Worlds 2010 Legacy Side Event: Another nail in the coffin?

[Lemnear]

Here's the list of the Legacy Sideevents T8

http://wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/worlds10/1209legacy

To me some facts are interesting:

1. 2 Survival decks in T8 (Legacy dominance? what?)
2. Only 4 copies of Vengevine in T8
3. No Deck played dedicated survival-hate-cards mainboard (!!)
4. Decks played 3-7 sideboard cards against survival

Here the complete breakdown of dedicated Sideboard hate:

8x Krosan Grip
8x Extirpate
6x Faerie Macabre
5x Relic of Progenitus
5x Tormod's Crypt
5x Pithing Needle
2x Nature's Claim
1x Bojuka Bog

Worth mention is that dealing with the grave after survival resolved is still the most popular solution. Krosan Grip is subpar due to my own testing; might it be a solution for both Legacy-defi.-enchantments (Survival/Counterbalance) so is it most of the time too slow to handle Survival.

IMO a strange T8 with lots of different decks. Is this a local phenom or are we over the edge with Vengevival?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the List of Top 8 Standard

http://wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/worlds10/decks/top8

We have 5 ~90% identical decklists there with 24 Mindsculptors and a total of 36 Jace in the Top8 ... may someone should talk about his ... I'm looking at you Evan Erwin!

[tsabo_tavoc]

2/8 is not dominant, but instead of 4 Vengivine, the winning list has 3 MB hate: Aven Mindcensor.

[Lemnear]

Aven Mindcensor is no "dedicated" Survival hate but a way to fight tutoring itself, which is good in every eternal format due to fetchlands, KotR, Infernal Tutor, enlightend tutor, Natiral Order, Intuition, Personal Tutor, etc. (the legacy ones)

I'd considered it a good metagame call, while writing my post, but refused to list it as specific hate or I had to list cards like Force of Will, Stifle and Pridemage too as possible ways to fight survival.

[Lemnear]

Edit: Adding the Standard T8 link

24 (!!!) Jace TMS in T8 but still no reason to talk about dominance in Standard?

[Jade]

I'm surprised by the absence of storm combo in the top8.

[dahcmai]

Storm gets hated on fairly hard by Counterbalance and it never seems to fail to hit one or two along the way. It's also rough to power through Merfolk if they get a good hand and a lot of people started running MD spell pierces which hurts. It's not hard to hate out Storm on accident.

[godryk]

Storm gets hated on fairly hard by Counterbalance and it never seems to fail to hit one or two along the way. It's also rough to power through Merfolk if they get a good hand and a lot of people started running MD spell pierces which hurts. It's not hard to hate out Storm on accident.

I really think that Survival or Merfolk are much easier decks to pick for non Legacy players while Storm decks are much more difficult to master and thus less appeling to newcomers. I mean, one of the reasons of the banality of the Survival archetype is that the deck can be piloted by a blind monkey to a top 8 finish.

[GGoober]

Interesting results. Goes as far as to prove that for the Worlds side event tournament datapoint that Vengevival is fine (but that's one tournament). To truly judge the situation, DCI needs to let SotF stick for a few more months before making any rash decisions (hello MTutor).

DCI will never ban Jace TMS, just like they allowed overpowering cards like Cryptic, Bitterblossom, BBElf to stick. By their philosophy they should ban these cards if the health of the format is of most important interest, but since a single card being overplayed in a format may not be a good metric for banning (e.g. count number of Islands/Fetchlands etc), the card should be evaluated on its role in archetypes/decks in the format. E.g. Jace is currently mostly being used in control, RUG/BUG Oracle lists. Since he is necessary in these control variants to have an edge against their aggro counterparts, he is still not universally being used in ANY deck, hence still has some 'reasons' for him to stick in the format despite being overly played.

Although 24 Jaces in the Top 8 is quite disturbing. That's an average of 3 Jace of deck in the Top 8 (or 4 Jaces in 6 decks). And here goes all the whining about SotF. I'm looking forward for another 2-3 months of tournament data before any decision is made. My guess is things should be fine. Once again, until the day I see us maindeck "Spreading Seas" to beat the "Jund" problem, I am not convinced that we are taking the overpopulation of Vengevival decks seriously. I find it embarrassing that Standard players have more dedication to beating Jund/Jace than we do, and in Standard, Jund/Jace seems to be much more powering than Vengevival since they have much less answers/cards to utilize in the format. E.g. if Enchantress ever became huge in the meta, I'll go about maindecking Harmonic Convergence

[GGoober]

I really think that Survival or Merfolk are much easier decks to pick for non Legacy players while Storm decks are much more difficult to master and thus less appeling to newcomers. I mean, one of the reasons of the banality of the Vengevival archetype is that the deck can be piloted by a blind monkey to a top 8 finish.

