[Concept] Multiplicity Of Options

[Fyrwulf]

First of all, the above is acually the name of the deck and I do realize that it acronyms to MOO. I don't take myself too seriously. Second, the name fits because I believe in not being stuck in one strategic frame of mind and screwing myslef with a bad first draw (I loathe mulligans with an undying passion) and my card choices reflect this. I will go into the why and wherefor after each section.

Creatures:
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Reya Dawnbringer
3 Shattered Angel
3 Sunblast Angel
3 Soltari Champion
3 Soltari Visionary
3 Peregrine Drake
3 Thalakos Deceiver
3 Thalakos Dreamsower

{Akroma: This is basically the only single-purpose creature in this deck. First strike and trample just turn this card into a weenie hate-fest.
Reya: While this card isn`t much of an attacker, it more than makes up for it by being a perpetual graveyard fetch machine. It becomes a monster when it`s buffed.
Shattered Angel: If you have all three down, which is possible by turn three, you`re gaining nine life every time your opponent throws a land down.
Sunblast Angel: A fairly decent flyer on its own, if pricey, it becomes spectacular when combo`d off a Cryptic Command.
Soltari Champion: Gives every creature you control a 1/1 buff every turn.
Soltari visionary: Facing a deck loaded with enchantments? It had better have tons of graveyard fetch.
Peregrine Drake: I have never understood why this doeasn't see more play in blue decks, since it is a 2/3 flyer for free. What is truly crazy about this card is that you can tap up to fifteen lands to play whatever, throw these into play, and untap everything to lay down down some hate on your opponent during his next turn.
Thalakos Deceiver: On its own this card is pure Grand Theft Goyf, but if Reya is in the game then the nasty little bastard can keep coming back turn after turn.
Thalakos Dreamsower: This thing can lock down the worst your opponent can throw at you in perpetuity, and this can be used in combo with Reya and Sunblast Angel for instant creature removal if you lack a CC.}

Spells:
3 Tithe
3 Cryptic Command
3 Daze
3 Force Of Will
3 Temporal Fissure

{Comments to be added}

Enchantments:
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Treachery

{Comments to be added}

Artifacts:
3 Aether Vial
3 Mind Crank
3 Sword of War and Peace

{Comments to be added}

Lands:
9 Plains
9 Island
4 Azorius Chancery
4 Glacial Fortress

Pretty self-explanatory, I think.

Sideboard:
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light And Shadow
2 Counterbore
3 Mental Misstep
2 Psycgic Barrier
2 Steel Sabotage
2 Vapor Snag

I have given some thought to dropping one of the Missteps in favor of a Platinum Angel, but part of me thinks that's just unsporting. I have aso given some thought to droppinng the Akroma and replacing her with Jace when money and testing permit. What I am looking for out of this thread are suggestions for cards that basicly do the same thing for a lower mana cost and not much of an increase in actual cost.

Btw, I am posting this from a Kindle, which is not tabs friendly, so I am going to hand write my notes on card choices and then copy them here. You guys are smart, so i am sure you will figure most of it out without my help.

[Nekrataal]

First post, first deck. Welcome! Without any delay I come to the point. This deck is unplayable in Legacy and has various deck build errors. Before I even start investing time in a lengthy comment of what to change which would result in a completely new deck making you even more unhappy please do one thing. Take this deck to a tournament or playtest it against someone having "real" Legacy decks at hand. From that experience you should be able to quickly learn what the challenges and requirements of a format like Legacy are. Sorry to be of no more help here but your build is too far away from anything that can be called competitiv. Hope you take it like a man ;-)

[Fyrwulf]

I'm actually not all that new to Magic itself, I played quite often when the Tempest and Urza blocks were Type 2 and I played with a somewhat more blue biased deck than this which was pure control and relied quite heavily on slowing down the weenie-heavy meta long enough to get my drakes out. I have every intention of play-testing this deck for real, but I only have 5% of it in hand and it's going to be slow building, so I would greatly appreciate any input before I'm heavily invested in this deck financially. If you would, please start off with why you think this deck is unsuitable strategically while keeping in mind that when I build decks I follow three general principles; don't use more than two colors, have about one third of your cards as lands, and don't be a one trick pony. If you can suggest improvements within that frame, I'm all for hearing them.

EDIT: After reviewing the rules for sorceries, I've realized that Temporal Fissure is pretty much a waste of a three-slot and it's redundant anyway with Mind Crank. Speaking of, I like MC because of the potential for consistency, but i'm starting to think there's probably something that's a more devastating mass removal spell for the mana cost. That would leave a three-slot open for something like Rush Of Knowledge.

EDIT2: After even further consideration, I have realized that the Swords slow this deck consideranly and take up sideboard slots better used elsewhere. I used to run an Empyrial Armor/Spirit Link combo in my old T2 deck and I think I let nastalgia victimize me on this one. More mainboard tempo and sideboard control, methinks.

[optml]

Fyrwulf, let me start by offering a brief warning; the following post is only a reality check, and not intended to insult. Please don't take personally...

I agree with Nekrataal's comments. Do you think that this deck can compete with a format that reliably wins by the 3rd turn when uninterrupted (Team America, Fish, Goblins, ANT, TES, Dredge, Belcher, Metalworker, Sneak and Show, etc.) or have the answers they need to ensure you can't play as you want by the 3rd or 4th turn (enchantress, countertop, landstill, etc.)??

If you truly believe it can, which I don't, then assemble the cards and take it to an event. But if you haven't got the cards yet you can do a lot better than spending money on a deck that will underperform.

Let's say you lose the roll, and you on the draw. You will be in for a real shock if you sit down opposite a dredge deck and, while your first two turns are,
T1 draw, play an Island,
T2 draw, play anAzorius Chancery, and return your island. This leaves you tapped out.

