A Net-Decker’s Paradise, or Why Not to Go Rogue in Legacy

[metamet]

A Net-Decker’s Paradise, or Why Not to Go Rogue in Legacy (http://www.quietspeculation.com/2012/09/a-net-deckers-paradise-or-why-not-to-go-rogue-in-legacy/)

What do you think of Ryan's assessment of the format? I can see how rogue strategies may not be as valuable in such a wide format when compared to others with fewer archetypes.

[Chikenbok]

"One of the arguments for going rogue is that your opponents will have no idea how to play against your deck. The thing about Legacy, though, is that very few people have much of any idea what they’re doing in the first place."

And then I stopped. You can't write an article about competitive legacy play under the pretense that competitive legacy players aren't aware of what they're doing.

Yes, many people who play legacy are unaware of certain interactions etc, etc, etc yet to have an article that is *against* rogue strategies exclaiming that people don't know what they're playing is, well, kind of silly.

Seems as though the article is reading something like this, for anyone who doesn't want to spend time reading it:

"Legacy players don't understand how to play legacy, I however, am better than them and therefore can do things that they cannot."

[Koby]

"Legacy players don't understand how to play legacy, I however, am better than them and therefore can do things that they cannot."

That's how I read this article, and the past article, and the article prior to that as well.

Broverturf might have some good ideas. But it's hard to separate them from the overly arrogant tone his article series take.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Dumb article. Author doesn't know what he's talking about, but tries to play it off like he does by being over aggressive.

[Amon Amarth]

It's pretty bad. He makes a bunch of arguments that aren't even relevant. No thanks.

[Squirrel]

Don't like the article, playing rogue decks as often as i can, because its nice to win because you have cards in your deck that are good in your metagame.

Was sulfur elemental a rogue part of the sideboard?

I wonder, which line has a deck to pass to be rogue?

[Mewens]

I once read an article by Sirlin regarding one of the Marvel v. Capcom titles. It was about how some strategies -- in the case of a fighting game, that typically means characters -- are inherently better than others; the upshot was that players ought to concentrate on those better strats because it's better to be amazing with an amazing strat than amazing with a subpar one.

But then he talks about how he revisited a "bad" char (Megaman, if I recall) and discovered that some facet of that character's style opened up new understandings about the game for him. In other words, there's value in approaching a system from new angles. Even if the time spent is "wasted" in that it doesn't result in a top-tier character (or Magic deck, etc.), it can provide insights into the game.

On the other hand, I wonder how the author of this article thinks the established decktypes came about? Mav wasn't a thing just a few years ago; it's not like G/W aggro has a long and storied history in Legacy. Someone had to sleeve up Hierarchs and KotRs and Teegs and go at it; he's right that Mav has benefited from thousands of hours of intense scrutiny and think-tanking, but it started out as a bunch of dudes in a "bad" color combination. Hell, I remember an article posted here on the Source about this hot new deck that used Quirion Dryads, Werebears and Nimble Mongoose with Force of Will and Brainstorm -- and oddly enough, Threshold hasn't changed much (other than obvious tradeouts and upgrades) since that initial list was made.

Edits: I'm bad at writing

[Aggro_zombies]

I feel like there might be a valid argument against trying to go with a rogue deck in Legacy, but this really isn't it.

I kind of agree that a lot of players in round one of a generic large Legacy event will be operating on outdated or completely off-base assumptions about the format, but that's sort of irrelevant to this argument. You don't gain or lose anything by mashing a rogue deck against a homebrew relative to mashing a Tier One deck against a homebrew when facing randoms. If your deck is good enough (or you're good enough), then being a rogue deck will still provide an advantage when you get to the top tables. This is particularly true of the Tier 1.5 decks that may be worse against a random field but are better against certain kinds of top-table metagames.

What he should have done is harp on this angle:

I can’t even being to imagine how many hours must have gone into coming up with working lists for TES and ANT. The simple fact of the matter is that actually building a rogue deck is going to be a lot more work than picking up an existing archetype.
...which I think is true, since your options are to either sink X amount of time into mastering an existing deck or X amount of time into making a new one; the first has some level of guaranteed returns, while the second doesn't. But this is true in basically every format.

[rxavage]

Snide article comes across as a personal attack on someone or a self conscious justification.

[CorpT]

Lands is a rogue deck?

[Koby]

This statement, from his previous article, describes Overturf's attitude succinctly:


The moral of the story, kids, is that everybody should just play RUG Delver.

I don't think this format need another cheerleader for the deck. It's got plenty with a much friendlier attitude.

[Awaclus]

A successful rogue deck is always better than a widely known deck, no matter what format you're playing. The fact that less people know about your tech is an advantage; if a lot of players are bad and you win them anyway, there are still the few good players who haven't heard of your rogue deck.