Fixed. RGBSA, Welder variants involve more thought and are quite difficult to pilot correctly. Bant, Elves, Vengevival are more forgiving variants. Interestingly, Welder Survival (non-Vengevines) have been doing well in some European tournaments, with the main reason being that it is fundamentally a turn faster than Vengevival, although argubly more fragile.

But yes, Vengevival is relatively easy to play, even against GY hate, as long as you are not a tard and understand some of the stack interactions and take into account of Extirpate (can't do much here if you discard a VV), I heard the last time that flipping creatures sideways is much easier than counting mana and storm in the face of hate.

[Finn]

I don't wish to derail the conversation. I just want to point out that Welder Survival is far easier to hate since it has trouble switching to aggro in the face of strong hate.

[Purgatory]

I was actually pleased with the Worlds Legacy T8, a good variety of decks. Then again, I'd be pissed if it was the other way aroud, I mean the "open" quality of Legacy is what is the real seller of it, disregarding the last few months of SGC results that is.

[godryk]

Fixed.

You are right, I meant Vengevival.

[Koby]

Here's the List of Top 8 Standard

We have 5 ~90% identical decklists there with 24 Mindsculptors and a total of 36 Jace in the Top8 ... may someone should talk about his ... I'm looking at you Evan Erwin!

Yes, the format seems completely balanced </sarcasm>

So many contradictory premises coming from big figure heads.
Apparently having Jace running rampant is OK, but Survival is a no-no. SURRRREEE.

[Pastorofmuppets]

Yes, the format seems completely balanced </sarcasm>

So many contradictory premises coming from big figure heads.
Apparently having Jace running rampant is OK, but Survival is a no-no. SURRRREEE.

Did you guys know that as an aside to that, did you know that there were 29 BASIC ISLANDS IN THE TOP 8?!?
Jace isn't a combo card. It's utility. While I don't respect the stance, Wizards doesn't like combo, and they love how awesome they are for coming up with balanced mythic rares like Blue Power Ranger.
EDIT: even with 12 Cantrips, I don't see how that U/B slowfish deck would have managed to drop a Jace. Also, Zoo in 5th is pretty nice to see.

[2Rach]

I thought in the team portion they need to have 2 of the 3 win in order to advance as the "winners" of that round. In other words, a Legacy Survival player can win his match, and his other-format teammates can lose their matches causing them to lose the round. Meaning Survival may have done better than the top 8 results let on. Isn't this how it works?

The Worlds tournaments are less about top 8s and more about individual format results, if you're trying to figure out what are the top dogs. Top 8 decks here are less representative of what actually did well than at a PT or GP due to the formats splitting the overall tournament(the main and team portions).

[Rico Suave]

Wow, did that guy really get Scapeshift to work? Impressive.

[Lemnear]

The Standard T8 reminds me of Mirrodin with the Affinity meta

Not even Jund or Faeries produced such an awkward T8

[frenchy-man]

For god's sake please ban survival ! It is so dominating !

[Shabbaman]

Did you guys know that as an aside to that, did you know that there were 29 BASIC ISLANDS IN THE TOP 8?!?
Jace isn't a combo card. It's utility. While I don't respect the stance, Wizards doesn't like combo, and they love how awesome they are for coming up with balanced mythic rares like Blue Power Ranger.
EDIT: even with 12 Cantrips, I don't see how that U/B slowfish deck would have managed to drop a Jace. Also, Zoo in 5th is pretty nice to see.

Uhhh, utility? It's a wincon all by itself.

[Julian23]

I thought in the team portion they need to have 2 of the 3 win in order to advance as the "winners" of that round. In other words, a Legacy Survival player can win his match, and his other-format teammates can lose their matches causing them to lose the round. Meaning Survival may have done better than the top 8 results let on. Isn't this how it works?

