[Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus [Archive]

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Aggro_zombies

06-24-2010, 04:32 PM

First off, let me say that this article is necessarily speculative. There won’t be very many major tournaments between when the Mystical Tutor ban takes effect and Columbus, which means the metagame will still be in a state of upheaval. Columbus is likely to be both the flagship tournament and closing chapter for the initial post-ban redevelopment of the format, although MTGO players will probably have a leg up in this regard. It may be worth tracking trends from the Legacy tournaments online to get a better picture of what Columbus will be like. Also, I realize lots of authors with investments in the format have already talked about this subject, but most of them have said the same thing, which is something easily deduced by most players. The goal here is to give you a bit more practical take on the upcoming format, or at least jump-start a constructive discussion.

One final thing: a lot has been said about Reanimator, both by people who think it's dead and those trying to make it rise from the ashes of No More Mystical. I'm not going to discuss it again here, other than to say that I think Reanimator is a fine Tier II strategy at this point, but the loss in consistency probably makes it not good enough anymore against a Zoo deck with graveyard hate.

Getting back to what I want to talk about, we know a couple things right now: first, that Mystical Tutor’s departure is going to cause a major re-alignment of the format; second, that (for the time being, at least) combo is dead as a major metagame force; and third, that Grim Monolith coming off the list is likely to cause a small uptick in “big mana” decks. I’ll discuss the last two first, and then the first one.

Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Mystical Tutor going away doesn’t kill combo, but it does kill Ad Nauseum – which might as well be the same thing. ANT was the format’s premiere combo deck for a number of reasons, chief among them that it was very easy to play relative to other combo decks. Your goal in basically every matchup was to ramp into AdN and flip cards until you had a way to generate lethal storm count with Tendrils. That meant that you didn’t really have to know a whole lot of tricks to generate storm count, and your biggest mulligan decisions were, “Can this hand beat blue?” and “How fast can I find and play AdN?” That’s not tremendously complex, so it’s kind of amusing that the storm deck for dummies still managed to underperform heavily in the American metagame.

ANT dying now opens up the format to a host of other possible combo decks, the most important of which are TES and Belcher. Belcher is likely to see a spike in popularity due to both that fact and the unbanning of Grim Monolith (which helps Belcher generate storm or store mana). Builds of Belcher substituting in Monolith for some number of weaker mana rituals, or perhaps using Goblin Welder to turn Lotus Petals into (colorless) Black Loti, will be the best versions of the deck in the coming months. I say “best” because Belcher as a deck is pretty bad; you’re playing the format’s flagship example of a high-risk, high-reward deck. Sometimes, you’ll live the dream and get there on turn one with Belcher, but sometimes your opponent will have the Force and screw you over, and sometimes the opponent will have sided in Needle or Pyroclasm and prevent you from winning, even if you “successfully” go off. Given that, Belcher is unlikely to take up ANT’s mantle as the format’s combo pillar.

TES is your other option (along with SI and a host of fringe TES-like decks) for combo. The deck is relatively stable and less susceptible to permission, and reasonably fast. That said, the deck is a far cry from the combo juggernaut of ANT; hate bears slow you down, the deck has a much higher learning curve, and it requires a much more intimate knowledge of both the format and the matchups to do well. American ANT players were not tremendously good at navigating the relatively narrow decision trees of their own decks, so it’s probably reasonable to say that most of them aren’t going to be able to make the switch and get in the practice necessary to do well prior to Columbus.

This relegates storm combo decks to regional phenomena that will sink or swim based solely on the skill of the pilot and not metagame saturation (as ANT might have done in Europe). In time, these decks may become more popular, but even then I do not think they will reach ANT levels of popularity. As far as the next month is concerned, storm combo is basically dead.

That brings me to the other item of note, Grim Monolith. Yes, this card is for realz legal in the format now. People who like X Stompy or Stax decks, and the few perverse members of the community who liked Urza’s-block Standard, will be overjoyed. The rest of us are probably right to be skeptical regarding the card’s impact.

First, what does this card do? By itself, it’s a mostly one-off +1 mana boost for base cost of two and one card; with Voltaic Key, it’s a +5 mana boost every turn for base cost of three and two cards. Combined with Tempest-era multi-mana lands, it allows for turn one Trinisphere or, when further combined with Mox Diamond, turn one Sneak Attack. That said, turn one Trinisphere was already possible in the format, and turn one Sneak Attack was also possible (and equally as much of a stretch as the Monolith scenario). Belcher might be happy now that it has access to another “delayed ritual,” and Big Blue or blue Stax decks using Tezzeret are probably salivating at the possibilities, but is this card really doing anything for them?

Monolith fills a role in Tezzeret decks that didn’t have a clear analogue before: namely, allowing your namesake card to do a pretty damn good impression of Garruk Wildspeaker. Not only does it allow a turn two or three Tezz, it generates six mana per turn for free (!) with Tezz in play. The question is, what to do with all that mana? Staff of Domination is the easiest answer: you basically turn Tezzeret into “+1: Draw a card and untap up to one target non-Monolith artifact.” That’s pretty snazzy in the abstract, especially when you flesh out the deck’s skeleton a little bit with Chalice, Trinisphere, Karn, Lodestone Golem, and the like.

However, there are two problems here, which are applicable to the Stompy and Stax builds as well: lack of consistency, and varying levels of power. One could make a compelling argument that a type of “big blue” deck already existed in the format, in the form of Eldariel’s Faerie Stompy; that deck, despite having Mulldrifter and perhaps TfK, is pretty inconsistent, with high mulligan rates, bad topdeck modes, and the virtual requirement of having to go all-in on its opener. Stax and Stompy are decks that basically give you all the bad news up front, and if you can weather it with fast beats or simple patience, it’s likely that these decks won’t be able to find what they need to win in time (although Stax is much worse for this than Stompy is). Yes, these decks can now consistently aim for turn one Trinisphere; the trade-off is that they now have more dead cards to draw in the mid- to late-game without really any gains in consistency (with the probable exception of a slightly lower mulligan rate). Stax and Stompy have both existed on the fringes of the format for a while, but more fast mana was not what they needed to be competitive. However, it’s likely that these two decks will see a spike in popularity leading up to Columbus as players first forget this fact, and then rediscover it by losing a bunch.

Okay, so with that out of the way, the take-home message is: combo is not a problem anymore, Stax and Stompy still suck, and apparently some other card that doesn’t matter got unbanned. Moving right along…

Charging Your Lazers

Pulling the rug out from underneath combo has created a bunch of big winners and a bunch of big losers in the lead up to the GP. Months of prior testing and tournament results aren’t completely invalidated, but the metagame will shift in such a way that you should hit the drawing board again and reshape your gauntlet if you want to be prepared. It also opens up a bunch of room for brewing, as a realigning format is perfect for rogue deckbuilders to do their thing. Regardless of your intentions, these are your top testing priorities:

Zoo
Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry
Lands
Aggro Loam
New Horizons

If you have more time or want to get a better picture of how your deck will perform, add the following to the queue:

Jace, the Mind Sculptor Landstill
Merfolk
TES
Dredge

These are likely to be the major players for the foreseeable future. I’ll discuss each in turn.

Zoo

King of the recent SCG 5ks, Zoo is the most obvious deck to beat going forward. Zoo loses one of its worst matchups (combo), sees one of its other weak matchups crippled (Reanimator), and now doesn’t have to bog down its sideboard with hate bears and Mindbreak Traps. That said, you should probably be prepared to make adjustments to your deck to reflect the new realities of the meta.

Zoo now needs to concentrate on two things: beating the mirror, and beating the hate. The hate will most often crop up in the form of Firespout or some sort of recurring life gain like Thopter Foundry, Zuran Orb, Jitte, and lifelink dudes. Each of these shows up in different decks, and the answers don’t cross over tremendously well. Needle and Null Rod can handle everything but the guys; the problem is that most decks that play permanents with activated abilities have ways to get rid of Needle and Null Rod, and you have no ways to protect them. Artifact destruction also works, but Foundry and Orb show up in decks packing Academy Ruins, so that would suggest some combination of Needle and Grip. Speaking of which, Grip may now be good enough to maindeck because of all the artifacts and enchantments you don’t want to see; Zoo’s biggest strength is consistency, and you don’t want to leave all the “bad stuff go away” heavy lifting to Pridemage. Of course, Grip is pretty shitty in the mirror, so…

There are a couple of options here. The blazing speed of Elias Zoo comes at the expense of long-term stability, which is more important now that many of your non-mirror matches are likely to be able to sweep you repeatedly. Burn is still important, but Lightning Helix is better than Fireblast in a world full of the mirror. Zoo now needs to find a balance between aggression and staying power that it hasn’t needed to focus on in a while; I’d suggest the following as a starting point:

4 Wild Nacatl
3 Grim Lavamancer
3 Steppe Lynx
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Knight of the Reliquary

4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning
3 Lightning Helix
2 Price of Progress

3 Path to Exile
2 Sylvan Library
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
3 Taiga
2 Plateau
1 Savannah
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Treetop Village

Remember, this is a pretty rough sketch. The Village and Jitte both give you partial immunity to sorcery-speed sweepers, while Library and an increased emphasis on big guys give you a better midgame. The mana is pretty shoddy and could use some work, but the basic idea is that it pays to go big in the mirror, and to overload the other guy’s removal with a steady stream of dorks in control matchups. The sideboard would likely consist of hosers for combo engines like Thopter-Sword, graveyard hate, and possibly a land toolbox to put your Knights to work. Extra Jittes for the mirror seem okay as well. Wasteland may be a card to consider because of all of the random good land cards in the format (Maze, Ruins, Chasm, etc).

Zoo is very strong going forward, but it’s also the deck everyone is gunning for. The builds that do best will be the ones that can balance answers to control against answers to the mirror.

Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry

Now that Mystical Tutor is banned, Enlightened Tutor is the best non-storm-deck tutor in the format – and you’re going to be constantly reminded of that. Other Counterbalance builds will continue to exist in the same way that Supreme Blue “exists” right now, but the best one going forward is likely to be Esper-colored Thopterbalance (with or without a splash for Firespout).

Why? Well, Thopter Foundry is just an enormous beating against Zoo, and Counterbalance is an enormous beating against Loam decks (also huge beneficiaries of MT’s loss). Both of these cards can be found with Enlightened Tutor. Furthermore, E-Tutor can find random singleton cards that hose certain decks pretty hard: Humility for aggro, Wheel of Sun and Moon for Lands, Aura of Silence for decks like Enchantress, etc. You obviously don’t want all of those in the main, but it sure does save sideboard space.

Consider the following 3rd-place list from a recent 42-person event in Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=36579):

4 Dark Confidant
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Brainstorm
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Sensei’s Divining Top

2 Counterspell
3 Daze
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will

4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Vedalken Shackles

2 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of the Meek

4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod
2 Academy Ruins

There are a couple of things to note here: (1) there’s almost no creatures, (2) Thopter Foundry is the main kill condition but is backed up by Jace, and (3) the deck is softer to Fast Zoo than Big Zoo. This deck is obviously built with a nod towards combo being a problem; in the future Zoo-infested metagame, the deck is likely to lose some of its counters and slower board control cards and pick up more Plow effects and/or silver bullet aggro hosers a la Humility.

That said, you’re still a blue deck, and Zoo decks prey on blue decks almost as a byproduct of their design. Your gains in consistency still won’t put you anywhere close to Zoo’s consistency levels unless you go out of your way to run tons of filtration effects, but that means you’ll spend most of the early game not really doing anything while Zoo plays guy after guy and gets busy. With enough targeted removal in the main, you may be able to aim tons of one-for-ones at the Zoo player to stay alive long enough to get Thopter Foundry rolling. That basically ends the game on the spot unless the Zoo player has Grip and/or enough burn to kill you in response to the first activation. Still, there’s a lot of things that need to go right (or go wrong for the Zoo player) in this matchup.

That said: you really beat the crap out of anything that’s not Zoo.

Your sideboard is likely to consist of a bunch of anti-aggro cards, silver bullet answers to problem decks like Lands that you can fetch with E-Tutor, and additional cheap counters to fight tempo decks. Taking the previous list as a starting point, Dark Confidant, Shackles, and Counterspell are all potential “flex slots” when trying to adjust the deck to a post-ban metagame. I’d recommend trying 2-3 Path to Exiles, a Humility, another EE, and maybe another Foundry, but I say that with the caveat that I haven’t tested this deck much.

Lands

Ah, the days when this deck used to run forty-three lands and was a total “WTF” deck. Now Lands is “mainstream,” thanks to its continued success in the 5ks and its inherent power against the field. Previously, two things were holding it back: the obscene cost of building the deck (Tabernacle really is a $300 card), and combo. One of these is no longer a problem.

Because of the neutering of combo, Lands stands to gain in a big way, and most people are aware of that. There are three big questions now: how many Lands decks will there actually be, how much of an impact will they have if they’re only present in low numbers, and how successful will they be in a field full of graveyard hate? The last question is perhaps the most important in terms of testing because, at the end of the day, the heart and soul of the Lands deck is still Life from the Loam; incapacitating that makes the Lands deck much, much worse. How you go about doing that, however, will have a big impact on how the matchup goes.

Consider this build from the Seattle 5k, piloted by Matt Gargiulo:

4 Exploration
4 Manabond

4 Intuition
4 Life from the Loam

4 Mox Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Zuran Orb

1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Winswept Heath
1 Forest
1 Bayou
3 Tropical Island

4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
1 Ghost Quarter

3 Tolaria West
3 Tranquil Thicket

4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Maze of Ith
1 Glacial Chasm
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Academy Ruins
1 Riftstone Portal

For those of you who haven’t been following the developments in Lands lately, the deck’s designers realized that blue has a lot more to offer the deck than red, which was in the early incarnations. It also gives you a much better game against blue decks, since Tolaria West is an uncounterable tutor for the Counterbalance-slaying EE, and Intuition is an amazing setup card. Against Zoo, you have Maze of Ith, Tabernacle, Zuran Orb, Ensnaring Bridge, and Glacial Chasm to make attacking impossible and burn weak. Most of the rest of the decks in the field tend to fold to you because they can’t really profitably interact with you, and most of them try to win by attacking.

