[Big Pile of Numbers] Color penetration in Legacy

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

As per the other thread I've gone through Deck Check and collected some data on the performance of different colors. This information is grouped by time frame and then color. I'll add comparisons for Goyf, Force, and Tendrils of Agony, and possibly Wasteland or StP/PtE and Duress/Thoughtseize later on. Color penetration was determined by looking for the relevant duals and basic lands. Hulk-Flash turned out to be difficult to filter out, so the 2007-2008 data is somewhat tilted by that month long sideshow.

Large tournaments are defined as>100

Time Period: 2005-2006

White decks made up 52.7% of all placing lists, and 58.4% of all winning lists. 70% of all decks that placed in large tournaments ran White, and 80% of decks that won those tournaments did.

Blue decks made up 46.6% of all placing lists, and 49.4% of all winning ones. 44% of lists that placed in large tournaments ran blue, and 80% of those that won.

Black decks made up 25.7% of placing lists, and 15.6% of those that won. 34% of decks that placed in large tournaments ran black, and none of the decks that won.

Red decks made up 47.5% of placing lists, and won 46.8% of the time. In large tournaments they placed 38% of the time, and won 40%.

Green decks made up 37.9% of placing lists, and won 35.1% of the time. In large tournaments they placed 54% of the time and never won.

Time Period: 2007-2008

White decks made up 45.2% of placing lists, and 46.7% of winning ones. In large tournaments they placed 47.1% of the time, and won 45.5%.

Blue decks made up 51.8% of placing lists, and won 55.2%. In large tournaments they placed 56.7% of the time and won 54.5%.

Black decks composed 48.2% of top lists, and won 51.2% of tournaments. At large tournaments black decks placed 47.1% and won 54.5%.

Decks with Red made up 40.5% of top lists, and 38.2% of winning lists. In large tournaments red placed 43.3% and won 27.3%

57.8% of placing decks played Green, with 60.9% of the winning lists sharing the color. 55.8% of placing lists in large tournament ran green, and 81.8% of winning lists.

Time Period: 2009

White decks placed 46.4% of the time and won 46.7%. In large tournaments they showed up in 46.4% of lists and won in 17.6%.

Blue decks during this time placed 53.9% and won 56.1%. In large tournaments they placed 62.3% and won 70.6%.

Black decks placed 42.4% and won 41% of the time. In large tournaments they made up 39.9% of the placings, and 23.5% of winners.

Red put in 41.8% of the pairings and 41.7% of the winners. In large tournaments they supplied 42.8% of the top lists and 70.6% of champions.

Green decks made up 62.8% of placements, 63.2% of winners. Out of large tournaments Green made up 65.9% of lists and 82.4% of winners.

Time Period: 2010

White decks contributed 49.9% of the final placings and 50.2% of winners. In large tournaments they placed 52.5% of the time, and won 46.2%.

Blue decks placed 58.8% and won 63%. In large tournaments they placed 68% of the time, and won the tournament 84.6%.

Black decks placed 35.9% of the time, and won 31.1%. In large tournaments they placed 39.3% and won 53.8%.

Red decks put in 42.4% of standings, and took the prize 45% of the time. In large tournaments they placed 44.3% but only won 30.8%.

Green represented 61%, and won 61.9%. In larger tournaments it broke through 62.3% and won 38.5%

Time Period: Last Month

White represented 49.7% overall, won 65.5%, represented 37.5% in large tournies and won 0%.

Blue represented 58.4% of the field and 58.6% of winners. In larger tournaments it put up 66.7% of placings, and won 100%.

Black put up 37% of results, and 24.1% of wins. However in large tournaments it put up 58.3% of the field and won 100%.

Red made up 43.1% of the field and won 37.9% of the time. It put 41.7% into large tournaments and won 33.3% of the time.

Green represented 55.3% and won 75.9%. In large tournamentss it represented 50% of the field and 0% of winners.



Over/under performance by year and color:

Looking at how each color performed on average in both fields, relative to it's placement presence.

2005-2006:
W: +7.9
U: +19.4
B: -22.1
R: +6.5
G: -28.4

2007-2008:
W: -0.1
U: +0.6
B: +5.2
R: -9.4
G: +14.6

2009:
W: -14.3
U: +5.3
B: -8.9
R: +13.9
G: +8.5

2010:

W: -3
U: +10.4
B: +4.9
R: -5.5
G: -12

30 Days:

W: -10.9
U: +16.8
B: +14.4
R: -6.8
G: -14.7

However, a small handful of results can disrupt these because of how few large tournaments are played. A better metric to filter out the guys that top 8'd at a 20man while giving enough data to look at would be add winning decks overall to decks that top 8 large tournaments. This gives us several hundred decks a year to get data from while filtering out most decks that lucked into it. This also ends up giving the winner of each large tournament double weight, while not allowing them to completely skew the numbers.

