easily lose games to a Thoughseize/Duress cast one turn early, a Ponder not shuffled or general failure on playing Brainstorm correctly (I swear about 95% of the legacy community plays their Brainstorms ineffectively).

There's no reason to compare Legacy ANT to Vintage combo. Of course Vintage combo is harder to pilot correctly than Legacy ANT. On the other hand, decks like DDANT and mainly NLS are harder to pilot that any form of vintage combo. Bringing up another deck that is harder to play doesn't imply the aforementioned deck isn't hard.

If 95% of the legacy community plays Brainstorms ineffectively, than that almost certainly implies tha CounterTop decks are harder to play than ANT, since Countertop decks run 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, and 4 Ponder. Manipulating Top optimally an entire game requires many, many more decision trees than what 4 Mystical Tutor presents.

People just think that ANT is difficult because they have maybe played Dark Ritual decks before. Vintage combo decks like Grim Long, Pitch Long and TPS are all much more difficult than ANT, as they actually have many, many different tutors that interact differently (DT, Vamp, Imperial Seal, Mystical, Tinker, Grim Tutor, etc).

I believe that people say that ANT is harder than it really is because the errors are more salient than in a deck like Countertop or Goblins or Zoo, where when you make a mistake in ANT, the mistake is usually proximate to losing, where as a similar mistake with CounterTop (i.e. putting the wrong card ontop with Top) is less proximate to the end result. that doesn't make ANT harder to pilot. It just makes the error more visible.

Hell, Goblins has just as many tutoring decisions as ANT, and you could lose just as easily to the wrong kind of deck or answer.

I see absolutely no evidence or reason to think that the skill distribution for ANT is any different than the skill distribution for any other deck in Legacy. the mistakes are just more salient.

[Bahamuth]

If 95% of the legacy community plays Brainstorms ineffectively, than that almost certainly implies tha CounterTop decks are harder to play than ANT, since Countertop decks run 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, and 4 Ponder. Manipulating Top optimally an entire game requires many, many more decision trees than what 4 Mystical Tutor presents.

This is tunnelvisioning. First of all, most decent ANT lists run close to 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder. Also, a lot of CB lists don't run Top and Ponder at all.

But aside from that, you can't, as a combo player yourself (right?) imply that you have to make the same decisions with your cantrips in Counterbalance lists as in any form of combo. That's just not true. When you see a Goyf or a StP on top, all you need to do is consider the board position and consider if that particular card is going to put you ahead. If it doesn't, you fetch. If you see a certain combination of card with your Top, you'll have to consider your entire hand, your opponents hand AND board, your life total, your viable wins in your deck, wether or not you're better off with other cards, wether or not you can expect certain kinds of hate or not AND, in the case of DD combo, what route to victory you plan on taking.


People just think that ANT is difficult because they have maybe played Dark Ritual decks before. Vintage combo decks like Grim Long, Pitch Long and TPS are all much more difficult than ANT, as they actually have many, many different tutors that interact differently (DT, Vamp, Imperial Seal, Mystical, Tinker, Grim Tutor, etc).

Wait, what? They think the deck is difficult BECAUSE they played other forms of Dark Ritual combo? Like, Dark Ritual combo in vintage, which is cleary harder?

Thanks for pointing out that vintage combo is actually more difficult. If you had read my post, you might've noticed that I agreed with that.


I believe that people say that ANT is harder than it really is because the errors are more salient than in a deck like Countertop or Goblins or Zoo, where when you make a mistake in ANT, the mistake is usually proximate to losing, where as a similar mistake with CounterTop (i.e. putting the wrong card ontop with Top) is less proximate to the end result. that doesn't make ANT harder to pilot. It just makes the error more visible.

How does that make ANT not harder to pilot? We're talking about a situation where we want to win out matches. That means we have to make our decisions to such an extend that we make our deck win. If we're allowed to make less optimal plays with a deck, that is definitely an argument to claim that deck is less skill-intensive than a deck that loses when you make a single mistake?


Hell, Goblins has just as many tutoring decisions as ANT, and you could lose just as easily to the wrong kind of deck or answer.

