[Article] The Meadery - Leaving Legacy for a Modern Mistress

[Dragonslayer_90]

Thoughts on the article found here: http://themeadery.org/articles/leaving-legacy-for-a-modern-mistress

I doubt I can really prevent it, but please don't let this degenerate into a discussion of banning brainstorm if at all possible. Rather I'd like people to give constructive input and/or criticism on Mr. Hoogland's opinions and also talk about comparative format philosophy in general maybe between legacy and modern.

[Pippin]

Not sure why he's ranting against Brainstorm since that's not the card that "killed" Loam decks. They were pushed aside years ago by Griselbrand/Emrakul on one side and Counterbalance/Entreat the Angels on the other side of spectrum. Sure, both of those strategies played Brainstorm, but what's stopping Loam decks to play it as well?

[lordofthepit]

He posted it on Reddit here, providing comments via Reddit (if you have an account) may be more productive: http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments/2c5fp1/leaving_legacy_for_a_modern_mistress/

I personally disagree with most of the assertions he makes about Legacy other than the one that Brainstorm is a powerful card, and he creates a false dichotomy between Brainstorm decks and non-Brainstorm decks to claim that Legacy is not diverse. I can totally respect that Legacy may not be for everyone, particularly if you hate Brainstorm, and Hoogland identifies himself almost primarily as a "non-Brainstorm player".

[Megadeus]

I think one thing he has a great point about is that since brainstorm decks are so much more consistent in the hands of a good player as compared to a non brainstorm deck in the hands of a similar player, you really are crippling yourself by not playing brainstorm

[LOLWut]

Three points I gleaned about Mr. Hoogland that may or may not affect his credibility.

1. He actually likes the way that WotC has shaped the Modern format with bannings.
2. He appears to have only played Aggro Loam in Legacy, and hasn't tried to attack the format from other angles once that deck became worse-positioned. I guess everyone's pet deck deserves to be Tier 1?
3. He states that there is an "objective best" in the format, ignoring non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.

[Dragonslayer_90]

He posted it on Reddit here, providing comments via Reddit (if you have an account) may be more productive: http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments/2c5fp1/leaving_legacy_for_a_modern_mistress/

I personally disagree with most of the assertions he makes about Legacy other than the one that Brainstorm is a powerful card, and he creates a false dichotomy between Brainstorm decks and non-Brainstorm decks to claim that Legacy is not diverse. I can totally respect that Legacy may not be for everyone, particularly if you hate Brainstorm, and Hoogland identifies himself almost primarily as a "non-Brainstorm player".

I have combed through much of the comments on the reddit thread, but posted a link to the article here to get input from people here on the source. Personally I found most of the article to be kind of disappointing as it seemed more like an outlet for him to complain about why he thinks legacy sucks. The one thing that caught my eye though is the brief comparison of the philosophies of non-rotating format management between legacy and modern. I guess I am wondering what is the significance of the difference in non-rotating format managament between legacy and modern? Is it two different cultures? Is it that legacy's way of managing non-rotating format is Wizard's old method and the way Wizards manages modern is their new method? Is is a matter of different format issues, like how some people say modern can't always self correct as well as legacy so there has to be frequent bans?

[Lemnear]

If you desperately hate Brainstorm & Co. while still not willing to play one of the very few strong counter-strategies, Legacy isn't for you.

It's pretty much like bitching about how bad Vintage is if you are unable/unwilling to get yourself Power 9 and Time Vault or play Dredge. The difference is that Legacy's monetary Chokepoint are not artifacts but Duals & Fetchlands.

A rant-article of you leaving the format because your pet.dec looses on at least one Side of the Legacy metagame spectrum is childish

Edit :

I have combed through much of the comments on the reddit thread, but posted a link to the article here to get input from people here on the source. Personally I found most of the article to be kind of disappointing as it seemed more like an outlet for him to complain about why he thinks legacy sucks. The one thing that caught my eye though is the brief comparison of the philosophies of non-rotating format management between legacy and modern. I guess I am wondering what is the significance of the difference in non-rotating format managament between legacy and modern? Is it two different cultures? Is it that legacy's way of managing non-rotating format is Wizard's old method and the way Wizards manages modern is their new method? Is is a matter of different format issues, like how some people say modern can't always self correct as well as legacy so there has to be frequent bans?

The Problem is the artificially dumped down cardpool of Modern which can't handle certain strategies/cards popping up in addition to the general philosophy of being a creature-centric format due to WotC print politics in the last 10 years. Legacy is just uncontrolable for them due to the reprint-issue with duals (primary) and their Demons of the past like Brainstorm, LED, S&T, etc. so they just gave up on Legacy after they abandoned Vintage 7 years ago for the same reasons (power 9 reprint, Yawgmoths will and friends, format defined by restricted list rather than bannings).