The Worlds tournaments are less about top 8s and more about individual format results, if you're trying to figure out what are the top dogs. Top 8 decks here are less representative of what actually did well than at a PT or GP due to the formats splitting the overall tournament(the main and team portions).

The Top8 is from the side-event which was Legacy-only.

[Mana Drain]

Wow, did that guy really get Scapeshift to work? Impressive.

That was the first thing I thought too, in addition to "wtf, Horn of Greed? What is this format coming too?"

[dahcmai]

Wow, did that guy really get Scapeshift to work? Impressive.


Have you guys ever tried it? It's really unwieldy to play against. It looks like 43 lands for a bit and just when you think you have your opponent figured out and think you have safe plays like flopping a Jace out, it smashes you all in one shot in a horrendous combo out display.

I tried it out a while back and it's really quite decent. It doesn't have the same hate that 43 lands does and so many people make that mistake of boarding for that deck. Boseiju, Who Shelters All is a gigantic pain to any control deck and it flawlessly pulls it up when you don't expect it. The deck obviously owns most aggro like usual, though it still has a weakness to combo. Good thing is when you see combo playing it, it's not too bad since you can combo out 5th turn or so anyway so they might get messed up by wasteland long enough.

This version has some weird stuff going on. Most versions are usually straight up RG, but this one has Force and Personal Tutor in it. Not a bad idea on the tutor, but Force seems kind of crappy in here. I guess it's useful here and there, but this deck doesn't have a ton of blue to support it and doesn't play the control game well anyway.

[FieryBalrog]

Well if there's one good thing about Survival decks is the GBW variants are at least keeping FoW in check.

[Mark Sun]

On a side note, at least the Team Championships is just Countertop versus Merfolk (what a beating).

EDIT: Oh wow, it's ThopterTop too. Uh-oh. No gas, it's been real.

EDIT #2: And a fast 2-0 for Merfolk. Boringest match ever. Sigh.

[Artowis]

The Standard T8 reminds me of Mirrodin with the Affinity meta

Not even Jund or Faeries produced such an awkward T8

Joke right? You realize this is based off full records and not the whopping 6 rounds of T2 out of 18 rounds?

[thecrav]

There's a kid at our LGS playing scapeshift.
"I have this many lands and one of them is Boseiju. I play scapeshift. You lose."

Makes me want to punch babies.

[GGoober]

I think thecrav is someone in my playgroup, and I can testify, the Scapeshift deck at our local group is just the most annoying rogue deck ever created. It beats the crap out of aggro and control and loses to combo.

And I'm not sure if I ever wanted to punch a baby, but if a baby is Scapeshift + Crop Rotations into Boseijus/Tabernacle -> Scapeshift -> Valakut win, I think I'm up for punching babies. The deck is an example of a successful rogue creation that just works. It seems so janky, but you just cannot stop it when they hit Boseiju Scapeshift and win lol.

Anyway, back to the point:
My friends and I were watching Worlds Live. I had some interest in Standard, even built UB control (since I have 4 Jace 2.0s). And feeling that it's awesome control is back in the format again, I was interested in getting into some Standard action. Yesterday confirmed my impressions of Standard. Watching Worlds was depressing. All I saw were Mana Leaks, Jace 1, Jace 2, Grave Titan, Inquisitions. The Worlds Standard decks are so stale and disgusting it pains me. And here we are hearing people like Chapin and Erwan complain about Survival being unhealthy in our format, when Standard is in a worst place. Doubt I'll play Standard now, a pity I spent $40 on the non-Jace cards. I'll love to play UB control, but with the format being so retardedly boring, I'll probably pass on it.

[Rico Suave]

Random rogue players with their pet Scapeshift deck winning games in Legacy isn't "working" in the sense that they probably loses 2 games for every 1 they win. That is not impressive. Scapeshift getting into the top 8 at the Worlds side event is working, which does impress me.

Then again, there are many things in that top 8 which are highly...speculative. The rate this format develops is really, really slow and I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a reflection of that.

[Tacosnape]

This is quickly becoming the most hypocritical thread in the history of this site.

How do you all make the argument that none of the tournaments where Survival made 3-5 of the top 8 don't matter, yet when it makes 2 of the top 8, which is still a strong performance, amidst an ocean of hate, declare that this and only this tournament result is the bar by which we should define the deck's power level?