Refined Performance Filter

So adding the combined presence of each color in these two fields and averaging:

2005-2006:

W: 64.2%
U: 46.7%
B: 19.8%
R: 43.4%
G: 44.6%

Average deck was running: 2.2 colors.

2007-2008:

W: 46.9%
U: 56%
B: 49.2%
R: 40.8%
G: 58.4%

Average deck was running: 2.5 colors.

2009:

W: 46.6%
U: 59.2%
B: 41%
R: 42.3%
G: 64.6%

Average deck was running: 2.6 colors.

2010:

W: 51.4%
U: 65.5%
B: 35.2%
R: 44.7%
G: 62.1%

Average deck was running: 2.6 colors.

Since July 21st:

W: 51.5%
U: 62.7%
B: 41.2%
R: 39.8%
G: 63%

Average deck was running: 2.6 colors.

One thing that can be said conclusively, I think, is that the mana situation seems to have stabilized: I think people are running about as many colors as they feel they can without being too Wasteland vulnerable.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Card distribution: For information purposes I decided to check the most played and/or bannable cards in Legacy against the penetration of >100 man tournaments and winning lists overall. I filtered for Force of Will, Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, Tendrils of Agony, (Duress d/or Thoughtseize), (StP d/or Path to Exile), Aether Vial, Wasteland, and Tarmogoyf. This is a pretty good spread; for comparison, all 122 decks that top 8'd at >100 man tournaments in the past year ran at least one of these cards. I was going to run LED separately, but there's only a handful of Belcher/Ichorid lists that wouldn't show up under Tendrils. PtE/StP and Duress/Thoughtseize overlap enough that I grouped them together; there's an argument for doing this with Ponder/Brainstorm or Force/Daze, but unlike StP or Thoughtseize there are people actually arguing for banning Bstorm and FoW, so I just went with the raw numbers.

2005-2006:

Decks placing in >100 man tournaments: 50
Winning decks: 77

Average penetration of:
Force of Will: 41.1%
Sensei's Divining Top: 4.3%
Brainstorm: 43.4%
Tendrils of agony: 1%
Duress/Thoughtseize: 15.2%
Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile: 40.6%
Aether Vial: 21.1%
Wasteland: 47%
Tarmogoyf: 0%

2007-2008

Decks placing in >100man tournaments: 104
Winning decks: 471

Average penetration of:
Force of Will: 46.7%
Sensei's Divining Top: 18.6%
Brainstorm: 49.5%
Tendrils of Agony: 4.3%
Duress/Thoughtseize: 23.4%
Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile: 33.2%
Aether Vial: 16.4%
Wasteland: 45.1%
Tarmogoyf: 35.5%

2009

Decks placing at >100man tournaments: 138
Winning decks: 456

Average penetration of:
Force of Will: 46.9%
Sensei's Divining Top: 28.2%
Brainstorm: 46.4%
Tendrils of Agony: 7%
Duress/Thoughtseize: 16.5%
Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile: 32.7%
Aether Vial: 18.5%
Wasteland: 48.9%
Tarmogoyf: 49.2%

2010

Decks placing in >100 man tournaments: 122
Winning decks: 289

Average penetration of:
Force of Will: 53.6%
Sensei's Divining Top: 28.5%
Brainstorm: 50.7%
Tendrils of Agony: 7.6%
Duress/Thoughtseize: 14.5%
Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile: 39.9%
Aether Vial: 18%
Wasteland: 45.5%
Tarmogoyf: 43.2%

Since July 21st

Decks placing in >100man tournaments: 24
Winning lists: 29

Average penetration of:
Force of Will: 50.9%
Sensei's Divining Top: 24.6%
Brainstorm: 48.6%
Tendrils of Agony: 10.1%
Duress/Thoughtseize: 18.1%
Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile: 40.1%
Aether Vial: 24.6%
Wasteland: 50.9%
Tarmogoyf: 36.6%

In pictures:

http://imgur.com/ZJN7R.png

http://imgur.com/css6i.png

http://imgur.com/Pa5M4.png

[jrsthethird]

OK, in your second post, you have 'placing decks' and 'winning decks'. Is the 'winning decks' number larger because that counts all tournaments, while 'placing' only counts large ones? Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.

And is the fact that the 'placing decks' numbers are not always multiples of 8 just due to incomplete reports on deckcheck? That seems like it would skew the data somewhat.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The data is imperfect. Not every tournament reports its results, and not every result is reported in full. We work with what we have. I don't know why it should skew things one particular way that this is so.

And yes, winning decks refers to decks that won any tournament, regardless of size.

[clavio]

What sort of conclusions did you draw from this exercise?

[MDB]

I would have liked to see Chalice of the Void in there, being archetypical and all. Did you go from the 75-list or 60 lists, with 75, I can imagine you left it out. The other obvious suspect is Life from the Loam. Is it hard to add those 2 to the numbers? Would be very interesting.