It has nothing to do with format Management. It's laziness. If they fuck up a format bad, they abandoned it and create a new one and hope it turns out the better. We saw this with T1/T1.5/Vintage/Extended/now Legacy

[Dragonslayer_90]

Legacy is just uncontrolable for them due to the reprint-issue with duals (primary) and their Demons of the past like Brainstorm, LED, S&T, etc. so they just gave up on Legacy after they abandoned Vintage 7 years ago for the same reasons (power 9 reprint, Yawgmoths will and friends, format defined by restricted list rather than bannings).

What makes you think that they've abandoned legacy just like they've abandoned vintage? Not saying I agree or disagree, but some might say they disagree with you since they seem to have been designing cards with legacy in mind very recently to varying degrees of success (TNN, Council's Judgment, Spirit of the Labyrinth). Are you merely talking about the decrease in support and the lack of bannings/ unbannings in recent years?

EDIT: I see what you're saying with your comment on "laziness". I guess it can be argued that modern's their most recent venture in this vein of laziness?

[Lt. Quattro]

He does realize that his pet deck rolls over to graveyard removal right?

[menace13]

non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.
Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

[CabalTherapy]

This article sounds like a huge complaint about how he cannot win with his random Loam pile against Shardless BUG and other "blue" decks.
What a frustrated guy.

Then this: "Anyone who thinks they can consistently beat these two cards without playing them is kidding themselves." (he refers to Brainstorm and Force of Will)
Not sure if this guy is that much frustrated that he simply writes down shit. At least this article was fairly short.

[Lord Seth]

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?Jund placed twice in the Top 8 of GP Denver (early 2013), with one of them taking second place. Death & Taxes landed two decks in the Top 8 of GP Strasbourg (one of which won the whole thing) and one in the Top 8 of GP Washington D.C.

To be fair, some of those were from over a year ago, but Legacy Grand Prix happen rather infrequently.

[Lt. Quattro]

If by "healthy as a format" you mean "largely unchanged since 2011" the. I agree with you. The format is fucking stale. Look at GP top 8 lists from 2011. They're all basically still viable except now you have death rite, abrupt decay, and Tnn. Other than that the format hasn't changed.

Check out one of his replies on reddit. Some of the major shake ups in that time were:

Griselbrand getting printed
Miracle mechanic
Death of Maverick
Rise then fall of Goblins
Legend mechanic change

Any other major change I'm missing? What Kool-Aid has this guy been drinking?

[Lemnear]

What makes you think that they've abandoned legacy just like they've abandoned vintage? Not saying I agree or disagree, but some might say they disagree with you since they seem to have been designing cards with legacy in mind very recently to varying degrees of success (TNN, Council's Judgment, Spirit of the Labyrinth). Are you merely talking about the decrease in support and the lack of bannings/ unbannings in recent years?


There is barely and GP support anymore, no PT support, World Championships are not held during Worlds but dumped to GenCon (till 2012, now "eternal weekend") and always held in the US, card support including non-standard-legal boxed products is close to zero (not talking about the judge FoW but products for the mere mortal), lack of new printings, unwillingness to care for the B&R list aka removing trash from it, unwillingness to tackle the Dual Land dilemma they created with the reserved list, etc.

You can see this in Vintage, where WotC on-&off-restriction of Gush, the mindless restriction of blue spells (known as vintage Apocalypse), the following creation of the Time Vault desaster and the ultimate chockehold of death, Lodestone Golem killed the whole playerbase, without WotC ever giving a fuck about getting hold of the format again. They put it into an accelerated downward spiral and never cared about stopping it by restricting Lodestone 4 example, a restriction vintage enthusiasts call for more than 5 years now without WotC giving a Fuck

EDIT: I see what you're saying with your comment on "laziness". I guess it can be argued that modern's their most recent venture in this vein of laziness?