Touche, guys. Touche.

[frenchy-man]

This is quickly becoming the most hypocritical thread in the history of this site.

How do you all make the argument that none of the tournaments where Survival made 3-5 of the top 8 don't matter, yet when it makes 2 of the top 8, which is still a strong performance, amidst an ocean of hate, declare that this and only this tournament result is the bar by which we should define the deck's power level?

Touche, guys. Touche.

Maybe because this is the worlds dude. And what's more WotC had warned players that survival could be banned if no reaction. Here is the best reaction that could have happened.

Yes survival is good. Not too good.

[Lemnear]

Thanks for calling a thread comparing Standard and Legacy "dominances" hypocritical. I just have doubts if some of the people, calling 8 Survival with 4 Vines in T8 dominant in Legacy and Standard "diverse" with 36 Jace in T8, are still sane.

Sure does tournaments with 50% Survival (by the way, which had 5 Survival T8? I don't remember...) matter exactly the way ones with 2 do. All of the 50% tournaments were SCG's (I guess) and the average number of Survival based decks in recent T8's seem to be ~2. Isn't that acceptable? Shall we yell "Ban Vial!" the next time Meerfolk makes multiple T8? Did we as it was a foil to CounterTop?

The question was: Have we already passed the peak of Survival due to the decrese in T8 spots and the rise of hate in SB's?

[FieryBalrog]

Hm. I've changed my mind. While I still think Vengevival is too dominant as a deck-building core, I say give it more time. We can always bring out the banhammer in March.

[Tacosnape]

Thanks for calling a thread comparing Standard and Legacy "dominances" hypocritical. I just have doubts if some of the people, calling 8 Survival with 4 Vines in T8 dominant in Legacy and Standard "diverse" with 36 Jace in T8, are still sane.

Sure does tournaments with 50% Survival (by the way, which had 5 Survival T8? I don't remember...) matter exactly the way ones with 2 do. All of the 50% tournaments were SCG's (I guess) and the average number of Survival based decks in recent T8's seem to be ~2. Isn't that acceptable? Shall we yell "Ban Vial!" the next time Meerfolk makes multiple T8? Did we as it was a foil to CounterTop?

The question was: Have we already passed the peak of Survival due to the decrese in T8 spots and the rise of hate in SB's?

In my standard numbered point-by-point dissection

1. I didn't call the original point of the thread hypocritical. I'm mostly referring to the general stance that the Frenchy-mans of the world are taking. The original post was actually a very good point.

2. I've never once called Standard diverse. I don't play Standard because it's never diverse. And just for the record, Jace, The Mind Sculptor should be banned in Standard, but it won't due to monetary reasons. I think Jace is one of the strongest kill conditions in Legacy, and while I don't have personal experience in this regard, I can't imagine it's anything but more broken in Standard.

3. Except anyone who knew much about Legacy or magic in general KNEW Merfolk wasn't an overpowered deck, merely a consistent one with what for awhile was a brilliant metagame for it. Survival's not preying on the metagame, it's skewing it.

4. A drop to 2 top 8's instead of 4 in one tournament could signal nothing more than random variance. It also could signal that people aren't playing it as much due to the fear of overhatred. Or, it could as you say, signal that the problem's beginning to get under control. I personally would go with the first one, and while I'm not calling the question stupid, I'm calling some of the general (over)reactions to it sheer lunacy.

[Lemnear]

@ taco

@1. You've talked about the thread so I took it as a whole. My fault.
@2. That comment didn't adress you. There are enough people on this board and on other ones who think good results over a short time should be answered with an outside action of the DCI instead by the intelligence of the players and their metagaming.
@3. Merfolk sure isn't overpowered. An important reason to ban Vengevival due to the complaining audience, is the mana-cheating. I mentioned the Vial to adress that point. I didn't make this clear here .... maybe 'cause I'm bored of mention the card then it comes to mana-tricks in any format.
@4 This is just one of many tournaments in the last 6 weeks where survival seem to be a fair addition to the metagame-pie without warping the format into survival vs. the world. The reason I've looked a bit closer to it is the "dominance" factor I already mentioned and the "announcement" that this might be the last breath of the card

[Ja-Boo]

The World T8 were played in Standard, but do not reflect the the Standard metagame, because this were the top 8 players after one day of standard, one day of extended and one day of draft.