Your opponent's play is
T1 Island, careful study, discard a couple of dredgers.
T2 combo out, with zombies and trolls aplenty...
T3 win.

Note: I am aware that you have 3 FoW and 3 Daze's, but I still can't see you winning any games at all, even on your very best draw...

If you hate mulliganing, and you are already aiming to get FoW, then Merfolk is probably the deck for you. FoW (and wasteland) are the only pricey cards in that deck, and it is actually one of the best decks at the moment. (Especially with the addition of MM).

That's just my 2 cents...

[Fyrwulf]

Like I said in my second edit, I realized that quite a few of the elements in the original list would slow my game down while doing nothing in particular to reliably slow theirs down. Thtat's why I've spent the last couple of hours ripping the list apart and turning it into a tempo/control deck while retaining the aggro-ish elements in the creature list. Seriously, even the little bit of input I've received made me think critically about the list I'd put together and change it for the better (I think). I'll post the list sometime this week.

PS: Seriously, what's with the whole walking on eggshells thing? I DID say that I don't take myself too seriously.

[Fyrwulf]

Thanks for mentioning Careful Study, btw. Hadn't heard of it before and once I looked it up I quickly added it to an open 3-slot.

[Qweerios]

Look into UW Tempo deck. It is an aggro/control deck that relies heavily on tempo. You get your aggro element in the form of Mother of Runes, Stoneforge Mystic, Serra Avenger, Meddling Mage, Umezawa's Jitte, Aether Vial, etc... You get control and tempo in the form of Force of Will, Daze, Mental Misstep, Stifle, and Wasteland tricks with Weathered Wayfarer and Fetch lands. The creatures might seem puny, but speed is very important to survive in a Legacy environment. As a general rule of thumb, anything in your deck costing you 4 mana and over should win you the game the following turn or put your opponent in a stranglehold(i.e. Jace the Mind Sculptor, Phyrexian Obliterator, Natural Order/Progenitus, Moat, Humility)

[Fyrwulf]

I thank you for the suggestion, but I don't derrive much satisfaction from playing decks that other people have developed. From my POV, it's intellectual laziness. That's not a knock on anyone here in any way; I understand that a lot of Magic players are hypercompetitive and aren't willing to go through the process of developing decks that are wholly their idea, but doing so is how I derive much of my satisfaction from the game and to be perfectly honest I'm patient enough to let cards from future sets fall into my lap that make my deck better. I also confess that I do not understand the obsession on this forum with the "following" a particular deck receives.

But, whatever, it's how things work around here and I'm content to nod and accept it for the sole reason that I'm one of the resident newbs.

[bakofried]

To explain it, it's simply that the best cards and strategies float to the top. Legacy has a very deep card-pool, but a very small percentage of cards available are fast or strong enough to see play. To build or play something completely original or perhaps simply obscure, you need to know your metagame and build a deck with that in mind. You also have to consider that there are hundreds if not thousands of people thinking about ways to break this format; it's unlikely that any idea is truly original. What most people hope to do is contribute to the optimization of a deck.

[Fyrwulf]

Well, living in Rhode Island, which has a surprisingly strong Legacy scene for such a small state, most everything is represented here. I understand that if you play blue it's mandatory to have Forces and Missteps and I have no problems with that because they're excellent cards. But, my goal in designing and improving upon this deck is to play something that nobody's planned for. Maybe that gets me a couple wins in an event and I gain extra experience playing the meta. If not, I wash out of the first few tournaments and still gain some experience in the legacy format. Either way, development continues and hopefully the deck improves with each new set.

[troopatroop]

Everyones advice is spot on, and your stubborness is predictable. Cards like Peregrine Drake, Sunblast Angel, Reya Dawnbringer, and Shattered Angel are far from playable in Legacy. Some cards you chose, like Force of Will, Daze, Aether Vial, and Tithe are all very good cards in Legacy, but you're doing yourself no favors by playing such slow creatures. The Legacy format is much faster than it used to be.

[Kich867]

Like I said in my second edit, I realized that quite a few of the elements in the original list would slow my game down while doing nothing in particular to reliably slow theirs down. Thtat's why I've spent the last couple of hours ripping the list apart and turning it into a tempo/control deck while retaining the aggro-ish elements in the creature list. Seriously, even the little bit of input I've received made me think critically about the list I'd put together and change it for the better (I think). I'll post the list sometime this week.

PS: Seriously, what's with the whole walking on eggshells thing? I DID say that I don't take myself too seriously.

It's just that people are sensitive and whatnot.

Anyways, in regards to your list, I think my only suggestion (if you were to keep this UW aggro/control) would be to seriously tone your curve down. Everything looks to be 3-7 mana, which is astronomically huge for being aggressive.

It's hard to call Akroma a weenie-stomper when a legacy weenie deck will have you dead 9-12 turns before you could play her and keep her safe, y'know?

I like the shadow route.. I'll break-down each section rather.

Creatures:
Soltari Champion is fine if you're sticking with shadows, as I think it's a very interesting route to take. They're unblockable, which is something to think about--if my creatures are unblockable how do I take advantage of that? Or more importantly, since I want to be attacking every turn, how do I not die to the 6/7 Tarmogoyf or 12/12 Knight of the Reliquary? I'll give suggestions on that later.

Thalakos Deceiver is fine but 3 is too many, they're costly, very costly, and very easy to kill. It should be looked at as a boon if it survives and purely an added bonus. I would drop to 2.

I would sideboard the Visionary, as the card is incredibly terrible if they don't have enchantments in their deck.

