[Archetype Discussion] Goodstuff.dec

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

This thread isn't about banning Brainstorm.

So as we're all aware the dominant strategy in Legacy right now seems to be to pick three colors (usually), and pick up some of the best (or perceived best) cards in those colors.

I thought it would be useful from a deckbuilding perspective to have a thread analyzing how this works and the card choices people make. I'll just be giving it a cursory examination at the moment, so probably nothing deeply relevatory for anyone who follows the format, but I want to build up a conversation about the approach generally. So these will be my thoughts based on building, specifically, a non-linear strategy with some combination of aggressive and control elements.

How many colors?

- Two color decks might seem more stable in terms of manabase than three color decks, and certainly you get to add less basics. But assuming you're not worried about blood moon, the way it usually plays out in my experience is that a Wasteland can at most cut you off of 1/3 of your spells. A Wasteland on the wrong land, conversely, can cut a two color deck off of half of its spells. Combine this with the increased options you get and there's little reason to stick to two colors.

What colors are good?

This is probably going to cause the most conversation, but from a Legacy perspective:

Green-white-blue, aka Bant: Probably the objectively strongest combination, with the best card filtering, creatures, and removal. A good nuts-and-bolts approach, leaning more towards control.

White-blue-black, aka Esper: Black's role here is questionable as it has a lot of overlap with white's removal and blue's disruption, but tends to be worse than both. Might make most sense using Vindicate to back up a tempo strategy of Wastelands/Stifles etc?

Blue-black-red, aka Grixis: This was popular back in the day but as far as I know no one tries it anymore. Your removal is weaker without white, and without green you don't have the speed you want (although Delver might make that line of thinking false).

Black-red-green, aka Jund: This seems like it could be good, combining burn and Hymn and beats, but also an underexplored area.

Red-green-white, aka Naya: Almost certainly the most powerful non-Blue combination, classic Zoo, of either the kitty or big variety, or anything else, gives you a wide range of tools to fight other fair decks, but is vulnerable to a number of combo strategies.

Red-white-black, aka Team Italia: Gerrard Fabiano is trolling you don't do this.

Green-blue-red, aka Rug: Removal is weak but you get the speed of red-green + blue protection and card manipulation, so it's not surprising that it's been a solid contender.

White-black-green, aka Junk: Lots of card advantage and big effects here, but it's been underperforming. But it has almost all of the cards you really want in fighting other goodstuff decks, so maybe that's an anomaly.

Blue-red-white, aka Star Spangled Slaughter: Weaker creatures but good removal/reach + manipulation. Maybe Delver pushes this into viability?

Black-green-blue, aka Team America: Great at preying on combo, removal sucks. But the creatures are good. Popular disruption combination.

What cards are good in what colors?

eta: Since there was some confusion, I'll clarify how I'm ranking these;

These are my own judgments based upon 1) Past performances, 2) My own perusal of the data, 3) My own testing, 4) The opinions of people I respect and arguments others post. Others can post their own analyses of card selection for this strategy and I encourage them to do so. This list is neither authoritative nor exhaustive and isn't the focal point of the thread anyway, merely a tool for discussion. Rankings mean, roughly:

Important SB Cards- Cards that are good to have in your sideboard but not maindeckable.

Fringe Playable- Cards that you generally don't want to play unless there's some specific interaction within your deck, or some specific meta consideration that makes it better than normal.

Tier 2- Cards that you're happy to play in your deck if you're in those colors already.

Tier 1- Cards that lead you to want to play a color in the first place.

Tier 0- Cards that you need a really good reason not to play.

White cards:

Tier 1:
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Stoneforge Mystic
Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Tier 2:
Mother of Runes
Steppe Lynx
Enlightened Tutor
Mirran Crusader
Oblivion Ring
Wrath of God


Fringe Playables:
Kor Haven
Student of Warfare
Spectral Lynx
Lots of 2cc 2/2s with abilities
Aven Mindcensor
Spectral Procession
Ranger of Eos
Parallax Wave
Reveillark
Shining Shoal


Important SB Cards:
Orim's Chant
Ethersworn Canonist
Disenchant & co

Blue:

Tier 0:
Brainstorm
Force of Will

Tier 1:
Ponder
Delver of Secrets
Daze
Jace, the mind Sculptor


Tier 2:
Preordain
Spell Snare
Stifle
Repeal
Counterspell
Counterbalance
Snapcaster Mage
Phyrexian Metamorph

Fringe Playables:
Faerie Conclave
Ancestral Vision
Standstill
Predict
Spellstutter Sprite
Phantasmal Image
Trinket Mage
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Vendilion Clique (Yeah, look there's like 1/5 the reason to play this card after Delver as before, I'm putting it here.)
Serendib Efreet
Cunning Wish
Psionic Blast
Threads of Disloyalty
Vedalken Shackles
Sower of Temptation
Cryptic Command
Misdirection

Important SB Cards:
Spell Pierce
Flusterstorm
Chill
Back to Basics
Mindbreak Trap
Submerge

Black cards:

Tier 1:
Thoughtseize
Hymn to Tourach
Dark Confidant
Tombstalker

Tier 2:
Inquisition of Kozilek
Ghastly Demise
Smother
Dismember
Snuff Out
Bitterblossom
Liliana of the Veil
Damnation
Consuming Vapors

Fringe Playable:
Volrath's Stronghold
Unearth
Dark Ritual
Sinkhole
Nantuko Shade
Doom Blade
Diabolic Edict
Shriekmaw
Gatekeeper of Malakir
Vampire Nighthawk
Hypnotic Specter
Tribute to Hunger
Phyrexian Obliterator

Important SB Cards:
Duress
Deathmark
Darkblast
Extirpate
Surgical Extraction
Yixlid Jailer
Perish
Engineered Plague
Massacre
Ravenous Trap
Leyline of the Void

Red cards:

Tier 1:
Lightning Bolt
Grim Lavamancer

Tier 2:
Chain Lightning
Price of Progress
Fireblast

Fringe Playable:
Barbarian Ring
Rift Bolt
Goblin Guide
Kargan Dragonlord
Blood Knight
Magma Jet
Burning Wish
Flametongue Kavu


Important SB Cards:
Red Elemental Blast
Pyroblast
Blood Moon

Green cards:

Tier 1:
Noble Hierarch
Green Sun's Zenith
Tarmogoyf
Sylvan Library

Tier 2:
Nimble Mongoose
Fauna Shaman
Living Wish
Thrun, the Last Troll
Natural Order

Fringe Playable:
Treetop Village
Birds of Paradise
Explore
Wild Mongrel
Eternal Witness
Troll Ascetic
Call of the Herd
Garruk's Various Incarnations

Important SB Cards:
Choke
Krosan Grip

Colorless cards:

Tier 0:
Duals
Fetchlands

Tier 1:
Wasteland
Ancient Tomb
Sensei's Divining Top
Umezawa's Jitte


Tier 2:
Mishra's Factory
Mox Diamond
Chrome Mox
Engineered Explosives
Aether Vial

Fringe Playable:
City of Brass
Lorwyn-block Filterlands
Cursed Scroll
Ratchet Bomb
Nevinyrral's Disk


Important SB Cards:
Tormod's Crypt
Pithing Needle
Phyrexian Revoker

Azorius (w/u) cards:

Fringe Playable:
Azorius Guildmage
Momentary Blink
Augury Adept

Important SB Cards:
Meddling Mage

Dimir (u/b) cards:

Fringe Playable:
Agony Warp
Psychatog

Rakdos (b/r) cards:

Tier 1:
Fire Covenant

Tier 2:
Terminate

Fringe Playable:
Blightning

Gruul (r/g) cards:

Tier 2:
Kird Ape


Fringe Playable:
Burning-Tree Shaman
Boggart Ram-gang

Important SB cards:
Ancient Grudge

Selesnya (g/w) cards:

Tier 1:
Horizon Canopy
Qasali Pridemage
Knight of the Reliquary

Fringe Playable:
Stirring Wildwood
Loam Lion
Kitchen Finks
Mystic Enforcer

Boros (r/w) cards:

Tier 2:
Lightning Helix
Ajani Vengeant

Fringe Playable:
Figure of Destiny

Simic (g/u)

Tier 2:
Trygon Predator

Fringe Playable:
Cold-Eyed Selkie
Lorescale Coatl
Voidslime

Orzhov (w/b) cards:

Tier 1:
Vindicate

Fringe Playable:
Tidehollow Sculler
Stillmoon Cavalier
Mortify

Izzet (u/r) cards:

Tier 2:
Fire/Ice

Golgari (b/g) cards:

Tier 1:
Pernicious Deed

Tier 2:
Maelstrom Pulse

Fringe Playable:
Putrid Leech
Putrefy

Bant cards:

Fringe Playable:
Bant Charm
Rhox War Monk

Esper cards:

Fringe Playable:
Dromar's Charm

Jund cards:

Fringe playable:
Jund Charm

Naya cards:

Tier 1:
Wild Nacatl

Fringe playable:
Woolly Thoctar

Junk cards:

Fringe playable:
Doran, the Siege Tower

Tutor Packages to play:

With Knight of the Reliquary:

Tier 1:
Wasteland
Karakas
Maze of Ith
Horizon Canopy

Tier 2:
Bojuka Bog
Various manlands

Fringe Playable:
Gaea's Cradle
Yavimaya Hollow
Volrath's Stronghold
Dust Bowl
Kor Haven
Sejiri Steppe
Barbarian Ring

With Green Sun's Zenith

Tier 1:
Dryad Arbor
Tarmogoyf
Qasali Pridemage
Scavenging Ooze
Knight of the Reliquary
Eternal Witness
Rafiq of the Many

Tier 2:
Birds of Paradise
Gaddock Teeg
Fauna Shaman
Trygon Predator
Thrun, the Last Troll

Fringe Playable:
Quirion Ranger
Terravore
Rhox War Monk
Doran, the Siege Tower
Dauntless Escort
Wickerbough Elder <- Best I can think of if you don't have white for Pridemage.