On day 1, the standard day, there 5 undefeated decks: 1 elves, 2 U/B control, 1 U/W control and 1 ramp. IIRC

Its not as bad as it seems...

[Lemnear]

Take those 5 undefeated decks and those data about the metagame:


http://wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/worlds10/std/metagame (http://wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/worlds10/std/metagame)

Standard @ Worlds: Valakut vs. Jace and while it was a near tie due to players playing the decks (114 vs. 110) the results of day 1 and the Mainevent both tell the same story either there are 3 Jace-decks out of 5 or 5 Jace-decks out of 8; Jace is THE way to go. So that is not bad, uh? If you think so, it's fine with me ... but ... watch your Mindsculptors! I've heard of people spark their torches if they see results like that XD

[Linkin Pac]

Why use the phrase "another nail in the coffin?" Unless you're referring to a nail in the coffin of the whole Survival being banned discussion, since all this major tournament proves is that Survival is not that big of a deal. And it isn't. If Wizards is concerned about decks being too good and unfun to play against, then they would have banned cards like Aether Vial and Lion's Eye Diamond a long time ago, and something would be done to weaken those damn Merfolk decks.

But at least smarter people prevailed over the whiners, and people figured out how to destroy enchantments and remove graveyards.

[Dark Ritual]

Well in the legacy metagame breakdown for the Saturday teams legacy worlds event 24% of the meta were survival decks/12 out of the 50 decks there.

The next deck was merfolk with 16% of the field or 8 decks.

Tendrils esque decks took 6 spots or 12% of the field.

Rock decks took 5 spots or 10%.

Countertop, belcher, dredge, and zoo had 3 decks in the field or 6% apiece.

Affinity had 2 decks in the field or 4%.

The rest of the decks had 1 deck in the field/2%: burn, threshold, sneak attack, Elves!, and goblins.

I'm amazed there were 3 countertop decks there with their bad MU coming in force (vengevival). Tendrils being the third most popular deck suggests people metagaming. Merfolk was a surprise to me; I thought vengevival crushed merfolk? Although I guess if the merfolk pilots all MD'ed spell pierces and played black/perish in the board they would have a decent shot since spell pierce usually counters survival on turn 2 very easily.

And as for Jace, TMS in standard I agree he should be banned. 6 of the top 8 decks ran 4 of him? Yeah, that's not format warping at all wizards. Nice job. Is this the plan for standard? Have a jund like deck dominate for a while, then have a blue based control deck dominate a while, and keep switching back and forth between the 2? It seems like it. Since in '08 it was faeries, in '09 it was jund, and in '10 it was U/x control. Keep the cycle going wizards lol.

Also it seems like with survival dominating worlds it will likely be banned Dec. 20th since it took a quarter of the field approximately. It didn't win the entire thing true but the data suggests that people will keep playing vengevival because it is quite absurd how it can win out of nowhere with a topdecked survival.

[Mad Zur]

Why use the phrase "another nail in the coffin?" Unless you're referring to a nail in the coffin of the whole Survival being banned discussion, since all this major tournament proves is that Survival is not that big of a deal.
What qualifies this side event as a major tournament?

[Linkin Pac]

What qualifies this side event as a major tournament?

The fact that it took place at Worlds?

[dontbiteitholmes]

Well in the legacy metagame breakdown for the Saturday teams legacy worlds event 24% of the meta were survival decks/12 out of the 50 decks there.

The next deck was merfolk with 16% of the field or 8 decks.

Tendrils esque decks took 6 spots or 12% of the field.

Rock decks took 5 spots or 10%.

Countertop, belcher, dredge, and zoo had 3 decks in the field or 6% apiece.

Affinity had 2 decks in the field or 4%.

The rest of the decks had 1 deck in the field/2%: burn, threshold, sneak attack, Elves!, and goblins.

I'm amazed there were 3 countertop decks there with their bad MU coming in force (vengevival). Tendrils being the third most popular deck suggests people metagaming. Merfolk was a surprise to me; I thought vengevival crushed merfolk? Although I guess if the merfolk pilots all MD'ed spell pierces and played black/perish in the board they would have a decent shot since spell pierce usually counters survival on turn 2 very easily.