Well, they finished off T1/1.5 due to the given fact that their B&R lists were connected and created 2 formats which were Independent and freed from the shackles of their ancestors. WotC could have changed the B&R list management instead but choose to go the easy way and instead of seperating the formats slowly, they chopped them down from one day to another and created a restricted list for Vintage and a ban-list for legacy from the start as random as they choose to creates Moderns 1st. With Extended driven against a wall with lacking support and the annoying semi-rotating character and Legacy long out of control (not only because of brainstorm but because of the broken cardpool and duals), they choose to NOT fix any existing problems of the formats, but, once more, just created a new one and let the support for the old one(s) run out. There is no doubt in Legacy going the way of Vintage, but with an inportant difference to the previous format replacements happened in the histeoy of the game: this time there is no more alternative to choose if you don't like the dulled creature-gameplay


Edit:

Check out one of his replies on reddit. Some of the major shake ups in that time were:

Griselbrand getting printed
Miracle mechanic
Death of Maverick
Rise then fall of Goblins
Legend mechanic change

Any other major change I'm missing? What Kool-Aid has this guy been drinking?

Delver?


This article sounds like a huge complaint about how he cannot win with his random Loam pile against Shardless BUG and other "blue" decks.
What a frustrated guy.

Then this: "Anyone who thinks they can consistently beat these two cards without playing them is kidding themselves." (he refers to Brainstorm and Force of Will)
Not sure if this guy is that much frustrated that he simply writes down shit. At least this article was fairly short.

Must be frustrating to lose with a pet.dec to both sides of the spectrum: Combo and Rest in Piece lol

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I played Loam in the past. I set away the deck when Ichorid became really good (Faithless Looting or what) with the obvious reason being "why play slow gy-based deck when I may play fast gy-based deck". And then I sold every gy-based deck when DRS, RiP (and the amount of old hate like Relic of Progenitus) made any of these decks obsolete; no thanks, I don't buy that a random guy with random Dredge won random tournament.

So yeah, I do understand his frustration, and I'm curious about several gleeful comments, but no surprise, a Magic community.

Overall I find the dominance of blue and bomb-cards quite annoying, but as Lemnear wrote, this is due to WotC's inability/unwillingness to reprint duals and because of broken (blue) spells be it SnT, BS, DoS/IA, LED, etc.
There's not much what can be done about it (if anything at all), and Legacy will continue to look like it looks now, because monetary barrier won't crumble (there's no chance for non-China reprints), oppressive cards won't get banned and every new set will bring another problematic issue, as WotC has clearly fallen in love with all kind of crazy nonsense like Omniscience, Griselbrand or omnomnom6 stupidity. Man, looking back i love the time when the most annoying creature to Show and Tell was Iona.

[Lemnear]

I played Loam in the past. I set away the deck when Ichorid became really good (Faithless Looting or what) with the obvious reason being "why play slow gy-based deck when I may play fast gy-based deck". And then I sold every gy-based deck when DRS, RiP (and the amount of old hate like Relic of Progenitus) made any of these decks obsolete; no thanks, I don't buy that a random guy with random Dredge won random tournament.

So yeah, I do understand his frustration, and I'm curious about several gleeful comments, but no surprise, a Magic community.

Overall I find the dominance of blue and bomb-cards quite annoying, but as Lemnear wrote, this is due to WotC's inability/unwillingness to reprint duals and because of broken (blue) spells be it SnT, BS, DoS/IA, LED, etc.
There's not much what can be done about it (if anything at all), and Legacy will continue to look like it looks now, because monetary barrier won't crumble (there's no chance for non-China reprints), oppressive cards won't get banned and every new set will bring another problematic issue, as WotC has clearly fallen in love with all kind of crazy nonsense like Omniscience, Griselbrand or omnomnom6 stupidity. Man, looking back i love the time when the most annoying creature to Show and Tell was Iona.

I guess you can thank WotC for their new focus on multiplayer Commander, which resulted in their splashy I-win-more-creatures nonsense which had an imo predictable, desasterous impact to any format with tools to cheat creatures on the battlefield (1-vs.-1 EDH included if you look at their banlist)

[sdematt]

I'm writing a rebuttal article to that pile of trash as we speak.

-Matt

[Dice_Box]

I agree with some of what he says, but can't beat blue without blue. My friend, Painter says otherwise.

Edit. When I say I agree with some of what he had said, I mean that I feel playing blue can be the easiest path though legacy.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I'm writing a rebuttal article to that pile of trash as we speak.

-Matt

Do it. I enjoyed the article. It pretty sums the thoughts of a non-blue mage, and I find it interesting, though a bit bitter. I don't know why anyone not satisfied with how Legacy looks like must be ridiculed, and his opinion and frustration is equally legitimate as an opinion and enjoyment of you and the others.
Personally I find Legacy a bit boring and everytime I ride for the torunament, I struggle with a strong urge to stay at home, often times saying to myself "what am I doing here". This is definitely a mix of tireness from game, bad manners in our lgs, etc., but frankly, if the prices would be less intimidating, I'd migrate to Modern long ago, as it's a natural place for my beloved GW-and-creatures style of play.