And how much of that White is splashed? That's the real question I guess, same goes for Green and Goyf. I understand that if you play swords, there's bound to be 2-4 white-ish cards that go along with it. But if that's all, then the deck ain't running White, it's running Swords... Can you filter out the decks were swords/goyf make up half/more than half the nr of W/G in the deck? That would be a pretty good benchmark I'd say. That's were the real evolution of the Meta is, the cards behind the top dogs. Although I expect the largest result for StP, it doesn't neccessarily mean it's broken, it might just mean that we need better white cards! Or Land Tax.. I think that Qasali/Hierarch- effects on the meta can be exemplified with this kind of analysis.

Props for the work though, interesting figures.

[DrJones]

What you can extract from the data: That decks with force of will win over half of the tournaments, that this month Wasteland has been overperforming and that Tarmogoyf has been underperforming and it's on the decline. It also shows that the pair Force of Will + Brainstorm seems to be stronger than anything else, they absolute dominate with over 10%+ victories over the next absolute best cards: Tarmogoyf and Swords of Plowshares (and that after adding the percentages of Path to Exile to it). It also says that blue is the best color right now, followed by (but paired most often with) green, and the worst color is black by a long shot.

While decks with Counterbalance/Sensei's divining top are on the rise, it seems that decks like merfolks and New Horizons are better choices for running more succesful cards.

Conclusion: If I were to bring a deck to a tournament, it better have an awesome pairing against blue decks, because over half of the top 8 spots are reserved for those.

[DragoFireheart]

Are merfolk the best deck as of now? They fight combo, they kick the crap out of other blue decks and they only suffer from super aggro decks like Zoo.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What sort of conclusions did you draw from this exercise?

A number of things, I'm not sure it's entirely settled though. I would say that Force is unhealthily present, and people are undestimating Tendrils' share of the metagame, which has been increasing steadily, despite the banning of Mystical Tutor. If you plan on going to a major tournament and top 8'ing, you'll probably play against Tendrils at least once. Which is frightening for quite a lot of decks.

[Silent Requiem]

For what it's worth, I just played 7 rounds at the Nationals Legacy side event in London. 66 players, and I faced combo every single round. Yet none of those decks played Tendrils of Agony.

-Silent Requiem

[DrJones]

For what it's worth, I just played 7 rounds at the Nationals Legacy side event in London. 66 players, and I faced combo every single round. Yet none of those decks played Tendrils of Agony.

-Silent RequiemHow many of those played Force of Will? Where you playing a combo deck?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

For what it's worth, I just played 7 rounds at the Nationals Legacy side event in London. 66 players, and I faced combo every single round. Yet none of those decks played Tendrils of Agony.

-Silent Requiem

There's a rising tide of Force-enabled combo, which generally has a fantastic Tendrils matchup due to a high clock + counters/discard + lack of vulnerability to the same hate as Tendrils. Orim's Chant doesn't do much against SnT, for example. It's possible that Force itself is the problem here, but as I said, I'd try out banning Tendrils at least; it disrupts the least of the metagame directly of any possible fix, but might skew the numbers enough to where decks that can hate Emrakul or Aluren but not Tendrils, might thrive. Of course at that point Goyf might just break the 70% penetration mark.

[majikal]

Another question, of course, is could the banning of Mystical Tutor actually be to blame for the sudden upswing in Force-enabled combo decks?

Edit: to clarify a little bit, pre-banning ANT was clearly the best combo deck in the format. Without its presence, it seems other, slower combo decks come out of the woodwork en masse. Could it be that Mystical Tutor actually played a vital role in keeping the format balanced, despite the warping effect that ANT may have had - eg, although it was indeed warping the format, it was warping it in a positive manner?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Another question, of course, is could the banning of Mystical Tutor actually be to blame for the sudden upswing in Force-enabled combo decks?

It hasn't noticeably weakened Tendrils, and the other deck that ran it was itself a Force-reliant combo deck (Reanimator). I'm having a difficult time seeing an argument where M. Tutor's banning made combo decks stronger.

[majikal]

It hasn't noticeably weakened Tendrils, and the other deck that ran it was itself a Force-reliant combo deck (Reanimator). I'm having a difficult time seeing an argument where M. Tutor's banning made combo decks stronger.
While it hasn't noticeably weakened the deck, it has expanded the decision tree considerably, making it incredibly taxing on the pilot. Let's face it, ANT is no longer the de-facto combo deck of the format. While Reanimator was in fact a force-driven combo deck, it was also extremely fragile and easy to hate. Both of these decks relied heavily on Mystical Tutor in order to maintain the consistency needed to be competitive. Once MT was out of the picture, a whole bunch more slower combo decks popped up.

What I'm trying to say is that having faster, more consistent combo decks in the form of ANT and Reanimator in the format actually forced people away from slower, blue-based combo. Certainly there was a warping effect, but the penetration of combo decks at the time was nowhere near what it is now, so I'm inclined to believe that the warping may have actually been a positive thing.

[ummon]

How many of those played Force of Will? Where you playing a combo deck?