And as for Jace, TMS in standard I agree he should be banned. 6 of the top 8 decks ran 4 of him? Yeah, that's not format warping at all wizards. Nice job. Is this the plan for standard? Have a jund like deck dominate for a while, then have a blue based control deck dominate a while, and keep switching back and forth between the 2? It seems like it. Since in '08 it was faeries, in '09 it was jund, and in '10 it was U/x control. Keep the cycle going wizards lol.

Also it seems like with survival dominating worlds it will likely be banned Dec. 20th since it took a quarter of the field approximately. It didn't win the entire thing true but the data suggests that people will keep playing vengevival because it is quite absurd how it can win out of nowhere with a topdecked survival.

Can we have one result without people crying about banning something. Jace is strong but fair, and without him blue decks wouldn't be able to win pretty much at all. There are still plenty of viable decks that don't run Jace and have just as good a shot of winning any tournament but good players like playing decks that award playskill instead of no-skill decks like Vampires, so of course Jace is going to show up at the top of a lot of top 8's. He's really good, fun to play, and he awards playskill, who wouldn't play him if they thought they had the skill to do so.

[Artowis]

re: Standard. Out of the decks that had 13 pts (4-1-1) or better, there were 21 Jace decks (of 3 varieties), 13 Valakut, a couple more Primeval Titan decks and 5 Red decks, not taking into other decks with small numbers like Vampires, Elves, etc. There's nothing wrong with Standard right now, although Valakut is infuriating to play against.

The people saying Jace is dominant now would've been whining about how Valakut was dominant for the past month. The irony in people talking garbage about Jace in Standard while whining when non-Legacy players make comments about Legacy is delicious.

[thecrav]

I think thecrav is someone in my playgroup
HI!!!!


What qualifies this side event as a major tournament?

First, this is an event supported by Wizards rather than a third party the way an SCG tournament would be. Secondly, it's Worlds. Worlds is the biggest event in the Magic universe. Third, due to the aforementioned, the players playing at a tournament like this are some of the best players in the world.

Additionally, as many of the players in this tournament are professionals or have some sort of support system, they can play any deck they want unlike many of us who may not always be able to afford the best deck at a given time. Having a quarter of people (who are some of the best in the world) in a tournament pick Survival shows that this is regarded as the best deck above and beyond all else by these players.

[KrzyMoose]

HI!!!!



First, this is an event supported by Wizards rather than a third party the way an SCG tournament would be. Secondly, it's Worlds. Worlds is the biggest event in the Magic universe. Third, due to the aforementioned, the players playing at a tournament like this are some of the best players in the world.

Additionally, as many of the players in this tournament are professionals or have some sort of support system, they can play any deck they want unlike many of us who may not always be able to afford the best deck at a given time. Having a quarter of people (who are some of the best in the world) in a tournament pick Survival shows that this is regarded as the best deck above and beyond all else by these players.

Er...that's not entirely accurate. Worlds is a four day event, beginning Thursday, and ending Sunday. This side event took place on Thursday.

Any player Q'ed for Worlds was not playiing in this side event. None of the players playing in that tournament were professional. Judging by the names of the T8 players, I'm guessing most of them were local/from Japan.

[ivanpei]

I hope that Survival survives the ban hammer due to this result. 25% of the field resulting in 25% of the T8 being survival seems very fair. If 25% played survival and put 50% in the T8, then I have to admit wizards will definitely be bringing out the hammers, axes and carving knives. The result shows that players are adapting to survival and in a competition with some of the best players, survival was strong, but not overwhelmingly dominant. Somewhat like merfolk regularly putting 2/3 decks in the T8.

[Lemnear]

See ... the whole discussion if Survival needs to be banned got ridiculous weeks ago.

I'm pretty sure it startet as someone said "Do we need Survival to make up 7 spots in T8 until it get's the hammer?" on a very popular site right after the first SCG's 5k where survival made 4 spots. Then that quote evolved into "Survival made 7 Spots in a T8!" which spread around the net and some guys (we won't name them again) took that to ask Pro's and popular Standard-faces like Nelson or Chapin about their opinion on that, which resulted that Nelson (without knowledge of Legacy) really claimed on TheMagicShow that the 7/8 tournaments shows that action is needed. A rumor as base for descision-making!? That goes on and on and wildfired into such things like "Survival has 58%+ against TES and 73% against deck X"

What does 58% tell you if the data may are from 40 player-tournaments? I have no idea how these numbers were calculated. How many players borrowed a TES to play it without any practice just because it was a good meta choice? TES needs some playskill. I can sit a 10-year-old behind that deck and beat him with WW all day! Again, why should these numbers be representative?