With Stoneforge Mystic

Tier 1:
Umezawa's Jitte
Batterskull <- In a creature light deck

Tier 2:
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Light and Shadow

Fringe Playable:
Batterskull <- In a creature heavy deck (against Merfolk? Really just play Jitte.)
Basilisk Collar <- W/ Lavamancer
Lightning Greaves <- W/ Knights/Goyfs
Grafted Wargear <- W/ non-Green decks that need muscle
Mortarpod <- I can see this in like a w/b tokens deck with Bitterblossom and Elspeth and Confidants you want to die. Might be sideboard material in Elves, although that's not really relevant to this thread...
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Body and Mind

With Fauna Shaman

Vengevine
Basking Rootwalla
Quirion Ranger
Loyal Retainers
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Iona, Shield of Emeria
I don't know what else really, someone else step up here.

[catmint]

Wow, that is a very useful thread. Love the idea to make a list and categorization of all the good cards. I hope you edit the initial post given the input of the thread.

Without thinking about everything in detail:
Delver and Daze are surely not Tier 1. These cards are currently strong in RUG tempo and the flavor of the month, but this deck is not the best and can be beaten by different strategies. Also the best counter in their deck is spell snare, which is Tier 1 in my opinion.

Not putting snapcaster in Tier 1 is kind of weird. :eyebrow:

Concerning black: Ghastly Demise is Tier2 I think and Darkblast deserves a SB slot.

I do not play white, but I certainly know that I often cannot beat a mother, so I would put her in Tier1.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Certainly it's my plan to edit if people make good arguments (already included Ghastly Demise and Darkblast), and of course people can post their own rankings. This is based on a combination of tournament performance and my own personal testing experience. Certainly I think it's unfair to call Daze a flavor of the month when it's been in top-performing decks since pretty much Legacy was a format, and Delver imho is much stronger than people are rating it at the moment, and its limited numbers over the past month confirm this; it had by far the steepest upward curve of any card since Innistrad came out on the other thread (although Brainstorm and Force started out so saturated that they had little else to do but move up to 100%, so it's not an entirely fair comparison).

I think Delver is the real deal and is going to be a staple for a long time to come, even if Brainstorm did get axed.

Snapcaster I think, on the other hand, is a very good card but not an amazing one, it's really at least a 3cc creature that provides some card advantage and a weak but sufficient body. There's lots of cards in that category. If, say, Eternal Witness were blue and Snapcaster green, I think the latter would be Fringe playable and the former a tier 2 card. They're quite comparable in power level.

Mother of Runes is a card I have a lot of god memories of and think warmly, and can be quite difficult to deal with, but I just haven't seen her perform to the level that I'd put her at tier 1; Tier 2 at best, and I'm not at all sure about that. It's probably about between but given that the deck does perform well in Europe atm, I suppose I'm fine with placing her at Tier 2.

[from Cairo]

Cool idea, I don't agree with all the ratings, but still seems like a good resource for deck/sb ideas.

[catmint]

Sure, Daze is not a flavor of the month - the RUG tempo deck is currently successful.

Daze is conditional and the drawback is significant. Only decks that have noble hierarch/GSZ like NO RUG did or decks that do not need land drops can run it. On the other hand Spell Snare is good - period.

I don't think delver can be played without brainstorm. He can be in a deck with 8 good cantrips and 30 spells. Also nimble mongoose is much scarier, because delver can be killed and that's it. By the way: Nimble is Tier2-Tier1 imo. If I play against RUG its the only animal I am afraid of.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I mean some decks exploit Daze more effectively than others, but it's a card that generally performs very well. Path to Exile or Tombstalker can't go in every deck, but they're tier 1 imho.

Updated to include actual manabases and to separate out the cards that are only good in tutor packages from the rest.

[Mr. Safety]

I think Progenitus should be in there somewhere...maybe just pop it into parentheses next to Natural Order? At least for good measure, as most folks know that it's the primary NO target, but the list is so damn good it would be silly to leave it out.

Nice work here! A great list of playables.

[boneclub24]

I would call Goblin Guide at least tier 2. Also, maybe add Azorius Guildmage to the fringe playable?

[soltakar]

I would add Scavenging Ooze to at least tier 2 green (though I personally consider it tier 1 for green), not just as a GSZ target. Also, I'd add Bloodghast to the Fauna Shaman tutor package.

[Guevera59]

Wild Nacatl should be coupled with Green Sun's Zenith, at least Tier 2.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I mean you don't play GSZ to get Nacatls or vice versa.

Azorius Guildmage I can see.

The list is more of a guideline though, I really didn't want discussion to just be arguing about placements or saying X random card is fringe playable, there's probably a fair number of fringe playables missing.

[Rizso]

Mortarpod should be under the stoneforge packages. It might look weak but considering it works against all the formats 1 toughness creatures as well removing Dredge bridges it should get mentionened.

[Kich867]

I agree that Jund is a very under-explored archetype right now. It opens up a lot of unconditional, cheap removal (Terminate, Ghastly Demise, Bolt, namely) with a strong disruption package (hymn / thoughtseize), strong beaters (goyf), good card advantage (bob), burn reach, lavamancers..

It seems solid, no blue might be turning people off though? One issue is that it may not have -enough- big ass beaters, but with a green sun package you can rummage up some pretty sick one-of beaters / utility guys.

So you've got Birds / Dryad + GSZ to accel, a disruption package, a removal suite, and a host of utility creatures + a solid creature base of Mancer's, Bob's, and Goyf's.

A good card that I don't think gets enough attention is Glissa, the Traitor. I've put her off because her secondary ability is less than stellar, the only thing I can think of it relevantly hitting are like, EE's in a deck that would already run a ton of removal, but being a 3/3 First Strike, Death Touch for 3 is actually kind of awesome. I don't believe there's any legitimately played creature that could kill her in combat except for like.. Mirran Crusader.

Jund could even rep out the punishing groves setup to keep the board clear / whittle away. I think it's a solid color scheme, I'll throw together a list and try it out on cockatrice..

[Hopo]

I've waited for the day when someone deems Blood Knight, Agony Warp and Burning Wish as equally playable on this format.

[sco0ter]

Huh? Fire Covenant is Tier 1? Never heard about it or saw it any decklist.

What about:

City of Traitors
Smokestack
Grim Monolith
Meddling Mage
Trinisphere
Life from the Loam

Though I don't get the sense of this thread. Listing good cards is helpful to whom?

[Hopo]

Listing good cards is helpful to whom?

To those who think all the good cards should be banned. This is a checklist for those cards and you can cross over one at a time.

[DrJones]

The point of the thread is to ask if deckbuilding has been replaced by stuffing your deck with the most broken cards in each color, and the answer is: it isn't. I mean, you can always do it, I remember Stephen Menendian did go that route at a GP, and then he got crushed by decks that exploited weaknesses he hadn't covered.

I don't think it'll always work that way, I mean, free all-purpose counters/discard/land destruction, free card draw, free mana, and cheap 1-card combos are sets of cards that tend to make everything else irrelevant.

[catmint]

This is of course no replacement for deckbuilding and also the Article title might be better off as "List of Legacy playables sorted by color and strength".

It can be a reference if you want to look for the best cards/colors to fit your strategy/curve/colors.

[wcm8]

While a reasonable deck could be made by just picking a bunch of tier 1/2 cards from a few colors, it seems like the most successful decks deliberately choose cards that have some synergy. For example, the original classic Team America list developed by Dan Signorigni was initially dismissed as being nothing more than a goodstuff.dec, but the card choices made sense within the framework -- Wasteland, Stifle, Daze, and Sinkhole all aided each other in the goal of mana denial, while still being good on their own (well.. Sinkhole maybe not so much anymore).

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I've waited for the day when someone deems Blood Knight, Agony Warp and Burning Wish as equally playable on this format.

That didn't happen. Burning Wish is obviously great in combo. This isn't a thread for Legacy generally; this is a thread for how "good stuff" decks are played and what goes into them. In a non-linear deck somewhere in the range from disruption/tempo to midrange/creature-based-control, Burning Wish is a lot worse than in combo (but still potentially playable.)


Huh? Fire Covenant is Tier 1? Never heard about it or saw it any decklist.

Well R/B isn't a very good combination at the moment. Vindicate and Deed haven't shown up in a lot of lists either. If you're in those colors already, however, those are very high quality cards.


What about:

City of Traitors
Smokestack
Grim Monolith
Meddling Mage
Trinisphere
Life from the Loam

Those don't really go into non-linear aggro-control decks. I mean Meddling Mage should probably be on the important SB card list for UW, I'll update it, but aside from that.


Though I don't get the sense of this thread. Listing good cards is helpful to whom?


The list is more of a guideline though, I really didn't want discussion to just be arguing about placements or saying X random card is fringe playable, there's probably a fair number of fringe playables missing.