Aside from the fact that that's not even true (Goblins has Matron, which is in 80% of the times a trivial decision anyway, ANT has 4 Mystical and at least 3 Infernal Tutor, which, as I hope you know, are used as tutors quite often in both pre-combo and mid-combo to up the storm count), the decisions are harder than those you make with Goblins. Also, the fact that you may or may not have more tutors doesn't directly imply that a deck is harder to pilot than any other, just like the 'salientness' of a deck and the amount of cantrips does or doesn't.

[/QUOTE]

[Bahamuth]

Double post

[Vacrix]

ANT and Reanimator are very easy decks to pilot.

Legacy ANT is not even remotely as difficult to play as Vintage Storm Combo decks. And Reanimator is about as intuitive as you can possibly have a deck be. Both decks are fairly linear, and their play sequences can be easily learned and applied.

I don't get the hoopa over how 'difficult' these decks are. Counterbalance decks, like the one Nassif used to win GP Chicago, are much more difficult to pilot than either one of those decks.

Iggy Pop was alot harder than ANT.
Oh of course. The problem was that despite how easy they were to learn, people could still manage to fuck up with them.


Silent Requiem pretty much struck gold here:

Actually, if they were indeed out to tone down ANT and Reanimator, then banning Mystical was absolutely the right thing to do.

What Wizards has effectively said is NOT that combo has no place, but that combo should be tricky to play, and that the tradeoff for avoiding interaction with your opponent is increased interaction with your deck. Mystical Tutor made combo too easy to play.

They didn't ban Entomb because they think Entomb is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did not ban Ad Nauseam because they think Ad Nauseam is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did ban Mystical Tutor because it is a force multiplier that makes otherwise reasonable cards and strategies too powerful and consistent.
Not much more needs to be said.


The issue here is that we've now lost an important boogeyman for the format. Combo is essentially dead in that most people who could play it, won't, or won't play it well enough to stay out of the 0-X-drop bracket.

I mean, Storm was less of an issue than Reanimator. I realize that you, as a storm pilot, would be unhappy with incompetent combo players, but in most cases they were pretty innocuous in terms of the wider metagame - basically, the same as bad Dredge pilots. If you didn't know the matchup and didn't have the hate, they'd get you, but if you did then it wasn't an issue. Reanimator was a deck that people with half a brain and playtesting experience could destroy tournaments with, although that hasn't happened of late because many of the recent Reanimator pilots seem to have lacked one or the other property. Regardless, most of the hate people were packing was laughably ineffective. Karakas? Inkwell. Crypt, Relic, and Faerie Macabre? Needle and Show and Tell. Bounce? Counters already in the main, but Spell Pierce is a fine backup. I mean, the deck was this close to being completely idiot proof, which is kind of scary.

I don't appreciate the collateral damage done by the ban decision. If the DCI had wanted to stop Reanimator, they could have just admitted they fucked up and re-banned Entomb. Storm combo is more of an issue in Europe than America, so just looking at GP Madrid and assuming the worst is pretty loose. If they looked at the Top 8 results of all the SCG events this year, they would have seen that both Force of Will and Tarmogoyf showed up far more often than Mystical Tutor. Mystical also enabled a bunch of funky Tier II strategies like Nightmare's Mossnought-Emrakul deck. Why mess with all of that? Storm and Reanimator could be targeted with surgical precision by banning Ad Noz and Entomb, respectively (Menendian says as much in the article, for those of you who can't read it).

This just feels so...unnecessary. Like, yeah, all of the cool kids in Magic think Zoo is just a dumb little kid's deck and that all Legacy players suck and that if REAL Magic players played Legacy, it would be all storm decks, all the time, but the point is that the real metagame is reasonably healthy and diverse, with an aggro deck currently on a winning streak.

Whatever. What's done is done, and now that combo is gone I might even play Aggro Loam in Columbus (assuming I go).
I wasn't really unhappy with terrible storm combo players. I was unhappy because I had to work much harder to win my matches because the number of storm decks increased by such a huge quantity. The result was more storm hate and more decks that kick the shit out of storm. Granted, it probably made me a better player having to fight through more hate than usual so I will concede there.

You explained the nature of Reanimator very well. It really is idiot proof. But isn't that the point? Magic is supposed to be about skill vs. skill, not skill vs. cards. Though it really does come down to skill vs. cards sometimes, having idiot proof decks takes more skill out of the equation than WoTC was comfortable with.

[Smmenen]

Wait, what? They think the deck is difficult BECAUSE they played other forms of Dark Ritual combo? Like, Dark Ritual combo in vintage, which is cleary harder?