He was playing Solidarity with his own set of Forces.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

While it hasn't noticeably weakened the deck, it has expanded the decision tree considerably, making it incredibly taxing on the pilot. Let's face it, ANT is no longer the de-facto combo deck of the format.

Again, in raw numbers, Tendrils has performed better than before the banning (10% as opposed to 7% of the largest relevant performance fields).

It may be fair to say that other combo is getting stronger also. Then this is a problem that combo is becoming dominant overall.


While Reanimator was in fact a force-driven combo deck, it was also extremely fragile and easy to hate. Both of these decks relied heavily on Mystical Tutor in order to maintain the consistency needed to be competitive. Once MT was out of the picture, a whole bunch more slower combo decks popped up.

What I'm trying to say is that having faster, more consistent combo decks in the form of ANT and Reanimator in the format actually forced people away from slower, blue-based combo. Certainly there was a warping effect, but the penetration of combo decks at the time was nowhere near what it is now, so I'm inclined to believe that the warping may have actually been a positive thing.

Do the numbers validate this? Blue is down, even if only slightly. But then so is Goyf. Are Goyf-based "Gro" decks giving way to Merfolk and Force-Combo? I'm not sure. This would be a whole different set of data to crunch through.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The biggest argument I can see for banning Brainstorm d/or Force is that blue is the only color that outperforms itself in every time period, despite being increasingly played. It can even be said that at this point blue is itself the best anti-blue strategy. Blue is good regardless of the metagame. You could make a complete metagame out of Merfolk, Bant, and TES. Banning Force would be a huge upheaval in Legacy strategies though. If not Tendrils, the next most reasonable card to ban would probably be Brainstorm, which would force people to move to Ponder and Preordain, weakening blue slightly without completely invalidating any existing decks. Given that Brainstorm would probably cost 3 mana today and is already banned in Vintage, this doesn't seem unfair.

[DrJones]

There's something that bugges me. According to LaPille, Brainstorm wasn't restricted in vintage to weaken blue, it was restricted to force blue decks to be slighty more different from each other. Is there proof that blue in vintage got nerfed with the restriction of brainstorm?

[kinda]

There's something that bugges me. According to LaPille, Brainstorm wasn't restricted in vintage to weaken blue, it was restricted to force blue decks to be slighty more different from each other. Is there proof that blue in vintage got nerfed with the restriction of brainstorm?

Vintage still has all of the tutors legacy does not...the effect on the consistency of blue and black decks would not be the same in legacy.

Agreeing with IBA I still think brainstorm is the right card to ban...as I said before it reduces the consistency of tendrils.dec and blue decks without force of will (and in turn merfolk) without invalidating any strategy or risking chaos. The only real problem I see with banning brainstorm is how much people will fight it...but you'd have that with any ban (see mystical tutor).

[Gheizen64]

The biggest argument I can see for banning Brainstorm d/or Force is that blue is the only color that outperforms itself in every time period, despite being increasingly played. It can even be said that at this point blue is itself the best anti-blue strategy. Blue is good regardless of the metagame. You could make a complete metagame out of Merfolk, Bant, and TES. Banning Force would be a huge upheaval in Legacy strategies though. If not Tendrils, the next most reasonable card to ban would probably be Brainstorm, which would force people to move to Ponder and Preordain, weakening blue slightly without completely invalidating any existing decks. Given that Brainstorm would probably cost 3 mana today and is already banned in Vintage, this doesn't seem unfair.

The problem i see with banning brainstorm are twofold:

- you don't remove the boogeyman of the format
- you may end up buffing tendril by weaking CB/Tops deck more than storm decks, or you may end with almost no changes


Also, brainstorm is a pretty old card and i bet there are much more people that love brainstorm compared to the ones that love Tendril. Dunno, Vintage seemed to react pretty bad to the brainstorm restriction, am i remembering this right?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The argument for banning Brainstorm is that it's a more conservative move in terms of impacting the metagame than any other relevant banning. You may be right that this is counteracted by people's deepseated, throbbing love of the card. Banning Tendrils is probably more pragmatic in the long term, and I would think (although it's not certain) would do a lot to kill the rising tide of blue-based combo decks and fix the color balance. I feel like any such fix is going to see Goyf surge to the top again. But that's a concern that can be stalled.

[ummon]

The argument for banning Brainstorm is that it's a more conservative move in terms of impacting the metagame than any other relevant banning. You may be right that this is counteracted by people's deepseated, throbbing love of the card. Banning Tendrils is probably more pragmatic in the long term, and I would think (although it's not certain) would do a lot to kill the rising tide of blue-based combo decks and fix the color balance. I feel like any such fix is going to see Goyf surge to the top again. But that's a concern that can be stalled.