Just listing cards isn't particularly helpful. I'm trying to spark a more detailed analysis of how this deckbuilding strategy works fundamentally. I was honestly not expecting to have to do all the legwork myself, but I'll probably add more to it later in terms of how I think when building a deck.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

While a reasonable deck could be made by just picking a bunch of tier 1/2 cards from a few colors, it seems like the most successful decks deliberately choose cards that have some synergy. For example, the original classic Team America list developed by Dan Signorigni was initially dismissed as being nothing more than a goodstuff.dec, but the card choices made sense within the framework -- Wasteland, Stifle, Daze, and Sinkhole all aided each other in the goal of mana denial, while still being good on their own (well.. Sinkhole maybe not so much anymore).


Absolutely. The main reason to run three colors is to get rid of as many chaff cards as possible (without having a highly destabilized manabase), but most of the "fringe playables" are defined by what's good if you have the support for it. Vendilion Clique was particularly good in NO Rug because it curved into a NO while letting you clear their hand of potential answers. A card like Troll Ascetic isn't playable by itself anymore, but you may want to look at it if you need guys to pick up equipment. And really every deck of this strategy ought to have some bomby cards that help it break stalemates and produce big card or board advantage.

Now a lot of people do seem to deckbuild, from what I see, by basically taking all the most highly regarded cards of three colors and mashing them together, but this as you note rarely works well.

[DragoFireheart]

What was your criteria for determining which cards were in which tier? Was it just a simple observation and opinion or something more complex?

Goblin Guide is not something I would consider fringe playable. At the very least he's tier 2.

Grim Lavamancer is arguably tier 0.

SFM should be tier 0 as well.

I don't agree about Vendilion Clique being fringe playable.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Combination of performance over time, and my own experience, and the opinions of people I respect from a deckbuilding perspective.

Now these are rough categorizations and certainly not all cards I've listed as Tier 1 have the same power level; tier 1, at an approximation, is "cards that pull you into a color," Tier 2 is "cards that you're happy to play if you're in a color," and Fringe Playable is, "Cards you'd rather not play without a very good reaosn."

But I only have four entries for Tier 0, which was very deliberate, because based on numbers and performance Braintorm and Force are just far and away the two most pervasive and defining cards in Legacy except for the manabase itself, nothing else really comes close. Some decks might have reason to build a manabase not rooted around duals and fetchlands, but only in very linear strategies. Even a "monoblack" deck that might want to use powerful black-heavy cards like Nantuko Shade, Pyrexian Obliterator and Gatekeeper of Malakir, for instance, could and should still play other colors via fetchlands and duals.

[Finn]

Combination of performance over time, and my own experience, and the opinions of people I respect from a deckbuilding perspective.Making this "Jack's List" and nothing else. It is folly for anyone to presume to know which cards are "best against the field" in any sort of exhaustive and objective way. At best, you may be able to create a "best against SCG top 16 placing decks".

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Making this "Jack's List" and nothing else.


1) I never claimed it was anything but. In fact this is what I have explicitly said.

2) The "something else" as I have also said numerous times already is an attempt to analyze how goodstuff decks are built and the way they work overall.

Jesus fucking Christ I'm getting tired of repeating myself.

[Finn]

Then try to understand why folks are primarily interested in the cards over any other element of the discussion instead of repeating yourself.

These are decks of mindlessly mixing cards. Honestly, it has always been the dominant design style in Legacy, and it is done constantly by players even without intention of even making a "new" deck. It usually is a useless offshoot that nobody hears about unless done by a SCG writer. It requires the least understanding of either the format or design principles. It has the highest probability of success because by it's definition you are not using new cards or strategies. You are simply choosing your favorites a la carte.

Since you did not tell anyone what sort of specific questions you want answered, and because the topic is rather transparent anyway, readers of the thread really have nothing else to discuss.

I may have accidentally discussed the topic in there somewhere.

[Gui]

This is a really good list, and if not perfect, the rating is at least acceptable.

Make sure to state that the tier is just related to the goodstuff decks, or someone else will try to say some card is gread and isn't on the list, when it actually doesn't make sence in GS.dec

I believe Life from the Loam should be somewhere in the green cards.

[ivanpei]

Nice job on the list. Will be pretty useful to newer players. Legacy has always been a good stuff format with the exception of a few archetypes like tribal or combo. I think the reason why 3 colour good stuff is so successful in legacy is because of answers/ disruption in this format.

Cute interactions, nifty mini combos etc in legacy have to be extremely robust to survive. The quality and amount of disruption in legacy really limits the deck building freedom in this format. Take goblins for example. The synergy of the cards in the deck is undeniable. But even then, goblins is nowhere as powerful as before. With the printing of better disruption and one-off threats, it is a much easier strategy to just disrupt, stick a bomb and ride it to victory.

In a interaction/synergy based deck like goblins, if you deal with vial/lackey, they are in trouble. It's the same with any other type of themed deck. Take out the most important gears and the whole engine fails. In a good stuff deck, you take out an important gear, the other gears still keep rolling. In bant, you take out sfm, kotr can still kick your teeth in. The quality of disruption is simply too good in legacy. Making robust good stuff decks the most successful.

[Octopusman]

I love threads like this so thanks. I think you did a great job of not going totally overboard with your list. These things usually spiral out of control and become some useless abomination consisting of cards that aren't even played in the format.

If I had 30 seconds to revise the list. I would add City of Traitors to tier2 land and painter/grindstone to tier2 artifacts. I'm not sure I would even include helm-line or nether shadow although they may see more play than the rakdos and golgari cards, sans deed, and Psychatog.


Fun list though. This thread will be funny as cards get banned and edited out. That's a cynical perspective, though. I hope we add some cards to this list as they come off the banned list. I've wanted to play with Black Vise again for so long.


Regarding "good stuff" strategy, I feel like sometimes too much focus is put on "good stuff" and not enough thought put into resilience or draw engines. These decks can run out of gas mid to late game and never recover. They may use the answer they have and play out the big threat that they have but ultimately lose out to lack of card advantage.
That sounds vague without examples.

What's interesting to me is the shift to cards that provide card advantage that aren't traditional draw spells. Aside from Brainstorm and Bob, we haven't exactly been seeing a lot of standstill (there was that brief moment recently where landstill was tier1) or similar. Now decks run cards like Loam, Liliana, Snapcaster and so on. I feel that is the "good stuff" of cards of this category are what will allow a good stuff deck to be tier1. Notice how the first three cards that came to mind (Loam, Liliana, Snapcaster) are all highly specialized cards that require much of the rest of the deck to function well with it which is usually at odds with a good stuff deck (lack of synergy). If they can print (as close to) objectively good cards that enable a super easy engine like a better scroll rack, this can plug the hole.

[luckme10]

The purpose of this list was made in irony. So we can continue to acknowledge the stagnant way in which decks are mindlessly build. Which, hopefully, in turn want us to ask what makes combinations of decks work and which ones do not. It's the closest thing to a plea for innovation. However, the ways that some have nitpicked on card choices only appear to further emphasis his original point, stressing a lack of innovation. To say this article is a great way for new people to get involved, because it has great card pool, is like saying South Park would be a great cartoon for toddlers because the characters are cute and use a lot of words.

Almost forgot my contribution: Rancor (http://deckbox.org/mtg/Rancor) is Fringe Playable.

[Octopusman]

The purpose of this list was made in irony. So we can continue to acknowledge the stagnant way in which decks are mindlessly build. Which, hopefully, in turn want us to ask what makes combinations of decks work and which ones do not. It's the closest thing to a plea for innovation. However, the ways that some have nitpicked on card choices only appear to further emphasis his original point, stressing a lack of innovation. To say this article is a great way for new people to get involved, because it has great card pool, is like saying South Park would be a great cartoon for toddlers because the characters are cute and use a lot of words.

Almost forgot my contribution: Rancor (http://deckbox.org/mtg/Rancor) is Fringe Playable.

Or could it be that these cards being identified as "good" is the result of countless hours and games playtesting?
It seems that sheer brute force is almost on par with a deck built with genius-like synergy.

People can have fun testing Crib Swap, but I'm still going to run Swords to Plowshares because it has been determined that it is "good" by both the community and myself.

We do see innovations. That's why Grindstone shot up in value when servant was printed. This is an obvious innovation. I guess we're hoping that someone will suddenly realize that card x is fantastic in the format/meta? Sometimes we find out that Peacekeeper is good. Other times, people just run bad cards.

[Richard Cheese]

I think the goodstuff mentality is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's always good to have some auto-includes for each color to get a shell built and then go from there.

On the other hand, I feel like despite the insanely large cardpool the community has available, you just see the same handful of best cards at all the top tables. Is it really that these have been proven to be simply better than similar alternatives, or are we lost in the world of tunnel vision? I personally have a tough time getting into new territory with decks because I stopped playing for so long that there's a huge block of cards out there that I'm just not familiar with. Just this week someone posted the idea of Encroach being a potentially better Sinkhole, or even the equivalent of a Wasteland on the play. This is a card I didn't even know existed...has it just been written off by the Legacy community after thorough testing, or just forgotten about?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

It is very true that I'd love to see people play less mindlessly put together goodstuff decks. But that's not to say that the generic goodstuff approach is bad in Legacy. Rather, it's as good as the net power of all the cards working together. Individual card power level is important, and it's why the strategy has strengths over strictly linear strategies, but how cards work together is also important. This is obviously important if you're looking at tutor packages- you can play Knight of the Reliquary with just fetchlands, but obviously she gets a lot better if you throw in even a small package of 1Canopy/1Wasteland/1Karakas/1Maze. Stoneforge kind of sucks if you're not running equipment.