Building a rogue deck in Legacy isn't, however, a very good idea, because Legacy doesn't rotate. The same cards have been around for ages, and every interaction has been already tried out by someone. Going rogue will be worth your time only when new cards get printed, and only if you're good at it or just enjoy playing your own decks and don't care about success in tourneys.

[Amon Amarth]

Lands is a rogue deck?

One of the major problems with the article, other than it just not being good, is that he fails to clarify what he means by rogue strategies. The term is rather nebulous and especially with an audience that probably consists of quite a few Legacy neophytes, clarity would have helpful or probably, required. Is RUG Delver the only tier 1 and everything else bad rogue decks? After reading his articles you'd probably come to that conclusion. Even just basing it off of The Sources Established, DTB and N&D forums would have been a big step up.

[Jenni]

Really.. his best argument for not going rogue, apparently, is that your opponents are all going to be too dumb to play well against you in the first place?
Sure, a lot of people don't know how to play against every single deck, because there are so many decks around, and the metagame shifts so often that it's not unreasonable for someone to never sit across the table from an opponent playing, say, the legacy MUD deck.
Most (decent) players, though, will learn from their experiences - if the esper stoneforge mystic deck is the most common deck in the metagame you play in, you learn how to play against it, you learn how to sideboard against it, you learn what hands are keep-able, what spells you need to counter, etc.
If RUG is the most common deck, then people will learn how to play against it. Depending on your opponent to be ignorant of a very popular deck is really foolish. Even with a rogue deck, depending on your opponent to play poorly is pretty sketchy.

I play a lot of odd/home-made decks, some work, some don't, it's just a lot more fun for me to play around with different ideas.
Most of the time, though, I don't recommend going rogue to other people, because many of the established decks have literally thousands of hours behind them and countless games, so usually you're going to get better results using an established deck,chosen for, and then tweaked as needed for the expected metagame. You get to piggyback on the countless games and hours other people spent making the deck better, and can spend all the time you would spend brewing and tweaking, and scrapping bad ideas, and starting over from scratch, to learn how to play the deck more effectively.

[nedleeds]

You can't write an article about competitive legacy play under the pretense that competitive legacy players aren't aware of what they're doing.


He can write whatever he wants. He's also correct, all you have to do is go to a legacy GP or SCG and watch the converted standard players stumble through their legacy decks they copied off the internet the week before. The play is hideous ... far worse than my local weekly legacy.

[CorpT]

He can write whatever he wants. He's also correct, all you have to do is go to a legacy GP or SCG and watch the converted standard players stumble through their legacy decks they copied off the internet the week before. The play is hideous ... far worse than my local weekly legacy.

But shouldn't you be beating them with whatever? I've always taken the philosophy of preparing to beat the better players/decks and take wins from bad players/decks. I don't build a deck with the intention of beating scrubs.

[Finn]

I think that it is a fine idea for an article, and he certainly does have a valid perspective there. Furthermore, I think that his writing style flows well. I really did not take offense to his nose in the air either. He even does a good job of blunting the kinds or responses we are seeing in this thread with provisos and clarifications of his respect for rogues.

But I always take a dim view of anyone who sings the praises of the deck du jour while recommending people not bother looking for a new angle. Legacy is the land of new meets old. Trying out old cards in new ways is what made decks like Nic Fit, Lands, all the Stompies, Dreadstill, and so many others possible. I see this a lot from people who primarily play the game to win tournaments, and not for the creative process that belies the decks they are using to win with. It happens a lot from people who don't quite have a handle on the full breadth of the card pool. Even then, he is aiming his article at people like himself, and not at oldtimers like me. So, it is not such a big deal.

I see this attitude even more from Standard converts. It is pretty impressive to see people make the conversion. It is not easy to do, so they have good reason to feel above others. It just is not a good perspective to write an article from.

[nedleeds]

But shouldn't you be beating them with whatever? I've always taken the philosophy of preparing to beat the better players/decks and take wins from bad players/decks. I don't build a deck with the intention of beating scrubs.

I took it as him saying ... playing rogue to beat legacy decks doesn't work because the main advantage of rogue (which is oppositions unfamiliarity with your strategy / endgame / synergies of your deck etc. ) is eliminated when your opponent is oblivious and is just playing the next cast-able card in hand.

Example: I'm playing my rogue'ish Birdstax deck and I'm on the play vs. some dude with U/w control miracle a few weeks back. I play a swamp, and cast Mox Diamond ... my opponent looks at his hand ... sees Force of Will, recognizes (barely) that I'm casting a spell and promptly pitches the one card I can't beat (JTMS) to counter a superfluous Mox Diamond (I had plenty of mana). He ends up winning that game anyway by sub optimally brainstorming into another Jace and preying on some rather limp drawing on my part (desperately digging for a TezzAoB).