I feel that Tendrils is too narrow a part of the combo spectrum to strongly affect the metagame. That is why I want LED banned.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

For all of those people that hate FoW so much and think it's overly dominating: Have you guys ever looked at the Extended-format at the end of any PTQ-season after FoW had rotated out? The change in how the format worked once FoW was gone is pretty enlightening, actually. It was basically a bunch of combo-style decks (anything from Tron to Scapeshift to Elves to TEPS to Oath to DDThopter to Hive Mind to Hypergenesis and like a hundred other go for broke decks I'm forgetting) racing each other with Zoo thrown in because it, too, was fast enough to kill on turn 4. If the blue cards actually were strong enough to get these combo-decks under control from turn 3 onwards, decks like Faeries or CBTop sometimes finished the season on top because they actually managed to beat up the whole muddle of different combo-decks racing each other. You essentially had the choice of which combo-deck to play, or to play Zoo or to play a blue deck built especially to deal with combo (and if that deck is good enough to do so, you basically remain at a blue-dominated format, same as before FoW was gone only now it's more random because combo gets to definitely win whenever it has the turn 1-2 kill).

Now imagine this problem magnified by the cardpool of Legacy, where you can do all of the above things and about a hundred others and do them a turn or two earlier due to the far better accelleration and sicker enablers. Having realized this, however many cool new decks you think getting rid of FoW would enable, do you think they would stand up to what boils down to a format that is basically a race between different ways to kill the opponent on your third turn (or kill them for all practical intends and purposes, see Emrakul attacking)? Because as Extended has so nicely illustrated, if you can build your combo-decks without the need to address possibly running into a counter on your second turn as long as you win the die-roll, you can built all of them for pure speed and that's what you should be doing. The most disruptive one - probably something close to DDThopter from last extended season or Reanimator - would likely come out on top in the end, but that doesn't change the fact that most of the matchups would come down to racing the opponents kill.
Without early countermagic, that is simply the best way to play this game as long as there is something broken you can do and anybody that has looked at Extended should be aware of that. To keep the format from turning into this kind of a format, you'd likely need to ban 20 more cards AT THE VERY LEAST (of the top of my head: LED, Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, Lotus Petal, Ancient Tomb, Charbelcher, Aluren, Show and Tell, Dark Depths, Grindstone, Survival of the Fittest, Hypergenesis, Doomsday, Dream Halls, Natural Order, Glimpse of Nature, Helm of Obedience, Entomb, Reanimate, Exhume, Animate Dead, Sneak Attack, Eureka). Sure, all of these cards can be interacted with in a variety of ways to beat them with most decks, the problem is that they attack from so many different angles that you can never cover all of them with any hope of success. The best strategies than become either being faster (burn sligh, probably), finding the one combo-deck that the metagame is hating least at the moment or run a combo-hate deck if the necessary blue cards are available.
Now as to how banning FoW would benefit the health of Legacy and draw more players in, look at Extended again. Whatever your arguments for banning FoW (blue dominance, it being to good in combo, etc), these problems won't get solved because FoW is gone, all you're doing is turn Legacy into an even faster post-FoW Extended. Now look at how many people actually play Extended if there is no qualifier-season forcing them to (hint: Wizards just performed a complete overhaul of the format because that number was pretty much zilch, zero, none).
Than reconsider the point you're making that getting rid of FoW would bring more players into the format without looking at your personal biases. Afterwards consider how many old-time players would quit the format (I know I would, for the same reason I never had any interest in Extended after FoW left).
On the other hand, consider how successful this format has been during the last years, with the blue-dominance (which, looking at IBA's numbers, has been in place for about the last 3 to 4 years if you don't count Tarmogoyf out of basically blue decks making them count as "green"), tons of ridiculous stuff happening early not to mention the pretty extreme price-tag. Players flock to this format in its current form, Tendrils, Belcher and tons of blue included. Honestly, I haven't yet heard any new player complain about FoW/blue being so prevalent. If the past history of extended teaches us anything, this is a case where we should better follow the old saying "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" and a format that is "not broken" in this context has to mean a format people enjoy, actively want to play and go out of their way search out. If Legacy loses its draw towards all kinds of people, I think this kind of discussion might make sense. As long as only a vocal minority of current players is complaining that there is too much blue but the general perception of anybody getting to play in the format is "wow, what a great format, I want to play it more" making changes that lead to such drastic transformations of the format seems at the very least ill-advised.
Now as to the banning of things like Brainstorm or Tendrils, I don't think there is anything like the argument against getting rid of FoW I can make from past formats. I do know, though, that many many people enjoy Brainstorm and it's one of the reasons this format is so well-liked (and, for a certain sub-group of people, this is also true of Tendrils).
To make my point, I think that this format, even if the colors are unbalanced, should be judged by how fun it is, not if the colors are balanced power-wise. The success of the format (as in it being fun and attractive) and it being inherently stable (in the sense that it isn't only a race to outbroken the other) should be what we focus on when looking at the cards that should be legal and what should be done to the banned-list.

[pippo84]

Wow. This thread started in an interesting way and now it's: Ban Force of Will and Brainstorm!
WTF. Go play T2 if you don't like these cards.