The word 'never' was missing in that sentence.




Also, the fact that you may or may not have more tutors doesn't directly imply that a deck is harder to pilot than any other, just like the 'salientness' of a deck and the amount of cantrips does or doesn't.

[/QUOTE]


It's not the salience of the deck that makes a deck harder to play. That's not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the salience of the error, and it's proximity to the conclusion of the game, make it seems like ANT is a harder deck to play than it really is, or compared to other decks.

That is, when you mess up with ANT, usually the crowd behind you can see it easily, and you lose the game in the next turn or so. When you mess up with a Top with CounterTop, or play the wrong creature on turn two with Zoo, or drop the wrong land on turn one or two with Lands, the error doesn't manifest in a game loss until much, much later in the game. So the error is both less proximate and therefore less salient, but also just less visible, and therefore less salient. But no less present.

[Bahamuth]

It's not the salience of the deck that makes a deck harder to play. That's not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the salience of the error, and it's proximity to the conclusion of the game, make it seems like ANT is a harder deck to play than it really is, or compared to other decks.

That is, when you mess up with ANT, usually the crowd behind you can see it easily, and you lose the game in the next turn or so. When you mess up with a Top with CounterTop, or play the wrong creature on turn two with Zoo, or drop the wrong land on turn one or two with Lands, the error doesn't manifest in a game loss until much, much later in the game. So the error is both less proximate and therefore less salient, but also just less visible, and therefore less salient. But no less present.

Actually, that error is not going to manifest in many cases at all. But even if it does, the fact that it is, for two reasons, less salient, is an argument to state that it is less difficult to play.

Why haven't you adressed any of the other points I made? Those are much more important that this anyway.

[deadlock]

Its not that relevant when the error manifests / becomes apparent, as i doesnt change the outcome.
It lies in the nature of (storm) combo decks that they are harder to play as they are less forgiving since you put everýthing in one basket (simply put). Aggro control is far more forgiving compared to that.

"Pure" ANT is easier to play than Vintage combo, simply because the deck is streamlined to use this one engine AN, compared to Vintage decks, which use a large amount of singleton bombs, which all need a different approach.
This changes if you add a couple of other engines like NLS does. At that point you can no longer say that such a deck is easier to play than any vintage storm combo deck.
There metagame considerations aswell, e.g. which is the more combo friendly format...

[Smmenen]

Its not that relevant when the error manifests / becomes apparent, as i doesnt change the outcome.
It lies in the nature of (storm) combo decks that they are harder to play as they are less forgiving since you put everýthing in one basket (simply put).


But being less forgiving doesn't mean that they are harder to play. The gravity of the harm may be greater, but that doesn't mean that the decision was harder. It just meant more.

Be careful about essentializing the 'nature' of storm combo.

[Vacrix]

Less forgiving = harder to play
If you fuck up with a non-storm deck, at least you can recover from your mistake. Play mistakes don't put you behind; they literally kill you. This can be said of pretty much any storm combo deck in the format. If you fuck up, it isn't likely you will be going off again for a few turns. Those few turns is all a deck with a half decent clock needs to kill you.

[denial]

First of all, most decent ANT lists run close to 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder. Also, a lot of CB lists don't run Top and Ponder at all.

really ?

[DalkonCledwin]

really ?

I think he was referring more to threshold (which use to be synonymous with counterbalance decks). Most Threshold decks in this day and age do not actually run sensei's top or even counterbalance anymore. Not as sure about Ponder though.

[honestabe]

Here's my problem.

Legacy is [as of july 2010, WAS] a Rocks---Papers---Scisors format. Combo--->Aggro------>Control. Now that Rocks is gone, Scissors is the best. Paper just can't win. This is in no way good for the format.

People look at Mystcial and say it was dominating, but this is false, much like how in Vintage, people thought Flash was this unbeatable deck, while it only was in 10 % of top 8s. Timmy Toughnuts with Zoo doesn't like to lose to tendrils, so everytime he plays it, its going to seem like he's played it more. This creates complaints about how good combo is, while in reality, Zoo and New Horizons have been CRUSHING everything in the latest SCGs.

