Format speed

[ktkenshinx]

I was having a discussion with some other Magic players and we were wondering what the format's speed is these days. Of course, there is this persistent myth that Legacy is a turn 1 or 0 format full of outrageous combos, and we all know that's not quite true. But with the advent of TNN and the metagame changes that came after he entered, I'm no longer sure what the format's speed is.

What is the "average" turn on which some key decks are winning?
How long do matchups between the different tier 1 decks last?
For those with tournament experience, how long are rounds lasting at big events?

I'm sure there are a bunch of other points related to format speed that we could discuss, but those are my big questions for now.

Thanks!

[Koby]

Legacy certainly has its share of Turn 1 decks, but these are largely fringe players outside of Belcher. A better discussion might revolve around a concept called the Fundamental Turn (article by Zvi) (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/3688_Clear-The-Land-And-The-Fundamental-Turn.html). Basically, when does the deck "click into action"?

I posit that most of Legacy's fair decks operate with a FT of 3. Compare this with the forced FT of 4 in Modern (or at least as told by R&D).

[Tea]

Among the most explosives starts are:

T1: Deathrite Shaman, T2: Lilliana with Daze/Force backup, possibly Wasteland
T1: Delver, T2: Tarmogoyf, Daze/Force backup
T1: Duress, comboing off on Turn 3
Can your deck compete with these plays?

[Megadeus]

Among the most explosives starts are:

T1: Deathrite Shaman, T2: Lilliana with Daze/Force backup, possibly Wasteland
T1: Delver, T2: Tarmogoyf, Daze/Force backup
T1: Duress, comboing off on Turn 3
Can your deck compete with these plays?

To be fair, sometimes no deck can keep up with a god hand.

[Tammit67]

To be fair, sometimes no deck can keep up with a god hand.

While you have a point, those starts are the litmus test of the format, just like in Legacy of old T1: Goblin lackey, go was the hallmark.

[Finn]

Compete? Sure
T1 Plains, Vial
T2 Port or Wsateland, Thalia

Versions of this win games before they start. Going first is everything in Legacy.

[Barook]

Going first is everything in Legacy.
This

It's pretty ridiculous how certain matches are pretty much decided with the dice roll.

[Dice_Box]

Unless your Manaless.

Almost all decks have ideal opening plays. Goblins Fish and DnT all want Vial (Or Mother), Ant wants a good setup play, Dredge want's LED and Faithless, Rock wants discard and a clock. The question is what happens when you do not have ideal hands? I think then, outside of combo, its safe to say you can pick what direction the game is going at turn 3. as a rule, Legacy is a turn 3 format. Most decks know what their plan is on turn 3, are moving toward it and have seen enough cards from the top of there deck to start the wheels in motion. While they may not have won the game, at this point about 60% of the time you can look and tell what the likely outcome is. Throw fast combo in and then the numbers become a bit harder to pin down.

Add in control though and you really muddy the waters. Add in Control with a Combo finish and well, fun is insured. In these situations you have to weigh up the decks that are being played. I would say against control, how you play your deck matters more than any turn picked out at random.

There are turn one decks in Legacy, but the term "Glass Cannon" is used for a reason. These are decks that are really quite simple to interact with and I think that people who play formats without cards like Force, Daze and Wasteland may not see how simple they are to stop. Then they mistaken the decks as the norm as they are not use to playing with the tools that disrupt the fast combo's they see.

[Mr Miagi]

There is a world of difference if I start first as Dragon Stompy or second :wink:

[twndomn]

Modern combos: turn 4 on average, turn 3 sometimes. If turn 3 or lower is the average, Wizard will just ban it.

Legacy combos (fastest):

turn 1:
belcher
tin-fin (griselbrand storm)
oops-all spell
storm (TES and ANT) variants
(omit show and tell decks because the unlikelihood of hands)

turn 2:
show and tell variants
doomsday

later turns:
alluren, dredge, high tide

in-deterministic:
elves
dredge
stompy

[Higgs]

there is this persistent myth that Legacy is a turn 1 or 0 format full of outrageous combos

Holy shit, when did Legacy become so old that it started replacing Vintage in people's presumptions for an archaic, degenerate format? Btw have these mythsters heard of this other combo called Counter-Top?