I have nothing against Standard; I played it till Mirrodin rotated out and know that there's always only 1-2 compeditive decks, be it MUC, Valakut, Faeries, Jund, Solar, etc. My problem in general is that players of that meta(s) now call for "adjusting actions", mostly without detailed format knowledge, based on lies, rumors, narrow data caps, certain T8, specualtions of future prints, etc.

I pointed their fingers back to themselves, showing that they are the first ones to shut-up while talking about diverse metas. The only respone I got was, that Jace will rotate fall 2011 and the problem is solved. Dear Sirs, why give Jace/BBElf/Bitterblossom a run over 1,5 years and Survival should be banned within 3 months?

Here are 2 more recent events if Worlds isn't enought. deckdb.com listed them too, so I'll be lazy by linking to them.

SCG Charlotte
http://deckdb.com/event/5224/

Kent
http://deckdb.com/event/150/

[GGoober]

See ... the whole discussion if Survival needs to be banned got ridiculous weeks ago.

I'm pretty sure it startet as someone said "Do we need Survival to make up 7 spots in T8 until it get's the hammer?" on a very popular site right after the first SCG's 5k where survival made 4 spots. Then that quote evolved into "Survival made 7 Spots in a T8!" which spread around the net and some guys (we won't name them again) took that to ask Pro's and popular Standard-faces like Nelson or Chapin about their opinion on that, which resulted that Nelson (without knowledge of Legacy) really claimed on TheMagicShow that the 7/8 tournaments shows that action is needed. A rumor as base for descision-making!? That goes on and on and wildfired into such things like "Survival has 58%+ against TES and 73% against deck X"

What does 58% tell you if the data may are from 40 player-tournaments? I have no idea how these numbers were calculated. How many players borrowed a TES to play it without any practice just because it was a good meta choice? TES needs some playskill. I can sit a 10-year-old behind that deck and beat him with WW all day! Again, why should these numbers be representative?

I have nothing against Standard; I played it till Mirrodin rotated out and know that there's always only 1-2 compeditive decks, be it MUC, Valakut, Faeries, Jund, Solar, etc. My problem in general is that players of that meta(s) now call for "adjusting actions", mostly without detailed format knowledge, based on lies, rumors, narrow data caps, certain T8, specualtions of future prints, etc.

I pointed their fingers back to themselves, showing that they are the first ones to shut-up while talking about diverse metas. The only respone I got was, that Jace will rotate fall 2011 and the problem is solved. Dear Sirs, why give Jace/BBElf/Bitterblossom a run over 1,5 years and Survival should be banned within 3 months?

Here are 2 more recent events if Worlds isn't enought. deckdb.com listed them too, so I'll be lazy by linking to them.

SCG Charlotte
http://deckdb.com/event/5224/

Kent
http://deckdb.com/event/150/

I can testify to the huge numbers of terrible combo player. Aside from 1-2 combo player in my playgroup, anyone who attempts combo (including myself) just fails at it. Going off turn 5 AdN without protection and getting your turn 5 AdN counterspell'd is just unbelievably bad. And these are players who THINK they're all hotshit and good at the game.

I can't even imagine combo players in Legacy. There's probably like 10% combo players who truly know what they're doing, and 20% of those 10% probably survive hate. I guess that's why Vengevival has a good 58% against TES. TES sure suffers against hate-bears, but seriously, the competent TES players I've played agains can still constantly beat a turn 2 hate bear, turn 3 Survival. What they sometimes cannot beat is a turn 2 hate-bear + Lightning Bolts + Fireblast on turn 3. But Zoo is being pushed out currently.

[frogboy]

I haven't read beyond the OP, but to say that Krosan Grip is dedicated Survival hate is pretty incorrect. Nature's Claim and Pithing Needle are Survival hate cards. Krosan Grip basically doesn't even have any text if you have Grip on the draw.

[Lemnear]

I haven't read beyond the OP, but to say that Krosan Grip is dedicated Survival hate is pretty incorrect. Nature's Claim and Pithing Needle are Survival hate cards. Krosan Grip basically doesn't even have any text if you have Grip on the draw.