Now, WoTC is biased towards Aggro, creature based decks, and dislikes combo. Aaron Forsythe admitted this in his interview with SCG. That being said, it was sort of the perfect storm for combo to get nuked----> There are 2 tier 1 combo decks, Timmy Toughnuts hates loosing to them and makes a scene, despite that Timmy and his buddies have been crushing everything---> WoTC, the figurative mommy, who Timmy Toughnuts goes running to sends mystical tutor to its room for a while, for being a bad boy, and making Timmy Toughnuts cry.

Now, if they REALLY had to ban a card, why not goyf? There were 24 copies of goyf in the top 8 of SCG Philly and only 4 copies of mystical in that top 8. The same stat holds true for SCG Seattle. In GP Madrid, there were 12 copies of Mystical in the top 8, and 20 copies of Goyf in that same top 8. Also, goyf has infiltrated many archtypes, while mystical is excluseveliy in storm and reanimator decks. Without mystical to keep goyf out of every top 8 spot, how long until he gets banned?

Goyf is WAYYY more dominant than mystical, and if WoTC truely NEEDED to ban something, and truely cared about archetype equality, goyf should have been hit.

First they fucked up Vintage, and now they've set thier sights on legacy. I am truely and thoughorly disguisted with the DCI and their unfair bias towards aggro

[Vacrix]

Here's my problem.

Legacy is [as of july 2010, WAS] a Rocks---Papers---Scisors format. Combo--->Aggro------>Control. Now that Rocks is gone, Scissors is the best. Paper just can't win. This is in no way good for the format.

People look at Mystcial and say it was dominating, but this is false, much like how in Vintage, people thought Flash was this unbeatable deck, while it only was in 10 % of top 8s. Timmy Toughnuts with Zoo doesn't like to lose to tendrils, so everytime he plays it, its going to seem like he's played it more. This creates complaints about how good combo is, while in reality, Zoo and New Horizons have been CRUSHING everything in the latest SCGs.

Now, WoTC is biased towards Aggro, creature based decks, and dislikes combo. Aaron Forsythe admitted this in his interview with SCG. That being said, it was sort of the perfect storm for combo to get nuked----> There are 2 tier 1 combo decks, Timmy Toughnuts hates loosing to them and makes a scene, despite that Timmy and his buddies have been crushing everything---> WoTC, the figurative mommy, who Timmy Toughnuts goes running to sends mystical tutor to its room for a while, for being a bad boy, and making Timmy Toughnuts cry.

Now, if they REALLY had to ban a card, why not goyf? There were 24 copies of goyf in the top 8 of SCG Philly and only 4 copies of mystical in that top 8. The same stat holds true for SCG Seattle. In GP Madrid, there were 12 copies of Mystical in the top 8, and 20 copies of Goyf in that same top 8. Also, goyf has infiltrated many archtypes, while mystical is excluseveliy in storm and reanimator decks. Without mystical to keep goyf out of every top 8 spot, how long until he gets banned?

Goyf is WAYYY more dominant than mystical, and if WoTC truely NEEDED to ban something, and truely cared about archetype equality, goyf should have been hit.

First they fucked up Vintage, and now they've set thier sights on legacy. I am truely and thoughorly disguisted with the DCI and their unfair bias towards aggro
Thats a really pessimistic way of looking at the format. Rock/Paper/Scissor isn't how this game works or nobody would play it. Winning is determined by skill, not by what you get paired against.

Control isn't dead just because aggro doesn't have to deal with as much combo. On the contrary, Landstill has been on the rise and thats not because ANT exists. Countermagic is good against everything you know, not just combo.

As for, "lol ban Goyf!!!" If they did ban Goyf, ANT and Reanimator would kick the shit out of absolutely everything so your argument fails pretty hard there.

[Aggro_zombies]

Thats a really pessimistic way of looking at the format. Rock/Paper/Scissor isn't how this game works or nobody would play it. Winning is determined by skill, not by what you get paired against.

Control isn't dead just because aggro doesn't have to deal with as much combo. On the contrary, Landstill has been on the rise and thats not because ANT exists. Countermagic is good against everything you know, not just combo.

As for, "lol ban Goyf!!!" If they did ban Goyf, ANT and Reanimator would kick the shit out of absolutely everything so your argument fails pretty hard there.
Countermagic is pretty bad against Zoo.