Going forward, the deck could use some work. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a pretty amazing card against Lands, and blue control decks running him are going to use him to full effect to kill you. EE wipes out Counterbalance, but short of heavy mana denial, many blue decks will keep you busy by repeatedly countering the EE and trying to overload your board control elements until they can completely lock you. Zoo is, well, Zoo, so you can’t drop too many anti-burn cards if you want to keep game one good.

The solutions? Well, there are a couple. The best is to add Volrath’s Stronghold somewhere in your 75 and take advantage of Vampire Hexmage and Meloku, the Clouded Mirror. Meloku is a total baller with Manabond and will force concessions on the spot. Hexmage gets Jace and, oh, did I mention that Dark Depths is a land? Yeah, recurring 20/20 flying guys seem pretty good. Beyond that, you want to keep Chalice to stop niche cards like Extirpate, Grips to stop Leylines and Wheels, and maybe a Crucible or two just to play it safe. As it is, a meta with insufficient graveyard hate and enough aggro is ripe for the taking, so even if you’re not packing Lands, you should be packing answers to it.

Aggro Loam

I mention Aggro Loam specifically here because it’s probably the best-known Legacy midrange control deck (and the deck I’m most familiar with), but decks like The Rock fall into this category too. Basically, these decks were underplayed because, despite being good against aggro and passable against blue, they rolled over and died to combo and struggled against tempo. Tempo and combo are major elements of the pre-ban format, so you can see why few people would play these decks, and even fewer do well with them.

Basically, Aggro Loam is great against aggro strategies because you play sweepers and big guys. That’s it. You have more big guys than they have removal, so you sweep and smash, rinse and repeat, round after round. There are no tricks and there’s very little thinking involved in most of your matchups. These sorts of decks will see a rise in popularity because they are relatively inexpensive and offer an alternative to Zoo for players who decide they don’t want to play the best deck, or don’t want to have to fight through the hate. That said, there’s some important limitations to consider here.

First, Aggro Loam relies heavily on Life from the Loam. Removing Loam makes the deck weaker, although it can compensate with Dark Confidant. However, Dark Confidant has a battlefield life expectancy of basically zero against Zoo, and if he does survive, the life loss is actually extremely relevant, as is the fact that he basically can’t kill any of Zoo’s guys on defense. That means that it may be time to reconsider Bob’s role in the deck, especially if Zoo’s metagame share pushes past 25%.

Second, Aggro Loam is soft to both tempo and control decks. Midrange decks tend to beat aggro because they go big and pack just enough disruption to stop the aggro deck from pulling together in time, but they don’t run enough guys (and have the wrong disruption) when faced with control – and thus they don’t do very well. Control decks like Thopterbalance will ruin your day with a combination of tons of removal, tons of chump blockers, and infinite counters. Furthermore, tempo (Daze) decks tend to beat you by being faster – midrange decks tend to be kind of ponderous, and well-timed counters and Wastelands can keep you on the back foot long enough to die to hordes of Merfolk or Knight + Terravore. Thankfully, tempo decks are generally soft to Zoo, so the metagame may work in your favor there.

With all of this in mind, Aggro Loam needs to make some major revisions to stay relevant. Burning Wish is basically too slow or too irrelevant in most of your matchups, so it should be cut. Dreams is a very hit-or-miss card against Zoo (and basically never kills Tarmogoyf or Knight), and is downright awful against blue and Lands. Firespout is much better as an anti-aggro sweeper and is basically a no-brainer sideboarding switch against non-creature decks. Maelstrom Pulse and EE are both decent at controlling Zoo and very, very good against blue, so they should stay. Chalice at one is of questionable value in a format now chock full of awesome two-drops (Counterbalance, Loam, Thopter Foundry, Jitte, etc), so it may be worth moving to the board.

This is not to say that Aggro Loam is bad – it’s a very strong deck. It places high emphasis on redundancy and power, and as such can go toe-to-toe with Zoo in terms of consistency while offering trumps in the form of bigger guys and better removal.

So, if you’re looking to test against Aggro Loam, you may wish to start with this riff on Pat McGregor’s list from last year:

4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Countryside Crusher
3 Terravore

4 Life from the Loam
3 Firespout
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Taiga
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
2 Forest
1 Mountain

3 Tranquil Thicket
2 Forgotten Cave
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Wasteland

Mmm, how I love me some rock-solid mana bases. You may also wish to note that an alternative, four color build of this deck exists, swapping Terravore for the (arguably) stronger Knight of the Reliquary. These builds are fine against most decks but have a softer tempo matchup than normal due to a more unstable mana base. One other thing: Aggro Loam is very customizable, and is more a strategy than a deck. As such, I'm going to toot my horn and suggest trying the Naya build with NO posted in the Aggro Loam thread (no, I will not link you, and yes, I am trying to generate traffic for my own thread).

Sideboard options include Seismic Assault (always kind of awkward for your mana, and not so good anymore), graveyard hate, Grips, and something to deal with blue decks. Mass land destruction can shore up weaknesses against oddball decks like Lands and Enchantress, which aren’t fazed by most of your removal.

New Horizons

At Chicago last year, Canadian Threshold proved itself to be the format’s most potent tempo deck. Tempo strategies were very powerful answers to the slower, more controlling builds of Counterbalance that were popular at the time, and so it seemed like a fine solution. However, since then the deck has gone into a slow decline and has now become an outdated relic in the format. Enter New Horizons.

This deck has been on an absolute streak lately, both in the hands of creator Dave Price (no, not that Dave Price) and, most recently, in Seattle 5k winner Kyle Boddy’s hands. It’s easy to see why when you look at it: the deck combines Canadian’s tempo control elements – designed to keep an opponent off-balance in the early game – with a brutal clock that is very capable of finishing him off before he can recover. One of Canadian’s faults is that a game will often slip away from you because you would come out of the gates with tempo guns blazing, but be unable to put enough pressure on your opponent to stop him from recovering and kicking your ass. Price and co. realized that red doesn’t do much for the deck and so swapped it out for white, which gives them access to both the best removal in the format and the biggest monsters in the format – at least, the biggest you’ll actually cast.

However, combo’s disappearance and Zoo’s ascension makes tempo a less attractive. For starters, 50% or more of a typical Zoo deck costs only a single mana to play, making the mana denial pretty weak. You don’t have many ways to keep yourself from getting burned out, and if Zoo builds up enough little guys, it’s fully conceivable that the deck can race you even if you execute your game plan. Furthermore, you were heavily favored against the sort of blue Counterbalance decks that beat combo; without combo to keep those decks relevant, some of your choice prey will be exiting stage left.

That’s not to say that Zoo is totally hopeless (it’s not), and even if it were, it’s nothing a good retooling can’t fix. Take the following tweaks on Boddy’s Seattle list:

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Rhox War Monk
1 Terravore

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder

4 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Engineered Explosives

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
3 Horizon Canopy
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

RWM in the main gives you a better shot against Zoo if that deck manages to recover from the tempo assault. Some of the cuter interactions – Vendillion Clique and Karakas, for example – are moved to the sideboard since they’re better against control decks. Speaking of sideboarding, you want graveyard hate, Merfolk hate, and Counterbalance hate in the board. Some more Plow effects might be good against Zoo, but Oust is better than PtE because of how awkward Path is with the mana denial plan.

There are certainly other options available, but current builds of New Horizons have a hard matchup against Zoo – not unwinnable, but not easy, either. If Zoo explodes in popularity, changes to the main will have to be made to reflect that.

Aggro_zombies

06-24-2010, 06:56 PM

Other Decks

These include Landstill, Merfolk, TES, and Dredge – decks you don’t necessarily need to test against, but which are good gauntlet additions anyway. Since these decks are more likely to be fringe decks, I won’t provide lists, but I will talk about them briefly here.

Laskin Landstill – A Landstill deck that uses Jace, the Mind Sculptor as its kill card. In many ways, it’s similar to Thopterbalance, but instead of using Counterbalance to generate card advantage, it uses more traditional methods like draw spells. These decks will often feature a removal suite spread across white, green, and black, with blue making up the backbone of the deck. Cunning Wish may or may not also be part of the equation.

There are two things you need to know here: one, these decks get wrecked by Lands, and two, these decks get wrecked by fast Zoo decks. The deck doesn’t have enough ways to interact with Lands outside of Pernicious Deed (to clear the enchantments) and Jace – but both of those can be answered by the Lands player, and anyway Landstill can’t win fast enough to avoid draws (also, Mindslaver lock from Lands). Your most relevant removal spells against Zoo are your 4 Swords; Edict effects in black aren’t very good (take one for the team, Pridemage! Swing with two Tarmogoyfs), and Pernicious Deed is glacially slow against a deck that can have you at ten life or less by the time you could fire it off. Still, if you’re rocking a slower control strategy, it might be worth it to test against this deck, as it will gain popularity after the ban.

Merfolk – Yes, this deck will still exist. The 16 lord versions with LoA, Coralhelm, Reejerey, and Sovereign will be the best since they don’t autolose to Zoo, and the deck is likely to dip into white more often now for Absolute Law and other protection measures. That said, it will never be a clearly favorable matchup for you, and this deck’s share of the metagame will be almost entirely dependent on blue control decks being good enough. If you’re working on such a deck, you should definitely test it against Merfolk, as Merfolk requires different answers than Zoo does thanks to both the tempo elements and to how well its creatures scale; otherwise, it’s probably not worth it.

TES – No, combo isn’t completely dead, and this is most likely to be the new face of it. However, this isn’t worth testing against if either of the following are true: (1) you don’t know a good TES pilot, and/or (2) your deck has a bad combo matchup currently. The most important of these is (1) because the difference between Joe Shmoe, “What’s this deck do?” TES pilot and a Bryant Cook TES pilot is enormous and will greatly affect how good the matchup seems to be in testing. Of course, you’re more likely to face the former than the latter at the GP – but TES is pretty rare, and probably won’t become popular enough to warrant sideboard slots in Zoo, for example.

Dredge – Hi, Max McCall. Yes, I see you. What, you’re not going to wave back at me? What a jerk. Anyway: yeah, Dredge exists. Now that Reanimator is no longer poised to wreck the format, Dredge might make a comeback as people ease up on their graveyard hate…or will it?

The short answer: no. The long answer: no, because Lands exists. Basically, Lands is the best anti-Zoo deck in the format right now, and may be the best all-around deck; as such, it would be unwise to remove graveyard hate from your sideboard. Even if you don’t expect to see Lands, many of the other control and midrange decks gunning for Zoo have some sort of recursive element to give them superior late-games. Dredge is probably the worst “best deck” in the format, and even when it was extremely popular at the end of last year, it failed to put up the sort of numbers you’d expect a popular deck to put up. Assuming relatively constant levels of graveyard hate after the ban takes effect (perhaps switching to be in favor of cards like Crypt that get rid of entire graveyards), Dredge is still going to be suffering enormous collateral damage. So, if you have absolutely nothing better to do, test against Dredge just so you can totally smash the bad Dredge pilots who will inevitably show up to Columbus.

Conclusions / TL;DR

Combo is certainly diminished and most likely a complete non-issue for Columbus, which changes the landscape of the format a lot. In order to cope, you need to do two things: (1) have a plan to beat Zoo, and (2) have a plan to beat most of the decks that try to beat Zoo. That is a tall order in this format.

Most of the decks that try to beat Zoo do so by making attacking unprofitable in various ways, either through life gain, preventing attacks altogether, or sweeping repeatedly. Different anti-Zoo decks will focus on different methods, which makes your life easier when deciding how to sideboard. You want to keep a couple of things handy: a varied mix of graveyard hate (to dodge Needle), Krosan Grips or some other way to destroy artifacts (there aren’t as many good enchantments as there are artifacts), and anti-aggro cards to keep Zoo from turning the match around after boarding.

If you’re playing Zoo, you need to be mindful that everyone in the room is trying to beat you. First, you need to address the mirror; second, you need to have outs to Thopter Foundry and Tabernacle/Chasm in particular. If you’re running enough Knights of the Reliquary, Wasteland may be an unexpected option against Lands, while Krosan Grip and Null Rod answer Thopterbalance pretty well. The best way to beat the mirror is probably to go large by stocking up on Knights and maybe Terravores, and to include some amount of life gain in the form of Lightning Helix.

I’m not sure where the format will go after Columbus, mostly because the results of that tournament will largely dictate what non-Zoo decks are good. Combo will likely creep back into the format as people make the switch to TES and/or Belcher, but it won’t be anywhere near ANT in terms of prevalence or obnoxiousness. Grim Monolith will most likely fail to live up to the hype, but the next block is an artifact block, so it may yet prove itself to be good. Either way, the format is likely to remain aggro versus a variety of anti-aggro strategies for a while yet, so deckbuilding and tuning should be much easier now.

Anyway, I hope this was more practical than the never-ending stream of “ZOMG BANZ” articles that have come out recently. Even if I’m wrong about the format, this is probably a useful starting point. It would be a good idea over the next few weeks to keep a close eye on MTGO, as many of the most prepared people at the GP will be calibrating their expectations by the metagame that evolves there.

ddt15

06-25-2010, 06:27 AM

Zoo
Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry
Lands
Aggro Loam
New Horizons

If this is your test metagame maybe start working on a decent Helm/Line list? Leyline alone beats 4 out of those 5 decks.