[rxavage]

Holy shit, when did Legacy become so old that it started replacing Vintage in people's presumptions for an archaic, degenerate format? Btw have these mythsters heard of this other combo called Counter-Top?

Is that the unanswerable turn 2 combo that completely locks you out of the game by countering all your spells and drags the first game out for the entirety of the round resulting in you losing or a draw while never ever getting to resolve a single spell or make a land drop?

[FTW]

Modern combos: turn 4 on average, turn 3 sometimes. If turn 3 or lower is the average, Wizard will just ban it.

Legacy combos (fastest):

turn 1:
belcher
tin-fin (griselbrand storm)
oops-all spell
storm (TES and ANT) variants
(omit show and tell decks because the unlikelihood of hands)

turn 2:
show and tell variants
doomsday

later turns:
alluren, dredge, high tide

in-deterministic:
elves
dredge
stompy

TES/ANT are not turn 1 decks anymore than SnT. Any deck with 12-ish cantrips and protection is not designed to be a turn 1 deck. Sure, you get those double Dark Ritual Ad Nauseam openers. But they're no more likely than Ancient Tomb + Lotus Petal -> Show and Tell. "turn 1" decks are generally glass cannons, even if some of the more resilient decks can theoretically pull turn 1 wins. For the OP and anyone newer to Legacy (i.e. anyone who characterizes Legacy as we would characterize Vintage), I think it's better to break them into the following categories.


A. Glass cannon "turn 1" decks: (can win turn 1. runs little-to-no protection or card control. aims to get lucky, win die roll and win immediately. beat by running Island)
Belcher
Spanish Inquisition
Cheerios
Oops All Spells
Tin Fins


B. Cantrip+Protect+combo "turn 2" decks: (can win turn 1 if exceptionally lucky but primary plan is to sculpt a good hand with cantrips and then go off with protection)
ANT
TES
Doomsday
SneakShow
OmniTell
Reanimator
Spiral Tide/Solidarity (sort-of... same gameplan but a turn 3-4 deck since dependent on land drops)


C. Creature-based combo: (involve playing a bunch of creatures. critical turn varies. plan A combo vulnerable to creature removal but has strong plan B of just going beatdown with dorks)
Elves
Aluren
Food Chain-Griffin
Painter's Stone


D. "Is this guy even playing Magic???":
Dredge

[joretapo]

If you are talking about the turn in which you can die all the answers about god hands are right but in my opinion it is more relevant to talk about the fundamental turn which is when a deck s strategy comes online as stated by the first answer to your question.

[Tylert]

WHat's the critical turn for dredge?
I faced it several times in my last tournaments, and usually, I could say they have won by turn 2 (even if they were not comboing off this turn), and sometimes turn 1.

[Megadeus]

WHat's the critical turn for dredge?
I faced it several times in my last tournaments, and usually, I could say they have won by turn 2 (even if they were not comboing off this turn), and sometimes turn 1.

Turn 2 is farily critical. T1 they have to have a REAL nutty hand. But generally turn 2-3 is when they really start doing this unimpeded.

[Lemnear]

Turn 2 is farily critical. T1 they have to have a REAL nutty hand. But generally turn 2-3 is when they really start doing this unimpeded.

This is overly dependant of which build we speak. LED Dredge is easily more than a turn faster than manaless

[Megadeus]

This is overly dependant of which build we speak. LED Dredge is easily more than a turn faster than manaless

Right, but they aren't generally winning on T1

[Lemnear]

Right, but they aren't generally winning on T1

I have never seen Manaless winning turn 1, so I guess my point wasn't off ;P

[Bed Decks Palyer]

If you are talking about the turn in which you can die all the answers about god hands are right but in my opinion it is more relevant to talk about the fundamental turn which is when a deck s strategy comes online as stated by the first answer to your question.

Just a small sidenote: while Legacy definitely isn't "herp derp turn1 kill" as outlanders think, the fundamental turn is somewhere around turn 2-3 which is quite fast. Otoh, I remember the times when this could be said about our casual metagame, where "turn1 Elf, turn2 Stone Rain, turn3 Pillage" meant gg quite often.