But this extends further than the obvious as well. One of these things that grates me is people playing Jace in Stoneforge decks. Yes, Jace is a powerful planeswalker, probably the most powerful in a generic deck (I think Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is actually the most powerful, but unfortunately the decks around him suck), but right behind Jace is Elspeth, in a color you're already in anyway and at the same cost. Except that Elspeth has massive amounts of synergy with equipment. Running Elspeth over Jace and alongside Stoneforge, Snapcasters, and especially flyers like Delver or Clique, would make it much easier to go beyond Batterskull and run Jitte and get a lot more use out or one or two Swords.

And I don't think people even thought to test it, I think they just run Jace with Stoneforge because that's what they ran in Standard, even though the synergies there are much weaker and less relevant.

Similarly, in metagames where people are running upwards of 4 StPs/Paths maindeck, I feel like a deck like Maverick should be looking at a creature like Troll Ascetic over leaning so heavily on Knight. Playing both Knight of the Reliquary and Stoneforge Mystic gives you two really powerful cards, but it also clots up your decklist, and while Knight is really powerful it also really sucks to lose her to a one mana spell after paying three. Conversely, while taking up much less space, Troll Ascetic is one of the best equipment carriers in the game, tutorable with GSZ, and gives controlling decks fits.

So the takeaway, if anything, should be;

You can try to rate cards in a vacuum, but cards aren't played in a vacuum. You have to look at your deck as a whole and see what works best there, and against what you expect to play against, not just mindlessly jam together a best-of-Legacy compilation.

[majikal]

Similarly, in metagames where people are running upwards of 4 StPs/Paths maindeck, I feel like a deck like Maverick should be looking at a creature like Troll Ascetic over leaning so heavily on Knight. Playing both Knight of the Reliquary and Stoneforge Mystic gives you two really powerful cards, but it also clots up your decklist, and while Knight is really powerful it also really sucks to lose her to a one mana spell after paying three. Conversely, while taking up much less space, Troll Ascetic is one of the best equipment carriers in the game, tutorable with GSZ, and gives controlling decks fits.

That's why Maverick plays Mother of Runes.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That's why Maverick plays Mother of Runes.

I'm aware, but that's a shitload of slots being clogged up (also why I, incidentally, strongly recommend just running Lightning Greaves instead). Is it worth it? Maybe. But generally players don't know because there's a general unwillingness to test out alternatives.

[UnderwaterGuy]

Mother of Runes is extremely good and I don't know how that is even being questioned. Troll Ascetic isn't good enough to warrant a spot.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Mother of Runes is extremely good and I don't know how that is even being questioned. Troll Ascetic isn't good enough to warrant a spot.

This reads like an orthodox maxim, and not anything based on an actual understanding of the game and the interactions in question.

The question is;

If there is a shitload of removal going around a meta, rather than running Knight + package to make Knight good + Mother of Runes to try and protect Knight, all of which is going to take up about 1/5 of your deck, does it make more sense to focus on the SFM aspect, upping that count, giving yourself more equipment and focusing on cards that are very good equipment bearers like Troll Ascetic and Elspeth (and, without the Knight package, maybe throwing in a PtE or two yourself to increase your own creature control game)?

I see no evidence that you've thought about or even understand the question, which goes back to the point of the thread; that so much of Legacy deckbuilding is just mindless orthodoxy. A card that is heavily played at the moment is fantastic, a card that isn't is trash, and only a few arbitrarily selected pros have the mystifying and unexplainable power to move a card from one category to the other. Like no one questioned my calling Sylvan Library a tier 1 card; yet a couple years ago, before the NoVa players and Hatfields in particular started playing it in Zoo, it was widely regarded as junk, relegated to Enchantress decklists and nothing else.

[Octopusman]

This reads like an orthodox maxim, and not anything based on an actual understanding of the game and the interactions in question.


...focusing on cards that are very good equipment bearers like Troll Ascetic and Elspeth (and, without the Knight package, maybe throwing in a PtE or two yourself to increase your own creature control game?

I know that Serra Avenger has been tested pretty thoroughly with one of the main premises being that she's a fantastic equipment carrier but she isn't cutting it. She gets removed like a champ.
Since removal is at an all time high, I'd personally experiment with Invisible Stalker or if they're straight G/W, Ledgewalker if they want to go this route. Perhaps the fellow who places well at the next event will have something like this. After all, decks do change despite how fanatically eager everyone is to see innovation in the format.

Take another look at the list and see if you can spot any cards that are good because of what the format looks like. There are objectively good cards, no doubt, but Swords to Plowshares doesn't do you any good in a mythical format of all combo.
It wasn't that long ago that Lavamancer was perceived as not strong enough. Consider how much more valuable he has become somewhat recently due to the kinds of creatures he can remove.
Let me tell you, I have been spanked by a mongoose more than once while sitting on a 1/1 Lavamancer.

[bowvamp]

First of all, Troll is a way better equipment carrier than Avenger. Encroach is much worse than Sinkhole, simply because Sinkhole gives you tempo over the long run while Encroach takes it away. I've tried to use "better sinkhole" combos like Spreading Algae + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, but in the end LD is a pretty simple concept. Removal on the other hand is not. Seal of Fire allows you to basically kill your opponent's creature in advance and not have to worry about tapping out. Plus, if it doesn't find a target, it pings your opponent. If Aether Vial is Tier 2, shouldn't GSZ be Tier 2? I think that Mirri's Guile makes a good Sylvan Library for 1 mana, and I usually make that substitution in lists that require libraries. Tribute to Hunger should be replaced by Disfigure. Liliana of the Veil is definitely tier 1. Disrupt should be somewhere in there. Suppression Field and Root Maze are also options for the fetch-less decks out there.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm no longer going to edit the list as I feel that it's derailing from the intended purpose of the thread; I'm quite aware of its subjectivity. If you think I'm not including something or under-rating something or whatever, lovely, by all means go out and break that card.

[UnderwaterGuy]

This reads like an orthodox maxim, and not anything based on an actual understanding of the game and the interactions in question.

The question is;

If there is a shitload of removal going around a meta, rather than running Knight + package to make Knight good + Mother of Runes to try and protect Knight, all of which is going to take up about 1/5 of your deck, does it make more sense to focus on the SFM aspect, upping that count, giving yourself more equipment and focusing on cards that are very good equipment bearers like Troll Ascetic and Elspeth (and, without the Knight package, maybe throwing in a PtE or two yourself to increase your own creature control game)?

I see no evidence that you've thought about or even understand the question, which goes back to the point of the thread; that so much of Legacy deckbuilding is just mindless orthodoxy. A card that is heavily played at the moment is fantastic, a card that isn't is trash, and only a few arbitrarily selected pros have the mystifying and unexplainable power to move a card from one category to the other. Like no one questioned my calling Sylvan Library a tier 1 card; yet a couple years ago, before the NoVa players and Hatfields in particular started playing it in Zoo, it was widely regarded as junk, relegated to Enchantress decklists and nothing else.

I absolutely understand what you were talking about. I've simply played with and against Mom a lot and I've won and lost plenty of games because of her. If she is ever allowed to become active it requires you spending two cards to just get rid of her or a creature she is protecting. Not to mention the unblockable aspect of her ability.

It's pretty well understood that Mom is a powerful card. There isn't anything else to say about it.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

As point of fact, it's not well understood. I'm perfectly willing to have a discussion about whether Mother of Runes is a powerful card, into what tier it belongs with what company, and so on, but let's do so realistically. It's a 1/1. Its ability is only very relevant if you have a very powerful creature you don't want to die. Its generally been played only in g/w Maverick, which hasn't the counters or discard to protect it otherwise. Unlike those cards, Mother of Runes will not do anything to disrupt your opponents game plan or protect Knight from counterspells and discard of your opponents'. Sans a large creature to protect, it's little more than a wall that has to use up its ability just to not die.

Is it a good card? Potentially. It certainly does a lot for g/w's plan of ensuring Knight survives. Is it better than going another color for discard or counters? I don't know. Is it better than running Lightning Greaves as an SFM target? Eh. Is it better than just dropping the Knight focus and making your deck more equipment based, upping the SFM/equipment count and adding Trolls and Elspeths? I don't know.

Do Maverick players even think about these questions, or do they just continue playing the list the exact same way they played it four months ago? My guess is it's the latter. Not because Maverick players are particularly unimaginative, but because players generally are. Calosso Fuentes is a very good Magic player, but he's still miffed at me for telling him that his own idea of deck innovation seems to always be to take the two best current decks in a format and shuffle them together. But that's a lot of people.

And if you're getting your lists from other people I suppose you can make that work. I'm more interested in discussing what makes a deck tick and what makes it good in an expected metagame, and in finding what's been overlooked.

Different Magic cards have different power levels- but those power levels aren't fixed. They fluctuate depending upon what cards you shuffle them up with and what cards your opponents are playing.

[Cire]

I know it wasn't the point of this thread, but I was slightly bored so I tried to make a ten tri colored decks using all the "tier - one" cards in the respective colors and a few made up rules that made sense at the time...

So far I could only make 5 of them work : but they look decent; which i guess is the trap of this type of deck building - but ill let you be the judge of that:

Some of the rules I used for the five decks:

1 Nobel Hierarch only if it produces at least 2/3 of the decks colors
2 Dark Confidant > Sylvan library
3 Dark Confidant > Tombstalker (unless there is other draw cards)
4 Elspeth > Jace (if color can support both)
5 No Sensei's Divining Top or sylvan library If blue or dark confidant in the deck
6 (No Fire Covenant )
7 Delver only if 24-26+ cards are Instants or Sorceries > maybe lower delver count by 2?