Valtrix

06-25-2010, 05:05 PM

Aggro_zombies

06-25-2010, 05:13 PM

Thank you very much for making this. I've been working on testing lately and was thinking about many of the same things for the gauntlet to test. I am especially grateful for the inclusion of lists of the decks to test against, because trying to find a "current good build" of a deck that you're not familiar with can be pretty difficult.
Well, some of these lists I'm not certain about. The Zoo list, for example, was something I put together when writing as a thought experiment. They aren't optimized, but they're probably a good place to start for a first round of testing.

The deck I'm most iffy on here is actually New Horizons. I think it's poorly positioned in the new metagame, but it will be popular because of how well it's done recently, so I included it anyway. The RWM in the main are kind of awkward, so you may want to take the winning list from Seattle and just tweak the sideboard to be heavily anti-Zoo (blue Blasts, RWM, etc).

Jak

06-25-2010, 05:32 PM

Awesome work AZ! I enjoy articles like this.

But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.

4eak

06-25-2010, 05:40 PM

Fucking excellent. Best MTG article I've read in a very long time.

But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.

I agree, this was the major omission of the article, imho. I believe the explanation of increased viability of mid-range control decks suggests it though.

Thanks,
4eak

Aggro_zombies

06-25-2010, 05:48 PM

Awesome work AZ! I enjoy articles like this.

But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.
Well, Survival may or may not be a fine Tier 1.5 strategy.

The issue here is that the deck is generally soft to Zoo and Merfolk and better at outmaneuvering a field of midrange blue decks. Zoo is now the format's top dog, which means that Merfolk is not going to be an issue until the metagame settles down. You could potentially build the deck to beat Zoo, but you're losing ground against more dedicated control decks like Thopterbalance then - especially dedicated control decks capable of answering your engine or fielding an engine of the same power. You could increase the number of bullet slots to try to hold your ground against control decks attacking from diffferent angles (Thopterbalance with permission, Lands with mana denial and inevitability), but then you risk spreading yourself too thin.

In short, Survival suffers from the classic "midrange deck problem," but has the advantage of a superior ability to switch roles thanks to its namesake card. In the near term, I think the deck is a weak choice; in the middle and long terms, the deck may be fine, but you need the metagame to quiet down first so that you have a better idea of how to tune your hate slots. Generic hate cards like Meddling Mage may be okay to tide you over, but they're not great, and in this format it's better to excel at one thing than to be mediocre at a bunch of things.

EDIT: Also, thanks for the thanks. As for myself, I don't have the ability to do adequate testing because there's almost no one playing Legacy around here, and my desktop - which I needed to run MWS - died on me. Well, even then, MWS is a pretty shitty way to do anything other than familiarize yourself with your deck, so like...my hope was that I could help other people who have a better shot at doing well in the tournament than I do. I probably won't come at this rate (sad_face.jpg), but I did get top 16 at the Dallas 5k despite having played almost no Legacy in over a year, so I might still make it if I can find a way to make the trip cheaper.

Nessaja

06-25-2010, 06:14 PM

Tammit67

06-25-2010, 06:16 PM

Very well done. I hope thopter-sword does start picking up its game in the meta, as I feel it has potential. Though i am unsure how poorly New horizons is in the scheme of things. From my limited testing, it would do well enough vs folk/zoo pre-board just by EE, swords, and having the biggest creatures around. Should be interesting to see how it develops

morgan_coke

06-25-2010, 06:39 PM

I thought it was interesting you mentioned Hex/Depths in regards to Lands as a potential addition. I recently added it to Slide (which shares many elements of Lands.dec's gameplan, strengths, and weaknesses) for a lot of the same reasons. i.e. Kill Jace (and in smaller doses Redjani and Elspeth), and provide an out to problematic situations or to just provide a quick kill method.

I think Entomb may begin to see some play in non-Reanimator decks as a tutor, grabbing stuff like Life from the Loam, various specialty lands, and creatures and artifacts for Ruins/Stronghold/Witness/Unearth. I haven't experimented with it myself yet, but I definitely have an eye on it.

-Note: Hexmage has been good, providing a lot of utility in addition to killing walkers and making Marit Lage tokens.

EDIT: Also, doesn't the newly spoiled Crystal Ball solve like, all of Stax's problems? Or at least put a big dent in them? I mean lets review:

-Works with 3Sphere? Check.
-Works with Chalice@1 and 2? Check.
-Actually gets rid of cards you don't want to draw without shuffle effects? Check.
-Reusable and colorless? Check.

One card, even as a 4x probably isn't enough to fix Stax's consistency issues, but this sure seems to go a long way towards helping them.

EDIT2: Also, since I didn't say it earlier, great job, very nice piece, thanks for putting the time in on this.

Aggro_zombies

06-25-2010, 07:16 PM

I feel like this whole "combo is gone" attitude will more likely lose you a tournament then prepare you well for it. Combo is always an issue, and always preys on meta's that don't expect it. Right now is exactly the best time to bring out a combo deck, maybe even balls to the wall belcher, or pseudo combo like enchantress (whose weakest matchup was combo). I don't feel like you did any speculation at all, instead you took the meta pre-combo, took out the combo and left the other decks intact.

I might agree that people typically don't test new decks on a big tourney like Columbus, they usually net-deck the best next thing. But if you truly want to predict the most effective deck now Storm has been nerfed you'll need to think this through a little more, I'd say.

Other sidenote is that I miss Goblins. Which might surpass everything you wrote down, considering being able to deal with Goblins is pretty much the first thing a legacy deck should be capable of doing. It's still one of the pillars in Legacy and less combo didn't hurt nor help Goblins.
Goblins is a relic. It is outclassed by Zoo in the aggro department and outgunned by control decks built to beat Zoo. People will continue to play the deck, but it is pretty solidly Tier II at this point.

Combo is, effectively, gone. ANT players who just lost their pet deck will do one of three things: replace Mystical with cantrips and get rolled by blue, switch to a different combo deck, or switch to a different non-combo deck. Regardless, the number of combo players will be decreased at Columbus. Some pros might play combo because pros are usually obsessed with finding and playing whatever the "best" deck is in a format, but the best pros (LSV or Chapin-caliber, here) could show up with a precon and make day two.

Because of the decreased number of combo players, it becomes realistic to rely on the blue decks in the room to take out those who remain. Yes, it is possible that some combo players could luck out in the opening rounds, let Zoo kill off all the blue players, and then cruise control into the Top 8. This is more a function of pairings than of the inherent strength of their decks, and it is perfectly possible to imagine scenarios where this doesn't happen because they get paired against blue, get crushed, and never escape the middle tables. In fact, we know this happens quite often at the SCG 5ks, where combo is a perennial ne'er-do-well despite how awesome and format-wrecking it's supposed to be.

Does this potentially create a lazy metagame for combo to prey on? Maybe. However, one notable feature of the American metagame is how well decks like Zoo do despite combo being a viable strategy. It's not immediately clear to me that combo will show up in enough frequency, with enough good pilots, to make not sideboarding hate any more risky than Zoo's current plan, which is "Have some token hate bears which don't do enough, but mostly just pray for favorable pairings."

EDIT: If it seems like I left all the other decks intact, it's because they haven't lost much. What does change is their representation, relative power, and the strategies they need to focus most on beating. Banning MT doesn't nuke the format in the same way Flash did, but it does make some decks worse and other decks better, and the number of people playing those decks in the tournament will reflect this. Consequently, you need to modify your deck to beat the expected metagame, which is basically aggro versus anti-aggro. This metagame already exists in some form, but that's because the aggro and some of the anti-aggro decks are very good at suppressing blue, which suppresses combo. Blue decks were basically only a defensible choice because of fears over combo. Now that combo is a shadow of its former self, do you really want to spend all day losing to Zoo?

EDIT 2: @morgan: If the card had Scry 3, maybe. But Scry 2 doesn't seem like it does enough. There's a big difference between seeing the top two and the top three - for example, if Sensei's Divining Top only showed you the top two cards, would it be anywhere nearly as good as it is now? You'd have a much harder time maintaining soft locks or digging for specific cards.

MMogg

06-25-2010, 10:15 PM

I really think the Planeswalker Landstill is a force to be reckoned with. Good analysis overall, but the Zoo match up can often be not as close as you say. Think of it this way, Zoo probably draws in its opening 7, 2-3 creatures and then over the next five turns, maybe another 3 creatures... that's all on average. That means about 6 threats to deal with in the first five turns, which isn't as difficult as you'd think when you consider their counter package and spot removal for the first few turns while they get the mana ready for a sweeper. I watch a lot of MODO (yeah, watch) and I see a lot of Engineered Explosives in these Landstill builds, which is strictly faster than Deed. Also, a lot of decks run more Planeswalkers than just Jace. Lastly, I have seen quite a few tricks, like the old Crucible-Wasteland lock or even Crucible-Mishra's Factory for a recurring blocker. The Steppe Lynx version that is more explosive can probably race a little better, but those decks have a harder time going toe to toe in the mirror and may drop out of favour. Not sure. Anyway, this rambling is just to say people should pay attention to this match up because at least from what I've seen on MODO, it can be very effective, especially after Jace hits ... fate sealing your opponent on its way to ultimate is pretty certain.

morgan_coke

06-25-2010, 10:30 PM

Aggro_zombies

06-25-2010, 10:39 PM

Zom,

Scry 2 doesn't seem like much when compared to Top's 3 cards, or Sylvans 3 cards, but really, Scry 2 IS 3 cards. Let's say you Scry 2 during your opponents' EoT. Both cards are junk, so you send them both to the bottom. Now you draw an entirely new card. You've "seen" three cards, and unlike with Top or Library, you will see up to 3 new cards next turn again, whereas after the initial burst from the other two, you're stuck with the junk until you find a shuffle effect.

I'll need testing, and I could be way off on this, but I think that recurring Scry 2 is actually going to be pretty significant. I know I plan on using the ever living heck out of it in Standard w/Green midrange decks (which admittedly, are probably horrible right now - thanks Jace).
Well, these are many of the same arguments that were made when Preordain was spoiled, and the consensus there was that it was still worse than Ponder, but only just. I'm not sure if this is necessarily the card Stax is looking for (it would be auto-in if it had a body attached), but it could be a start. You'd have to cut lock pieces for it, though, which can get tricky.

One thing I think I should clarify (not related to morgan's post) - I expect that Columbus will be combo's "throw things at the wall and see what sticks" phase. If a good combo deck breaks out there, then people will pick it up, everyone else will have to start siding hate again, and the format will likely shift back to something similar to what it is now. But, for the next month at least, combo is in a state of disarray, so we don't really have to prepare for tons of it like we would if MT were still around for the GP.

EDIT: @MMogg - if that's the case, Zoo pilots who are MTGO-savvy will likely be packing some number of red Blasts post-board. It would be nice if there were more cheap ways to kill planeswalkers in each of the colors, but for now it's better to just fight it out. Also, more midrange-ish Zoo decks running something like Sylvan Library or their own manlands can fight back pretty effectively by ensuring consistent attackers. I'd expect Zoo to shift in that direction anyway since Library can actually be okay in the mirror.

DragoFireheart

06-25-2010, 11:23 PM

Aggro_zombies

06-25-2010, 11:26 PM

With the rising popularity and power of Zoo... why is there talk of Merfolk? Merfolk get crushed by Zoo (arguably more than Goblins against Zoo) due to Zoo:

1. Not having Islands.

2. Not caring about vial.

3. Superior stand-alone creatures and massive removal.

I'm well aware that Merfolk decks are good against other blue.deck, but then again why bother when Zoo is also good against blue.deck?
Because:

1) Lots of people have Merfolk built already.

2) Merfolk is still cheaper to build than Zoo.

3) Players who want to beat blue decks but who also want to have insurance against random crap will be attracted to Merfolk.

4) Merfolk has better game against blue control decks because it is able to fight the sweepers while presenting a similar clock to Zoo's.

DragoFireheart

06-25-2010, 11:59 PM

Because:

1) Lots of people have Merfolk built already.

2) Merfolk is still cheaper to build than Zoo.

-That's a pretty good point. Merfolk is much cheaper than Zoo.

3) Players who want to beat blue decks but who also want to have insurance against random crap will be attracted to Merfolk.

-Wait, are you saying Zoo is bad against random crap? Isn't Zoo just as good if not better against random crap?

4) Merfolk has better game against blue control decks because it is able to fight the sweepers while presenting a similar clock to Zoo's.

- But that still leaves Merfolk players gambling on the frequency of blue decks. If what your analysis is saying is accruate, Lands! and Zoo will be the meta since Lands crushes other control decks and Zoo crushes most everything else. That means there will likely be less blue decks, which means Merfolk decks will suck more.

Aggro_zombies

06-26-2010, 12:16 AM

Wait, are you saying Zoo is bad against random crap? Isn't Zoo just as good if not better against random crap?
Zoo is pretty good against random crap decks, but it's not so hot against "Whoops, I win" plays. Granted, there aren't many of those, but there are plenty of players out there who love them some Force of Wills.

- But that still leaves Merfolk players gambling on the frequency of blue decks. If what your analysis is saying is accruate, Lands! and Zoo will be the meta since Lands crushes other control decks and Zoo crushes most everything else. That means there will likely be less blue decks, which means Merfolk decks will suck more.
Yeah, that was exactly my point. You only want to test against Merfolk if you're a blue control deck; otherwise, you're probably fine letting Zoo and Lands knock them out of contention.

If blue decks turn out to be good, Merfolk is a perfectly reasonable metagame deck.