Also, pairings do influence whether or not you win. That's the basis of the theory behind the skill of "metagaming" - namely, that you're much more likely to win if you choose a deck with good matchups against the expected field. If you show up to a tournament with Merfolk and play against Zoo for the first three rounds, you're probably going home early no matter how good you are.

[Vacrix]

Oh of course they influence whether or not you win. That wasn't his point.
Paper just can't win.

[Aggro_zombies]

Oh of course they influence whether or not you win. That wasn't his point.
Well, making allowance for some hyperbole, he actually does have a point. The current and probably future Legacy metagame is made up largely of little rock-paper-scissors dynamics.

I mean, let's speculate a bit here. Zoo is an obvious deck going forward. NO Counterbalance has lost one of its main reasons for existence (a strong and relatively prevalent combo deck) and will likely spin off a variety of Counterbalance child decks that are more control-oriented. Most of these will probably opt for Enlightened Tutor and either Thopter-Sword or Painter-Stone as a combo kill, but otherwise be light on creatures. Many of them will need to be built specifically with beating Zoo in mind because of how mediocre blue is in general against that deck. However, in doing so, many of them are likely to lose points to a tempo-oriented Merfolk build using Spell Pierce, Daze, Cursecatcher, Wasteland, and possibly substituting Ports in for manlands (or moving the manlands to the sideboard). However, that deck will pretty much be a dog to Zoo and its relevance in the format will depend entirely on there being a sufficient amount of blue-based control available. This works for Jace TMS control builds eschewing Counterbalance as well.

Lands is also an obvious deck going forward. Setting aside the expense of the deck, its presence is likely to warp regional metagames around it. An unopposed Lands deck is pretty good against Zoo and can board specifically to beat blue control decks, so it would do well in inbred blue-v-Zoo metagames. However, successful but sparse Lands decks may cause shifts in the meta towards Counterbalance strategies with maindeck ways to answer EE and Lands' other card advantage elements. Those decks tend to be slower, Supreme Blue-ish decks using Trinket Mage packages and perhaps a combo kill (Chain-Swans, maybe?). They would also be soft to Zoo.

Midrange decks like The Rock or Aggro Loam can be built to beat Zoo while punishing other aggro-control decks, especially blue-based ones. However, they tend to be soft to heavy control decks in the Jace TMS Landstill vein. Those decks in turn are soft to Merfolk and tempo strategies like New Horizons that may in turn be favorable matchups for midrange decks.

Combo will exist in small quantities on a regional scale. It will most likely beat Zoo, but not beat blue control decks. However, its presence may increase the chances of a deck like Merfolk doing well because of its ability to knock out red aggro decks early on, leaving the control decks Merfolk is favored against. This effect will be heavily dependent on pairings, pilot skill, and the amount of combo.

Similarly, Reanimator will likely be too slow to consistently beat a Zoo deck with hate, but it will probably be able to rumble with the control decks. That would increase Zoo and midrange's power at the expense of Landstill evolutions and the decks that prey on them (Merfolk).

The point is that any deck with variable matchups will have some where it is heavily unfavored and some where it is the clear favorite. The degree of "clear" or "heavily" are dependent on the deck in question, but some archetypes are just strategically inferior to others in a given matchup. Merfolk will not consistently beat Zoo even in the hands of a skilled pilot (without sacrificing tons of board space, anyway). Zoo will not consistently beat a Lands deck built to not keel over to PoP. These aren't "just can't win," but for a lot of players and in a lot of situations, it will certainly feel like it.

One interesting thing to note from this analysis is that correct metagaming may now be more important than ever. Decks have very defined matchups and there aren't a lot of confounding factors anymore. The loss of Mystical is likely to re-consolidate the format around a different set of good decks: Zoo, New Horizons, and blue control of various types, with Lands, Merfolk, storm, and Reanimator all being viable Tier 1.5 or metagame decks. In that sense, regional metagames may very well become rock-paper-scissors affairs.

Regardless, he automatically loses the argument by asking for Tarmogoyf to be banned. At this point, banning Tarmogoyf would be as format-destroying as banning Brainstorm.

[Vacrix]

That pretty much sums up the format. Good analysis sir.
But you proved my point. It isn't as well defined a metagame as rock/paper/scissors.
Its more like rock/paper/scissors/magnet/papershredder/paperweight/hammer/gun/sword. :D

[DalkonCledwin]

That pretty much sums up the format. Good analysis sir.
But you proved my point. It isn't as well defined a metagame as rock/paper/scissors.
Its more like rock/paper/scissors/magnet/papershredder/paperweight/hammer/gun/sword. :D

wouldn't the sword go before the gun?