I hope you appreciate the deck names :tongue:

IBA JUND

1 Ooze
1 Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Lightning Bolt

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA GRIXIS

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Ponder

2 Jace, the mind Sculptor

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA ITALIA

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Dark Confidant

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Vindicate
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Path to Exile

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 BatterSkull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

--------

IBA RUG

4 Noble Hierarch
1 Ooze
1 Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Delver of Secrets
4 Grim Lavamancer

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt

2 Jace, the mind Sculptor

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA AMERICA

4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Delver of Secrets
4 Stoneforge Mystic

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Path to Exile

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Wasteland
17 Lands

I'm having trouble making the other tri-colored decks 60 cards, but I found the exercise fun. As I said the decks look decent, but it's impossible to tell otherwise without testing. At the very least, despite the ease it took to make these lists they look like the provide decent starting points for debate. For example the IBA ITALIA list looks good IMO compared to Team Italia itself. The IBA JUND list also looks pretty good just by itself, with no actual deck to compare it too.

[Octopusman]

I know it wasn't the point of this thread, but I was slightly bored so I tried to make a ten tri colored decks using all the "tier - one" cards in the respective colors and a few made up rules that made sense at the time...

So far I could only make 5 of them work : but they look decent; which i guess is the trap of this type of deck building - but ill let you be the judge of that:

Some of the rules I used for the five decks:

1 Nobel Hierarch only if it produces at least 2/3 of the decks colors
2 Dark Confidant > Sylvan library
3 Dark Confidant > Tombstalker (unless there is other draw cards)
4 Elspeth > Jace (if color can support both)
5 No Sensei's Divining Top or sylvan library If blue or dark confidant in the deck
6 (No Fire Covenant )
7 Delver only if 24-26+ cards are Instants or Sorceries > maybe lower delver count by 2?

I hope you appreciate the deck names :tongue:

IBA JUND

1 Ooze
1 Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Lightning Bolt

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA GRIXIS

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Ponder

2 Jace, the mind Sculptor

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA ITALIA

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Dark Confidant

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Vindicate
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Path to Exile

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 BatterSkull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

--------

IBA RUG

4 Noble Hierarch
1 Ooze
1 Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Delver of Secrets
4 Grim Lavamancer

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt

2 Jace, the mind Sculptor

4 Wasteland
18 Lands

------

IBA AMERICA

4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Delver of Secrets
4 Stoneforge Mystic

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Path to Exile

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Wasteland
17 Lands

I'm having trouble making the other tri-colored decks 60 cards, but I found the exercise fun. As I said the decks look decent, but it's impossible to tell otherwise without testing. At the very least, despite the ease it took to make these lists they look like the provide decent starting points for debate. For example the IBA ITALIA list looks good IMO compared to Team Italia itself. The IBA JUND list also looks pretty good just by itself, with no actual deck to compare it too.

Yes, it's cute but most non-blue still folds to combo/show and tell -> Emrakul.

[Finn]

You are wrong on this, Jack. You don't have enough experience with this card recently.

On turn one, you have to FoW Mother of Runes unless you are playing combo or holding removal. Even then, it is a close call for stuff like Reanimator after game 1 if they don't have a great hand. There are extremely few spells that are ever must-counter available in these colors for aggro-control. I like to joke that Mother of Runes is a 2-1 even when it does not hit the table. Against Zoo, they have to Bolt it if they can instead of dropping their Wild Nacatl or Lavamancer. This buys you that critical turn.

Equipment turns little creatures into game-breakers and finishers. Mother of Runes makes SFM-using decks operate better, and not just a little.

Mother of Runes has been an essential card in D&T since the printing of Stoneforge Mystic. The ability to protect your creature on the turn it equips a weapon or to grant free passage if the opponent has a Tarmo blocking (many D&T lists do not have a protection from green weapon) makes Mother of Runes a potent offensive weapon. You can not do any of those things with Lightning Greaves. This is besides the uncomfortable position you are in if you have Jitte OTB, a creature equipped with Greaves, and your opponent can deny you another creature, or you don't draw one, or whatever.

My opponents will go to great lengths to rid themselves of Mother of Runes. If you have SFM, you are a fool not to fit as many Mother of Runes into your deck as you can manage.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Well I mean if Finn thinks it's good in Death and Taxes.

@Cire: That's neat actually. Although there should be a rule against Lavamancer and Tombstalker being in the same deck. But yeah, I mean you can get a decent starting point just jamming together top cards, but as you polish it you should be finding that other cards fit the mould better than an objectively better card.

[Red Army]

As point of fact, it's not well understood. I'm perfectly willing to have a discussion about whether Mother of Runes is a powerful card, into what tier it belongs with what company, and so on, but let's do so realistically. It's a 1/1. Its ability is only very relevant if you have a very powerful creature you don't want to die. Its generally been played only in g/w Maverick, which hasn't the counters or discard to protect it otherwise. Unlike those cards, Mother of Runes will not do anything to disrupt your opponents game plan or protect Knight from counterspells and discard of your opponents'. Sans a large creature to protect, it's little more than a wall that has to use up its ability just to not die.

Is it a good card? Potentially. It certainly does a lot for g/w's plan of ensuring Knight survives. Is it better than going another color for discard or counters? I don't know. Is it better than running Lightning Greaves as an SFM target? Eh. Is it better than just dropping the Knight focus and making your deck more equipment based, upping the SFM/equipment count and adding Trolls and Elspeths? I don't know.

Do Maverick players even think about these questions, or do they just continue playing the list the exact same way they played it four months ago? My guess is it's the latter. Not because Maverick players are particularly unimaginative, but because players generally are. Calosso Fuentes is a very good Magic player, but he's still miffed at me for telling him that his own idea of deck innovation seems to always be to take the two best current decks in a format and shuffle them together. But that's a lot of people.

And if you're getting your lists from other people I suppose you can make that work. I'm more interested in discussing what makes a deck tick and what makes it good in an expected metagame, and in finding what's been overlooked.

Different Magic cards have different power levels- but those power levels aren't fixed. They fluctuate depending upon what cards you shuffle them up with and what cards your opponents are playing.

I like the general argument you've been making lately. It sort of justifies my approach to Vial Goblins lately. Yes it has been a 'deck in a can' with many dogmatic rules associated with how it should be constructed or played, but it too can be adjusted with an open mind in order to maximize it's impact on an expected meta.

One thing that I notice about the t8 at SCG is that the winners are almost always built in a way that would be heavily criticized in their respective forums just a week earlier.

I don't think it is my right to call out other players as ignorant because they have come to a different conclusion, but newer players tend to fall into these habits, and if they have any amount of success, they will never learn.

Also, I don't think anyone mentioned that Maverick lists often contain bigger legendary Troll Ascetic guy to fill that roll.


edit - About Mother of Runes...it is white's Delver of Secrets or Goblin Lackey (erhm...guess I should say Grim Lavamancer). It's actually been used quite a bit, the first time I had to face that ho was in my friend's old UW Tempo deck...the first deck to my knowledge which abused SFM and Sword of Fire and Ice.

[Richard Cheese]

You are wrong on this, Jack. You don't have enough experience with this card recently.

On turn one, you have to FoW Mother of Runes unless you are playing combo or holding removal. Even then, it is a close call for stuff like Reanimator after game 1 if they don't have a great hand. There are extremely few spells that are ever must-counter available in these colors for aggro-control. I like to joke that Mother of Runes is a 2-1 even when it does not hit the table. Against Zoo, they have to Bolt it if they can instead of dropping their Wild Nacatl or Lavamancer. This buys you that critical turn.

Equipment turns little creatures into game-breakers and finishers. Mother of Runes makes SFM-using decks operate better, and not just a little.

Mother of Runes has been an essential card in D&T since the printing of Stoneforge Mystic. The ability to protect your creature on the turn it equips a weapon or to grant free passage if the opponent has a Tarmo blocking (many D&T lists do not have a protection from green weapon) makes Mother of Runes a potent offensive weapon. You can not do any of those things with Lightning Greaves. This is besides the uncomfortable position you are in if you have Jitte OTB, a creature equipped with Greaves, and your opponent can deny you another creature, or you don't draw one, or whatever.

My opponents will go to great lengths to rid themselves of Mother of Runes. If you have SFM, you are a fool not to fit as many Mother of Runes into your deck as you can manage.

A T1 Mom is not going to stop me from dropping my Nacatl. I'm going to play the cat, pass, then on my next turn swing. If you block and go pro green, she gets bolted or pathed, if you don't, I'm achieving my ultimate goal anyway. I'm not disputing that she's a good card, but the notion that she's this unstoppable behemoth once she's active just isn't always true. Even Merfolk runs Dismember now.

The disturbing thing though is that all too often the response to anyone that questions a proven decklist or strategy ends up with replies like 'you just don't know how to play it right' or 'you obviously don't understand how this card works' or 'you're a fool if you don't run x'. This community tends to be highly critical of any idea that goes against the status quo, unless of course it results in stellar performance at a largely publicized event. Then it's worth testing, then people start to like it, then it's written in stone and you're back to square one.

[Red Army]

A T1 Mom is not going to stop me from dropping my Nacatl. I'm going to play the cat, pass, then on my next turn swing. If you block and go pro green, she gets bolted or pathed, if you don't, I'm achieving my ultimate goal anyway. I'm not disputing that she's a good card, but the notion that she's this unstoppable behemoth once she's active just isn't always true. Even Merfolk runs Dismember now.