DragoFireheart

06-26-2010, 12:28 AM

Yeah, that was exactly my point. You only want to test against Merfolk if you're a blue control deck; otherwise, you're probably fine letting Zoo and Lands knock them out of contention.

If blue decks turn out to be good, Merfolk is a perfectly reasonable metagame deck.

Oh, my bad. I misunderstood you and thought you were suggesting that Merfolk was the meta to test against (besides you playing a blue deck obviously).

I agree, merfolk is now a meta-game deck. Also, I love your Article and I believe it is extremely accurate.

majikal

06-26-2010, 12:36 AM

I agree with Aggro_Zombies about Bant Survival 100%! It's a poor choice, so nobody test against it! :wink:

MMogg

06-26-2010, 12:46 AM

EDIT: @MMogg - if that's the case, Zoo pilots who are MTGO-savvy will likely be packing some number of red Blasts post-board. It would be nice if there were more cheap ways to kill planeswalkers in each of the colors, but for now it's better to just fight it out. Also, more midrange-ish Zoo decks running something like Sylvan Library or their own manlands can fight back pretty effectively by ensuring consistent attackers. I'd expect Zoo to shift in that direction anyway since Library can actually be okay in the mirror.

The trouble is that Landstill outdraws Zoo, and Zoo decks at most run 2 Sylvans, so if a Sylvan hits (and stays... 2 creatures and a Library would be a nice 3 for 1 with EE), maybe it's gg for Zoo, but I don't think that's something to rely on as a game plan. Also, depending how the meta shifts with the new B&R list, there might just be anti-blue sideboard slots available. I think Price of Progress is one of the best cards in this match up, but getting that through may take a lot of counter baiting. Also, post board, depending on the Landstill build, may include Spell Pierce or even Hydroblast, again depending how the meta shifts. Also, I have seen quite a few with variable Planeswalkers that lead to variable win conditions. It's exciting and interesting to see this deck develop. Speaking of speed, I've seen it survive versus Burn/Sligh, which is way more balls-to-the-wall than Zoo.

As for Lands . . . unfortunately there is no way to know, but I really don't think it will be so prevalent in Columbus in the first few rounds at least. Once you get to the upper tables, maybe it will be more dominant, but the cost prohibitive nature means it's certainly not going to make up a sizable portion of the meta. There are just too many other viable and cheaper choices. It's not like a Standard situation where the number of truly best decks are less than a handful in number. I know a lot of cards/decks are expensive in Legacy, but that $300 investment is hard to swallow for only one card that is used pretty much in one deck.

[/babbling]

DragoFireheart

06-28-2010, 11:45 PM

Why isn't the Counter-Top Thopter-Sword thread in the Established forum?

Aggro_zombies

07-08-2010, 04:21 PM

Updates!

We're now a little more than three weeks out from the Big Event, but that's not why I'm writing this now - M11 has recently been completely spoiled, so I want to address some of the cards from that set (which will be legal for tournament play at the time of the GP!) and their potential applications in Legacy.

But first, I want to revise my metagame predictions a little bit: I think Reanimator is now a deck worth testing against. I left it out of my original post as something of a cop-out; I didn't want to have to deal with it at the time because the list was still very much back on the drawing board. However, I've seen several lists now that look promising, and with maindecks reconfiguring and sideboards shifting to more general graveyard hate, Reanimator is in an excellent position to make a comeback. What's changed?

First, the new Reanimator lists coming out are running more creatures in the main, usually to the tune of seven or eight guys. These are usually configured as 2 Iona, 2 Sphinx, 1-2 Inkwell, 1 It That Betrays (WHY was this not a name from Kamigawa?!), and 1 of some other guy: Terastodon, Realm Razer, or maybe more niche things like Bloodghast. Either way, there's more men in the main to turn Careful Studies into pseudo-Entombs, and the most successful lists will probably have double Sphinx as a nod to Zoo. A quick aside to people testing with/against this deck: please, please, please do not get Iona against every deck. Please.

The rest of the Mystical slots that weren't converted to creatures are converted to more dig: Ponder, Strategic Planning, or maybe LDV. Dispel is also working its way into these decks as an extra answer to Plow effects on your non-shroud guys, with the usual cast of Daze, Thoughtseize/Duress, and Force to back it up. I've been working with an Infoninja team list recently that I've been quite impressed with, but I can't disclose it here as doing so would cause my fellow team members to kill me in my sleep one night.

Back to what I want to talk about: Twelfth Edition, also known as Magic 2011.

There are a couple of niche cards that might trickle into the format, of which the ones most likely to make an impact are the white and red Leylines (the black Leyline is a reprint and therefore a known quantity, but since the art is much better on this version I'd recommend picking some up anyway). For those who don't know, the white Leyline gives you troll shroud, while the red Leyline makes damage unpreventable and shuts off life gain, all for :2::w::w: and :2::r::r:, respectively. Let's get the obvious out of the way: these are strictly sideboard cards, and they are also subject to the Leyline Syndrome - namely, while they are theoretically available in every color, the only decks that will consider them will be decks capable of paying retail for them, or decks running awful jank like Serum Powder. With that out of the way, what do they do?

First, the white Leyline is immensely useful for decks looking either for storm hate, or burn hate. Zoo will probably be interested in this card for the former reason, as it is probably much better than Mindbreak Trap when combined with hate bears (being on-color helps too), but it's unlikely to be a Zoo sideboard staple until after Columbus because of the likely sharp decrease in the number of people playing combo for that event. On the other hand, white control decks like Quinn will be interested in the Leyline both for its anti-storm applications and for its anti-burn applications, allowing that deck to shore up a shaky Zoo matchup (yes, yes, Quinn is supposed to win when the stars align and Zoo draws poorly and Quinn gets a fast start with the right topdecks). Other decks in white will likely overlook this card since they're usually also in blue, and therefore have access to counters and/or Counterbalance.

The red Leyline is almost strictly a card for Zoo and Sligh, but it could be useful for both. The anti-prevention clause completely shuts down most of the tricks Lands uses to corral Zoo's offensive (Glacial Chasm, Maze of Ith, and Zuran Orb), leaving Lands with just mana denial and Tabernacle. Zoo could already finish off a Lands deck with PoP; now it doesn't have to over-commit to force its way through Mazes. The red Leyline also does splash damage to Thopterbalance: while it doesn't stop the chump blocking, at least it stops the life gain, which could allow the Zoo player to tie up the Thopter player's mana every turn making Thopters, thereby allowing burn spells to slip through and end it. However, Null Rod shuts down Thopterbalance much more effectively, and there aren't many other decks in the format that either gain life or prevent damage that don't also get boned by the Rod. Therefore, the red Leyline is almost strictly an anti-Lands sideboard card for metas where that deck is out in force, and it probably won't see much play in Columbus. Tabernacle, unfortunately, does still cost $300.

Next up on the list: Dark Tutelage, a Dark Confidant enchantment for :2::b:. My initial reaction was that the card was worse than Bob, both because of the higher cost and the fact that it's harder for you to off it if it's killing you (on the other hand, it's also harder for the opponent to kill it when it's winning you the game, so...). However, there are a number of decks in the format, especially Thopterbalance, that would be interested in this card as a trump versus control and other slow matchups. The life loss there is mitigated on two fronts: Top, and Thopter Foundry's life gain. The added cost is offset by the benefit of being more difficult to kill while also having a relevant card type for Enlightened Tutor, allowing the Thopter player to side just one or two in and still get the full benefit. There's a SCD thread about it here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18142-SCD-Dark-Tutelage) for those interested.

For Columbus, I expect the majority of Counterbalance decks to be of the Thopterbalance variety thanks to its recent performance at the St. Louis 5k, and I expect that at least some of these decks will have Tutelage in their 75. The card seems much better to me as a sideboard card since a Dark Confidant that can't dispose of itself by blocking seems pretty awkward against Zoo, and the card is one of the less relevant ones you could draw in that matchup. Still, it seems like an excellent card in the mirror and against Landstill and Lands decks.

There's also Brittle Effigy, a one-mana artifact that has ":4:, Exile ~: Exile target creature." Yes, a colorless answer to Iona, but the four-mana activation is a bit of a downer there. On the other hand, Reanimator is slower now, so this might be good enough; on the other other hand, most decks that want this would likely be Trinket Mage blue decks, and Inkwell is almost always the best target in those matchups. Still, the card might see play as a tutorable targeted removal spell, but the fact that it exiles itself as part of the cost makes it much less interesting than it would have been otherwise. Bummer.

Speaking of exiling things, I feel like Hanni would be extremely disappointed if I were to forget to mention Mystifying Maze. Maze is, as its name would suggest, a throwback to Maze of Ith; unlike its progenitor Maze, though, it taps for colorless but costs four mana to Slide out a creature. The card seems worse to me than both Maze-I and Kor Haven, but decks that find Ith's lack of mana production intolerable will likely be interested in some split between Haven and Mystifying Maze. The card is probably niche playable in non-Counterbalance control decks not using the manland plan in Columbus.

Aside from these, there are a couple of other very fringe cards:

- Autumn's Veil: a green Orim's Chant for combo decks looking to streamline their mana. It's probably worse to be on the Xantid/Veil plan than it is to be on the Chant/Silence plan since the latter also stops decks like Zoo from trying to burn you out while you go off, especially when using Ad Noz or one of the draw-fours. However, if you're already in green for Grips and only in white for Chants, this card might be worth considering. It will almost certainly not see play in Belcher because that deck has no space to waste on protection.

- Fauna Shaman: and Elf decks the world over rejoiced, then realized that this guy draws creature kill like some sort of super lightning rod. It could still be useful as a redundant Survival in decks that want that, but that begs the question: what decks want that? I guess I just mention this guy because he has potential, but no home.

- Crystal Ball: this might be the long-needed library manipulation that Stax decks have been looking for, but there are two things that make me leery about that being the case. The first is that it's only scry 2, which seems pretty weak; you only get to "see" your top 3 if you put the top two on the bottom and then draw blind, which makes the card much worse than Top. The second is that it's competing for space with redundant lock elements, some of which simply have to stay in the deck as four-ofs: Trinisphere gets a lot worse when you don't regularly get it on turn two, for example. Figuring out what to cut to fit in the Ball will be painful, and it may not even do enough to justify the cuts. Still, the printing of this card in conjunction with the unbanning of Grim Monolith is likely to push interest in Stax as the GP approaches. I still think that "being patient and letting Stax shit on itself" is a fine plan against the deck, but if you're paranoid about lock decks, you may want to add it to your testing queue.

Wrapping Up

So, in summary: I'll revise my forecast slightly as follows:

- Zoo is still good, but Elias (fast) Zoo is probably still just as competitive as slower/Big Zoo versions. However, you really need to test a lot to know how to fight the hate.

- Thopterbalance will be out in force since the cat is now out of the (St. Louis Top 8) bag, and people will make the switch because the deck "won the last 5k" (think of the spike in Goblins after that deck did well). Having a plan against this deck is essential; having a plan against the common plans is also essential if you're playing it. Load up on artifact and enchantment hate whether you're playing with or against this deck.

- Lands is, as ever, a weird hybrid between juggernaut and glass cannon. Decks that are prepared for it will stop its engines and roll it, while those that aren't will get rolled by it. Most of the things that give Lands fits are sideboard cards, but the belief that Reanimator is on the down-and-out may make graveyard hate less popular, priming Lands for a return to the spotlight. This is kind of a toss-up for me.

- Please don't play Rock decks or tempo decks. Just don't.

- Landstill is worse than Thopterbalance in all cases except the one where you're fond of Landstill. If that does not apply to you, don't play the deck, and don't bother to test much against it.

- Lord-heavy versions of Merfolk will show up a lot for Columbus as people look to beat the blue decks that every seems to love; non-lord-heavy versions will get raped and pillaged by Zoo and will probably not percolate very far into the tournament without some serious luck or serious tech. Still, I would not recommend being the guy playing a deck with a 45% matchup at best against Public Enemy #1, at least not until after the GP allows the meta to shake out.

- Combo will be played by far fewer people than normal. It's not dead, but there might not be enough pilots at the GP to make it feel that way.

- Reanimator is still a deck, and thanks to the combined efforts of a lot of its fans, it is in an excellent position to pick up a lot of wins on Saturday and Sunday from people who go, "Wait, that's still a deck?!" Yes it is, sugar, and you just got goldfished by it. I would recommend adding this into your gauntlet, especially when looking at post-board games. It won't be as ubiquitous as it was pre-Mystical Tutor, but it's still a powerful deck that requires dedicated hate slots to beat.

Good luck with testing. Also, does anyone have any Strategic Plannings I could borrow...?

Hanni

07-08-2010, 04:39 PM

Speaking of exiling things, I feel like Hanni would be extremely disappointed if I were to forget to mention Mystifying Maze.

Funny thing is, if I don't even think I'm going to play any. If I do, it will be as a 1-of compliment to Kor Haven only, lol. Ah, gotta love initual speculation and hype.

routlaw

07-08-2010, 04:46 PM

- Fauna Shaman: and Elf decks the world over rejoiced, then realized that this guy draws creature kill like some sort of super lightning rod. It could still be useful as a redundant Survival in decks that want that, but that begs the question: what decks want that? I guess I just mention this guy because he has potential, but no home.

To be fair, a lot of Elves in Elf decks have a super lightning rod on their heads. Elves are almost like the anti-Goblins, they don't do much right when they come into play for the most part, but can do ridiculous things if you let even just a few of them stick the board for too long. And that's not even counting Big Dumb Hydra shenanigans.

I think Elf decks probably want two maindeck Fauna Shamans as card quality engines with a sideboard that adds in Squee and two more Fauna Shamans in the board to help fight matchups where a battle of attrition is inevitable.That's definitely what I'll be testing when I get my playset.

