Eternal Europe: Adaption in Action

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

In the continuing struggle to show the rest of the world that Legacy is neither dead nor damned to be totally dominated by blue decks, I present a few (non-blue) decks that have proven they can stand up to the new metagame and explain what allows these decks to do so. Take a look!

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/22260_Eternal_Europe_Adaption_In_Action.html

[DragoFireheart]

I didn't realize Ancestral Recall was legal in legacy.

[Glorfindel]

I didn't realize Ancestral Recall was legal in legacy.That decklist was a Vintage deck. It also contained a few pieces of jewelry.

[DragoFireheart]

That decklist was a Vintage deck. It also contained a few pieces of jewelry.

Clearly it is a Vintage deck. What is it doing in a Legacy article?

(Note: I read the article. I still fail to see the point of using a Vintage deck as an example/deck to compare with)

[troopatroop]

That "Buried Alive" deck looks bad! 4 Reanimate and that's it? No draw? What if it gets... oh idk, Mental Missteped?

[chinEsE girl]

Troop, if you didn't notice, Ken's deck is far from just the ooze combo. It's nice to have a "I win" option when you have reanimate in hand, but otherwise you can get 3 vengevines or 3 bloodghasts to wreck blue decks. Or just play a bunch of goyfs and rip your opponents hand apart with some discard (therepy is especially nice working together with those bloodghasts).

[brattin]

Good article.

I played Aggro Loam a couple weeks ago in a local tournament, and I still love Seismic Assault. With one resolved LftL, you can wrath merfolk or whatever, while with punishing flames you wouldn't have enough mana to do so. Granted, I haven't tested flames enough, but is it really that much better?

That Buried Alive deck is also excellent, I played against it recently. You have Therapies and Thoughtseizes to protect against misstep, and also if they had misstep they'd likely waste it on birds or hierarch. Also, as mentioned, Tarmogoyfs and Vengevines make good beaters, and if they board in grave hate you just board out the combo (trisk/devourer/ooze) for natural order progenitus (leave the buried alives in, they're still good with vengevines etc). Only problems are a possible weakness to combo/dredge, and a lack of card draw.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Excellent article, as always. Keep it up!


I didn't realize Ancestral Recall was legal in legacy.

And I didn't realize you were an idiot. I'm pretty sure the writer of the article is allowed to draw comparisons to whatever deck he pleases, if there is some sort of similarity. That you believe a vintage deck doesn't belong in the article is irrelevant, as the rest of us have obviously had no issues.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

@Drago: Uhm, yeah, right. Because you can't ever learn anything by looking at decklists from different formats. Clearly nobody should ever have tried to update High Tide from old Extended for Legacy and the Next Level Blue decks in a later Extended format didn't help shape what was going on in Legacy at all.
If you really don't see what the two decks have in common, I'm sad for you. While they use widely different cards and are from different formats, they're structurally and strategically very similar. In a way they could be considered different incarnations of the same underlying deck-concept.

@troopa: ChinEsE Girl explained this already, this is clearly not an Ooze combo-deck. If you lose to having your Reanimate on Ooze Misstepped, I'd suggest you screwed up long before that by casting Buried Alive for the combo-pieces against a blue control(ish) deck instead of Vengevines/Bloodghasts. If you haven't just finished using the discard-suite to clean out the opponent's hand, in which case there shouldn't be any Missteps for the Reanimate available.

@brattin: Thanks.
Seismic Assault is definitely immensely powerful but actually has much less synergy with the deck at large. It's harder to find by Loaming, easier to stop with Countermagic and demands that you set up triple red in addition to all the green you want for Loam. Seismic Assault and the fake combo-finish it provides is a valuable resource, but I think in the curent metagame the inevitability and resilience of Grove-Fire will likely be better.

/edit: @Admiral Arzar: Thank you.

[troopatroop]

Yeah, I'm just not sold. Blue does seem to be dominating Legacy, despite showing us 2 decks that made top8.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Seismic Assault is definitely immensely powerful but actually has much less synergy with the deck at large. It's harder to find by Loaming, easier to stop with Countermagic and demands that you set up triple red in addition to all the green you want for Loam. Seismic Assault and the fake combo-finish it provides is a valuable resource, but I think in the curent metagame the inevitability and resilience of Grove-Fire will likely be better.