I went rogue, the guy had no idea what was going on. Didn't know how cards worked. But was just piloting a pile of powerful cards. He was going to Force the first spell placed on the stack that he couldn't STP; whether it was Mox Diamond, Tel-Jihad Stylus or fucking Blackmail.

[CorpT]

I took it as him saying ... playing rogue to beat legacy decks doesn't work because the main advantage of rogue (which is oppositions unfamiliarity with your strategy / endgame / synergies of your deck etc. ) is eliminated when your opponent is oblivious and is just playing the next cast-able card in hand.

Example: I'm playing my rogue'ish Birdstax deck and I'm on the play vs. some dude with U/w control miracle a few weeks back. I play a swamp, and cast Mox Diamond ... my opponent looks at his hand ... sees Force of Will, recognizes (barely) that I'm casting a spell and promptly pitches the one card I can't beat (JTMS) to counter a superfluous Mox Diamond (I had plenty of mana). He ends up winning that game anyway by sub optimally brainstorming into another Jace and preying on some rather limp drawing on my part (desperately digging for a TezzAoB).

I went rogue, the guy had no idea what was going on. Didn't know how cards worked. But was just piloting a pile of powerful cards. He was going to Force the first spell placed on the stack that he couldn't STP; whether it was Mox Diamond, Tel-Jihad Stylus or fucking Blackmail.

LOL. That sounds about right.

[Aggro_zombies]

I took it as him saying ... playing rogue to beat legacy decks doesn't work because the main advantage of rogue (which is oppositions unfamiliarity with your strategy / endgame / synergies of your deck etc. ) is eliminated when your opponent is oblivious and is just playing the next cast-able card in hand.

Example: I'm playing my rogue'ish Birdstax deck and I'm on the play vs. some dude with U/w control miracle a few weeks back. I play a swamp, and cast Mox Diamond ... my opponent looks at his hand ... sees Force of Will, recognizes (barely) that I'm casting a spell and promptly pitches the one card I can't beat (JTMS) to counter a superfluous Mox Diamond (I had plenty of mana). He ends up winning that game anyway by sub optimally brainstorming into another Jace and preying on some rather limp drawing on my part (desperately digging for a TezzAoB).

I went rogue, the guy had no idea what was going on. Didn't know how cards worked. But was just piloting a pile of powerful cards. He was going to Force the first spell placed on the stack that he couldn't STP; whether it was Mox Diamond, Tel-Jihad Stylus or fucking Blackmail.
But, see, the exact same thing would have happened if you were playing RUG Delver or something. If you're playing against someone who has no idea of what's going on, every deck is essentially a "rogue" deck in the sense that your opponent may vaguely know what you're doing, in extremely general terms, but isn't prepared to play against it optimally. The only advantage to a Tier One deck in this situation is that you'll probably be playing a more inherently powerful deck, but I would argue the people who are really favored in a Clueless vs. Other Guy matchup are the people who actually know their deck, regardless of what that deck is.

The real question one should be asking is whether your deck is favored against people who are good players or who actually know what's going on - i.e., the people who tend to get to the top tables. Rogue strategies are good there. Of course, Legacy has a very, very broad Tier Two, so it's difficult to go truly rogue, but it is possible to catch people off-guard and play something against which they'll have to under-sideboard.

[wcm8]

I took it as him saying ... playing rogue to beat legacy decks doesn't work because the main advantage of rogue (which is oppositions unfamiliarity with your strategy / endgame / synergies of your deck etc. ) is eliminated when your opponent is oblivious and is just playing the next cast-able card in hand.

This, ****ing this. I've lost to some guy piloting Nic Fit like a total scrub (calling every wrong card possible with Cabal Therapy, Deeding away his own SDTs, GSZ'ing for the wrong target given the board state, etc.) simply due to the inherent power of the cards he was chucking my way.

Playing against decks like Merfolk, Burn, Sneak and Show and Dredge often feels the same way when you lose. Now, I mean no offense to players who pilot these decks with nuance and skill, but there are plenty of newer players who can pick up a netdeck-list the day of a tournament and go deep and top 8 simply on the strong-arm power level of the cards within them.

I mean, whatever. That's Magic. But as obnoxious as the author's tone is, I can sort of see what he's saying regarding rogue strategies. Of the thousands of cards printed, only a very small pool of them are legacy-viable. You might get style points for playing something off-the-wall, but just about everything that's tournament-viable has been discovered at this point.

FWIW I don't consider a deck rogue if it's playing a ton of 'tier one' cards, so calling a deck like BGW Rock rogue is pretty silly.