That being said, I really wouldn't spend too much time practicing Elves as part of your GP guantlet. :)

Aggro_zombies

07-08-2010, 04:59 PM

That being said, I really wouldn't spend too much time practicing Elves as part of your GP guantlet. :)
Not at all. But it is the main beneficiary of the card's printing, so I mentioned it.

@Hanni: I almost want to "I told you so," but I didn't explicitly say the card was not that great, so... :P

Hanni

07-08-2010, 05:04 PM

@Hanni: I almost want to "I told you so," but I didn't explicitly say the card was not that great, so... :P

Happens to the best of us :p Plus I totally forgot about Kor Haven until you mentioned it, which made a big impact... cause if there was no Kor Haven, I'd definitely be looking into Mystifying Maze still.

Aggro_zombies

07-08-2010, 05:15 PM

Happens to the best of us :p Plus I totally forgot about Kor Haven until you mentioned it, which made a big impact... cause if there was no Kor Haven, I'd definitely be looking into Mystifying Maze still.
Yeah, Kor Haven is better in almost cases. If Maze cost 3 to activate, it might actually still be worth considering since there's such a huge difference between three and four mana, but at four to use (effectively five), it's just too slow.

And I've also seen control decks pushing 28-30 lands and Treasure Hunt which are fine with using Maze of Ith (iMaze?), so if Mystifying Maze is playable, it will be very narrow.

SpikeyMikey

07-09-2010, 10:50 AM

I think this is a very good analysis, except for one thing. Everyone is looking at Null Rod and Pithing Needle as answers to Thopter but those are easy for the deck to play around with counters and Vindicate. The correct answers to the deck are Faerie Macabre and Extirpate. Both are incidentally effective against Reanimator, Lands and to a lesser extent Dredge. Extirpate would obviously be superior here but successful Zoo decks will probably be packing 3-4 Fairies in board and successful Thopter decks will have a second Sword of the Meek in board and possibly be packing Extirpates of their own. The most successful Thopter decks will probably be creature-based; like a more traditional Counter-Top with Tutor and Thopter Sword wedged into it. Jace is a fine win-con, but when your primary win-con is vulnerable to the GY-hate that every deck is packing, games 2 and 3 become much more difficult if you don't have more than 2 backup win-cons. The standard Thopter lists will get hosed all day long by good Zoo players.

Underestimate combo at your own peril. Yes, it sucks now by any standard that we'd have held it to a month ago. It can still rip your face off with a great hand or enough time. I wouldn't pull my combo out of the board unless I had a 3rd round bye walking in the door. If people were fully rational beings, then no, people wouldn't show up with mediocre storm decks, but a lot of people played AnT not because it was the best deck (despite claims to the contrary from the more zealous storm players) but because the storm playstyle fits their personalities. As it is, do not expect to see a drop in the presence of storm combo at all. If anything, I would not be shocked if it's presence increased slightly. With all the talk of storm being dead and "go ahead and pull out that storm hate", some people are going to see a possibility for day of goldfishing unopposed and it's going to look very favorable to them.

routlaw

07-09-2010, 12:54 PM

Null Rod isn't hate against graveyard shenanigans like Thopter CounterTop. It's good combo hate that can also splash damage against decks running any of the following:

- Artifact mana of any sort
- Engineered Explosives
- Equipment of any kind
- Aether Vial
- Sensei's Divining Top (whose decks also tend to use Engineered Explosives or other artifacts like in Thopter)

I agree with your sentiment to never underestimate combo. In a GP with this many rounds, not being prepared for combo seems an extremely poor idea. Combo players can often finish their rounds fast and can relax and mentally/physically (think food!) recover better over a long and grueling event like a GP than someone playing Landstill can. Yes, bringing a combo deck to an event where Merfolk+Counterbalance+New Horizons will likely make up nearly a quarter of the field seems like a pretty insane plan, but it does have its benefits.

RexFTW

07-09-2010, 12:58 PM

Nice article.

PS Bant survival is a real deck. It wins about 60% of our weekly tournaments here.

EssKay

07-09-2010, 01:45 PM

Does anyone know if there's a good template for creating a 4-way proxy deck? Ideally I'd like to have a script or something that could use a pre-formatted decklist to pull important stuff like card name, casting cost, and oracle wording straight from oracle and fill out a template for printing. Something like that would really speed up the process of creating a good testing proxy for those of us that don't have the cards to keep several top-tier decks put together.

SpikeyMikey

07-09-2010, 02:11 PM

EssKay

07-10-2010, 08:38 PM

Pull the cards up on scg and copy paste into MS Word. It's what I do when I get the urge to play outside of MWS. 30 minutes with a scissors and you're good to go.

I want to put together a 4-way proxy deck though, you basically divide the space into four parts, then just write the names of the cards, giving each deck its own quadrant. That way you can sleeve up once and have 4 different decks to test against.

Cthuloo

07-11-2010, 05:54 AM

Great (pseudo-)article! Very well written and complete. I agree almost 100% with what you wrote, except for a few exceptions:

- Please don't play Rock decks or tempo decks. Just don't.

With combo almost gone, I think that Rock decks are a decent choice. You can easiliy tune the deck to beat Zoo, and counterbalance matchup are generally about even. Why do you think Rock is a poor choice?

- Landstill is worse than Thopterbalance in all cases except the one where you're fond of Landstill. If that does not apply to you, don't play the deck, and don't bother to test much against it.

Jace Landeed is doing really well in my meta, with 2 slots in the top 8 of the last 50 people tournament of my local league. I played against it and found it really solid. I wont completely dismiss the deck.

majikal

07-11-2010, 05:57 AM

Nice article.

PS Bant survival is a real deck. It wins about 60% of our weekly tournaments here.
Shhhhhhh! You'll spoil everything!

Aggro_zombies

07-11-2010, 05:48 PM

With combo almost gone, I think that Rock decks are a decent choice. You can easiliy tune the deck to beat Zoo, and counterbalance matchup are generally about even. Why do you think Rock is a poor choice?
Because they don't do anything.

In Legacy, you have one of three deck construction paradigms: what I'll call Power, Trumps ("Broken"), and Goofball.

Power: Power decks play the best cards at a given mana cost. They seek to win the game through a combination of resource efficiency and having the strongest effects per unit of resource used. The flagship example of this deck is Zoo: Zoo isn't interested in playing crappy cards like Savannah Lions when it could have much better ones for the same amount of mana (Grim Lavamancer, Wild Nacatl). These decks win because their cards tend to be much better than their opponents' cards on an individual basis, and the opponent simply can't deal with them all. One other thing: like Zoo, these decks tend to have a much narrower spread than other decks between how good the good draws are and how bad the bad draws are. When you're running a bunch of ridiculous cards and a straightforward strategy, it's hard to have a lot of varience.
Trumps or Broken: People object to the use of the term "broken" because the definition is apparently subjective, but I'd argue that it's like porn in that we know it when we see it. This category is broad at first blush, but Broken or Trump decks are typically in one of two families: either engine decks that consist of a difficult-to-interact-with engine card(s) flanked by support cards, or "cheater" decks like Reanimator that take cards with game-changing effects, ostensibly balanced by their difficult mana costs, and ignore those mana costs by using another card to cheat them into play. Lands and Thopterbalance are part of the former category. These decks may seem a little bit more fragile than other decks because answering their trumps typically leaves them with just a bunch of mediocre support cards, but the issue with these decks - and the reason they're so attractive - is that failure to answer the trumps quickly enough costs you the game. Being the guy who can tell the opponent, "If you don't have the answer in hand or the top 2-3 cards of your library, you lose" is pretty sweet.
Goofball: This seems kind of a catch-all category, but not really; combo decks like storm and dredge fall under this category. Unlike engine decks, these decks' "engines" are impossible for many decks to interact with, meaning they often just lose unless they pack a sideboard full of hate. Granted, Wizards has realized recently that many players don't like playing against this kind of deck, and that the presence of decks like this invalidates a lot of strategies. Consequently, there's recently been a lot of powerful hate cards printed that are available to all colors, so that every deck has a (theoretical) shot at taking a Goofball-class deck down. However, there's also the fact that many of the Goofball decks' career players know how to navigate around these cards, meaning they're usually only effective against new pilots.

The decks built with the tenets of one of these three categories in mind tend to be the absolute strongest decks in Legacy regardless of what the rest of the format looks like. At one point, Goblins was the top Power deck because the added value built-in to the playable Goblins made up for their anemic bodies. However, Zoo has taken the crown from Goblins in this regard as "added value" has proven to be less compelling than "raw mana efficiency." In any event, I'll address both of your questions now:

- Decks like the Rock wish they fell into the Power category, but they don't because their cards aren't powerful enough, and they typically run weak cards that are broadly useful: think Maelstrom Pulse, which can destroy almost everything but will almost always cost more than the card it's destroying, in addition to being vulnerable to things like permission. You can run it in the main as a kind of security blanket, but real men...er, decks don't use wimpy "security blankets." Furthermore, the Rock's strategy is often an amorphous blob of "try to answer my opponent while getting there with awkward and/or mediocre threats," which may allow you to sometimes beat more focused decks, but if the opponent is doing something you're not prepared to answer (Maelstrom Pulse is pretty shitty against Thopterbalance), you're toast. Finally, decks on the fringe of the Rock spectrum that tend towards engine decks, like Aggro Loam, are almost invariably just worse than playing a dedicated engine deck. Yes, you give up some of the vulnerabilities, but you also lose the strongest aspect, which is the ability to be non-interactive when you want to be.

- Similarly, decks like Landstill don't really do anything despite having lots of good cards. There's a difference between good_stuff.deck and a deck with a cohesive plan. Landstill decks typically are more answers than threats, and their threats aren't powerful enough to be compelling. Yeah, sure, Jace is good. He can be answered by every deck in the format by attacking into him. "But Aggro!" you say, "They have so many removal spells! Creatures never last that long! This deck totally beats Zoo!" Sure. And when that Knight of the Reliquary is one turn away from killing you and you topdeck Force of Will, you're totally showing Zoo who's boss there. Basically, Landstill decks are worse than something like Thopterbalance because they can't comprehensively take over the game. Yes, some people still do well with them, but people also do well with joke decks like Aluren and Dream Halls. The point is that decks that aren't total piles will do well in this format when in the hands of a sufficiently skilled and knowledgable pilot. That doesn't mean they're good decks, and it doesn't mean they're worth playing.

Being a deck whose strategy is fundamentally reactive leaves you at the mercy of decks who showed up to do their thing and do it well, and there's a lot of those in Legacy. Because of this, decks that don't have a clear, obviously proactive goal in mind ("I'm going to do [something]" versus, "I'm going to answer this and negate that and then I guess I'll win eventually") will simply be better on average than decks that don't. There's a reason why Zoo does so well despite being derided as being "just" a big dumb aggro deck...

MMogg

07-11-2010, 06:17 PM

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification of Landstill's philosophy. I agree that it is reactive, but that's not entirely/necessarily bad. Against aggro, their goal is to get to the midgame, which is where Landstill begins. I remember reading a strategy guide back in the '90s that said something that stuck with me to this day: apply pressure early or be able to deal with early pressure. What you are saying is only the former is good and the latter is bad. I agree, with the aggro vs. Landstill matchup, that would seem best, but Landstill does a good job of getting to the late game and then dominating from there on. They also are able to stop a lot of those engine decks as well as goofball.

What I'm not very articulately trying to say is that yes, Landstill is reactive, but it also punishes decks that are not proactive enough. If you are Zoo and you begin with first turn Lavamancer and second turn Lavamancer, end of creature rush for two more turns... I have bad news for you. Just as Zoo punishes the inconsistency, Landstill punishes decks that allow it to reach its midgame. At midgame card advantage and card quality advantage kick in and it's game over. Early game your opponent's threats are usually 2-1 for your answers, but that's why cards like Engineered Explosives or Wrath of God are employed to even out that tempo advantage. By midgame, threats and answers should be 1-1 and once in midgame for a while, the threats should be 1 for every 2 answers in hand.

So, in short, I would say its philosophy is: deal with the early game (punish decks that are early game decks that cannot seal the deal in the early game), ascend to midgame and secure a victory. In porn terms, Zoo has a 11" shlong and an impressive money shot, but it's over in 4 minutes, whereas Landstill is a good 8" and can go for 30 minutes.

Aggro_zombies

07-11-2010, 06:52 PM

So, in short, I would say its philosophy is: deal with the early game (punish decks that are early game decks that cannot seal the deal in the early game), ascend to midgame and secure a victory. In porn terms, Zoo has a 11" shlong and an impressive money shot, but it's over in 4 minutes, whereas Landstill is a good 8" and can go for 30 minutes.
Yes, but this is precisely my point: Landstill's battle plan involves the opponent doing something.

A Tendrils deck doesn't care what you're doing unless you're countering its spells. It's going to ignore you and combo off.

Zoo doesn't care what you're doing unless you're blocking. It's going to get into the red zone every turn regardless.

Landstill does care what you're doing, because it's trying to control you. Granted, Thopterbalance is also a control deck, but it's also an engine deck, so it can still force you to react to it by doing something to completely dominate the game. Landstill doesn't do that. It can't completely warp the game around an engine, so it has to get there piecemeal, which is far worse. When it sits down to a matchup, its goal isn't to do anything more specific than "get around to winning eventually." I mean, yes, it wants to control things in the interim, but this isn't a specific game plan: it's based entirely off of reacting to what the opponent's specific game plan is. In a format like Legacy, where there are so many different proactive things to do, it's just flat-out better to do something ridiculous and force the opponent to play the game by your terms than it is to be on the receiving end.

In porn terms, it's sort of like being a dominatrix versus being the dude who gets the ball gag, tied to the bed, and whipped for half an hour.