[Sloshthedark]

Ok so a random guy has a string of top 8s becomes somehow scg "star" or what, doen't win anymore, leaves the format crying... So how did he get into top8? nothing has changed since 2013, he should be happy for his fair amount of success better players with U decks haven't had... I recall other one crying guy finding his salvation in Omnitell this month...

There should really be some entry requirements/ trial period (in years) to make statements about legacy, cardboard price is clearly not enough...

[lordofthepit]

I'm writing a rebuttal article to that pile of trash as we speak.

-Matt

What is there to rebut? Other than his assertion that Brainstorm is the best card in the format and his experience that he can no longer compete with his pet deck, everything he wrote was pretty much just (salty) opinion.

Edit: I just remembered that Niklas Kronenberger took down the biggest Legacy event since GP Paris with 4-Color Loam (http://www.bazaar-of-moxen.com/en/bazaar-of-moxen-coverage-bom9,24/bom9-legacy-main-event,c147.html), so maybe the second point isn't true either.

[menace13]

Jund placed twice in the Top 8 of GP Denver (early 2013), with one of them taking second place. Death & Taxes landed two decks in the Top 8 of GP Strasbourg (one of which won the whole thing) and one in the Top 8 of GP Washington D.C.

To be fair, some of those were from over a year ago, but Legacy Grand Prix happen rather infrequently.
That isn't as bad as I thought at first. At least this brings the number of non blue decks that won a GP above 0 and some actually came close. But yeah the GPs are sparse at 2 a year. I know Painter top 8'd a GP. Loam did. Zoo did few years ago? Has Lands ever? I'm asking for GP data sets because that would stand with his good player argument.

[Sloshthedark]

Do it. I enjoyed the article. It pretty sums the thoughts of a non-blue mage, and I find it interesting, though a bit bitter. I don't know why anyone not satisfied with how Legacy looks like must be ridiculed, and his opinion and frustration is equally legitimate as an opinion and enjoyment of you and the others.
Personally I find Legacy a bit boring and everytime I ride for the torunament, I struggle with a strong urge to stay at home, often times saying to myself "what am I doing here". This is definitely a mix of tireness from game, bad manners in our lgs, etc., but frankly, if the prices would be less intimidating, I'd migrate to Modern long ago, as it's a natural place for my beloved GW-and-creatures style of play.

So play it, obv you can build anything everytime you ride to a tournament, people just forget that due to "optimal" netdeck trap... I remember you slinging myriade of different decks, many of those your design, with joy and frustration (depending on actual result) through the years... The problem is you kept the most stale legacy deck possible as your deck of choice and you simply can't stay on one deck, it's the same like I saw you in the seastompy-stax-metalworker-uw tempo-thresh-dredge-ant-horizons-maverick-something-something-armageddon-wannaquit-something-thresh-ant-something-something-dredge-ant-thresh-wannaselleverything-keepjustthresh-armageddon-melovedmodern... There is not one optimal deck that both always wins and is always enjoyable and fun, in fact neither is possible and a lot of things has to go right to have success... I believe your problem is getting trapped in cardpool not islands and obv getting older you question yourself if is this worth time and energy... I believe you can 2-2 a lgs with any semireasonable bindersurfing pile, maybe 3-1 if not drunk in the process... Its all the sfm, drs, jtms that mentaly converge people/decks into boredom

[Higgs]

Ok so a random guy has a string of top 8s becomes somehow scg "star" or what, doen't win anymore, leaves the format crying... So how did he get into top8? nothing has changed since 2013, he should be happy for his fair amount of success better players with U decks haven't had... I recall other one crying guy finding his salvation in Omnitell this month...

There should really be some entry requirements/ trial period (in years) to make statements about legacy, cardboard price is clearly not enough...

Hah, well said my friend!

Also as a minor footnote, I think the 4c Loam decks with Chalice is a really tough nut to crack. A tough matchup for Miracles and Delver decks in general. I wouldn't dismiss a deck so easily that could finish first in BoM just 3 months ago:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=13611

[Zombie]

The article comments over at the Meadery are great for playing Brainstorm Bingo.

[Lemnear]

What is there to rebut? Other than his assertion that Brainstorm is the best card in the format and his experience that he can no longer compete with his pet deck, everything he wrote was pretty much just (salty) opinion.

Edit: I just remembered that Niklas Kronenberger took down the biggest Legacy event since GP Paris with 4-Color Loam (http://www.bazaar-of-moxen.com/en/bazaar-of-moxen-coverage-bom9,24/bom9-legacy-main-event,c147.html), so maybe the second point isn't true either.