You could always do what I do when I play Aggro-Loam and play Assault AND Fires/Grove. Time for the fish fry...

[Greenpoe]

Troop, if you didn't notice, Ken's deck is far from just the ooze combo. It's nice to have a "I win" option when you have reanimate in hand, but otherwise you can get 3 vengevines or 3 bloodghasts to wreck blue decks. Or just play a bunch of goyfs and rip your opponents hand apart with some discard (therepy is especially nice working together with those bloodghasts).

Has anyone here played Ken's Ooze deck? Why wouldn't he play a singleton Apprentice Necromancer or Doomed Necromancer to reanimate the Ooze as fetchable by Shaman? Why would he not play Confidant maindeck? Is using up deck space on cards that are easily mediocre or dead worth having in exchange for the Shaman or Buried Alive synergies while not even having NO in the maindeck? Plus, let's remember how crappy a few 2/1's that can't block are when you're staring down a 5/6 goyf and a 7/7 KOTR. Sure, they might ping in for a few damage, but they're so small that Bloodghasts are only decent on a relatively empty board.

[Tsnowflake]

Cool article, very informative, I like that Eva made a showing! I wonder why he went with Dismember over Snuff Out though.

[DragoFireheart]

And I didn't realize you were an idiot.

+And I didn't realize you are a child that needs to resort to personal attacks. Fooled me well!


I'm pretty sure the writer of the article is allowed to draw comparisons to whatever deck he pleases, if there is some sort of similarity. That you believe a vintage deck doesn't belong in the article is irrelevant, as the rest of us have obviously had no issues.

+I didn't ask what YOU think, so calm down and quit acting like a spoiled child that had its toy taken away.




@Drago: Uhm, yeah, right. Because you can't ever learn anything by looking at decklists from different formats. Clearly nobody should ever have tried to update High Tide from old Extended for Legacy and the Next Level Blue decks in a later Extended format didn't help shape what was going on in Legacy at all.
If you really don't see what the two decks have in common, I'm sad for you. While they use widely different cards and are from different formats, they're structurally and strategically very similar. In a way they could be considered different incarnations of the same underlying deck-concept.


+So why not use a deck from previous Legacy tournaments that one would be more familiar with? What if I have NEVER played Vintage? Am I an idiot for not playing Vintage and failing to see the connection? I don't presume a Vintage deck will play the same way as a Legacy counterpart just because it shares some of the same cards. Posting a GW Vengevival deck would have been a better comparison and would have sent the message home more firmly. The article is clearly aimed at Legacy players but presumes they played Vintage to fully understand the connection he is making. The loose comparison adds nothing to the article and had he simply left it out nothing would have been lost.

[majikal]

Cool article, very informative, I like that Eva made a showing! I wonder why he went with Dismember over Snuff Out though.

Flexibility, probably. You can kill black creatures with it. If you're in the danger zone, you can pay 1B and 2 life or 1BB and no life, and it doesn't hurt you as much when Bob flips it. You don't have to have a swamp in play to play it for 1. It's pretty much just better against everything but Dreadnoughts and possibly KotR.

[Greenpoe]

Cool article, very informative, I like that Eva made a showing! I wonder why he went with Dismember over Snuff Out though.

Dismember kills Bob.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Pretty nice article. Blue is definitely not too dominating right now, especially Maverick shows that. There also are still some people playing versions of Zoo that are placing. I also agree with you on Punishing Fire, that card is incredibly strong right now; shutting of Stoneforge Mystic, being a reusable tool against Batterskull if have multiples, shooting down Merfolk and killing pesky Planeswalkers.
Also, regarding the Vintage deck, this is much closer to the BG than the old GW Vengevine Survival lists were as there are less tricks in Survival and there are more lines than just two or three ways to use Survival and the backup plan of beating down with Tarmogoyfs and hardcast Vengevines.