Every other creature needs to go. The rest are very bad or your deck can't support them. I would recommend things along these lines:

Soltari Priest
Looter Il-kor
Commander Eesha
Fog Bank

Things like that, lower mana cost but highly budgeted. The priest is just amazing, the Looter is surprisingly effective, Commander Eesha shuts aggro plans down like a boss, is out of bolt range, and can beat if need be, and Fog Bank again, shuts down aggro plans.

Enchantments:
These are fine, I'd prefer something cheaper than Treachery--Threads of Disloyalty will hit some of the more important targets like Tarmogoyf.

I would recommend, if you were going the more shadowy route, something like Energy Field would be ideal. So long as nothing of yours dies, you can just swing freely at them.

Artifacts:
I don't get why Aether Vial is here, it's not very good for your deck. It wouldn't be relevant until turn 4-5 if you play it first turn, much later if you play it later. That's no bueno. Aether Vial is for decks that run 1-2 mana creatures almost exclusively, so that you only need to wait, at most, 1-2 turns to use it. I would remove this, add more control.

Mindcrank is terrible and genuinely doesn't do anything. You're not running a combo that will instantly mill them, so at most mindcrank will mill 19 cards before you win. That's awful. If you really want to run mill for some reason, run Archive Trap or something. I would drop this for more control.

Sword of War and Peace is quite bad as well, it would be much nicer if they were Sword of Feast and Famine or Sword of Fire and Ice, with a Sword of Light and Shadow sideboarded. Or really, Umezawa's Jitte would probably be better than all options as it's the most flexible and you should be able to protect your creatures in hand anyways.

Land:

Tundra
Flooded Strand
Hallowed Fountain
Misty Rainforest
Marsh Flats
Plains
Island
Wasteland
Karakas
Maze of Ith

Something involving the cards listed. The extra fetches just increase your chance of finding things like Tundra's. Your current lands are very bad for legacy, most notably the dissension bounce-land as it sets you literally 2 turns behind just to break even by turn 3. Why would you willingly skip your turn 2 etc. for that land?

I'm sure you already know this, but playing that land on turn 1 doesn't let it stay in play, it's bounce effect triggers after it hits, meaning it's only target is itself, and it goes back to your hand. Everything about that land is bad. Pain lands and the Scars/M11 duals would be eons better than that land.

If you're on a budget, I would utilize something like this:

Hallowed Fountain
Adarkar Wastes
Glacial Fortress
Seachrome Coast

Spells:
Drop that plains fetch thing, tithe, I can't fathom why you would need it if you run an appropriate number of lands. Add more counters/control in general, Counterspell, Swords to Plowshares, Spell Snare, Mental Misstep.

If you want to affect people's tempo, the first thing to do is put a playset of Wasteland in and Stifle. You stifle their fetches and waste what they fetch when you don't have stifles. This will buy you a lot of time and can be potentially game-winning in and of itself.

So to recap:
More control, lower your curve, add things that actually hit tempo, and find a way to do all of this without dying. You don't seem to want to kill them quickly, just quick enough with threats that don't affect your ability to control them.

Misdirection is always fun too. But more importantly, not dying.

[GGoober]

Best way for OP to improve this deck is to test this deck against other Legacy decks, since he's new to the format, he needs a feel for the format's speed and density.

[Fyrwulf]

@Kich867: You know, it's funny tthat you mentioned Archive Trap because as I was tearing apart my deck last night I indentified the need for a mass discard mechanic and stumbled upon it. By the time my deck was "done" last night I had also discivered Careful Study, Rush of Knowledge, and (most importantly) Steady Progress. I had also cut my list to 75 and was fairly happy with my revision. Then, as I was coming home from work I hag an epiphany and realized that the reason every good deck has only 60 cards has to do with probabilities and thus began a five hour effort to get my deck down to that number. Three complete revisions later, plus the discovery that Zendikar has an entire series of trap cards, and my deck has the possibility of effectively winning the game on turn one withought ever having to throw down a land. Thing is, I'm not entirely happy with Careful Study because it just makes it more likely that I'll mill myself, but I'm not sure whether to replace it with Mental Misstep (which has been added and removed every other revision) or to add more land (I'm at 18, which I'm theoretically happy with).

Btw, I'll look at Threads of Disloyalty after I post this. I'm all for anything that is a less costly replacment.

@troopstroop: I don't see how I'm being stubborn, as I've gone through half a notebook writing down lists, scribbling notes over them, writing down a new list, RLR. I've also previously thanked the first couple of people to comment because it popped my big head and forced me to think critically about this deck. Was I a bit frustrated with the lack of specific suggestions? Yes. Did that shine through in my replies? Possibly. I didn't mean to come across as ungrateful.

[BooleanLobster]

Your creativity is wasted until you understand the format. Do not even attempt to design your own deck until you know enough established decks to be able to look at your creation and say "wow, this is really cool. but in the end, it is just worse than $OTHER_DECK. time to start over from scratch."

Start by proxying up a gauntlet of the top decks - maybe Merfolk, Team America, Metalworker MUD, Landstill, and Zoo - and playing them against each other with friends.

[brattin]

I think the perceived stubbornness was not due to any specific wording on your part, but simply due to the thought that the deck could be brought up to par via incremental improvement.

I have not looked at the list thoroughly, but given that I recognize the names of fewer than a third of the cards, I assume that the deck will not do well in Legacy. Typically a Legacy deck must either win quickly or stop the opponents deck from doing so, and the list you have proposed does not appear to have a way to consistently do so.

There's nothing wrong with creativity and unorthodox card choices, but in some cases (perhaps many cases) these things are outweighed by difference in power level. The surprise factor alone is worth practically nothing. Just because your opponent didn't expect you to play a certain card doesn't mean that that card will necessarily bring you closer to winning the game than the expected card would have.

I think the main point is, it seems unlikely that your deck, even incrementally improved, could do well in a typical Legacy metagame, and therefore, rather than suggesting incremental improvements, you should test it and verify that it would not do well. If you find that it in fact does do well, convince us of such!