Yep, Playing Loam + MB Chalice IS an angle to attack the metagame, but obviously it's easier for him to rant about how KotR isn't the hot sauce between S&T in the one side and RIP on the other and rather switch the format to keep playing his LftL/Punishing Fire/KotR stuff in a format which doesn't punish his unadaptive appraoch to the metagame of Legacy with a Sneak Attack, Belcher, Tendrils, etc.

[Mr Miagi]

How can we take this guy seriously when he starts his article with:


In early 2013, I had just really started playing competitive magic and a string of Top 8s in Legacy events, while casting
Life from the Loam, made me known to many as "the loam guy."

So your pet deck is not doing so great lately (although 4C loam winning this year's BoM would like to have a word with you), upsy effin boo. You take offense like a little kid. Man up.

Also stop bitching about legacy. If you want to leave then just leave and put your bitterness towards legacy asside. We don't need you to throw feces at legacy just because your deck is not tier 1 anymore..

..again.. playing competetivly since 2013.. what a joke..

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So play it, obv you can build anything everytime you ride to a tournament, people just forget that due to "optimal" netdeck trap... I remember you slinging myriade of different decks, many of those your design, with joy and frustration (depending on actual result) through the years... The problem is you kept the most stale legacy deck possible as your deck of choice and you simply can't stay on one deck, it's the same like I saw you in the seastompy-stax-metalworker-uw tempo-thresh-dredge-ant-horizons-maverick-something-something-armageddon-wannaquit-something-thresh-ant-something-something-dredge-ant-thresh-wannaselleverything-keepjustthresh-armageddon-melovedmodern... There is not one optimal deck that both always wins and is always enjoyable and fun, in fact neither is possible and a lot of things has to go right to have success... I believe your problem is getting trapped in cardpool not islands and obv getting older you question yourself if is this worth time and energy... I believe you can 2-2 a lgs with any semireasonable bindersurfing pile, maybe 3-1 if not drunk in the process... Its all the sfm, drs, jtms that mentaly converge people/decks into boredom

Seems like the article in question was exactly about that, wasn't?

The whole Legacy metagame/decks converged and it's much more about bombs and be-alike deck design than it was even just a few years ago. Why dick around with anything else if there's that one best way how to win?

I'm trying some GW hatebears deck now, dissimilar to Maverick and although it's quite decent (speaking of MWS "testing"; I'm not even sure if it means anything), it still leaves me wondering why should I even try. Because no matter how hard I address the metagame, it's fairly obvious that stronger decks are stronger. For every game insta-won on the backs of "Savannah, ESG, Arbiter, go", there are those where I simply try to race SFM->Skull or die to some absurd dude on turn2 or whatever else blue can bring. Saying that "one may play anything" is like saying you may hunt down tigers with airgun - of course you can...

Do you seriously ask why I dislike the state of Legacy? I guess that you answered the question yourself, but for the record: it's not funny to lose. And as long as every Brainstorm.dec has +50% chance of winning, there's no point in twiddling with any Shit Stompy or Arma Shat or w-e. Unless I'm mistaken, you're the one who played Stax, Lands, Painter (and maybe something else I don't remember), now firmly entrenched in Storm camp, which is a deck known for it's highly modular nature and non-linear strategy. /sarcasm

So basically, yes, I do understand guy's point and no matter how nonsensical my own decision are(n't), I think he deserves to be read and listened to. And again, his opinion is similarly legitimate as anyone else's; to speak of his short carrier in Legacy is an unnecessary ad hominem attack, especially knowing that it doesn't mean anything: Pythagoras sentence would be equally true no matter if it's told by a simpleton or Legacy newbie. Either he's right, and then it doesn't matter for how long does he play, or he's wrong, and then again it doesn't matter for how long does he play the game.



Yep, Playing Loam + MB Chalice IS an angle to attack the metagame, but obviously it's easier for him to rant about how KotR isn't the hot sauce between S&T in the one side and RIP on the other and rather switch the format to keep playing his LftL/Punishing Fire/KotR stuff in a format which doesn't punish his unadaptive appraoch to the metagame of Legacy with a Sneak Attack, Belcher, Tendrils, etc.
Oh so! You know, I thought that this Magic thing is a game played for the fun. I never knew we are forced to play it.
If he dislikes the format, why should he try to address it? And for how long? It's not like he's married with Legacy and they got three children. He may quit the second he decides and move wherever he wishes to, even a Chess Club of London.
I'm not sure what's so extraordinary annoying in his article that it deserves more bashing than Delver of Secrets and Show and Tell combined, I just read a dozen of paragraphs about how a dude left what was his favourite format. If you feel insulted by this, than maybe... don't read the article?