Antonius

07-11-2010, 08:05 PM

Aggro_zombies

07-11-2010, 09:14 PM

Very interesting pseudo article; I got a few things to bring up:

Firstly, is it really fair to consider goblins "antiquated"?

The Goblin/Zoo match has always been close to even, at least in my experience. When did that change? Zoo has healthy amounts of removal and pound-for-pound better creatures, but Goblins has the ultimate trump in an aggro race (unblockable, haste for the alpha strike) to go along with ancestral recall, demonic tutor and decent removal of its own.

Unlike Zoo, Goblins actually has disruption and as such has a better match-up against control because of it. Also, all of the projected top decks you listed, with the exception of CounterThop (and even then, depends on the build), has real issues with blood moon. With that, I still think Goblins is a really strong deck.
Goblins' disruption is fairly inconsequential. Actually, it has less disruption than Merfolk, with which it shares Wasteland but lacks Force, Daze, and Cursecatcher to actually stop bad things from happening. Mono-red versions may also have Port, but on average Goblins is less consistent at disrupting mana than, say, Lands, which can't even always keep control off of Jace TMS mana with recurring Wastes, recurring Ghost Quarters, and multiple Ports. Goblins can bring in Blood Moon, sure, but how mana lists opt for Blood Moon in the board? Many Goblins decks are still using two-three colors for various sideboard options. Furthermore, many control decks are now built with mana disruption in mind and will have a higher number of basics, and access to basics in colors needed for either sweepers or counter-hate cards. Goblins is also more adversely affected by things like Firspout, since nothing in Goblins will actually survive one (as opposed to Goyf and Knight in Zoo). Goblins also can't answer Moat in game one, while Zoo can still try for Pridemage, and so on.

The only selling point of Goblins over Zoo is Demonic Tutor and Fact or Fiction on legs. Haste is fine but not good enough when many of the common anti-aggro strategies involve locking down the combat step completely in one way or another (chumping Thopter tokens, Moat, Glacial Chasm, etc).

Goblins can still compete, but it's no longer the aggro deck. It's also not nearly as scary as it used to be. Turn one Lackey is pretty meh in this day and age, and lots of 2/x and 1/x guys aren't that frightening anymore.

Secondly, some aggro loam players I know told me that Chalice is one of their stronger cards in the Zoo matchup. Do you really think its a good idea to take it out? After all, the biggest advantage that Aggro Loam has over Zoo is that it's dudes are bigger and harder to remove. How much bigger is that advantage if their only source of removal is shut down? In fact since it shuts down swords and path, chalice basically gives your big dudes absolute immunity. When you only have ~10 threats in the deck, how can you say no to that kind of power? And why run bolt when you can use Terminate?
Chalice doesn't stop Zoo. It stops Zoo until the draw Qasali Pridemage and kill it. You can play more than one Chalice at one, but that's a pretty "do nothing" play; alternately, you can take yourself out of the game as well by playing Chalice at two and hope you can get there with Crushers alone. Furthermore, if you have Chalice in the main, Zoo will bring in Grips in game two, meaning they have additional outs for it - and you're not fast enough to force them to need to have the Grip right away. In most cases, Chalice doesn't come down until turn two, in which case you're already behind to their Nacatl.

Bolt is better than Terminate simply because it's also reach. Terminating a Wild Nacatl or Steppe Lynx to stay alive is always a pretty unsatisfying move, and their big guys never quite get as big as your big guys, leaving open the possibility of blocking as "removal" for things Bolt can't kill. In either case, you're most often only breaking even on mana when you Terminate something, which is not exciting.

Thirdly, what are the Dark Horse decks that you foresee making a splash? I think Enchantress is going to surprise people now that one of its worst match ups has been kicked to the curb. It goldfishes most all creature-based strategies and has a positive match with Lands. It still doesn't have a way to consistently beat Countertop, though. Will older combo (yeah, referring to solidarity) rise out of the grave?
Solidarity is dead, despite what the two or three remaining players in the world will tell you. The deck's fastest kill was ~turn four, which is waaaaay too slow. Also, Counterbalance exists. Not gonna happen.

Enchantress seems fine. It's certainly the most difficult engine deck to answer, but it's costly and unpopular; there won't be enough players with it to make Top 8 in significant numbers, and the deck isn't ridiculous enough to put a disproportionate number of people near the top of the tournament. At the end of the day, all the cool kids are playing Krosan Grip, many are also playing Pridemage, and many decks can simply ignore most of the enchantments you have (Elephant Grass is dead against Lands while Ground Seal is only a cantrip against Zoo, and so on).

I think storm decks in the vein of TES will be Dark Horses for this tournament. Conventional wisdom, or at least the prevailing belief, is that combo is dead for the GP. People will drop hate because they feel they could get more value from devoting those slots to other matchups, which is true: I do not think there will be enough combo decks to make going above four or so sideboard slots necessary. That said, this is exactly what those crafty storm players want, and there may be just enough of them around for a significantly higher percentage than normal to make Day Two. At that point, how well they do is dependent on the "meta" (the apparent metagame at the top tables is actually much different than the apparent metagame at the bottom tables).

Reanimator is also a dark horse. People assume the deck is dead, but there are a lot of folks who spent too much money on Entombs to give up now. Those people will be working on fixing the deck until the tournament starts, and Columbus is likely to showcase the best of the patches people came up with for Mystical Tutor. In fact, given how the hate is likely to shift back to things like Crypt, I would not be very surprised if we had a repeat of Madrid with Next Gen Reanimator versus TES or something in the finals.

Other than that, there are a bunch of fringe decks with decent chances of breaking out. Aeon Bridge will show up in non-negligible amounts because of the Conley Woods Coattails Factor, and because it did well. Laskin Landstill may just be good enough, but I doubt it. It's tough to predict this because there will be a lot of rogue decks that show up, as well as a lot of crappy decks people seem to love (Stax, I'm looking at you here). Any of those could do well, but the real question is whether they do well because of a fluke, their pilots' skill, or inherent strength. I think it's tough to call that, and I don't do enough development out here in the Legay Wastes of Tucson to be able to single out any fringe candidates.

Lastly, as a Lands! player myself, I think the biggest change for this new meta-game will be a slight swing back towards red. Devastating Dreams might start popping up in some sideboards and Burning Wish might start showing up in some lists again. Wish is the only way to recover from Extirpate (spreading a lot now that lands is prevalent) and it gives you at least a handful of other dick moves--worm harvest, performance, upheaval--to pull out of a hat. Performance doesn't seem like a bad way to beat counterthop. Needs Boseiju to work, though.
There are a few issues here:

1) The deck may or may not already be using Riftstone Portal, in which case you're in white for Pull from Eternity, and reagrdless of what splash colors you are, you're in green for Riftsweeper. Yeah, none of those are as exciting as Burning Wish, but Burning Wish itself is not as exciting as a ninja "board into Meloku and Stronghold" plan against Counterbalance (you can totally out-token them with Manabond) or the Hexmage/Marit Lage plan.

2) Dreams seems okay, but why not just use Armageddon and float about a million mana? Geddon takes out all their lands, is potentially on-color, doesn't screw you if it's countered, and is easy to recover from for you. The damage is not relevant against some decks where you're only after the land destruction (like Enchantress).

3) What happens if they just counter the Burning Wish? It costs two, which is right on target for most Counterbalance lists.

MMogg

07-11-2010, 10:28 PM

Yes, but this is precisely my point: Landstill's battle plan involves the opponent doing something.

A Tendrils deck doesn't care what you're doing unless you're countering its spells. It's going to ignore you and combo off.

Zoo doesn't care what you're doing unless you're blocking. It's going to get into the red zone every turn regardless.

Landstill does care what you're doing, because it's trying to control you. Granted, Thopterbalance is also a control deck, but it's also an engine deck, so it can still force you to react to it by doing something to completely dominate the game. Landstill doesn't do that. It can't completely warp the game around an engine, so it has to get there piecemeal, which is far worse. When it sits down to a matchup, its goal isn't to do anything more specific than "get around to winning eventually." I mean, yes, it wants to control things in the interim, but this isn't a specific game plan: it's based entirely off of reacting to what the opponent's specific game plan is. In a format like Legacy, where there are so many different proactive things to do, it's just flat-out better to do something ridiculous and force the opponent to play the game by your terms than it is to be on the receiving end.

In porn terms, it's sort of like being a dominatrix versus being the dude who gets the ball gag, tied to the bed, and whipped for half an hour.

Nice final sentence.

But with Jace 2.0, you do have a game plan. If your opponent does nothing you still win, it's not that you need your opponent to do something specific to win. You make it sound like it's a Test of Endurance deck where your only life gain spells are Exile. The opponent is not so necessary as you make it seem. It just so happens that the deck wants to survive long enough to get to that stage to win, and it has to deal with the opponent's onslaught before it can reach that stage. The philosophy, as I see it, is one of security and variability (to be able to handle more opposing strategies, such as disrupting engines as well as halting armies), whereas aggro/engine has no such stability and just balls-to-the-wall goes for it.

In other words, in porn terms, Landstill has mastered a repertoire of Kama-Sutra positions whereas aggro/engine can only do doggy.

Antonius

07-11-2010, 11:04 PM

Goblins' disruption is fairly inconsequential. Actually, it has less disruption than Merfolk, with which it shares Wasteland but lacks Force, Daze, and Cursecatcher to actually stop bad things from happening. Mono-red versions may also have Port, but on average Goblins is less consistent at disrupting mana than, say, Lands, which can't even always keep control off of Jace TMS mana with recurring Wastes, recurring Ghost Quarters, and multiple Ports. Goblins can bring in Blood Moon, sure, but how mana lists opt for Blood Moon in the board? Many Goblins decks are still using two-three colors for various sideboard options. Furthermore, many control decks are now built with mana disruption in mind and will have a higher number of basics, and access to basics in colors needed for either sweepers or counter-hate cards. Goblins is also more adversely affected by things like Firspout, since nothing in Goblins will actually survive one (as opposed to Goyf and Knight in Zoo). Goblins also can't answer Moat in game one, while Zoo can still try for Pridemage, and so on.

surviving firespout doesn't matter if you can just draw four more goblins. Getting multiple lords isn't as hard as it used to be, with kings and chiefs. But yeah, I don't think that the 2/3 color builds are going to be as successful. Running multiple colors just doesn't make sense with tabernacle/wasteland reared to dominate your team. Blood Moon is so strong, especially with King.

Chalice doesn't stop Zoo. It stops Zoo until the draw Qasali Pridemage and kill it. You can play more than one Chalice at one, but that's a pretty "do nothing" play; alternately, you can take yourself out of the game as well by playing Chalice at two and hope you can get there with Crushers alone. Furthermore, if you have Chalice in the main, Zoo will bring in Grips in game two, meaning they have additional outs for it - and you're not fast enough to force them to need to have the Grip right away. In most cases, Chalice doesn't come down until turn two, in which case you're already behind to their Nacatl.

So what if you don't stop Zoo? You only have to slow them down. If they get Pridemage to remove Chalice, then so what? You traded cards 1-for-1 an they paid 1 more mana than you did to do it. But while chalice is out there, it shuts off about half of all their business. Even if chalice gets axed several turns later, thats several turns that you are ahead because they weren't able to use those turns to cast bolts and light your ass up. Also, by your own logic, missing that T1 Nacatl with a chalice shouldn't matter--it's one of those midget creatures that your guys eat for breakfast anyways.

Also, I'm not sure if you realized, but the Aggro Loam list you posted was short 2 cards--I presume those slots are for Seismic Assault?

As for Dark Horse decks--you're probably spot on. Reanimator and Storm have decent shots but I would really like to see some previously unknown deck emerge from the woodwork and stun people like Enchantress stunned everyone at SCG LA. Glimpse Elves? Or something equally random, lol. Of those random rogues, though, I'd say that Dragon Stompy is the perennial dark horse favorite. It can win any tournament so long as it doesn't lose to itself along the way.

There are a few issues here:

1) The deck may or may not already be using Riftstone Portal, in which case you're in white for Pull from Eternity, and reagrdless of what splash colors you are, you're in green for Riftsweeper. Yeah, none of those are as exciting as Burning Wish, but Burning Wish itself is not as exciting as a ninja "board into Meloku and Stronghold" plan against Counterbalance (you can totally out-token them with Manabond) or the Hexmage/Marit Lage plan.

Sweeper and Pull don't sound all that appealing. Both are extremely narrow.

My beef with Meloku/Stronghold is that I really don't think that the deck has room for both stronghold and ruins and getting into some struggle choosing between the two is not profitable. But bringing it in from the board isn't a bad plan. You can really blindside someone that's boarded out all their swords. But there are better, broader tools to bring in against Counterbalance (Needle is what I'm using now, Boseiju also comes to mind) and also, better ways to win maindeck.

2) Dreams seems okay, but why not just use Armageddon and float about a million mana? Geddon takes out all their lands, is potentially on-color, doesn't screw you if it's countered, and is easy to recover from for you. The damage is not relevant against some decks where you're only after the land destruction (like Enchantress).

Geddon or Upheaval is the only way you can beat Enchantress, so that makes sense, but I'd rather hedge against the match that i know I will run into.

3) What happens if they just counter the Burning Wish? It costs two, which is right on target for most Counterbalance lists.

That's why I'd want to run boseiju with a Burning Wish build. Not only to resolve wish, but to resolve whatever I get. Because every card in the wishboard other than loam and hull breach will be some kind of game-winning bomb.