[Fyrwulf]

Yeah, that was a bit silly on my part. I have a new and vastly improved list beside me on a notebook, I'm just waiting until I have a couple hours of uninterrupted computer time before I post it. It's lookung a lot like a Uw Draw Go deck with the Cryptic-Aether-Blast combo thrown in. I think I'm going to start calling it CAB Go.

[Kich867]

I'm not going to lie, it was a little frightening to read that you just now realized why magic decks shoot for the minimum 60 card limit.

18 lands is very, very few. If you're aiming to operate on some semblance of control, you'll want at least 22.

It took me a moment to understand what you meant by Cryptic-Aether-Blast combo--don't...do that. Threats in legacy are significantly more consolidated. Unless they're playing affinity, Legacy decks play incredibly efficient creatures--obnoxiously efficient creatures. Tarmogoyf is often a 5/6 for 2 mana, Knight of the Reliquary can become enormous very quickly with fetch-lands, same as Terravore.

By turn 7 the game should be over unless you're playing something like Mono-blue control, and granted I guess if you're playing UW control, you could make it to turn 7 with the right setup, but I just don't really get why you need a 3 card interaction Day of Judgment when you could just run a 4 mana Wrath of God.

Mageta the Lion would probably be more effective and he's a rather bad card.

If your deck's creature base does not exist solely as 1-2 mana drops, Aether Vial is universally a dead draw. Keep in mind it does not let you put into play creatures with mana cost equal to or less than the number of counters on it, only creatures with mana cost equal to the number of counters on it.

I don't understand why you would want to wait 6 turns after playing it in order to wipe your opponent's board--and even if that did work, what are you going to do with a turn ~7 at the earliest 4/5 flier with no protection? It's going to get killed.

Also, I don't understand what you meant by the Careful Study comment...why would that make you more likely to mill yourself? Nothing...at all interacts with Careful Study that might make you accidentally mill yourself. If you're playing against a mill deck, they don't care how many cards are in your deck..?

I would advise you again to not try and operate that combo: drop aether vial, drop the mill... like, I get that the point of the deck is to be a swiss army knife, and I'm sure that works very well in casual games that hit the 12, 15, or 30 turn mark, legacy doesn't.

Legacy games end very quickly, very painfully. Browse around the established threads forum as well as the decks to beat forums, notice how fast or incredibly nearly-unstoppably effective they are.

You need to ask yourself: how fast is my deck, what are my win-conditions vulnerable to, and can I stop a Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary?

[Fyrwulf]

Eh, it probably should have occured to me before, but I used to play Type 2 when the Tempest/Urza blocks were in cycle and I ran a crapton of counter so the pobability was that I was going to land or counter. Fastest deck I ever played was a black/white void deck fueled by Will and Ritual and I still beat it more often than not.

As far as the self-mill goes, I had too many draw mechanics going on, including rush of knowledge. I dropped everything but Steady Progress (fuels Vial on top of the draw) and Cryptic Command, then I threw in Sensei's Divining Top to give me some consistent card draw.

And yes, I'm aware that just about everyone runs Goyf and I've even seen it in action. That's why in the new list my dream opening hand goes Mindbreak Trap, Seachrome Coast, 2 Force, and 3 Archive Trap from behind the draw. That's turn one game more often than not. I am also running four cards with theft mechanics (the Deceivers have free recursion after turn five if I can fuel at least one Vial to drop Reya) and if all else fails I have Jace to mill them out (turn six win under the right circumstances).

Anyway, point is, my new list is at a place where I feel I can start really investing in my mainboard. Once that is accomplished I can start the process of tweaking it. In case you are curious, I will be posting the new list sometime today.

[bakofried]

I don't understand how that hand is any good.

Now, everyone's been really sensitive because we love new players, and we certainly don't want to scare anyone away from the format. But half the cards that you're suggesting are bad - really, really bad. Mill is fairly unplayable in Legacy unless it's taking the Painter's Servant/Grindstone or a Brain Freeze route. There are other random ways to mill people, but these two are by and large the fastest and most resilient. You won't get anywhere by casting Archive Traps - whether or not they are free. Furthermore, because of both the rarity and nature of mill in Legacy (will typically mill your whole library regardless of how many cards) you don't really have to worry about card draw spells hurting you when playing against an opponent playing mill. In fact, those extra cards would most likely help you stop them from assembling a game-winning combo.

Why don't you tell use what you want to do - and even then, you have to understand that most of these ideas have been thought of before. First off, it sounds like you want a blue-based control deck. Just knowing that, I can suggest all of these as a 4-of.
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Mental Misstepw
Of course there's more past that (I don't play blue-based control often) but that's a start. Then you can start looking at CA engines, like CounterTop or Standstill, and win-conditions.

[Kich867]

But why is that an ideal hand--3 Archive traps mills 39 cards, they still have quite a bit of their deck left plus whatever is in their hand. And you have..nothing. A mindbreak trap that you can't play for free and 2 forces of will that you would have to ditch to one another in order to counter something. Furthermore, given the function of shuffling, having 3 archive traps in your hand is incredibly unlikely unless you are terrible at shuffling / shuffle in such a way that would encourage that to happen.

Your hand would go something like this:
They'd fetch or something, you'd mill them for 39 cards. They have 13 cards left in their library. You have not won yet and have no means of keeping yourself alive at this point. Turn 2 they play their tarmogoyf, you counter it, they counter your force, it resolves (Mindbreak trap can't be used for free because they only cast 2 spells, not 3). You die, because Tarmogoyf (given their graveyard is so large) is bare minimum a 5/6, you lose the next few turns.