[klaus]

Run 4 Choke in the board, or heck: MD them.
Loam.dec still is a very decent contender in a blue meta.

[Barook]

Hoogland is known to become salty very easily.

Changing the format because your pet deck can't win anymore is childish and I can't wait to see him complain about Snapcaster Mage, Remand and Cryptic Command.

He has a point when talking about consistency, though. We're living in a ~70% Brainstorm meta. Non-blue decks do have a harder time to compete the longer a tournament goes. Why do the big tournaments with lots of rounds normally have blue-biased Top 8s? Consistency. While you can do well with non-blue decks, the chances that you get screwed by your deck at some point is way higher than for non-blue decks.

[Higgs]

I think the problem about the state of Legacy is the percentage of blue-goodstuff-aggrocontrol in the higher tiers, and player preferance creating a huge metagame saturation for these decks. To me the transitional difference between Deathblade, Esperblade, UW Stoneblade, UWr Delver, RUG Delver, BUG Delver, Shardless BUG is so little, I just think that picking up any deck from that list is basically a tactical preferance in your expected metagame. I remember reading somewhere Steve Menendian calling this a tactical diversity while lacking strategic diversity and I agree with that. Synergistic deckbuilding is almost a thing of past and decks like Lands, UB Tezz or Elves are niche gems of the format. It's mostly about building around packages and goodstuff and binding them with a blue shell nowadays. That's the problem I see with oversaturation of blue decks.

And I think it is important to make the disctinction between FoW blue decks and all Brainstorm decks because Storm isn't a blue deck goddammit. Decks like Storm are also a beauty of Legacy and contribute to the diversity of this format, again imo.

[Dzra]

As others have said, his article is less about why Legacy is bad or why Modern is good, and it's even less about why Brainstorm is good and everything else is bad. His unwillingness not only to play Brainstorm decks but also his unwillingness to play the myriad of top performing non-Brainstorm decks suggests that his problem is less with the state of Legacy and more about the state of his pet deck. Formats change; strategies rotate. I mean Burn, long considered the joke of Legacy, is actually making top 8 quite consistently these days.

[menace13]

I mean Burn, long considered the joke of Legacy, is actually making top 8 quite consistently these days.
Eidolon is real. Just waiting for Vortex on legs so i can troll everything.

[lordofthepit]

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

I took a look at every single Legacy GP ever and assigned them archetypes. Sometimes, I had to make up archetype names because I wasn't playing back then, and I arbitrarily chose to distinguish Canadian Threshold from RUG Threshold (running weird stuff like Isochron Sceptor) and the current iterations of RUG Delver.