That's that I said, it's most of the time to slow and clearing Survival After opponent is able to untap with it on the board is pointless. Grip is good againt countertop and that's the reason people run it, but in Game 3 against Survival they are dead

[edgarps22]

The Land list is pretty nice, it seems a lot of people have forgotten about Turboland. I am thoroughly impressed with its results, and love the tech of adding in a Scapeshift win. And yes it can be deceptively strong, I used to run a UG version back in the early days of Legacy, it can really romp on someone in a hurry if they are not prepared, as well as it being very difficult to break out from their lock if they assemble it quick enough.

Hopefully Survival will not be banned though, it is not too strong in my opinion. I think though that what we as a community should be doing is something along the lines of this Turboland player. Innovate and explore cards that are not currently popular. I took a Necrotic Ozze/Psychatog deck to Grand Prix Toronto for its Legacy side event, nearly had a top 8 seat as well, and no one, and I mean no one, had any idea what I was playing or how to board against it. The rogue strategy sometimes can be very powerful and effective, in this case Turboland rocked, who knows we might see some Welder MUD/Psychatog/Turboland type decks, the ones we forget about, come out and give people a hard time, especially since all of the deck ideas I just listed were played and designed in days dominated by ATS/RG Survival Advantage etc. Time for us to innovate and hit the drawing boards.

[Pastorofmuppets]

re: Standard. Out of the decks that had 13 pts (4-1-1) or better, there were 21 Jace decks (of 3 varieties), 13 Valakut, a couple more Primeval Titan decks and 5 Red decks, not taking into other decks with small numbers like Vampires, Elves, etc. There's nothing wrong with Standard right now, although Valakut is infuriating to play against.

The people saying Jace is dominant now would've been whining about how Valakut was dominant for the past month. The irony in people talking garbage about Jace in Standard while whining when non-Legacy players make comments about Legacy is delicious.

Sort of like how a few months ago everyone was flailing mad over ANT and Reanimator's dominance in addition to their idiotproof playstyle? Legacy develops in the same way, just a lot slower.
Also, your comment at the end could've been worded in a more neutral way.
Standard is fine. Legacy is slowly becoming fine. If it had more support, the metagame might develop as fast as standard's.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I can testify to the huge numbers of terrible combo player. Aside from 1-2 combo player in my playgroup, anyone who attempts combo (including myself) just fails at it. Going off turn 5 AdN without protection and getting your turn 5 AdN counterspell'd is just unbelievably bad. And these are players who THINK they're all hotshit and good at the game.

I can't even imagine combo players in Legacy. There's probably like 10% combo players who truly know what they're doing, and 20% of those 10% probably survive hate. I guess that's why Vengevival has a good 58% against TES. TES sure suffers against hate-bears, but seriously, the competent TES players I've played agains can still constantly beat a turn 2 hate bear, turn 3 Survival. What they sometimes cannot beat is a turn 2 hate-bear + Lightning Bolts + Fireblast on turn 3. But Zoo is being pushed out currently.

This is 100% correct, especially as I am probably one of those terrible combo players :P. The vast majority of the people that pick up TES know how to goldfish the deck but have no idea how to play around hate or otherwise get the deck to do anything other than "Ad Nauseum -> hope I win." I swear most of them aren't even aware that they can win with additional storm engines.

[Justin]

This probably won't sway the decision, but Mike Flores commented today that Survival probably does not need to be banned. See "There is more to Legacy than Survival." http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/td/121

Of course, basing a decision on whether or not to ban a card based on the top eight of a Legacy side event at Worlds and the World Team Championships is ridiculous. One would need to consider a lot more information than just that. However, it looks like Mystical Tutor was banned soley on the results of Grand Prix Madrid. Maybe the decision-makers just look at results of these big MTG pro events. Maybe they're not looking at SCG results. If this is the case, I do not expect Survival to be banned.

[Lemnear]

And sometimes they play Legacy at MTG:O and pwn some random kids playing beast.dec with their Reanimator/ANT and claim Mystical is much to powerful for compeditive paper Legacy tournaments.

... and maybe they listen to pro's like Chapin who (may) listens to Evan Erwin who (may) listen to beast.dec-players etc.

I guess we'll never know ... ^^