Anyways, stop thinking that you'll mill yourself by drawing. If your games are going long enough where this might happen and Rush of Knowledge is actually being used (the card is freakishly bad), then the deck you're playing against isn't a Legacy deck, it may qualify as one, but it's not a deck you'll see at a tournament.

[Fyrwulf]

From what I've seen most of the top flight decks operate by abusing search and fetch mechanics. I wouldn't dare use Archive withought first using Mindbreak. If I can't use it like that then I won't. In the situation you described I wouldn't do a darn thing because it's more advantageous for me to wait. Hopefully I draw into a Ghostly Prison, force them to make one of three bad choices, and pounce the moment they start to abuse. I might not have a great grasp for the flow of Legacy, but please credit me with enough intelligence to work out strategies to force other decks to play on my terms.

As for the self-mill, I was largely referencing an un-posted revison which featured five sets of three cards which were in some way draw oriented. I could have easily self-milled mysled under the right circumstances.

[Nihil Credo]

Fyrwulf, I want you to do this:

- Download and install Cockatrice (www.cockatrice.de (http://www.cockatrice.de))
- Use the included Deck Editor to build this deck:
Creatures
4 Grim Lavamancer (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Grim+Lavamancer)
3 Knight of the Reliquary (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Knight+of+the+Reliquary)
4 Qasali Pridemage (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Qasali+Pridemage)
4 Steppe Lynx (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Steppe+Lynx)
4 Tarmogoyf (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Tarmogoyf)
4 Wild Nacatl (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Wild+Nacatl)

Enchantments
2 Sylvan Library (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Sylvan+Library)

Instants
4 Lightning Bolt (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Lightning+Bolt)
4 Path to Exile (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Path+to+Exile)

Legendary Artifacts
2 Umezawa's Jitte (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Umezawa%27s+Jitte)

Sorceries
3 Chain Lightning (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Chain+Lightning)

Basic Lands
1 Forest (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Forest)
1 Mountain (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Mountain)
1 Plains (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Plains)

Lands
3 Arid Mesa (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Arid+Mesa)
3 Horizon Canopy (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Horizon+Canopy)
3 Plateau (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Plateau)
1 Savannah (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Savannah)
2 Taiga (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Taiga)
3 Windswept Heath (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Windswept+Heath)
4 Wooded Foothills (http://sales.starcitygames.com//cardsearch.php?singlesearch=Wooded+Foothills)
- Play a few solitaire games, without an opponent, see exactly how fast you can put creatures on the board and deal 20 to someone who doesn't seriously defend himself

You really need to get a feel for what playing in Legacy is like, or you will waste the rest of your life wall-of-texting back and forth with others in this thread and theorising all sorts of cool scenarios that will never happen. You need to realise that a plan of "hopefully I draw into a Ghostly Prison, force them to make one of three bad choices" is only slightly less reliable than hoping they have a sudden attack of diarrhea.

A game, even a solitaire game, is worth a million words. Go play one. Don't write another serious post until you do.

[Fyrwulf]

Unfortunately, my laptop is down for an indeterminable amount of time and downloading anything on the other laptop in the house is a no-go. However, when my laptop is back up I would be happy to play my new list against each and every deck you qualify as tournament competitive.

[bakofried]

Fyrwulf, that wasn't a testing exercise he was recommending; he wasn't saying "Your deck isn't competitive unless it can beat X different decks." He was saying two things:
1. This deck is not competitive. Nor is it improvable until you gain a level of understanding of the legacy format, which leads me to
2. You lack understanding of the Legacy format. What you perceive as a weakness to be exploited is not. Go, proxy that list on paper (Look up those cards, understand what they do, scrawl their names and basic land and sleeve it up. Play a few games without an opponent. This will give you a basic feel for the speed and resilience of a Legacy deck.

This is one of the most wide-open and fun formats to play, but it is extremely high-powered and you need to understand that before you build a deck.

[Doomhed]

Please take this as constructive criticism from a fellow RI player-

taking decks this rogue and unfocused and running them any legacy event is like taking a mixed breed mutt to the Westminster dog-show. Sure, old sparky can fetch, but don't be hurt when he can't compete with the thoroughbreds.

I understand you want to be all unique and special, but the reality is that unless wizards bans around 100 cards tomorrow morning there are many cards and strategies that will not beat anything other than OTHER random decks. Want to do something unique? go play some legacy at Veteran's gaming or DieHard Games and see what people are playing. Build a deck that uses good counter-strategies to what people are playing, or take a basic outline of a legacy deck-

4x Force of will
4x brainstorm
4x mental misstep/spell pierce/stifle
12-20x "answers/draw"- Swords, bounce, discard, destroy effects, more counters
8-12x win conditions that cost 4 mana or less (depending on how you want to win)
20-28 mana sources

and tweak this with what you want to play. The key is keeping your deck fast enough to either win or stop the other player from winning in the first few turns of the game. Casting 7-9 drop creatures does not win you games in legacy unless they are cheated into play, and your deck as constructed is not doing it.

[morgan_coke]

You know, at first I read this thread and thought it was really cool how the forum was coming in to help a new player understand legacy. Now I just think we're all getting very sneakily trolled. The "I can't do what you recommend because I'm having computer problems that prevent whatever action you recommend but still allow me to post on the internet" bit is what really pushed it over the edge for me.

I'm not trying to backseat mod or anything, I'm just saying this guy is a Cavius wannabe without the fun factor and we should probably start treating him as such.

[Nihil Credo]

As a rule we don't talk about moderation in public, for obvious reasons, but I will make an exception in order to prevent more well-intentioned people from starting this again and further derailing the discussion: I too got the hunch that Fyrwulf might be trolling (mainly due to his use of technical slang), but after looking into it, it turns out that if he's a troll, he's an incredibly patient one, who has been sticking to his persona for almost five years while only making two threads in that period (either that or an incredibly paranoid troll who decides to impersonate a random five-year-old total unknown, just in case a mod Googles him) (http://www.magic-league.com/phpBB/search.php?search_author=Fyrwulf). And at the same time he would be a remarkably incompetent troll, since the point of trolling is to cause rage, and there's none in this thread. All he would be getting is to make the Source look good, so, uhm, great job there.