The disturbing thing though is that all too often the response to anyone that questions a proven decklist or strategy ends up with replies like 'you just don't know how to play it right' or 'you obviously don't understand how this card works' or 'you're a fool if you don't run x'. This community tends to be highly critical of any idea that goes against the status quo, unless of course it results in stellar performance at a largely publicized event. Then it's worth testing, then people start to like it, then it's written in stone and you're back to square one.

That's a matter of context. Sure, the best green one drop can compete with the best one drop, but things play out differently under different circumstances, I don't play with Mother of Runes, and I apologize for standing by a card that I think is pretty darn good. My reply was a simply an agreement with TheInfamousBearAssassin's advocacy of open minded deck building, in Goodstuff.dec but also beyond Goodstuff.dec. I don't really care if someone doesn't think my Goblin deck is good, I just consider the Source to be a place for thoughtful, open-minded discussion, about an archetype, and since I've been posting here, no one has been working harder to facilitate constructive dialogue about the deck I'd like to see some of than I have. I understand that I could just take a break and 'leave it to the Pros', but that would be a serious concession to the kind of deck-building habits that are the result of stagnant innovation.

[Cire]

Yes, it's cute but most non-blue still folds to combo/show and tell -> Emrakul.

Yeah I understand that, but that still leaves 6 out of 10 of the color combinations that will be able to not fold to combo or S&T :rolleyes:



@Cire: That's neat actually. Although there should be a rule against Lavamancer and Tombstalker being in the same deck. But yeah, I mean you can get a decent starting point just jamming together top cards, but as you polish it you should be finding that other cards fit the mould better than an objectively better card.

That's what i thought when i did the experiment. The Decks actually look like GREAT starting points...not say that the path leads anywhere, but i imagine posting all 10 IBA decks in discussion and letting people roll with them, eventually they would either be optimized as goodstuff decks, scraped, or concluded as inferior to another already competitive deck.

And that's a good rule i did not even think off. MUch more are needed to deal with the other 5 decks, especially with any deck with GW, since GSZ, Knight & SM come with so many additional cards, it's hard to find room for all of them. As soon as i figure it out, ill post the other 5 lists here for fun

[Finn]

A T1 Mom is not going to stop me from dropping my Nacatl. I'm going to play the cat, pass, then on my next turn swing. If you block and go pro green, she gets bolted or pathed, if you don't, I'm achieving my ultimate goal anyway.You should just kill her and be done with it. Otherwise you are giving me the choice between having the exact same net effect as what I said - your first damage is delayed a turn - or doing something nasty like Wasteland and dropping another that I can now protect. If that hapens, you have just kept a mana open on turn two for nothing, you are down a land, and you have two Mothers to deal with.

Well I mean if Finn thinks it's good in Death and Taxes.Yeah, that's about the sort of response I have come to expect from you when you recognize that you are wrong.

[GenioDeArena]

Being a HC Black Mage I´ve seen that some cards might deserve a spot in the opp list:
Innocent Blood
Smallpox
Abyssal Persecutor

Those have seen an interesting amount of play in several archetipes, specially the Innocent Bloods as they do great in control shells as a perfect 1st turn on the draw play killing Nacatl, Mom, lackey, Delver, lavamancer, while trading with Cursecatcher to name a few.
Also Smallpox have seen play in other decks besides Pox, supporting a heavy Hand/Board/Lands disruption in tempo oriented builds.
Also, to be honest, Percy sees a decent amount of play, and is more splashable that Obliterator.

Very good thread idea by the way.
Congrats!

[Purgatory]

I had never heard of Fire Covenant either before reading this list, cool spell, but it looks like crud on paper.

As far as cards left out goes, I guess SB cards like Echoing Truth and Firespout deserves mention as well somewhere. Also Relic of Progentus, though it is a lot heavier on the mana than Crypt, deserves a mention because of its cantripping nature.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You should just kill her and be done with it. Otherwise you are giving me the choice between having the exact same net effect as what I said - your first damage is delayed a turn - or doing something nasty like Wasteland and dropping another that I can now protect. If that hapens, you have just kept a mana open on turn two for nothing, you are down a land, and you have two Mothers to deal with.

Who cares? I mean moms by themselves are 1/1s. If you turn them into walls you're opening yourself up to the removal you were trying to turn off; if not you're losing the race. There are certainly board situations where it matters, mainly where you have say a Knight, but there's also plenty times when Mother of Runes just doesn't do much except chump well.


Yeah, that's about the sort of response I have come to expect from you when you recognize that you are wrong.

I'm not going to get into an argument with you on this thread about why Death and Taxes isn't a good deck.

[Finn]

These statements reek of ignorance. Either you have never encountered these situations or you have and did not assimilate the significance. And yeah, I hear ya knocking on my deck. See previous statement.

[catmint]

Come on IBA:
The way you talk about mother is pretty embarrassing for you. Also your disrespectful way of talking about other people's opinion is not welcome!!!

Look at the DTB and which one the DTB had the highest relevance (TCdecks weights the top finishes depending on the number of players in the tournament). Maverick is always on top, because it is a very very good deck that beats blue. Mother plays a major role in that sucess and you can be sure that scryb ranger would not see play if it would not have knight AND primarily mother as targets.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

These statements reek of ignorance. Either you have never encountered these situations or you have and did not assimilate the significance. And yeah, I hear ya knocking on my deck. See previous statement.

I'm not knocking on your deck. I am stating the empirical and obvious truth that your deck sucks. Numerous people have tried to make it work, and failed. It might be useful to dissect why this is so, but I'm not going to argue reality with you.

And I have played with and against Mother of Runes extensively. Again, it is a good card, it is not an amazing card, and it can be situationally quite useless.


Come on IBA:
The way you talk about mother is pretty embarrassing for you. Also your disrespectful way of talking about other people's opinion is not welcome!!!

People don't have a right to have a bad opinion treated like a good one, I'm afraid, and it's not ad hominem to point out the weaknesses in an argument.


Look at the DTB and which one the DTB had the highest relevance (TCdecks weights the top finishes depending on the number of players in the tournament). Maverick is always on top, because it is a very very good deck that beats blue. Mother plays a major role in that sucess and you can be sure that scryb ranger would not see play if it would not have knight AND primarily mother as targets.

Well I believe Maverick actually isn't on top this month. But Maverick is certainly very popular over in Europe- in my opinion overplayed there and underplayed here- and I believe it's a fine enough deck. That doesn't mean, first of all, that lists are perfect, however (in fact there's still a fair amount of variance in decklists themselves); secondly it doesn't mean that every card in that list is good on its own; in fact that was much of what this thread is about. It may be that Mother of Runes and Scryb Ranger and Knight and Stoneforge Mystic are, all together, correct to play in the same deck and very good in that deck; but it doesn't mean that taken apart those cards are all equally powerful. Knight of the Reliquary is very powerful in many deck, but Mother of Runes isn't in any other good decks; in fact, while people have tried to play it in numerous other decks from D&T to U/W Tempo to Soul Sisters, those decks have all, in performance and testing that I'm aware of, proven remarkably bad.

That's not to say that there are no other decks that might want to play Mother of Runes; I listed it and then was quite willing to move it to Tier 2 status for a reason. But it is not a Tier 1 card; lots of decks that are running white get little to no value out of it.

I mean I like to think that I am distinctly open to whatever possibilities in whatever deck. I don't often dismiss things out of hand. But while one should approach deckbuilding with an open mind, one should also do so with a sort of skepticism. Test an idea by all means, but don't cling to the theory long after it has discredited itself.

[catmint]

...makes sense IBA.
She is not Tier 1 like Stoneforge or Swords... I thought mother is still in "Tier 3" where she was at the beginning.

[Rizso]

But generally players don't know because there's a general unwillingness to test out alternatives.

This is something people should get away from. Also people are to blind tbh on low costed cards. Batterskull alone has proven that many games do lead to last long enough to have 5+ lands.

What really stopps a UW deck to have 1 or 2 gamebreaking Gideons in their 75's?

[UnderwaterGuy]

But most of the time Batterskull only costs 2.

[Rizso]

Sure but durring the card discussion just when it got released people kept claiming it will never be casted normal or ever be used to equip. I for one have seen and done both mulitple times.

[Finn]

And I have played with and against Mother of Runes extensively. Again, it is a good card, it is not an amazing card, and it can be situationally quite useless.
Every single card can be situationally useless. Mother of Runes is fantastic because it has so many applications, and the importance of those aplpications in the decks that run it successfully.

I am stating the empirical and obvious truth that your deck sucks. Numerous people have tried to make it work, and failed. It might be useful to dissect why this is so, but I'm not going to argue reality with you.

So you are claiming to know that a deck sucks. You offer no analysis, and you would prefer to not have to bother. Now you claim that your opinions are substantiated by some sort of empirical data, but can't be specific, and you don't care to discuss that either. I don't have any idea who these numerous people are who tried and failed. I only know of one person who has ever serioulsy tried: me.

I got some obvious empirical reality for ya. As you know, there is very little Legacy where I live, so I don't get nearly the practice I would like to. In fact, after all these years, I only played my first major Legacy tournament at SCG Orlando in 2010, I placed 14 with D+T. I certainly did not get lucky matchups, and my final opponent will tell you that I got screwed out of top 8. A fluke? This year, in my only other major Legacy tournement ever (SCG Orlando again), I took 10th, also with D+T.

So when I point out that you have no idea what you are talking about. It is only because no matter what else, on this topic you have no idea what you are talking about.

Good day, sir.