Aggro_zombies

07-11-2010, 11:09 PM

The philosophy, as I see it, is one of security and variability (to be able to handle more opposing strategies, such as disrupting engines as well as halting armies), whereas aggro/engine has no such stability and just balls-to-the-wall goes for it.
Yeah, but you're not good at doing either of them. For example, Thopterbalance doesn't need to work to halt an army because it just sets up the Foundry engine; if aggro isn't fast enough, the tokens can race. That forces the aggro deck to do something to answer the engine or risk losing, while not being able to execute its game plan in the meantime because of the life gain and chump blockers. What does Zoo care if you have Jace? They can burn it out or attack it and then kill you. Sure, you can Counterspell or Force the first burn spell, but if they have more than one burn spell, Jace dies. You can Swords a guy, but the other guys will get Jace. And if you have Counterspell and he has Goyf, Nacatl, and Loam Lion, your Jace just became one of the most expensive Fog varients ever printed (though with slightly more upside if you Brainstormed or something).

When the opponent is doing something ridiculous, you can't just ignore them - you'll lose the game. But if you don't get the answer in time, you'll lose the game. Trying to be the jack-of-all-trades is terrible in a format where there are so many different "answer me or lose" strategies. And often, even if you can answer those strategies, the decks running them have outs. Zoo can burn you to death, Thopterbalance has Jace, Lands has Mindslaver lock, and so on.

Also, to say that Zoo has no stability is pretty loose. Zoo is far and away the most consistent deck in the format (although Lands is more consistent in the late game because it Ancestral Recalls multiple times every turn).

Anyway, I think you're still misunderstanding me, so let's look at this a different way:

When you goldfish a Zoo deck, what do you do? You play guys as fast as you can while lobbing burn spells at the imaginary opponent's head. You're mapping damage outputs and trying to figure out your maximum speed and most efficient resource use.

When you goldfish a Lands deck, what do you do? You try to get Loam going as quickly as possible and then figure out what the best way is to achieve the most board development per turn. You're interested in figuring out how much growth you get relative to resouces spent, so even though Ports and Mazes are kind of meaningless without concrete targets, you can still figure out what happens to your development when you need to Port one land versus needing to Port two or whatever.

When you goldfish a Thopterbalance deck, what do you do? You try to figure out how to set up your Foundry engine the fastest and then figure out how long it takes to win. Yeah, Force and Moat are meaningless draws, but you can still figure out how to set up your engines given particular combinations of cards.

But when you goldfish Landstill, what do you do? It's all hypothetical. You say to yourself, "Well, my opponent probably did some stuff, so I'll pop Deed for...I dunno, three, maybe? No, I need mana up to counter the spell he's definitely going to play next turn, so I guess I'll do it for two. Well, maybe he has Knight of the Reliquary. So I'll guess I'll be fine if I just keep :u: up for Brainstorm. But maybe he has Bolt and PoP..." Do you see what's going on here? With Landstill, you have to write the opponent into the equation much more than the other decks. That's because you have all of these cards whose value is predicated entirely on what the opponent is doing. Figuring out how fast you can set up Jace is even more useless for this deck than figuring out how fast you can set up Thopter Foundry because the amount of resources you have available for setting up Jace vary incredibly based on what you need to do to interact with the opponent. In other words, you're a reactive control deck: more so than any other deck in the format, the value of the cards you run is dependent on what the opponent is doing. Jace only makes it into the deck because he wins faster than Factory beatdown does, and he does something more useful than tapping for colorless.

There's a fundamental difference between the kind of strategic framework that goes into building a deck like Landstill versus a deck like Zoo. One of these decks sits down and says, "I have a specific game plan and everything in my deck is geared towards executing it," while the other says, "I want to do something about my opponent's game plan, and oh yeah, guess I need to win too." I'm arguing that the realities of Legacy make the latter of these two fundamentally flawed as a strategy. You can't react to all of the broken things that happen in Legacy, and trying to do so makes you spread yourself too thin, while doing the opposite and gunning for specific decks means you'll lose too many games to decks doing something you're not equipped to answer. That's why I said it's better to just do something broken and force the opponent to react to you than to be on the receiving end all of the time - if people have decks with powerful plans, the person who loses is going to be the one for whom things went wrong. Control decks in the Landstill vein have far, far more room for things to go wrong, and far fewer ways to recover. Yes, specific sequences of cards will get you out of a jam, but what if you don't draw them? What if you draw them in the wrong order? What if the opponent has the answer to your answer? And so on. Reactive control decks are simply bad in this format, no matter what their fans say (insert long wall-of-text rebuttal post from Hanni here).

I mean, in a lot of cases, Zoo can just ignore Jace and burn you out. It's not exactly a broken card in this format.

Hanni

07-11-2010, 11:24 PM

So, in short, I would say its philosophy is: deal with the early game (punish decks that are early game decks that cannot seal the deal in the early game), ascend to midgame and secure a victory. In porn terms, Zoo has a 11" shlong and an impressive money shot, but it's over in 4 minutes, whereas Landstill is a good 8" and can go for 30 minutes.

Sigged.

Reactive control decks are simply bad in this format, no matter what their fans say (insert long wall-of-text rebuttal post from Hanni here).

I don't need a wall of text. Sounds like you have a boner for proactive stratgies, and hate reactive ones. However, if you look at historical Top 8's, reactive stratgies can and do Top 8. The reason why Landstill isn't doing well anymore isn't because it's a reactive strategy, it's because it's cards are no longer strong enough or efficient enough to compete with the current power level of Legacy. Once you up the power level, cutting bad cards like Standstill, Mishra's Factory, and Decree of Justice... the deck becomes alot stronger. It has nothing to do with a reactive strategy being bad.

You're also mostly dead wrong on all of your points for why reactive control is bad, and why proactive control is better, but there's no need for me to make a wall of text right now to rebuttle each and every point.

Also, you say control decks have no gameplan besides to interact with the opponent, and you are wrong. They only interact with the opponent so that the opponent cannot get their gameplan going; the control deck prevents the opponent from playing magic to prolong the game. It does this because once it gets further/later into the game, it dominates the opponent's deck through superior card quality, card advantage, and it's bombs are much stronger than the opponent's spells, i.e Elspeth, Jace, Vedalken Shackles, hell even Morphling, is better than a 2/3 Kird Ape at that point in the game.

I'm not sure why you assume that reactive control is bad, despite the massive amount of Top 8's that reactive control has had in this format. However, you're wrong, and I'd be glad to playtest with you to prove it, rather than go back and forth and argue with walls of text about it. Or we can just agree to disagree.

MMogg

07-11-2010, 11:37 PM

(insert long wall-of-text rebuttal post from Hanni here)..

Pretty cheeky considering you buried that in a wall-of-text post. :tongue:

Yeah, I get what you're saying and I see why you think it's flawed, but my original point of contention was your opinion that the deck's philosophy is to do nothing. I think it wants to win just as badly as Zoo, it just has an opinion (however flawed it may be in reality playing in Legacy's current meta) that it is flexible/stable (which is what I meant about Zoo... not consistency, flexibility and how Zoo pretty much should be a bye for Lands/Storm combo) enough to interact with all decks, even those that try not to interact. I agree with you that the strategy is passive and that the answers sometimes don't come as consistently as with aggro or aggro-control, but I still disagree that Landstill has no plan, for all the reasons I already said. Old school Landstill had even more of a plan than newer Planeswalker incarnations. They essentially want to beat the opponent down and by not needing to waste spell slots on threats, and instead can pack their deck full of answers. Again, where you are rebutting my original complaint (that Landstill has no plan) is saying that the plan is horrible. That may be, but it still has a plan/philosophy.

Aggro_zombies

07-12-2010, 12:59 AM

Pretty cheeky considering you buried that in a wall-of-text post. :tongue:
Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Sometimes I forget that you're not allowed to do that on the internet.

Yeah, I get what you're saying and I see why you think it's flawed, but my original point of contention was your opinion that the deck's philosophy is to do nothing. I think it wants to win just as badly as Zoo, it just has an opinion (however flawed it may be in reality playing in Legacy's current meta) that it is flexible/stable (which is what I meant about Zoo... not consistency, flexibility and how Zoo pretty much should be a bye for Lands/Storm combo) enough to interact with all decks, even those that try not to interact. I agree with you that the strategy is passive and that the answers sometimes don't come as consistently as with aggro or aggro-control, but I still disagree that Landstill has no plan, for all the reasons I already said. Old school Landstill had even more of a plan than newer Planeswalker incarnations. They essentially want to beat the opponent down and by not needing to waste spell slots on threats, and instead can pack their deck full of answers. Again, where you are rebutting my original complaint (that Landstill has no plan) is saying that the plan is horrible. That may be, but it still has a plan/philosophy.
I'm using the phrase "do nothing" somewhat flippantly here. Obviously the deck does something, because every deck does something (even a deck with 60 basics still plays a land every turn). The point is that the deck doesn't get up in the morning with the intention of going out and grabbing the bull by the horns; it does not dictate the rules of engagement and force the opponent to play by them. Instead, it plays by the opponent's rules but tries to beat the system. It's a fine strategy but not one I would want to play in the relatively open field of a GP, because there are simply too many different potential systems to have to beat. Landstill will do well in the sorts of defined metagames that allow it to pack all of the right answers, but in open or hard-to-predict metagames you generally have to run broader but weaker cards to try to cover all the bases. This sounds like a losing proposition to me. That's why I only recommended testing against it if you're a deck working on a similar wavelength or your deck hinges around one or two cards working, since Laskin Landstill is very good at negating those kinds of decks. Otherwise, you're generally fine against the deck if you can force it into awkward situations where things have to happen in just a certain way for them: Zoo is very good at blanking a lot of potential draws just by having a very aggressive start (topdecking Force does jack shit when the other guy can kill you with what he already has in play, for example). Coincidentally, that's why I've been arguing for proactive strategies this entire time, and apparently pissed Hanni off in the process - I am much happier letting the opponent lose to himself than in being in that position.

EDIT: @Hanni: no hard feelings or anything, broski. I hope you come to the GP so I can meet you and buy you a beer or something.

morgan_coke

07-12-2010, 01:03 AM

Bitterblossom control, Death and Taxes, and Aluren have all been making stronger and stronger showings in MTGO tournaments lately, there's a good chance some very tuned versions of those decks are going to be at Columbus and surprise some people. Just throwing this in here since it's a "GP meta" thread.

Hanni

07-12-2010, 02:05 AM

Coincidentally, that's why I've been arguing for proactive strategies this entire time, and apparently pissed Hanni off in the process - I am much happier letting the opponent lose to himself than in being in that position.

EDIT: @Hanni: no hard feelings or anything, broski. I hope you come to the GP so I can meet you and buy you a beer or something.

I'm not pissed, and there isn't any hard feelings. I just disagree with you, that's all. We do disagree on alot of things, though. :p

I'd love to go to the GP, but I only have half the cards I need for my deck, the other halfs gonna cost $400 I don't have, and I have no arrangements. So unless a miracle happens, I won't be attending this GP. Maybe the next one. It's funny, I only live 2 hours from Columbus, too.

majikal

07-12-2010, 02:24 AM

There isn't any hard feelings, I just disagree with you, that's all.

I'd love to go to the GP, but I only have half the cards I need for my deck, the other halfs gonna cost $400 I don't have, and I have no arrangements. So unless a miracle happens, I won't be attending this GP. Maybe the next one. It's funny, I only live 2 hours from Columbus, too.
What do you need?

Hanni

07-12-2010, 02:48 AM

Aggro_zombies

07-12-2010, 03:08 AM

1 Scrubland
1 Kor Haven
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
3 Wrath of God
2 Doom Blade
1 Vedalken Shackles
4 Innocent Blood
4 Relic of Progenitus

I realize some of the cards on that list are super cheap (like the Doom Blades), but I priced it on shuffleandcutgames (which could be more expensive than other places, I dunno), and it was roughly $400 before shipping.

Luckily, I have most of the staples (manabase, Forces) because of a little old UWb Fish deck I invested in back before the last GP Columbus. Unluckily, I was in a bad car accident last year and I'm still working on recovering financially.
Hanni, your inbox is full.

That said, I can loan you at least some of it, and potentially almost all of it, depending on what I'm playing at the GP. Here's what I can definitely loan you:

1 Elspeth
3 Wrath of God
1 Kor Haven
2 Doom Blade
1 Shackles
4 Relic
2-4 Innocent Blood (not sure how many I have)

I have three potential decks I might play. If I eliminate one of them, I can also loan you the Jaces, the Scrubland, the Counterbalances, and most or all of the Tops. But I won't know for sure what I intend to play until probably a week before the event. Still, if it makes you more willing to come, you'd only need to find 1 extra Elspeth if I can loan you the rest of the package.

Hanni

07-12-2010, 03:29 AM

That said, I can loan you at least some of it, and potentially almost all of it, depending on what I'm playing at the GP. Here's what I can definitely loan you:

I have three potential decks I might play. If I eliminate one of them, I can also loan you the Jaces, the Scrubland, the Counterbalances, and most or all of the Tops. But I won't know for sure what I intend to play until probably a week before the event. Still, if it makes you more willing to come, you'd only need to find 1 extra Elspeth if I can loan you the rest of the package.

I'd definitely be interested in that proposition, but I'd have to figure out something soon enough for me to also make arrangements sleeping wise, etc. I mean, GP Columbus is in like 3 weeks, so there's not alot of time left.

Oh, and I didn't realize my inbox was full. I cleaned it out some.

EDIT: I also don't have a car, so I'd have to find someone either in the local area, or driving through this way, to carpool with. There just seems to be too many factors going against me for my attending the GP. I wasn't planning on attending the GP, and unless a miracle happens, I won't be there.