And yes I think that those decks that are able to adapt to the widest variety of decks are probably going to be the ones that become the new Tier 1 in this new meta. Unfortunately I am not sure how many of said decks there are. I know Zoo will likely be very popular due to its ease of play, but in all honesty I am not sure how configurable that deck happens to be.

[Bahamuth]

really ?

Yeah, that was a typo. Wanted to say ponder.

[Gheizen64]

Ehm, we're still arguing about Combo/Control/Aggro?

I was under the impression that kind of classification was pretty old and was replaced by something like this:

Grinding decks (most control, few aggressive cards, lot of setup cards) -> Bomb Decks (ramp, midrange, combo, some big aggressive cards, some setup ones)-> Swarm decks (aggro, burn, little to no setup cards, lot of aggressive cards)-> Grinding decks

In this case, if Combo disappear (which i don't think it's the case) and aggro deck go wild, the logical consequence is to play midrange decks like Rock. And those deck lose to permission even more than combo does.

Just my 0.02

[pippo84]

Since combo will be less popular Counterbalance decks will also see less play.
Zoo will be everywhere, and maybe Landstill will return as a solid choice. Also Enchantress and Aggro Loam become good choices..
Anyways the choice of banning MT will affect the meta.
And for the last time: banning Tarmogoyf is wrong!! It's a vanilla creature. It's strong, but has no evasion and dies easily to whatever removal in the game!

[Smmenen]

Less forgiving = harder to play
If you fuck up with a non-storm deck, at least you can recover from your mistake. Play mistakes don't put you behind; they literally kill you. This can be said of pretty much any storm combo deck in the format. If you fuck up, it isn't likely you will be going off again for a few turns. Those few turns is all a deck with a half decent clock needs to kill you.

No it doesn't. Less forgiving = less forgiving. Harder to play = harder to play.

A deck that is less forgiving means that making a single mistake is more deadly, but that doesn't mean that the decisions are intrinsically more difficult or intellectually challenging.

[Hanni]

Since combo will be less popular Counterbalance decks will also see less play.

Counterbalance was popular when combo wasn't seeing much play, to begin with. Counterbalance prevents the majority of the format from playing spells, and is still extremely strong against decks like Zoo, despite popular belief.

Counterbalance is going to continue to see alot of play. The difference now, is that you are going to see those Counterbalance decks become alot more hostile towards aggro strategies.

I see board control with Counterbalance becoming the next Tier 1 deck, although I think that archetype should have become a Tier 1 deck a long time ago.

I also see the aggro/control CounterTop decks splashing red. Grim Lavamancer dominates Goblins and Merfolk, which were CounterTop's worst matchups. Firespout answers Goblins, Merfolk, and Zoo.

Once the format starts to handle all of these small aggressive aggro decks, midrange aggro will probably make a comeback. Aggro Loam and The Rock will trump the small aggro decks, as well as the small aggro answers like Grim Lavamancer and Firespout.

The metagames going to keep shifting like that until it finds its new sweet spot.

[Cthuloo]

No it doesn't. Less forgiving = less forgiving. Harder to play = harder to play.

A deck that is less forgiving means that making a single mistake is more deadly, but that doesn't mean that the decisions are intrinsically more difficult or intellectually challenging.

I'm not sure this is in any case the correct question to ask. I was thinking at a simplified model, where you have 2 decks equally "hard to play", but more or less "forgiving"

Let's say you have to take 3 decisions during a game, and let's assume that an average player has 90% possibility to make the right choice and that this possibility is independent of the deck (CB or ANT), but for ANT every mistake has 100% of losing you the game, while for CB the value is 10%.

So, with ANT you have a 27% chance of losing the game on bad decisions, with counterbalance only 3%. To obtain that value the ANT player should be able to master his deck at 99% correctness. This basically means that a higher skill level is required to play ANT (well) than CB.

Lets look at an opposite scenario. Let's suppore that ANT is "harder to play" but "equally forgiving", and the same average player has an 80% possibility to make the correct decision with ANT and a 90% with CB, but in either case he has a 10% chance to lose the game if he makes the wrong choice.