[majikal]

What really stopps a UW deck to have 1 or 2 gamebreaking Gideons in their 75's?
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/ne/30.jpghttp://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/67.jpghttp://magiccards.info/scans/en/cfx/113.jpg
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/tp/340.jpg

Oh I don't know...

[Rizso]

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/ne/30.jpghttp://magiccards.info/scans/en/zen/67.jpghttp://magiccards.info/scans/en/cfx/113.jpg
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/tp/340.jpg

Oh I don't know...

Yea, cos that really stopps a 2 colored deck to reach 5 mana?
Counters are never a reason to not to play a card.

But I see the japanese legacy scene isnt afraid of playing diffrent cards. In their mains or boards. Seen Gideons in the UW-blade decks boards.

[DragoFireheart]

Come on IBA:
The way you talk about mother is pretty embarrassing for you. Also your disrespectful way of talking about other people's opinion is not welcome!!!

Look at the DTB and which one the DTB had the highest relevance (TCdecks weights the top finishes depending on the number of players in the tournament). Maverick is always on top, because it is a very very good deck that beats blue. Mother plays a major role in that sucess and you can be sure that scryb ranger would not see play if it would not have knight AND primarily mother as targets.

Keep in mind this is the same IBA that thinks Mefolk decks without Brainstorm are bad even though only about 30 Merfolk decks in four years even attempted to use Brainstorm. Dig into older posts and you'll see him dissing the validity of using JTMS when it was first printed. This is also the same IBA that claimed that Batterskull would either not see play or see fringe play. IBA is not always good at judging cards and has a history of such. Take his opinions on how good cards are with a grain of salt.

In fact, it seems that IBA opinions on newly discussed cards or decks seems to be the opposite of what he claims. If he claims a card is bad, it's likely good. If he claims that X deck is too strong, it probably isn't. If he thinks brainstorm is too powerful, he's likely wrong.



Yea, cos that really stopps a 2 colored deck to reach 5 mana?
Counters are never a reason to not to play a card.

But I see the japanese legacy scene isnt afraid of playing diffrent cards. In their mains or boards. Seen Gideons in the UW-blade decks boards.

Just because it's seen a handful of play time doesn't make it viable. Having a fringe card pop up here or there is nice and all, but when you compare it to what could be in it's place, you realize that people are using fringe cards like Gideon as "super secret tech". It may work once or twice, but once people catch on you'll clearly see how bad the card is when anticipated.

[Rizso]

The card is really punishing against creature decks, combined with other walkers like jace or elspeth its very hard for a deck that swings to win to beat. Probly there in the boards as an additional tool with Wrath of God. Also seen from TC decks that they are showed up in the maind deck of a couple UW decks maindeck. Awesome Metagame card.

Alot of cards at 4, 5 and 6 cc is untapped for testing outside of combo decks.

[DragoFireheart]

The card is really punishing against creature decks, combined with other walkers like jace or elspeth its very hard for a deck that swings to win to beat. Probly there in the boards as an additional tool with Wrath of God. Also seen from TC decks that they are showed up in the maind deck of a couple UW decks maindeck. Awesome Metagame card.

Alot of cards at 4, 5 and 6 cc is untapped for testing outside of combo decks.

At 5 mana Gideon simply isn't powerful enough.

[Rizso]

At 5 mana Gideon simply isn't powerful enough.

Gideon is what I would cast for 5 mana outside of combo decks, thats for sure. Jace proof, protects jace / liliana / elspeth, fast clock, resilient and can create card advantech as well as forcing opponents to throw away their utilitie creatures by running into stronger blockers. Anyway if playing with brainstorm its very much possible to shuffle it away when the matchup isnt allowing it to get to 5-6 mana or just having it in the board against decks that relies very much on creatures to win.

Theorizing here ofc, I can easy see it as a singleton in main / board.

I know its far from the same format but Gideon sees loads of play in modern where zoos are running wild and turn 4 and turn 5 combo decks.

[SpeakingofJager]

Shouldn't Imperial Recruiter be considered at the very least a fringe red card? It can let you do some silly things.

[Kich867]

Gideon is what I would cast for 5 mana outside of combo decks, thats for sure. Jace proof, protects jace / liliana / elspeth, fast clock, resilient and can create card advantech as well as forcing opponents to throw away their utilitie creatures by running into stronger blockers. Anyway if playing with brainstorm its very much possible to shuffle it away when the matchup isnt allowing it to get to 5-6 mana or just having it in the board against decks that relies very much on creatures to win.

Theorizing here ofc, I can easy see it as a singleton in main / board.

I know its far from the same format but Gideon sees loads of play in modern where zoos are running wild and turn 4 and turn 5 combo decks.

The alternative is just not..spending..5 mana on anything. There's no 5 mana slot that needs serious filling here.

[Rizso]

The alternative is just not..spending..5 mana on anything. There's no 5 mana slot that needs serious filling here.


Its not that it needs to be filled, its more that 4+ cc spells / creatures are overlooked. All spells at 4 and above has to turn a game pretty much instantly if not winning direcly.
Gideon is one of them just like Jace, Elspeth. 1 mana is noticeable but for creatures he is one of the toughest planeswalker to take down. Decks that would use a 5 dropp wouldnt go for 20 lands where 8-12 of thoes are fetchlands.

I dont know how much you have experianced him in other formats.

[Goin Aggro]

Its not that it needs to be filled, its more that 4+ cc spells / creatures are overlooked. All spells at 4 and above has to turn a game pretty much instantly if not winning direcly.
Gideon is one of them just like Jace, Elspeth. 1 mana is noticeable but for creatures he is one of the toughest planeswalker to take down. Decks that would use a 5 dropp wouldnt go for 20 lands where 8-12 of thoes are fetchlands.

I dont know how much you have experianced him in other formats.

Yes, Gideon is tough to take down, but at 5 mana, I want a card that is going to turn every single match that I play it in into a game that cannot be lost. Gideon doesn't do that. The reason that cards over four mana are often overlooked is that with cards such as Daze, Force, and Wasteland everywhere, you just can't count on getting there with those cards.

At four mana, Jace and Elspeth are relevant in pretty much every matchup. Jace gives you incredible card advantage/selection, can stop creatures, and if need be, wins you the game.

Elspeth stalls the board against aggressive decks, provides extra punch immediately if needed for racing, and can create unwinnable situations for opponents.

Gideon comes down one turn later than both of them, and derps around if they're not on creature based aggro. and TBH, most creature based aggro decks can deal with him.

By T5, the Goblins matchup is either won or lost. He's not going to affect it at all.

Same with 'folk. Except that he'll probably catch a counterspell on the way down as well.

T5 is Zoo's slow kill turn.

Maverick? Mangara says Hi and Bye.

That, and probably less than 40% of the current meta is creature based aggro. Why play a card that's dead against matchups like storm, tide, tempo, dredge, reanimator, and Stoneblade?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm pretty busy at the moment, and unlike many other people, sadly, I try not to post when I don't actually have the time and wherewithall to bring something to the discussion and support it with facts and sound arguments.

Since this thread is getting shitted up pretty bad, however, I'll just make a few quick notes:

Finn: Stop hiding behind, "I live in the middle of nowhere." A) Your fans don't and they've been scrubbing with your deck for quite a while, and B) It kind of defeats the purpose of talking about that one time you almost almost top 8'd a 120 man tournament when you're admitting the scene sucks in your area.

D&T is not underplayed, it's just been played and consistently underperformed. I think this is the consensus of the overwhelming majority of people not named Finn who have tested the deck and against the deck and run into it at tournaments.

As such the argument that D&T proves how powerful Mother of Runes is kind of fails. I don't see any reason to call it a Tier 1 card.


Keep in mind this is the same IBA that thinks Mefolk decks without Brainstorm are bad even though only about 30 Merfolk decks in four years even attempted to use Brainstorm.

This isn't an argument.

Look, people, this isn't complicated. A deck being played doesn't mean it's good, a deck performing well relative to its numbers means its good. A deck performing well relative to its numbers even when the metagame expects it means its very very good and gets into the territory of when we start questioning if things are too good.


Dig into older posts and you'll see him dissing the validity of using JTMS when it was first printed. This is also the same IBA that claimed that Batterskull would either not see play or see fringe play. IBA is not always good at judging cards and has a history of such. Take his opinions on how good cards are with a grain of salt.

In fact, it seems that IBA opinions on newly discussed cards or decks seems to be the opposite of what he claims. If he claims a card is bad, it's likely good. If he claims that X deck is too strong, it probably isn't. If he thinks brainstorm is too powerful, he's likely wrong.

Cards I predicted would be very strong in Legacy long before they were the consensus would include Umezawa's Jitte (bought my foil ones for $3), Dark Confidant, Flash, Tarmogoyf, and Mental Misstep.

Generally I'm conservative in estimating new cards, however. This is in part because the tendency is for people to shit themselves over every new thing that comes down the pike.

Jace is a case where I seriously underestimated a card, although it didn't actually see that much play until the format slowed down a bit from where it had been at the time. In fact, during the first three months of its existence, it only top 8'd in three decks out of four Legacy opens; 2 in that same unusually small Orlando tournament Finn almost top 8'd at, and once at Richmond in, irony of ironies, Merfolk.

Planeswalkers in particular I generally underestimated for the first couple years of their existence, especially in non-control decks.

Batterskull still has every weakness I pointed out at first; it's a very slow card most of the time, against any deck packing any kind of removal. In a creature heavy deck, more aggressive and more mana-light such as had been running SFMs prior to the printing of Batterskull and the only kind of deck anyone discussed running it in, it's not in fact very good against anything but Merfolk, and somewhat defeats the purpose of equipment generally, which had been to weaken removal.