If you wish to discuss this further and have other arguments to bring, write either a PM to me or a comment in the Report function. Until then, let this thread proceed in good faith.

[perm]

Before you get started in legacy, you need a deep understanding of what kind of format it is. The bottom line is, this deck just won't work in this format, you will lose every game. Try going through established decks and trying them out, but until they throwing together cool stuff won't work for you, you don't need to re-invent the wheel

[Guy I Don't Know]

I would try to cut the deck down to under 70 cards, I think that will help with consistency.

[Fyrwulf]

Morgan: Yeah, troll, okay. FYI, and I've posted this before, I've been using my Kindle to post on The Source and you can't even download a PDF on one of those, never mind any kind of real program. As it happens, I'm now posting on my laptop after I've just completed swapping a hard-failed HDD and installing Windows 7 from a flash drive. So, yeah, whatever you say.

Doomhed: I've had a really bad past five days, mainly because I have chronic bronchitis and it's been screwing with me something fierce, so don't take this personally. But I sorta figured that out. Again, I have a new list that I'm posting tonight that's much cleaner, far more mana-curve friendly, and a lot faster to drop. Oh yeah, and still accomplishes most of what I want it to accomplish.

[evanmartyr]

I eagerly await your improved decklist, but here're my first impressions.

1: The deck is trying to do multiple things. It has generic creatures, and more aggressively themed creatures (Soltari Champion, Akroma) which means you can win with beatdown. It has kind of a toolbox of Shadow creatures, which helps with beatdown but also lets you answer threats (if inconsistently). It tries to mill your opponent. The decks that tend to do very, very well in Legacy either have one consistent plan and shave off all the extra bits and pieces off the deck to execute that plan very, very quickly, or they have a deck packed with powerful cards that are all undercosted, with good effects, and with ways to utilize them (card filtering, tutors, etc).

Consistent plan decks are like Burn, Zoo, Goblins, most combo decks, and Stasis (lol).

Powerful card decks are like Team America, most control decks, Green decks with Zenith + other colors, etc.

Occasionally, a deck will include a small package of cards to do powerful things that are kind of secondary to the main plan, on the off chance you can just randomly win doing it. Natural Order + Progenitus being included in a base-green deck would be a good example of it. If they choose to go this route, though, it's because it's a powerful, game ending package that doesn't take up a lot of space.

So ask yourself this: what sort of deck do you want to play? Do you want to aggressively swarm your opponents defenses and attempt to win on your own terms? Or do you want to react to what they do, keep your options open, and answer their threats with timely (and better) cards of your own? Based on your original post, I'd suggest you'd like the latter. That said, obviously you like white, you can't not include counterspells in your decks (I am much the same way), and so you should pick a plan and go with it.

UW control, win with fatties? UW aggro control, win with smaller, more cost-efficient creatures that help you maintain control? Or a UW control deck that millls for the win? If you zero in on whichever tactic you'd prefer to delve into more, we can be of more help.

2. Some of your card choices are poor. I don't mean this because there are direct upgrades, like playing Tarmogoyf instead of Grizzly Bear. You're playing Sunblast Angel when you could be playing Baneslayer Angel, if you want to beat down; or you could be playing Wrath of God if you want to blow up the board. While yes, Sunblast Angel can be cast at times where it leaves your creatures alive while wiping their board, it's also expensive, clunky, and not even that large of a threat on its own.

Treachery is another good example: yes, it untaps 5 lands. This is good, in a vacuum. But it costs one more than all the other versions of it, and 90% of the time, Threads of Disloyalty would do that as well. Once you start using higher and higher mana cost spells, you start seeing more and more turns go by before you can use them. That 5cc Treachery doesn't mean you're stealing a creature on turn 5: more often it means you're stealing a creature on turn 6, or 7, or later. You can't afford to wait that long.

So hopefully those two points were helpful, somewhat.

Quick Edit: Doomhed has a very good point, if he takes the magic out of deck construction somewhat. While the base he suggested is a good starting point, based on your OP I'd suggest an Enlightened Tutor package, and a more board-oriented control strategy. Counterspells are all well and good, but they're boooooring.

[badgerigar]

I would like to suggest that your first legacy deck should be tribal. You will need to play aether vial and exactly 60 cards but apart from that there is a lot of freedom in your card choices, so you really will be making your own deck.

The reason I am recommending this is that tribal decks are much easier to build. Once you have chosen your tribe, just use the advanced search on gatherer or magic-cards.info to see all the cards with the creature type. Choose the best ones, throw in the best other cards of that colour or colours and you have your deck. It probably won't be competitive, but it will be close enough that you can have fun in tournaments. Eventually, you will understand the format well enough to make other new decks.

[GGoober]

Doomhed: I've had a really bad past five days, mainly because I have chronic bronchitis and it's been screwing with me something fierce, so don't take this personally.

Hope you feel better man..

[SpikeyMikey]

I thank you for the suggestion, but I don't derrive much satisfaction from playing decks that other people have developed. From my POV, it's intellectual laziness. That's not a knock on anyone here in any way; I understand that a lot of Magic players are hypercompetitive and aren't willing to go through the process of developing decks that are wholly their idea, but doing so is how I derive much of my satisfaction from the game and to be perfectly honest I'm patient enough to let cards from future sets fall into my lap that make my deck better. I also confess that I do not understand the obsession on this forum with the "following" a particular deck receives.