[PirateKing]

Game speed is difficult to nail down conclusively, but game play speed is easy. All tournaments are 50 minutes per match, and at large tournaments there are always 1 or 2 games that go to time. Very rarely has match pairings been posted less than an hour apart at large events.

[Asthereal]

The fundamental turn for Legacy in general is turn 2. At least that's what I think.
If your opening hand has no turn one play, you might still keep it.
If your opening hand cannot do anything for the first two turns, you have to take a mulligan.

Fair decks assemble a nearly unbeatable board position if you let them go unchallenged for two turns.
Unfair decks either win on turn 1-2, or they take their time to assemble a hand with a lot of protection.
You cannot afford to do nothing at all for the first two turns, or you should normally just lose.

[FTW]

There is a world of difference if I start first as Dragon Stompy or second :wink:

This. A few years ago a friend and I were testing Dragon Stompy for an event. I wasn't familiar with it then so I asked him what I should practice most to get a good feel for how to handle its matchups. His answer? "Rolling the die".

I could buy a turn 2 critical turn. Legacy's best creatures are 2-drops and 1-drops. Legacy's best lock pieces are set up to come online on turn 1 or turn 2 (there's a reason noone played nonlegendary Glowrider in D&T). Legacy's best disruptive spells are all playable in the first 2 turns (O Blightning, where art thou?). By turn 2 aggro-control strategies have typically decided whether they're the aggressor or the control in the matchup, white decks have decided what they're Stoneforging for, prison decks have established a major lock piece, Enchantress has played at least 1 draw engine or Elephant Grass, Dredge decks have had their first dredge. By turn 2, combo decks have usually cantripped enough to decide which angle they're going for and whether they're going for it right away or going to sculpt to beat disruption, even if they haven't found the cards yet. Although many decks have not established control by then, you should know what kind of hand and gameplan you're on. Aggro decks need to be able to present some kind of threat before turn 3 (simplest example is Goblins with a high curve... you don't keep a hand where your first play is Matron...). There are some decks like Solidarity and Aluren that don't get their gears turning until at least a full turn later, so maybe turn 2-3 is more accurate. But I could buy that turn 2 is critical for a lot of decks.

[Barook]

I would say that T2 is the critical turn in Legacy because it decides whether or not you can get disruption like Hymn, Thalia, RiP, etc online.

That's also the reason why many games are already decided by the dice roll because it's decided who gets to establish the hate or remove the hate/win the game before it gets online.

[MrShine]

Also going to have to agree with Turn 2.

All the playable hand disruption is CMC1, 2 tops (Hymn); Hatebears are only good at CMC2 (or less... cough*DRS*cough); Wasteland/Stifle/Daze are all fully active [still]; Delver flips & attacks; Sol land + other land is available... If you don't have an answer to combo by your T2 chances are you're not going to win that game. The value of mana denial drops significantly after the first couple of turns. Similarly, if you can stay at (at least) 2 mana, you'll tend to have a fighting chance, regardless how long it goes.

This is probably why winning the Die roll is so important; you get to disrupt/sculpt + launch your T2 [Fundamental turn] before they do.

[FTW]

If the format now has a fundamental turn of turn 2 (and arguably can present threats much faster than it could 5 years ago), could Survival be unbanned?

[canofworms]

[Asthereal]

Survival can be unbanned anytime you want. It warped the format in the US far more than in Europe, and we never got the chance to adapt before it got the axe.

[SaberTooth]

idk, to me legacy is a turn 3 format, obviously belcher can go off turn 1, but turn 2 seems a little fast to my experience

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

idk, to me legacy is a turn 3 format, obviously belcher can go off turn 1, but turn 2 seems a little fast to my experience
I'd also place the fundamental turn somewhere around turn 3, maybe fractionally lower. That's when Nemesis is cast, Batterskull is deployed, Miracles can untap with countertop and you can expect the resilient yet fast combo decks to go off. That's also supported by 1 and 2 mana disruption being run. Your disruption has to be online before the fundamental turn as its whole point is to push the opponent's fundamental turn back meaning it hitting later is kind of pointless.

I've explored the speed of some of the combo-decks here for those interested: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/27202-Eternal-Europe-The-Combo-Continuum.html