Where Batterskull did pick up in Legacy a bit was in a U/W control shell, and when that deck was developed I immediately conceded that I hadn't really considered using the combo as a sort of new Exalted Angel in those decks, one with more Wrath and StP resilience. And there I think it still has some potential, although again, if one is not flailingly incompetent and looks at actual performance relative to numbers, Batterskull does not do very well. That's not to say that it can't do well; but if it does rise to the top it will do so on the basis of its ability to play defense and groundstall in control, and based on the strength, largely, of its return-to-hand ability.

Regardless, it's obviously specious to use two examples, one of which just isn't very good, for your theory. I mean I, by contrast, actually went and put together the data showing that no, in fact Brainstorm is really goddamn good and has been for quite some time, not just in its numbers but in its relative performance.

At any rate, as someone who actually contributes to the discussion I really don't feel that I have to put up with the bullshit of some kid who can't string together even the semblance of a coherent argument and who thinks Invisible Stalker and Leyline of Anticipation are Legacy cards.

Oh, also, speaking of digging through peoples' posts;


I agree with this 100%. However, is it good for the format to depend on counter magic to stop combo?

I've seen a few Vintage deck lists and almost 90% of them have: power nine, FoW, brainstorm and then their little combo.

I just don't want to see Legacy end up on the same path as Vintage is.

[damionblackgear]

This had a good concept when it started. It's turned onto a opinion bashing thread. That's too bad. PS. Motherbis a tier 2 card. She's a serious threat in the decks that she goes into (which there are more than just Death & Taxes) but, she requires a reason to be good. Knight is a good example of a tier 1 card as when it was realized how powerful knight was on her own, decks like aggro-loam shifted their manabase to alllow room for her.

Sent from my phone, may clean this up later since editing is a pain. May also go looking for that clapping GIF to post with this for iba's response. That was awesome.

[Rizso]

Yes, Gideon is tough to take down, but at 5 mana, I want a card that is going to turn every single match that I play it in into a game that cannot be lost. Gideon doesn't do that. The reason that cards over four mana are often overlooked is that with cards such as Daze, Force, and Wasteland everywhere, you just can't count on getting there with those cards.

At four mana, Jace and Elspeth are relevant in pretty much every matchup. Jace gives you incredible card advantage/selection, can stop creatures, and if need be, wins you the game.

Elspeth stalls the board against aggressive decks, provides extra punch immediately if needed for racing, and can create unwinnable situations for opponents.

Gideon comes down one turn later than both of them, and derps around if they're not on creature based aggro. and TBH, most creature based aggro decks can deal with him.

By T5, the Goblins matchup is either won or lost. He's not going to affect it at all.

Same with 'folk. Except that he'll probably catch a counterspell on the way down as well.

T5 is Zoo's slow kill turn.

Maverick? Mangara says Hi and Bye.

That, and probably less than 40% of the current meta is creature based aggro. Why play a card that's dead against matchups like storm, tide, tempo, dredge, reanimator, and Stoneblade?

None of thoes aggro decks will kill you by turn 5, they might goldfish that turn but after removal, combat trades and counters its probly turn 10 or so if not more.

What Gideon will do against aggro decks is come down kill your strongest tapped guy or force you into attacking unfavorble then pick of creatures or start the fast clock.

Dont know what kind of merfolk or goblin decks you are facing but thoes decks arent really fast decks. Only time goblins are fast is when they are able to connect a Lackey wich shouldnt happend durring the early turns.

Daze and force of will arent card that hinders playing a card in your deck, both are very much possible to play arround.

Mother of Runes is a nice card, A tier 2 card but not a tier 1. Its not a card you splash white for. She gets inf better when she got a purpose, protecting equiped creaturers, protecting knights and able to use multiple påer turn with Rangers.

[DragoFireheart]

This isn't an argument.

Look, people, this isn't complicated. A deck being played doesn't mean it's good, a deck performing well relative to its numbers means its good. A deck performing well relative to its numbers even when the metagame expects it means its very very good and gets into the territory of when we start questioning if things are too good.


-First of all, it is an argument. You are bad at judging decks. Evidence of this is based on that quote you made and your argument with Finn. Goodstuff decks? Yeah, you seem fine in judging the value of cards. Non-goodstuff decks? Not so good.

Relative to it's numbers, Merfolk with brainstorm is bad. Period. If that wasn't the case, the numbers would show it performing much better relative to the arch-type as a whole.



Regardless, it's obviously specious to use two examples, one of which just isn't very good, for your theory. I mean I, by contrast, actually went and put together the data showing that no, in fact Brainstorm is really goddamn good and has been for quite some time, not just in its numbers but in its relative performance.

- ...After the printing of snappy and Delver. You always fail to mention those two cards. It seems to me you pretend that brainstorm magically got better because "blue is good". I feel as though you are avoiding the issue: Delver and Snappy made blue decks good, not Brainstorm. Brainstorm is played more simply because it's a staple in blue and more people are playing with Snappy and Delver. If those two blue creatures were not printed, you'd see pre-MMS era levels of Brainstorm being played.




At any rate, as someone who actually contributes to the discussion I really don't feel that I have to put up with the bullshit of some kid who can't string together even the semblance of a coherent argument and who thinks Invisible Stalker and Leyline of Anticipation are Legacy cards.

-First, thank you for admitting that you have no serious arguments beyond insults (much like your previous insult of "hit my own privates") and that you concede in defeat. Ironic considering you are calling me a kid, :laugh:.

- Second, please find the quote where I said "Invisible Stalker and Leyline of Anticipation are Legacy cards". I have mentioned them in the past, but I never claimed they were "Legacy cards". Merely made suggestions in using them. You know, discussing fringe cards that could have application? That thing people do to make new decks or modify existing ones? Surely you know that!



Oh, also, speaking of digging through peoples' posts;

- I'll give you a real response to that quote when you stop hitting around the bush and make your point. I'm not going to guess what is on your mind.

[snappingbowls | ಠ_ಠ]

what is this thread about? I was lurking pretty closely and it kind of fell apart in the last few pages...

Infamous Bear Assassin, I think this was a cool initiative and is a strong compilation of legacy playables. I love playing goodstuff decks and 3 color decks, it's part of what distinguishes legacy from other formats!

[Zilla]

Enough of this shit. This is a good thread, so let's get things back on track. Further bickering about Mother of Runes or Brainstorm will be moderated with extreme prejudice.

[nedleeds]

3 City of Brass
3 Karplusan Forest
1 Lava Tubes
2 Mishra's Factory
2 Sulfurous Springs
12 Swamp
23 lands

4 Erhnam Djinn
4 Hypnotic Specter
1 Ihsan's Shade
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
2 Sengir Vampire
19 creatures

2 Barbed Sextant
4 Dark Ritual
3 Fireball
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Zuran Orb

I agree. Check out what an old good stuff deck looks like. Some of the principles still apply today. Undercosted dudes (for the time they were) backed with burn or discard.

[Gui]

My 2 cents about Mother of Runes is that it doesn't matter if it's amazing in Maverick or not, this is a question for the Maverick Thread. In Goodstuff.dec, only Maverick uses her in a regular basis, so she's not a tier card for that purpose. If you are playing Bant or Junk, she's tier 2 tops, in my view. I'd keep her there. She's a situational card, not a must-play-if-in-that-color card.

[MUCGuy]

Building good stuff decks involves looking at each card in a vacuum. Even to the point of vacuuming out the other cards to include.

Vacuum limits include color cost. That's why we generally see the three color mentality. Rather than just pick the cards you want to play (as seen in YuGiOh!).

Taking the first two points into account it's easy to see why the only tier 0 cards listed, help a mage achieve color costs. Force of Will is a stretch here, I know, but lets say it buys time to play more land, as well as counters some land destruction.

Now lets say we build a deck that includes all the tier 0 cards, and leans towards a controlling style. If we pick up a few of the lesser tiers that achieve the same goals as tier 0 we might say we can move into 4 colors.

These lesser tier 0 cards include:
Ponder
Daze (Stretch like FoW)
Dark Confidant (Helps find land)
Noble Hierarch
Green Sun's Zenith (looking for mana producing creatures, as well as reducing color req' all together)
Sylvan Library
Sensei's Diving Top
Mox Diamond
Chrome Mox
Aether Vial
Horizon Canopy
Knight of the Reliquary

Taking the OP's color power picks into account it's probably safe to assume the best four color combo is White, Green, Blue, Black.

Now to define vacuum, it's basically taking everything into account in general, which seems counter intuitive. But for the most part it is about overlooking specific interaction. Take a small step away from a vacuum and cards can be classified a little more than just as good or not.

I'll make two very general classifications, that all cards can be fit into. A card can be an enabler or a disabler, as well as mix of the two.

A good goodstuff.dec strikes a balance between enablers and disablers, without actually thinking about what decks you're going to face.

Knight of the Reliquary has elements of both, it can reduce the opponent's life, attack/block and destroy his creatures, or destroy his Plains walkers. The Knight can also enable you with a variety of land options. Dark Confidant also has elements of both. In fact many of the best cards have the highest marks in both classes.

Striking this balance of enable and disable is where a player's individual style is shown, as there are many different paths to disabling an opponent just as many to enabling oneself. Especially when you take into account that a disabling maneuver could in some cases be seen as an enabling maneuver and vice versa.

The four color approach I've outlined above would maximize a player's ability to stylize his/her creation, while still remaining strong overall.