Philadelphia 2005 1st Goblins
Philadelphia 2005 2nd Deadguy Ale
Philadelphia 2005 3rd RW Lightning Rift
Philadelphia 2005 4th Goblins
Philadelphia 2005 5th Gamekeeper
Philadelphia 2005 6th Canadian Threshold
Philadelphia 2005 7th ThreshGro
Philadelphia 2005 8th UGW Threshold
Lille 2006 1st 4-Color Threshold
Lille 2006 2nd UGW Threshold
Lille 2006 3rd RUG Threshold
Lille 2006 4th Junk Survival
Lille 2006 5th RW Lightning Rift
Lille 2006 6th Goblins
Lille 2006 7th Gamekeeper
Lille 2006 8th UW Landstill
Columbus 2007 1st Hulk Flash
Columbus 2007 2nd Goblins
Columbus 2007 3rd Suicide Black
Columbus 2007 4th Uwb Fish
Columbus 2007 5th Hulk Flash
Columbus 2007 6th Canadian Threshold
Columbus 2007 7th Hulk Flash
Columbus 2007 8th Bw Aggro
Chicago 2009 1st 4-Color Baseruption
Chicago 2009 2nd RUG Counterbalance
Chicago 2009 3rd Eva Green
Chicago 2009 4th Dragon Stompy
Chicago 2009 5th Junk
Chicago 2009 6th ANT
Chicago 2009 7th Canadian Threshold
Chicago 2009 8th Zoo
Madrid 2010 1st Reanimator
Madrid 2010 2nd ANT
Madrid 2010 3rd Zoo
Madrid 2010 4th ANT
Madrid 2010 5th NO Bant Countertop
Madrid 2010 6th NO Bant Countertop
Madrid 2010 7th Zoo
Madrid 2010 8th Zoo
Columbus 2010 1st Merfolk
Columbus 2010 2nd UW Counterbalance
Columbus 2010 3rd BUG Landstill
Columbus 2010 4th UG Survival
Columbus 2010 5th TES
Columbus 2010 6th Doomsday
Columbus 2010 7th Sneak Attak
Columbus 2010 8th Junk
Providence 2011 1st Bant Maverick
Providence 2011 2nd Hive Mind
Providence 2011 3rd NO RUG
Providence 2011 4th BUG Landstill
Providence 2011 5th UW Stoneblade
Providence 2011 6th UR Painter
Providence 2011 7th Zoo
Providence 2011 8th Merfolk
Amsterdam 2011 1st Bant Aggro
Amsterdam 2011 2nd RUG Delver
Amsterdam 2011 3rd ANT
Amsterdam 2011 4th Hive Mind
Amsterdam 2011 5th Punishing Maverick
Amsterdam 2011 6th Bant Aggro
Amsterdam 2011 7th Imperial Painter
Amsterdam 2011 8th Ugw Counterbalance
Indianapolis 2012 1st Esper Stoneblade
Indianapolis 2012 2nd RUG Delver
Indianapolis 2012 3rd Maverick
Indianapolis 2012 4th High Tide
Indianapolis 2012 5th Dredge
Indianapolis 2012 6th RUG Delver
Indianapolis 2012 7th Maverick
Indianapolis 2012 8th UW Stoneblade
Atlanta 2012 1st RUG Delver
Atlanta 2012 2nd Esper Stoneblade
Atlanta 2012 3rd RUG Delver
Atlanta 2012 4th UW Stoneblade
Atlanta 2012 5th Maverick
Atlanta 2012 6th Goblins
Atlanta 2012 7th Belcher
Atlanta 2012 8th Zombardment
Ghent 2012 1st ANT
Ghent 2012 2nd Elves
Ghent 2012 3rd Esper Stoneblade
Ghent 2012 4th Show and Tell
Ghent 2012 5th Miracles
Ghent 2012 6th Maverick
Ghent 2012 7th UW Landstill
Ghent 2012 8th Junk
Denver 2013 1st Esper Stoneblade
Denver 2013 2nd Jund
Denver 2013 3rd RUG Delver
Denver 2013 4th Jund
Denver 2013 5th Elves
Denver 2013 6th Team America
Denver 2013 7th Miracles
Denver 2013 8th Esper Stoneblade
Strasbourg 2013 1st Death and Taxes
Strasbourg 2013 2nd RUG Delver
Strasbourg 2013 3rd RUG Delver
Strasbourg 2013 4th Death and Taxes
Strasbourg 2013 5th Merfolk
Strasbourg 2013 6th Team America
Strasbourg 2013 7th Sneak Attack
Strasbourg 2013 8th Punishing Maverick
Washington, D.C. 2013 1st UWR Delver
Washington, D.C. 2013 2nd Sneak Attack
Washington, D.C. 2013 3rd Dredge
Washington, D.C. 2013 4th Bant Aggro
Washington, D.C. 2013 5th Death and Taxes
Washington, D.C. 2013 6th Elves
Washington, D.C. 2013 7th Shardless BUG
Washington, D.C. 2013 8th Esper Stoneblade
Paris 2014 1st Team America
Paris 2014 2nd Miracles
Paris 2014 3rd Reanimator
Paris 2014 4th Miracles
Paris 2014 5th Painter
Paris 2014 6th Team America
Paris 2014 7th Deathblade
Paris 2014 8th Miracles


To answer your question, Death and Taxes has three top 8s (all within the last three GPs), Elves has three, and Jund has two (both in Denver). Maverick has had six (excluding Bant Maverick which ran Brainstorm but not Force), Zoo and Goblins had five apiece, and Junk Aggro has had three. Other non-Brainstorm decks include several black aggro decks (Deadguy Ale, Suicide Black, Eva Green, and a deck from 2007 that's B/W but I cannot categorize as Deadguy), three copies of Merfolk, two copies of Gamekeeper, two copies of Imperial Painter, two copies of Dredge, two copies of Lightning Rift, one copy of Dragon Stompy, one copy of Belcher, one copy of Zombardment, one copy of Junk Survival, and Durward's U/G Survival.

I counted a total of 46 non-Brainstorm decks making up 120 GP Legacy Top 8's, although the ratio was higher in the earlier GPs.