Now the chance to lose the game with ANT due to bad decisions is only 6%. You could say that this deck is "harder to play", but this may very well be a pure phylosophical question, since Average Joe tends to "auto lose" more with the "easier" deck.



Counterbalance was popular when combo wasn't seeing much play, to begin with. Counterbalance prevents the majority of the format from playing spells, and is still extremely strong against decks like Zoo, despite popular belief.



Zoo is much stronger now than it was then, and Merfolk rose a lot in popularity. Even with the banning of MT, the metagame wont be the same as 1 year and a half ago. It's not assured that CB will still be a winning strategy. Of course neither can we say for sure that it will disappear.

I have the feeling that CB will be no more a Tier 1 strategy, but we will see in some months.

[Hanni]

I have the feeling that CB will be no more a Tier 1 strategy, but we will see in some months.

By design, Counterbalance is a very broken strategy. The format was completey warped because of it, and the metagame adapted to handle it. It's still a broken strategy. Legacy is format defined by 1cc and 2cc staples, and Counterbalance prevents those spells from being played. Zoo has Qasali, which itself is countered by Counterbalance. Krosan Grip is the only spell that adequately answers it.

Expect to see Counterbalance decks become much more hostile to aggro strategies in the coming months. By hostile, I mean expect to see spells like Grim Lavamancer and Firespout make big showings.

[Sevryn]

Spanish Inquisition will dominate. Mark my words.

[whienot]

Spanish Inquisition will dominate. Mark my words.

Shhhhhh. You can't have people expecting it.
(See what I did there?)

[Hanni]

hahaha

[death]

Spanish Inquisition will dominate. Mark my words.

I am also rooting for Cephalid Breakfast. Screw you WotC, you can't stop my turn 1-2 combos!!


EDIT: I dare you to ban Worldly Tutor too or I will break the card in every possible way imaginable.

[Bryant Cook]

I can't believe I wasted my time reading this.

[Fuzzy]

We are back to Chicago metagame. That's it.

[SpikeyMikey]

@Dalkon: Tendrils has been dominating the Netherlands for months, and to discount the results from the largest tournament of all time that saw a Mystical v. Mystical final due to a lack of sample size is more than a little disingenuous. Sure, a lot of Zoo decks made day two, where they got crushed by all of the people playing loam decks and combo decks after they started getting paired against Silvergill Adept.

With all due respect to our Scandanavian brethren, I think the dominance of AnT there has more to do with saturation than with the inherent goodness of the deck. To simplify, let's say that CB Top has a 70% win ratio against AnT and that you've got a 5 round tournament with cut to T8 where said CB Top faces AnT all 5 rounds. You've got a 50/50 shot of making T8 with that CB Top even though you post a fantastic matchup in all 5 rounds. On average, you win 3.5 matches, meaning half the time 3 and half the time 4 (obviously that's not 100% accurate, sometimes you'll scrub out after 2 rounds and sometimes you'll win out, but 3-2 and 4-1 will be the most common finishes). 3-2 (or worse) is not going to put you in T8. So it looks like AnT is dominating, but in reality, it's just field saturation. Again, this is very simplistic, as you'll never see clean numbers like that, but the model illustrates how saturation can cause a deck to appear better than it is. I felt the same applied to the NE metagame when Legacy split from Vintage. It took months for bad storm decks to disappear and even longer for ATS to fade out and I will argue to my dying day that neither Long or ATS was ever a tier 1 deck.

Edit: That's not really fair. I do think that ATS was good, just not as dominating as people thought it was. I got a little carried away at the end there.

[Cthuloo]

By design, Counterbalance is a very broken strategy. The format was completey warped because of it, and the metagame adapted to handle it. It's still a broken strategy. Legacy is format defined by 1cc and 2cc staples, and Counterbalance prevents those spells from being played. Zoo has Qasali, which itself is countered by Counterbalance. Krosan Grip is the only spell that adequately answers it.

Expect to see Counterbalance decks become much more hostile to aggro strategies in the coming months. By hostile, I mean expect to see spells like Grim Lavamancer and Firespout make big showings.

I 100% agree with your last sentence, I also think that this will be the way to go. I don't know if it will be enough. Future metagame will be different from what it was post Chicago, it will be faster, even with the downfall of combo. We will see if a new version of a Counterbalance deck will manage to fight to the top.