[DrJones]

Force of Will rotated far before people stopped playing Extended. The problem with extended wasn't the lack of Force. In fact, I think Extended got far better after Force rotated out, and I vividly remember how Faeries, Countertop, Psychatog, UG Madness and ScepterChant were perfectly able to stop the combo decks in their tracks. What made Extended so bad, was that WotC broke the policy of rotation in Extended two times, one to "bring it closer to Magic Online" and the other "so that sets rotates every year", and that last change was too much, more disrupting than Standard, I say. You can play a Standard deck for two years as its core usually uses cards from only one block, that doesn't happen with Extended.

The next extended format has yet to prove itself, and I personally don't think it will be succesful at all.

Also, if you think Force of Will is good because otherwise combo decks would get too strong, let me paste this extract from a report:

Loss number 1 - Reanimator.

I go into round 2 fairly upbeat, having stomped all over a Scapeshift deck.

Game 1: He plays Underground Sea. I play Island. End of my turn he Entombs. I Force, but so does he. He Exhumes Iona on his turn and I scoop.

Game 2: I play Island. He plays Underground Sea. I play Island, and at the end of my turn he Entombs. I Force, but so does he. I Impulse, but don't find another Force. On his turn he Exhumes Iona. I scoop.

I played 3 turns of Magic in the entire round. Slow and inconsistent my @ss.

Loss number 2 - Reanimator.

I shake off my funk from round 2. After all, I just faced my Reanimator for the day, right? Apparently not. I win game 1 because he has his Ionas in the board. Games 2 & 3 play exactly like games 1 & 2 from the previous round.

Loss number 3 - Hypergenesis

Game 1 - I Forced his first two Hypergenesis, and went off in response to the third. However, by then he had drawn into his Forces, and he shut me down.
This report shows the futility of trying to stop combo when the combo deck runs Force of Will. You basically have ONE chance in your two first turns to stop the combo deck, and because he uses FoW and Daze to make sure you cannot do anything relevant in those two turns except watching, you have to resort to UNCOUNTERABLE hate such as Extirpate, Faerie Macabre and Leyline of the Void if you want to have at least a chance of fighting back.
The real way to stop degenerate combo is not force, but the DCI. Wizards also knew when they printed Mirrodin that they would have to ban a whole bunch of cards from Extended, and they specifically said that they wanted the Pros to "have some fun with the brokenness" at GP: Tinker before banning the cards and fix the rest of the extended season.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Force of Will rotated far before people stopped playing Extended. The problem with extended wasn't the lack of Force. In fact, I think Extended got far better after Force rotated out, and I vividly remember how Faeries, Countertop, Psychatog, UG Madness and ScepterChant were perfectly able to stop the combo decks in their tracks. What made Extended so bad, was that WotC broke the policy of rotation in Extended two times, one to "bring it closer to Magic Online" and the other "so that sets rotates every year", and that last change was too much, more disrupting than Standard, I say. You can play a Standard deck for two years as its core usually uses cards from only one block, that doesn't happen with Extended.

ScepterChant is a combo-deck itself, even though it's combo control. As for the others, I thought I mentioned the format being either combo-racing or blue decks keeping combo in check leading to the same kind of blue dominance you're trying to get rid off in the first place. The main thing I remember about that time, though, is basically that I neither knew nor met anybody ever that had an Extended deck together and nobody played Extended outside of the qualifier season, but whatever, personal experience may wary. No idea where to look up the statistics of tournaments played per format from that time.