But, whatever, it's how things work around here and I'm content to nod and accept it for the sole reason that I'm one of the resident newbs.

You remind me of a guy I know named Adam, friend of friend. Biggest geek I've ever met. You talk like him.

Anyway, here's the question. If it's intellectual laziness to play a deck that other people have developed, then what is the point of getting advice on the forum? And if you're posting this not for advice, but to show off, well then all of the previous comments about its competitiveness apply.

I enjoy designing decks too; in fact I very rarely play a stock list of anything unless I'm working as a playtest dummy or it's a list that I have no interest in ever learning (like Dredge, for example, fun to play sometimes, but not something I'll ever take to a tourney). But what you've designed here is so far into the realm of casual that it's not salvagable as a competitive deck. Before you can design a playable deck, you're going to have to get an understanding of the format by playing a known quantity on MWS or Cockatrice to get a feel for how the format flows.

[Fyrwulf]

Right, apologies to all for not posting last night as promised, I was just too tired last night to be bothered. Here's the list as it stands, although I will note that while I'm comfortable with the ratios of card types, I'm not entirely sure how it's going to play (but that's what play-testing is for, ne?)

Creatures
3 Sunblast Angel
2 Soltari Champion
2 Peregrine Drake
3 Thalakos Deceiver
2 Thalakos Dreamsower

This is one area I'm probably going to end up tweaking a LOT. Part of me says that I need another Drake for the tempo, but another part says that two dropped on turn four or five is just as devastating as three and the three Deceivers allows for a better probability of Grand Theft 'Goyf.

Instants/Sorceries
3 Archive Trap
3 Cryptic Command
3 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
3 Mindbreak Trap

I talked to Grant @ The Temple (he's the owner and a judge) and he was a great help in clearing up some confusion on exactly what Mindbreak does. Even though it's not the outright removal spell I thought it was, it's still useful against combo decks and in the end it's a free spell under the right circumstances. Archive Trap is the other card that doesn't see much play that I'm committed to, simply because dropping three puts the opponent on turns in its own right and the inclusion of Jace into the list just makes that situation worse for them.

Enchantments
2 Ghostly Prison

I'm committed to the card, I just don't know if I should find a spot for another. It's cheap and it slow the game down by making the opponent decide whether to attack with one creature or spend the mana on another, but as the game goes on its utility wears thin with only two in the deck.

Artifacts
3 Everflowing Chalice
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Sensei's Divining Top

This is another section that I'm not too sure on, especially Top. Do I really need three? With Chalice, I like it for its permanence, but how well does it stack up against Lotus Petal?

Planeswalkers
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Jace The Mind Sculptor

I'm thinking this needs more, but I don't know what to can. Actually, this dilemna made me create a 75-card list alternate version that I'm not much more happy with, although it allows me to more freely sideboard.

Lands
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Azorius Chancery
2 Celestial Colonnade
2 Glacial Fortress
4 Mystic Gate
2 Seachrome Coast
2 Sejiri Refuge
2 Wasteland

This is where I need the most help, I think. Not incredibly sure about the numbers on some of these cards.

[Darth Nihilus]

frywolf for all thats holy listen to the people. your list still looks horrible in so many ways

you cant play 3 decks in one, go with ONE only ONE gameplan and than build around that gameplan.

look at the DTB or established section at this forum, those decks got 1 gameplan and they stick to it and win with.

please just copy a list from here and playtest it against your deck. for example proxy a zoo list let a friend of you play it and then come here again and tell us how did it go, because out of 10 games you will win at best 1 with this list.

sorry but you just dont seem to listen what people tell you so here again: YOUR LIST IS UNFOKUSED and thus wont win many games and the other thing is you run shitty cards like sunblast angel and peregrine drake. small hint: a 2/3 that gets killed by all hate cards in the format and ontop of that is priced at 4U is bad. sure you untap 5 lands but in between you got your face bashed by a wild nactal/steppe lynx beeing 3/3 or 4/5 at turn 2.

you just lack the understanding what legacy actually is and what a deck must fullfill to play it, download cockatrice or just proxy up lists, i am all in for homebrews but your list sucks because of 1 reason: you dont understand 1.5

[brattin]

Archive trap is good in a deck which is trying to mill the opponent, and bad otherwise. If you are playing archive trap, you should be playing a lot of other cards which mill your opponent, and you might steal games, but only if your opponent isn't playing emrakul or similar.

Force of will is amazing, I don't see why you would only run three.

Mindbreak trap is good against decks which play lots of spells in one turn, and worse than counterspell otherwise. Most decks don't play lots of spells in one turn; hence, Mindbreak Trap is almost universally played in the sideboard or not at all.

Sensei's Divining Top is very good with Counterbalance. It is also very good with fetchlands and other shuffle effects, and helps minimize life loss with Dark Confidant. Decks with Counterbalance and Confidant almost always want top, and slow control decks often also want top. It's a card whose value will become more apparent the more you use it. It can prevent you from getting mana screwed or flooded. Lotus Petal only gives you one mana, one time, at the cost of a card. This is good when you are playing a storm deck where you need a lot of different colors and you are trading in all of your resources at once in order to win, but not really good elsewhere. People rarely even play Lotus Petal to ramp up to a somewhat expensive game winning combo (e.g. Aluren). Comparing Lotus Petal to Sensei's Top seems wrong.

Wasteland is an excellent card in Legacy, because most people are playing nonbasic lands. If you're playing a deck with minimal color requirements (2 colors, sometimes even three), and you can fit wastelands in with enough fetches and duals to ensure that you won't get color screwed, and enough basics to fight through opposing dual lands, then you should. Otherwise, you shouldn't. People usually play zero or four, but occasionally a case can be made for a different number.