Bahamuth

07-12-2010, 03:32 AM

Goblins' disruption is fairly inconsequential. Actually, it has less disruption than Merfolk, with which it shares Wasteland but lacks Force, Daze, and Cursecatcher to actually stop bad things from happening. Mono-red versions may also have Port, but on average Goblins is less consistent at disrupting mana than, say, Lands, which can't even always keep control off of Jace TMS mana with recurring Wastes, recurring Ghost Quarters, and multiple Ports. Goblins can bring in Blood Moon, sure, but how mana lists opt for Blood Moon in the board? Many Goblins decks are still using two-three colors for various sideboard options. Furthermore, many control decks are now built with mana disruption in mind and will have a higher number of basics, and access to basics in colors needed for either sweepers or counter-hate cards. Goblins is also more adversely affected by things like Firspout, since nothing in Goblins will actually survive one (as opposed to Goyf and Knight in Zoo). Goblins also can't answer Moat in game one, while Zoo can still try for Pridemage, and so on.

The only selling point of Goblins over Zoo is Demonic Tutor and Fact or Fiction on legs. Haste is fine but not good enough when many of the common anti-aggro strategies involve locking down the combat step completely in one way or another (chumping Thopter tokens, Moat, Glacial Chasm, etc).

You can bring up as many arguments defending why Goblins is bad as you want. The reality is still that Goblins is even against Zoo, positive against any form of control except possibly for lands (I have no idea, no one plays lands over here) and it might be even against this CB list, and positive against any form of aggro-control, except for Red Tempo Thresh, against which it's even. Goblins has no bad matchups except for combo, which is pretty much gone now. I'd still call Goblins tier 1.

I think storm decks in the vein of TES will be Dark Horses for this tournament. Conventional wisdom, or at least the prevailing belief, is that combo is dead for the GP. People will drop hate because they feel they could get more value from devoting those slots to other matchups, which is true: I do not think there will be enough combo decks to make going above four or so sideboard slots necessary. That said, this is exactly what those crafty storm players want, and there may be just enough of them around for a significantly higher percentage than normal to make Day Two. At that point, how well they do is dependent on the "meta" (the apparent metagame at the top tables is actually much different than the apparent metagame at the bottom tables).

For the dedicated storm players in legacy like myself and my team, this change is actually a good thing. Combo has been the best deck in the format for a couple of years, and it will continue to be. Only at this point, people won't even realise it it. It's like going back 2 years, where no one had ever heard of TES. This doesn't mean that anyone that doesn't play combo should be worried. It's definitely the best choice to drop the combo hate you play, as you are extremely unlikely to meet combo anyway, and those 4 slots won't usually win you the match either.

Reanimator is also a dark horse. People assume the deck is dead, but there are a lot of folks who spent too much money on Entombs to give up now. Those people will be working on fixing the deck until the tournament starts, and Columbus is likely to showcase the best of the patches people came up with for Mystical Tutor. In fact, given how the hate is likely to shift back to things like Crypt, I would not be very surprised if we had a repeat of Madrid with Next Gen Reanimator versus TES or something in the finals.

I agree here. Reanimator is simply dead, but people will still be trying. With the right amount of luck, the deck obviously won't have to Mystical as much anyway, so there might be some players that just luck out and do very well.

MMogg

07-12-2010, 03:58 AM

Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Sometimes I forget that you're not allowed to do that on the internet.

I'm using the phrase "do nothing" somewhat flippantly here. Obviously the deck does something, because every deck does something (even a deck with 60 basics still plays a land every turn). The point is that the deck doesn't get up in the morning with the intention of going out and grabbing the bull by the horns; it does not dictate the rules of engagement and force the opponent to play by them. Instead, it plays by the opponent's rules but tries to beat the system. It's a fine strategy but not one I would want to play in the relatively open field of a GP, because there are simply too many different potential systems to have to beat. Landstill will do well in the sorts of defined metagames that allow it to pack all of the right answers, but in open or hard-to-predict metagames you generally have to run broader but weaker cards to try to cover all the bases. This sounds like a losing proposition to me. That's why I only recommended testing against it if you're a deck working on a similar wavelength or your deck hinges around one or two cards working, since Laskin Landstill is very good at negating those kinds of decks. Otherwise, you're generally fine against the deck if you can force it into awkward situations where things have to happen in just a certain way for them: Zoo is very good at blanking a lot of potential draws just by having a very aggressive start (topdecking Force does jack shit when the other guy can kill you with what he already has in play, for example). Coincidentally, that's why I've been arguing for proactive strategies this entire time, and apparently pissed Hanni off in the process - I am much happier letting the opponent lose to himself than in being in that position.

I guess we can't agree, which is a-ok. I see them having a game plan (I knew what you meant by doing something, and I still think they do something), it just doesn't become proactive until mid-late game. Again, the point being the ability to have more favourable match-ups with a larger field.

For example, you're Zoo playing against Aeon Bridge. You come out strong, rawr!! Kitties smash!! Great, my opponent is at 10 life! Sweet, my plan is working. My opponent's turn three, Dreadnought, enters the battlefield trigger on the stack, Mosswart--> Emrakul. gg At least playing Landstill you'd have a better chance to stop that from happening. We could sit here all day with examples, and that isn't my point. My point is that Zoo's tunnel-vision thirst for blood makes it also more vulnerable in certain matchups as they have less chance to interact with decks that don't want to be interacted with.

Landstill, adding to what Hanni said above, is a way to put the brakes on their game plan until you are ready to go from reactive to proactive.

Edit: I should add, I do agree that in a field as varied as a GP, a reactive deck/strategy is probably not such a good choice unless you really know your shit.

I agree here. Reanimator is simply dead, but people will still be trying. With the right amount of luck, the deck obviously won't have to Mystical as much anyway, so there might be some players that just luck out and do very well.

I agree with what you quoted from AZ, but I disagree with this. Reanimator is certainly not dead. A deck that packs Show and Tell, Entomb and Lim Dul's Vault, supported with cantrips, has a good chance at running consistently. Sure it isn't the break out menace all the pros were raving about, but hardly dead.

Bahamuth

07-12-2010, 06:11 AM

I agree with what you quoted from AZ, but I disagree with this. Reanimator is certainly not dead. A deck that packs Show and Tell, Entomb and Lim Dul's Vault, supported with cantrips, has a good chance at running consistently. Sure it isn't the break out menace all the pros were raving about, but hardly dead.

I call this dead. The deck won't be much better than a turn 3 deck that has a hard time fighting around a ton of different kinds of hate, including any form of Counterbalance, regular counters, graveyard hate, and even just creatures. LDV is terribly slow, and not suited for a deck that is willing to play a couple more turns after resolving it.

Zay

07-12-2010, 01:32 PM

EDIT: I also don't have a car, so I'd have to find someone either in the local area, or driving through this way, to carpool with. There just seems to be too many factors going against me for my attending the GP. I wasn't planning on attending the GP, and unless a miracle happens, I won't be there.

I live about 2 hours from Columbus also, which direction do you live from Columbus. We may be able to fit you in.

-Zay

Hanni

07-12-2010, 02:29 PM

I live about 2 hours from Columbus also, which direction do you live from Columbus. We may be able to fit you in.

I'm up near Cleveland, Ohio. Slightly west of Cleveland.

Zay

07-12-2010, 04:36 PM

I'm up near Cleveland, Ohio. Slightly west of Cleveland.

Sorry can not help you, I live in southern Ohio.

-Zay

Artowis

07-12-2010, 04:55 PM

positive against any form of control

I hate when people say this crap. Just because some Control decks can't beat Goblins consistently doesn't mean they can't with a few modifications. It's a lazy way of thinking and will likely degrade prep you put into the format pre-GP.

Amon Amarth

07-12-2010, 06:25 PM

I hate when people say this crap. Just because some Control decks can't beat Goblins consistently doesn't mean they can't with a few modifications. It's a lazy way of thinking and will likely degrade prep you put into the format pre-GP.

With a few exceptions, can't you say this about most decks?

Artowis

07-13-2010, 12:26 AM

With a few exceptions, can't you say this about most decks?

I mean you can, but on the level I'm talking about I mean it'd be an easy fix. With the sheer amount of manipulation many Control decks run and the wide array of hosers they have access too, it's a lot easier to beat something along the lines of: "A linear swarm aggro deck with no reach outside of attacking". Where as other decks need to basically reconstruct a good portion of their maindeck or sideboard to deal with a similar kind of issue.

At it's core my statement can be taken as an indictment of lazy deckbuilding though, sure.

Aggro_zombies

07-13-2010, 12:46 AM

Pat Chapin's article today (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/19702_Innovations_Metagaming_and_Deckbuilding_The_Three_Laws_of_Prediction.html) (WARNING: Premium) is a thing of beauty. He basically gives the same criticisms of control I did, but explains it better.

@Amon: What he's saying is that, if you're a Goblins player, simply assuming you beat control because you're Goblins is a great way to get surprised buttsexed by control players who decided they wanted to beat Goblins. There are very few matchups in this format that are simply unwinnable for one of the decks involved (like, 90% against, say). Thinking you're fine because you get 60% against your average control deck leads to the sort of lazy deckbuilding Artowis mentioned, which means you won't have the sort of outs you should have had when your prey deck figures out the key to beating you.

EDIT: One example of this comes from Standard earlier this year, prior to Worldwake's release (IIRC). Jund at the time was basically the best deck in the format, and as such it began to focus heavily on beating the mirror by cutting cards like Maelstrom Pulse and Putrid Leech and trying to go big. It allowed a plethora of lesser decks to suddenly start beating Jund, because instead of running generally good cards those decks couldn't deal with, Jund was getting super inbred and top-heavy. Similarly, control isn't so good for Goblins that it can simply ignore the matchup; Goblins has zero reach and therefore is heavily reliant on being able to profitably attack. Decks like Lands that can shut that down will just roll Goblins, especially if Goblins players figure they're favored and therefore don't have to try.

Amon Amarth

07-13-2010, 04:21 AM

I mean you can, but on the level I'm talking about I mean it'd be an easy fix. With the sheer amount of manipulation many Control decks run and the wide array of hosers they have access too, it's a lot easier to beat something along the lines of: "A linear swarm aggro deck with no reach outside of attacking". Where as other decks need to basically reconstruct a good portion of their maindeck or sideboard to deal with a similar kind of issue.

At it's core my statement can be taken as an indictment of lazy deckbuilding though, sure.

Ah, true enough. At least from a Goblins players point of view trying to metagame against "Control" is not worth it. Mostly because Control decks (aka CounterTop-Thopter, Landstill, etc etc.) don't really seem to be very prevalent although that may change after this last SCG Open. The other reason is that they all run different hate cards/sweepers/ etc. Are they running Humility or Firespout? Moat or WoG? BEB? Who the fuck knows; there doesn't appear to be a solidified control deck in this format. Yeah, sure, if I show up to an event and I'm able to do some scouting and it looks like everyone is playing EPlagues maybe I should roll with Krosan Grip in my sideboard, or Tranquilty. Otherwise I'm not going to try and play the guessing game and I would just rely on Vial+Wastes+Card Advantage to get me there.

@AZ: In the example you gave Goblins is only favored because they can profitably run things like PoP and or Moon in the sideboard. I don't think Goblins really has any innate advantage over Lands with the exception of its rock solid manabase, at least for Mono Red.

Antonius

07-13-2010, 10:02 AM

goblins is a LOT better against lands than zoo. They can timing push through chasm with wasteland. They can timing push through mazes with ports. It's harder to dominate goblins with Tabernacle because they have so many basic mountains. EE doesn't hit as many things because their CC is all over the place. And they still have PoP and Moon in board. I'd much rather play against zoo than goblins.

Brad Herbig

07-13-2010, 10:25 AM

Hey guys, take out your combo hate. You won't need it.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

07-20-2010, 04:05 PM

Control is an archetype, not a deck. Control beats whatever it was designed to control; that's why it's control. If you build a control deck to build Goblins, it will beat Goblins. There are lots of ways to do this. The problem with control is the decks you're not designed to beat, generally.

FoulQ

07-20-2010, 04:49 PM

I think you people are a little crazy about goblin matchups. Goblins is not that well positioned. It had a great matchup against reanimator, this was true, and also against merfolk, and a favorable one versus bant lists, particularly CB ones.. However, both those two decks are waning in popularity for obvious reasons which does make goblins worse. Any aggro-control or control list depends on the list individually if it is good against Goblins more than anything, but I would say goblins has an even matchup with landstill and aggro loam, but definitely not positive...and even with zoo? I don't think so, it's unfavorable but winnable with skill. Goblins has a very bad matchup against lands, they just have to fetch out the right lands and its done...g1 is possibly even but lands sideboard hate against creatures is usually very stellar against goblins. Meanwhile, goblins has to get lucky enough (or mull enough to statistically make their deck worse) to get their hate early on (or mid for PoP) to screw the lands player. Guessing the hate is usually pretty easy, because moon and crypt will come down fairly early (since lands will go for loam right away most of the time and the goblin player needs to moon him before he is prepared) and PoP requires a large creature push, but a creature push that can have sacrifices. So the lands player can focus on killing creatures for awhile if he can see PoP coming, or let the life points slide to insure that moon and crypt don't wreck everything before they set up their sideboard hate (which is better later in the game usually).

It's not a good matchup at all, playing against lands is one of the last things I want to see.

Also goblins still has one of the worst matchups in the format against combo of most kinds.

I would not call goblins tier 1. Bant lists that predict it will have a favorable matchup (and people probably will predict a heavy goblins presence, everyone knows goblins is the most popular at the mega events), zoo has a favorable matchup especially since it is preparing for the mirror and aggro, most tier 2 decks that got a boost from ant/reanimator dying will have an even but most likely positive matchup (enchantress, loam decks, landstill, TES). So goblins might beat up on cheap merfolk players the first few rounds, but the decks played by the best players in the later rounds will make quick work of them.