This report shows the futility of trying to stop combo when the combo deck runs Force of Will. You basically have ONE chance in your two first turns to stop the combo deck, and because he uses FoW and Daze to make sure you cannot do anything relevant in those two turns except watching, you have to resort to UNCOUNTERABLE hate such as Extirpate, Faerie Macabre and Leyline of the Void if you want to have at least a chance of fighting back.
The real way to stop degenerate combo is not force, but the DCI. Wizards also knew when they printed Mirrodin that they would have to ban a whole bunch of cards from Extended, and they specifically said that they wanted the Pros to "have some fun with the brokenness" at GP: Tinker before banning the cards and fix the rest of the extended season.
I see the problem with combo-decks that abuse FoW themselves, I even kind of agree. These combo-decks are the tip of the iceberg, though, and if they prove to be to powerful the DCI should and likely will step in. The problem with these decks is their combo-engine making it easy to support FoW, though, not FoW itself. Sure, FoW protects their combo, but it wouldn't be much trouble for them to run Duress or even Spell Pierce instead and still remain as fast and nearly as well-protected against hate. I don't really see much of a difference between them Duressing/Thoughtseizing or even Unmasking me turn 1 to stop my hate and Forcing it later. Sure, FoW is clearly better in these decks than discard because it stops topdecked hate, but that is actually a comparatively minor difference. The last Extended format had access to most of the hate and disruption Legacy has (sans FoW, most of the hate has been printed surprisingly recently) and the disruptive combo-decks (Scapeshift, DDThopter) still beat the hate with ease even though they didn't have Force.
On the other hand if you remove FoW from the picture, you get another 20 (guesswork, maybe it's only 10, maybe it's 30) decks that suddenly can become degenerately fast - not because they can only be stopped by FoW at the moment but because now they have to take it into consideration when building their deck and add at least some disruption in place of more accelleration or search to not always be cold to FoW. It isn't FoW as it is played during the match that has the effect of the so-called "glue that holds the format together" but the threat of FoW forcing deck-building constraints (and no, Counterspell and Daze do not have the same deterrent-effect. Daze can be worked around and Counterspell is only marginally playable with FoW already. In the new faster format, Counterspell probably wouldn't cut it at all).
As for non-FoW answers to these threats, the problem is that all these combo-decks that are now forced to slow down would attack from a million different angles, meaning specialized hate couldn't be played to take care of all of them, meaning the format essentially becomes correctly predicting which kind of hate will be skipped this time and running that combo-deck. A small list of examples: Elves needs cheap mass-removal, Hypergenesis needs countermagic or WoG, S&T and Natural Order need Edicts, Reanimator, Manabond and Ichorid need GY-hate, Aluren needs Krosan Grip, Survival + Retainers/Vengevine needs Needle (or Grip if you're lucky) Emrakul-DDay needs Wasteland or Needle, Belcher and Storm need Mindbreak Trap, Stifle-Naught and Dark Depths need StP. Good luck getting all of these into one deck that can still beat anything but combo and than only if it draws the correct hate in it's first ten cards... Heck even Spring Tide would probably become a huge problem if it could use Gigadrowse to make sure the opponent can never interfere with it.
So your solution than is to ban all of these interactions (or all the mana-accelleration down to FE sac-lands and the cards that are fast enough even without it) and anything else that comes up with newer sets that might be pushed to goldfish consistently by turn 3? Congrats, what a great way to ruin a format everybody aside from a small minority (aka you, pretty much) seems to enjoy immensely and turn it into a boring, annoying and for all intents and purposes doomed steaming pile of crap. You're either ignorant about the true depth this format has and how far you can push many interactions if you really try to or your view of what's actually happening is so clouded by your bias against FoW that you can't see straight any more.

/edit: also, in what way exactly does that excerpt from a report show how broken FoW is? Remove all of the FoWs played during those games and they go exactly the same way, the hypergenesis match aside which ends two Hypergeneses (or whatever the plural of that is) earlier. Clearly that's a desirable state for the metagame to be at, while the opponent actually winning if the combo-player(s) hadn't gotten lucky enough to draw multiple combo-pieces PLUS active Force each time isn't. Wait, what? /end edit.

As for banning Brainstorm, it would probably be quite a realistic candidate from a power-level point of view, but in the light of how successful Legacy is and how much this success has to do with Brainstorm being legal (quite a bit, at least that's my impression, but I'm probably biased here.) I'd rather leave well enough alone. I mean Legacy is THRIVING as it is, more and more people want to play it and even sceptical newcomers declare this their favorite format after having played it for a while. What need is there to change, do you guys really think meddling with something that is so successful is likely to make it much better?
Anybody remember what happened to Vintage's popularity after Brainstorm got the axe? Do we really want to risk something similar only to balance out the power-level between the different colors (not to mention we're far from a format where blue is undisputed king. As far as I know Goblins, Zoo and quite a few other decks still regularly win tournaments. Just look at SCG 5K results). I for my part would rather play in a format where one color is a bit better than others than not be able to play at all because the format dies out.
There is a pretty solid and well-established indicator of blue dominance, by the way, coming to us from as far back as 1994: people regularly play MD REBs. If we ever reach that point, ban away. Until then don't destroy the village to safe it, please.

[Meekrab]

This report shows the futility of trying to stop combo when the combo deck runs Force of Will.
Yeah, the problem is clearly Force of Will, and not the fact that people run decks that lose to EOT Entomb/Reanimate. Notice that, if Force was banned the games in your quoted example wouldn't play out any differently. Except maybe the players would use Daze instead. /Yawn

[dahcmai]

Can you guys practicing the exercise in futility over Force and wanting to ban cards go back over here. http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18571-Is-Legacy-too-broken/page8



This was about colors, not the banned list. Jeez.


I would be curious to see what those numbers looked like if you excluded Goyf from green, Swords from white, Force from blue, Thoughtseize from black, and bolt from red. Bet it would change it up drastically.

[bakofried]

I would actually say Bob before Seize, but I could easily be wrong. (@dahcmai)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Yeah, the problem is clearly Force of Will, and not the fact that people run decks that lose to EOT Entomb/Reanimate. Notice that, if Force was banned the games in your quoted example wouldn't play out any differently. Except maybe the players would use Daze instead. /Yawn

This argument is kind of dumb, since any deck non-mono color deck can easily find answers to EoT Entomb/Reanimate. You probably want to find a combo deck not reliant on creatures here. Actually, if anything, Reanimator would be far easier to deal with if it didn't have Force.

