Limited flow of ideas between formats

[EssKay]

Because there are no regular Legacy events around here, I decided to make my still-incomplete Zoo build standard legal and go play in a PTQ this past weekend. I was totally amazed by how many people had 1. never heard of Zoo and 2. had to read staples like KotR and Wooly Thoctar.

I tried to get some ideas for substitutions by searching the standard section on mtgsalvation, but couldn't find anything even close to Zoo, despite a large portion of the deck being standard legal. For what originally started out as a joke, the deck performed better than I expected, not that it's going to win the next Pro Tour, but with a little tweaking it could at least be competitive.

I also noticed that standard players don't seem to have the same negative feelings towards "enters the battlefield tapped" lands as Legacy players do. I ran nothing but fetches and basics, and was actually surprised at how consistent the manabase was, meanwhile almost every opponent started each game by timewalking themself with a tapped land.

That being said, should the Legacy community be paying closer attention to what's going on in Standard, Vintage, and not-very-Extended?

[Nonex]

We Legacy players are largely influenced by Wasteland and most of us can't build a mana base without keeping it in mind. Standard's current Wasteland is Goblin Ruinblaster, and probably the best one since Magus of the Moon. Because tempo must then be oriented towards board control rather than mana denial, it's ok if your lands enter tapped as long as they fix the proper colors for your bombs (unless they serve another purpose, like Windbrisk Heights).

IMHO paying attention to other formats can't be bad, especially Standard. If rotations have something good, it's that they force you to be more open-minded because you must find new interactions every year unless you prefer netdecking. I find new decks or new cards in preexisting decks to be rejected by the Legacy community rather often, until they start winning tournaments. I rarely see that happening in Standard.

[jrsthethird]

Standard 'Zoo' is basically named after the shard that comprises the deck, Naya. The format's slower, so they can run 4- and 5-mana cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Vengeine, Ranger of Eos, Elspeth, Gideon, Baneslayer, whatever.

If you're going to continue playing it in standard you should invest in a couple Sunpetal Groves and Rootbound Crags to make your mana better. Also, the manlands are really good if you don't mind the ETBT.

In response to your last question, yes. There's no harm in following other formats, and a lot of decks in Legacy try to port in ideas that are viable in other formats, usually (old) extended. Two recent examples are Dark Depths/Hexmage and Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, which made up the best deck in extended last season, and have both been ported to Legacy to some degree of success.

An example of Standard influencing Legacy is U/G Madness or Psychatog, both huge Standard decks in their day, and were good in Legacy for years afterwards.

[Artowis]

Because there are no regular Legacy events around here, I decided to make my still-incomplete Zoo build standard legal and go play in a PTQ this past weekend. I was totally amazed by how many people had 1. never heard of Zoo and 2. had to read staples like KotR and Wooly Thoctar.

I tried to get some ideas for substitutions by searching the standard section on mtgsalvation, but couldn't find anything even close to Zoo, despite a large portion of the deck being standard legal. For what originally started out as a joke, the deck performed better than I expected, not that it's going to win the next Pro Tour, but with a little tweaking it could at least be competitive.

I also noticed that standard players don't seem to have the same negative feelings towards "enters the battlefield tapped" lands as Legacy players do. I ran nothing but fetches and basics, and was actually surprised at how consistent the manabase was, meanwhile almost every opponent started each game by timewalking themself with a tapped land.

That being said, should the Legacy community be paying closer attention to what's going on in Standard, Vintage, and not-very-Extended?

The two bolded things I want to touch on.

1. Wherever you play isn't very competitive if they need to read KOTR.

2. It's not a Time Walk when you have nothing to cast on turn 1 (and many decks do not). In addition, getting utility and value from your land slots is huge in a format with very few good ways to gain card advantage without investing a lot of mana. When your options are down to Planeswalkers, Mind Spring or a select few cards (ranger of eos or Bloodbraid Elf for example) you start picking up points everywhere you can. The format isn't so fast that you get punished for doing so and as Nonex pointed out, there's no real LD to worry about.

Obviously people should pay attention to other formats at things to port over. Most of it won't function due to the power level difference, but sometimes you find something that transcends it (jace, thopter combo, etc.). Zoo for a time was basically the same 30-35 cards across every format differented only by the mana-base and a format-only cards like Price of Progress and Tarmogoyf.

[EssKay]

@jrsthethird: maybe the threads have expired or something, but all I could find when I searched for 'Naya' was Naya Allies and Naya Control. Also, I didn't have any problems with the manabase, I ran 3 of each basic, and the rest were fetches, worked out surprisingly well.

@Artowis: Not sure about #1, really don't pay much attention to the Magic scene here since there's no Legacy to be found. Regarding #2 though, that kind of goes back to my original point. One of the first things I learned when I got back into Magic to play Legacy was that one of they key components of a successful Legacy deck was a good curve. Why is having a turn 1 play unimportant to the standard meta? Is it because the card pool just doesn't have enough good cmc1 cards, or is it because there's little risk of getting blown out by turn 3-4, so there's no impetus for establishing early board position?

[jrsthethird]

Probably the latter, which is what makes decks like Boros Bushwacker and Devastating Red good. Problem is, Jund throws a Sprouting Thrinax on the table and they get 4 chump blockers for 3 mana, and your late game sucks.

[EssKay]

So how many sourcers actually play competitive Standard/Extended, and how many are like me and will just throw together some jank just to play in big events?

[jrsthethird]

I try to be competitive in Standard/Extended, but I hate most of the archetypes so I put together rogue decks. I'm actually going to attempt to port my Standard to Legacy, see if it's viable or not. Probably not, but it's so much fun to draw cards with Grim Discovery and Wall of Omens, and bash with Persecutor.