[Aggro_zombies]

I mean, whatever. That's Magic. But as obnoxious as the author's tone is, I can sort of see what he's saying regarding rogue strategies. Of the thousands of cards printed, only a very small pool of them are legacy-viable. You might get style points for playing something off-the-wall, but just about everything that's tournament-viable has been discovered at this point.
The problem is, the author seems to be treating as "rogue" any deck that's not part of a narrowly defined Tier One. Legacy's Tier Two is very, very broad, and you're right that it's extremely difficult to come up with something off the wall that hasn't already been developed or isn't just a slightly different version of a Tier Two deck. That said, I feel like your best bet is still to play any decently powerful deck that you know well rather than trying to jam the latest top-tier fad deck; you'll gain a lot of edge over people who are doing that and thus don't know their decks as well as you know yours.

I feel like the best argument against going Tier Two or rogue is to say that the core Tier One decks - Maverick, RUG, and Stoneblade - are Tier One because they're the best combination of raw power and being forgiving towards play mistakes. Many powerful Tier 1.5 decks, like various combo builds, Miracle control, or linears like Goblins - lack either the raw power or the ability to forgive loose play that the three top decks have. Thus, because you have limited time to master a deck, the expected returns are higher for a top-tier deck than for a Tier Two deck or for trying to develop a homebrew.

[Anusien]

I think you want to be rogue in narrow formats where peoples' decks and sideboards are tightly constrained. Legacy is almost never like this. Pretty hard for an opponent to have no relevant sideboard cards against you. Even if you're randomly, say, Salvagers combo instead of Lands or Dredge, their Surgical Extractions and Relic of Progenituses are still good against you.

[Aggro_zombies]

I think you want to be rogue in narrow formats where peoples' decks and sideboards are tightly constrained. Legacy is almost never like this. Pretty hard for an opponent to have no relevant sideboard cards against you. Even if you're randomly, say, Salvagers combo instead of Lands or Dredge, their Surgical Extractions and Relic of Progenituses are still good against you.
There are still times in Legacy where things get pretty inbred; people will be playing Tier One decks with sideboards tuned specifically to beat other Tier One decks with only minimal nods towards a broader metagame. When people assume that their main beats randoms and build their sideboards specifically to beat the top tables, a decent Tier Two deck can do well. See: Burn winning back-to-back SCGs earlier in the year despite the relative ease with which Burn can be beaten.

[joemauer]

It is kind of easy to make a rogue deck in Legacy, I don't mean Tier 1.5 or 2.

To create some deck that isn't netdecked is easy and good to do in any format. It is actually easy to do in Legacy. You can create a rogue deck in two different manners.

1- Make sure all your cards have synergy. See "We are Spartans" deck in tourney reports section. Guy just took a bunch of Legacy playable cards that had synergy and added Brainstorm and Force of Will to keep the deck fair.

2- Use new combinations of Legacy staples. There are about a dozen playable Delver type decks in Legacy and that is because Force of Will+Delver+Brainstorm+other good cards=A Good Deck.

There is Junk, Maverick, Deadguy Ale, and Eva Green which are all slight variations of each other that use the best cards in their respective colors. Maverick is obviously the strongest(at the moment) but the other decks could catch players off guard and win at any given tourney.


Also, I wonder if Broverturf realizes that even Maverick was a rogue deck once upon a time.

[Fizzeler]

Even well known decks have variants

I have had success taking a well known deck and changing what the deck did, the concepts were the same, but how the deck played was very different

There also those who see an archetype and go "I want to play that, but this way instead!" like taking BUG and adding in Shardless Agent and Baleful Strix then building off those cards to have synergy in the deck (like Ancestral Visions)

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I think the fact he doesn't really define what exactly a rogue deck is, as others have said, is what hampers the article. Is Death and Taxes a rogue deck? Blue Enchantress? Was Saito's Black splash in Merfolk rogue? Do you need to discover some new engine, synergy, or goodstuff combos to be considered a rogue?

It's most certainly true that trying to reinvent the wheel, or make some goofy stuff work isn't going to give the best return on your invested time. As neat as they are, I don't think people are going to get anywhere trying to break Arborea or finally get Tortured Existence plus Krovokian Horror to be a real deck. Most competitive constructed formats reward "tweakers", not rogues. It's people who slot in a few cards for the right metagame, who explore a splash in an existing deck, who try to take best advantage of newly released cards in an existing deck, who come up with clever sideboard plans, or who slot in some forgotten oldies to take a new meta by storm.

Trying to make your "own" competitive deck in any explored format is tough; most of the "good cards" and good synergies are already known. Often you'd just be making "Deck X, But Worse". It's a much more lucrative proposition to build off an established one.