[dahcmai]

I tend to see Thoughtseize more than Bob, but that's me. Mainly because of things like Tendrils, Team america and things like that. Though I guess Tendrils has Bob in the board also. lol

[Azdraël]

Ban MT? ok let's take it on our nerves.

Ban BS/Fow/LED=> kill Legacy for ever.

[Phoenix Ignition]

This argument is kind of dumb, since any deck non-mono color deck can easily find answers to EoT Entomb/Reanimate. You probably want to find a combo deck not reliant on creatures here. Actually, if anything, Reanimator would be far easier to deal with if it didn't have Force.

This concept really isn't so hard but people keep missing it. The combo decks that run FoW are not helped by FoW being in the format. Aggro control decks run FoW because it can answer anything, including cards in other aggro decks. If FoW didn't exist the 4 slots in a deck like reanimator could be moved to being extra hand hate or extra counters like spell pierce because the ONLY cards they care about are things that stop their Entomb or Reanimate (which are almost exclusively non-creature spells). The Aggro control deck, however, could not just run Spell Pierce in its stead because they have to deal with a wider varieties of decks that can womp on them, like goblins or merfolk, where Pierce is much less effective. The next best hard counterspell is Counterspell, which is far to slow for the format in general.

In fact the statement "any deck [SIC] non-mono color deck can easily find answers to _______" is quite obvious, but complete crap. Sure, every deck can run maindeck/sidebaord graveyard hate as well as maindeck/sideboard Mindbreak Trap as well as maindeck/sideboard Leyline of Sanctity, but in a format where you need to run a bunch of answers to the still "broken" 2 card combo decks any deck that will try to play "fair" will get thrashed. How do you even have enough slots for all of the different types of combos out there? FoW is necessary to keep the random crap combos from winning.

I know I would much rather have a blue dominated format than a format with random placings of storm, show and tell, reanimator, sneak attack, Alluren, Natural order, food chain, etc. The fact that blue dominates the format where almost every card allowed is a sign of health anyway. The decks that play the permission cards are still ahead of all of the broken decks in the format. If it ever starts to be the other way around we are going to be in quite deep sh*t.

[GGoober]

IBA, please send this to the DCI B&R Committee. Ask them to draw similar data for Mystical Tutor, and justify their ends.

Great work, solid data, and it's nice to know how someone who isn't involved officially with DCI bannings etc is doing much more research than the hand-wavy "We saw too many Mystical Tutors in the top8 of one tournament, therefore we ban it".

Aside from praising IBA's good data and mocking DCI's data resourcing, I must say that as much as numbers strongly show the power and dominance of specific cards that are tied to winning games, there are just these cards that cannot be removed from Legacy e.g. Force, Brainstorm, Goyf, Wasteland otherwise it would entirely change the format, into what most Legacy players would not want to play.

It's the combination of the popular cards in IBA's list that defines decklists, metagames, and combination of these cards that lead to wins. Force is not strong in decks that are light on blue, Brainstorm is sometimes sacrificed for more power/gas (e.g. Merfolks). The relationship on how cards are paired is what truly defines its power and the existence of this format.

And hinting back at DCI again, Mystical Tutor outshowing in one top8 should not have been their justification for banning it, it's more like the power of Mystical Tutor in making Reanimator and combo so much more resilient and consistent that makes it somewhat ban-worthy, which emphasizes my point again that a single card that penetrates the meta is not a measure of power level, it is the contribution of the card in a specific deck or synergy with other cards that makes it have the potential to penetrate tournaments e.g. Flash

[DrJones]

Mystical Tutor wasn't banned because it was too powerful, it was banned because they didn't want to ban the cards that truly deserved it. It's the same as when they banned Dark Ritual in extended instead of Necropotence.

[MDB]

I would praise the lord if Brainstorm and Sensei were gone.
I just find it, how to put it, ah yes, RUDE, if an opponent is busy with the thought-process of how to stack the top cards of his library, which one to fetch away during next turn etc. in response to my spell, and I have to wait for that in MY main phase. I mean c'mon.
EOT, during your own turn, np take ur time. Need some time to think whether to counter, again np, but the information that cantrips provide should be already present, or stay on 'topic'. Impulse, a beautifully designed card imho. I'm principally against cheap cantrips that are best played at such annoying time, and which increase the thought process beyond the current issue, which would be MY spell, MY main phase, are you gonna counter or not? So I can finish MY turn. I'm fine with blue being able to sculpt their hand and have the counter ready. But I rather have them a bit less consistent and 'rude', and have them commit to choices in their own turn, like the rest of us, untill they reach Intuition/FoF-mana. The overwhelming FoW stats seem to argue for a Brainstorm-ban anyways. Banning Force is such a non-issue.

Anyways. staying on topic would be nice. Guilty and sorry for trolling too.

[ummon]

Mystical Tutor wasn't banned because it was too powerful, it was banned because they didn't want to ban the cards that truly deserved it. It's the same as when they banned Dark Ritual in extended instead of Necropotence.

Spot on.