If you're playing more than one color, you should probably be playing dual lands and fetch lands. Fetch lands ensure that you'll get the colors you need when you need them, they (negligibly) thin your deck, and they shuffle when you want to get rid of things on top of your library (via top, Jace, brainstorm, et cetera).

Relic of Progenitus is an excellent sideboard card against dredge, and sometimes against other decks. I've always been happy to have someone side in relic to help out with my Tarmogoyfs, but maybe that's just me. It is very rare to find relic in a maindeck.

Everflowing Chalice...may be good, I've never tested it. I would think you'd need to be able to spend a lot of mana every turn in order for it to be worth it, but I think maybe your deck can handle that requirement.

Ghostly Prison is very good, in some decks. I would think you would want more. There is a blue version of the card, I can't remember the name. It does the same thing and pitches to FoW.

I would guess that you would take a lot of damage in the early game, like before turn three. The zoo deck you've been asked to play can probably get you down to 5-8 very regularly before your Ghostly Prisons hit the board, and then you're just a few burn spells away from losing, not to mention the fact that they can pay for a 5/6 Tarmogoyf or an even larger Knight of the Reliquary to get past Ghostly Prison most of the time. Well-timed Force of Wills and Mental Missteps can mitigate this somewhat, but you'll probably need some cheap blockers or removal as well (a la Swords to Plowshares). There are a lot of options here, but most people think Swords is the best at what it does, unless you're trying to kill really fast (which is why Zoo plays Path to Exile).

Typically on The Source we discuss ideal decks, not decks with budgetary contraints. It's totally OK to play decks without forces or duals if you don't own them / can't get access to them, but you should put them in your proposed decklist unless you're specifically trying to circumvent Wastelands and Stifles (which decision you would probably have to defend). I don't want to say "any blue legacy deck must run 4FoW, 4BS, 4Misstep" because you can get by without, and misstep is still not entirely proven, but if you aren't playing them, you probably will have to explain why, and "because I want to be different" is not really an acceptable reason. They're that powerful.

I tried to address one thing at a time here, I hope I didn't come off as...you know, anything bad. Whatever choices you make with your deck, I hope you have fun playing, cause that's what it's about.

Edit: JTMS is amazing, and I would play zero because I don't own any, but probably you want to play more than one, pending availability.

If your list reflects budgetary contraints ("I only have access to one Jace, no fetches or duals" etc) say so and people won't hassle you about it. Better yet, provide an "ideal" manabase, and note your replacements in parens, e.g.:
.
.
.
1 JTMS
1 Ajani (should be Jace, but I only have one)
.
.
.
(Ajani is a pretty good sideboard card against burn, but I think he doesn't get played a lot in Legacy. Might be worth testing, though, he seems decent.)

[troopatroop]

First let me ask, does card availability have anything to do with these choices? anything at all.

[troopatroop]

Double post, because you want to play this deck

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20582-Deck-Ascension

It's cheap, costing about $50, but it's also insanely fun

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Jack Elgin's build-your-own-U/W-control-deck Guide:

Start with:

Lands (No less than 23 or more than 26):

3-6 Island
1-3 Plains
2-4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
1-4 Misty Rainforest
1-2 Polluted Delta
0-3 Celestial Colonnade
0-2 Urza's Factory
0-1 Karakas
0-1 Academy Ruins
0-2 Kor Haven
0-4 Mishra's Factory
0-3 Wasteland
0-2 Dust Bowl

Add:

Early Game Stuff (No less than 18, not much more than 24)

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
3-4 Force of Will
3-4 Mental Misstep
2-4 Counterspell
(Unless you've fucked up your manabase with lots of colorless lands, in which case, and only in that case
4 Rune Snag
)
0-1 Negate
0-3 Repeal
0-3 Path to Exile
0-3 Enlightened Tutor
0-2 Sensei's Divining Top
0-2 Pulse of the Fields
0-3 Wing Shards

Add:

Bomby Stuff and Kill Conditions (Fill out the remainder)

2-4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
0-2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
0-3 Decree of Justice
0-3 Eternal Dragon
0-2 Gideon Jura
0-4 Ancestral Vision
0-4 Standstill
0-2 Fact or Fiction
0-3 Cunning Wish
0-1 Forbid
0-1 Capsize
0-1 Call the Skybreaker
0/4 Stoneforge Mystic
(In which case, but only in that case)
2 Batterskull
0-3 Baneslayer Angel
0-2 Venser, Shaper Savant
0-2 Vedalken Shackles
0-2 Cursed Scroll
0-2 Crucible of Worlds
0-3 Akroma's Vengeance
0-3 Austere Command
2-4 Wrath of God
(In the case of E-Tutor only:
0-1 Staff of Domination
0-1 Moat
0-1 Humility
0-1 Story Circle
0-1 Ensnaring Bridge
0/2 Painter's Servant
[in which case:
2 Grindstone
]
0-1 Runed Halo
0-3 Oblivion Ring
0-1 Ratchet Bomb
0-1 Nevinyrral's Disk
0-1 Pithing Needle
0-1 Porphyry Nodes
0-1 Propaganda
0-1 Threads of Disloyalty
0-2 Counterbalance
0-2 Sword of the Meek
0-2 Thopter Foundry
)

Total should not surpass 62, with an understanding that you are to work on getting it down to 60.

Sideboard:
0-4 Tormod's Crypt
0-3 Pithing Needle
0-2 Aura of Silence
0-1 Circle of Protection: Blue
0-1 Circle of Protection: Red
0-1 Arcane Laboratory
0-4 Meddling Mage
0-2 Decree of Justice
0-3 Pulse of the Fields
0-4 Kitchen Finks
(If C. Wish, some combination of:
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Path to Exile
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Wing Shards
1 Hibernation
1 Rebuild
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Wipe Away
1 Dominate
1 Misdirection
)