[Richard Cheese]

You could always do what I do when I play Aggro-Loam and play Assault AND Fires/Grove. Time for the fish fry...

http://i.backpackgnome.com/21409489934e178b0c02c4f9.36634205.png

[SpikeyMikey]

+And I didn't realize you are a child that needs to resort to personal attacks. Fooled me well!



+I didn't ask what YOU think, so calm down and quit acting like a spoiled child that had its toy taken away.





+So why not use a deck from previous Legacy tournaments that one would be more familiar with? What if I have NEVER played Vintage? Am I an idiot for not playing Vintage and failing to see the connection? I don't presume a Vintage deck will play the same way as a Legacy counterpart just because it shares some of the same cards. Posting a GW Vengevival deck would have been a better comparison and would have sent the message home more firmly. The article is clearly aimed at Legacy players but presumes they played Vintage to fully understand the connection he is making. The loose comparison adds nothing to the article and had he simply left it out nothing would have been lost.

Except most serious Legacy players have played Vintage at one time or another. I have a harder time understanding Standard references in Legacy articles than Vintage references and trust me, they're more common. But then, some Standard articles pull lists from Legacy or, as is more common with older writers, T2 scenes so long gone that most of their audience was still in diapers at the time. When Flores pulls a Maher RecSur listing to illustrate a point in a T2 article, people don't complain. I think you're being needlessly picky.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

...

Stay mid-rangey, my friends.

[Tim the Enchanter]

I'm extremely surprised that Maverick got the nod over Bw lists. Bw has obviously proved that it's good against blue decks, and probably more so since MM came out.

Over the last two and half months, which is when it seems people started playing it, it's had four T8 and two T16 finishes on the SCG circuit:
SCG Baltimore: T16 with Joe Bernal and others finishing X-2 and being beaten out by breakers
SCG Invitational: T8
SCG Indy: T16
SCG Louisville: 4th and 6th
SCG Charlotte: T8

[Zamussels]

I'm extremely surprised that Maverick got the nod over Bw lists. Bw has obviously proved that it's good against blue decks, and probably more so since MM came out.

Over the last two and half months, which is when it seems people started playing it, it's had four T8 and two T16 finishes on the SCG circuit:
SCG Baltimore: T16 with Joe Bernal and others finishing X-2 and being beaten out by breakers
SCG Invitational: T8
SCG Indy: T16
SCG Louisville: 4th and 6th
SCG Charlotte: T8

I just checked all those lists and notice most have Mirran Crusaders maindeck and no Scullers. I play Crusaders only in the SB and a total of 4 Scullers including the sideboard. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. (yeah I know wrong thread for this discussion)

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Thanks for the props :)

@Drago: So you're annoyed because I told you about something (in a few lines no less) that was both very relevant (the decks work basically in the same way, as others seem to have realize without trouble), talked about something you didn't know beforehand and, considering your reaction, should help you get better at comparing strategies over different formats/cardpools? Why exactly are you reading Magic articles if that kind of thing is something you feel the need to complain about?

@Tim: Maverick has been posting a ton of results but not performed on the SCG circuit yet, so it seemed like something that could do with some coverage. BW also is a pretty known quantity, what with the T16s you cited yourself, and as such less common decks seemed more valuable to point out.

[Star|Scream]

Thanks for the article, Mon. It was much less "confrontational" than the previous one, however apparently the trolls still found something wrong with it.

Anyway LFTL is so annoying. I don't have to read SCG open to find out which decks just did well because as soon as the tournament is over MWS becomes cluttered with them.

[Finn]

I thought the ratios of blue to nonblue made a strong point.

On that note, why was SCG Orlando not represented? It was days after NPh was released, and as blue as it gets.

[Richard Cheese]

I'd like to see this for the other colors.

[Tim the Enchanter]

@Tim: Maverick has been posting a ton of results but not performed on the SCG circuit yet, so it seemed like something that could do with some coverage. BW also is a pretty known quantity, what with the T16s you cited yourself, and as such less common decks seemed more valuable to point out.

I can understand and appreciate that, it just seems like it would deserve a mention in an article about decks that beat blue. I'm OK with there being less coverage, and therefore less people packing hate, for the deck I play.

It was an interesting read. I didn't realize blue was doing worse since Mental Misstep lol. Keep up the good work.