[Dice_Box]

The thing is, he is making a good point, he just made it badly. There are no small amount of players whom do not want to play Blue. (I am one of them) I dropped what was at the time, the price of 4 FOW on some random card played in only two decks just so I could fight blue. (Imp Recruiter) Then the meta shifted so hard the deck became a real contender, but that more or less proves the point. A deck that main's 5-7 Moons and 6-8 Blasts is a viable deck in this format. The format has converged so hard on one colour that main decking hate for just that one colour is a viable strategy. This is a fair point to make and one that really, is to me, quite frightening.

Now while we can point at individual decks that are not Blue and do well, hold their finishes up like beacons in the night, the fact is we care so much about them because we know they had to fight with limited card manipulation and limited permission to get to that point. Something that we are so accustom to that it is an achievement to do it at all. While his attack is weakened by his longing for his pet deck to be good again, (I played Goblins for 10 years man, trust me, you don't know the pain of losing your pet deck if you started early last year) his points all stand up to scrutiny, the meta is converging, it is not the healthiest of situations and the trend does not seam to be slowing at all. Brainstorm and FOW are almost seen as mandatory and I feel that, when it is all said and done, if he had not made a big song and dace about "Oh woe is Loam" and "Screw you guys, I am running away from home because I do not feel loved anymore" he really could have been seen as crafting a very good snapshot of the Legacy Meta right now.

I mean lets face it, the Legacy meta is so inbreed these days we are starting to think six toes is the norm.

[Barook]

I counted a total of 46 non-Brainstorm decks making up 120 GP Legacy Top 8's, although the ratio was higher in the earlier GPs.
I don't know how viable it is to take data from 9 years ago when the format looked completely different.

Comparing GP data before and post-Delver (let's face it, Delver and what came after it was the jump start for the blue insanity we currently have) in terms of BS/Non-BS decks percentage would be more interesting.

[lordofthepit]

The thing is, he is making a good point, he just made it badly. There are no small amount of players whom do not want to play Blue. (I am one of them) I dropped what was at the time, the price of 4 FOW on some random card played in only two decks just so I could fight blue. (Imp Recruiter) Then the meta shifted so hard the deck became a real contender, but that more or less proves the point. A deck that main's 5-7 Moons and 6-8 Blasts is a viable deck in this format. The format has converged so hard on one colour that main decking hate for just that one colour is a viable strategy. This is a fair point to make and one that really, is to me, quite frightening.

Now while we can point at individual decks that are not Blue and do well, hold their finishes up like beacons in the night, the fact is we care so much about them because we know they had to fight with limited card manipulation and limited permission to get to that point. Something that we are so accustom to that it is an achievement to do it at all. While his attack is weakened by his longing for his pet deck to be good again, (I played Goblins for 10 years man, trust me, you don't know the pain of losing your pet deck if you started early last year) his points all stand up to scrutiny, the meta is converging, it is not the healthiest of situations and the trend does not seam to be slowing at all. Brainstorm and FOW are almost seen as mandatory and I feel that, when it is all said and done, if he had not made a big song and dace about "Oh woe is Loam" and "Screw you guys, I am running away from home because I do not feel loved anymore" he really could have been seen as crafting a very good snapshot of the Legacy Meta right now.

I mean lets face it, the Legacy meta is so inbreed these days we are starting to think six toes is the norm.

There is a "best card" in every format, and in the case of Legacy, it is Brainstorm. As far as dominant cards go, this is quite innocuous because it can fit in pretty much any archetype and enables consistency in a way that doesn't make the opponent feel like they got blown out without a chance to actually play Magic.

As a thought experiment, suppose you sat down from your opponent, and he accidentally showed you a Brainstorm while shuffling his deck. Do you automatically assume it's a bad matchup? Are you more inclined to keep a hand with Force of Will? Removal? Wasteland? Discard? An aggressive clock? Does it change your approach whatsoever? No, because Brainstorm is truly a card that enables all archetypes.

Lumping all Brainstorm decks together in an attempt to marginalize the diversity of the format is simply poor reasoning. If he had simply said "Brainstorm is a powerful card, and I think it needs to be banned," I would consider that a valid opinion that has been debated ad nauseam in the B/R thread. But the central message of his article was instead "Brainstorm is a powerful card, and I have an irrational hatred for it, so I'm leaving the format," which is also understandable, and I would be quite fine if he left it at that. But the message as a whole instead felt like this: "Brainstorm is a powerful card, and I have an irrational hatred for it since my deck that was designed to beat Brainstorm decks does not consistently do so against strong players (because such decks represent a wide spectrum of strategies within the format that cannot be collectively beaten by any strategy). Therefore, fuck Legacy, and all of you who aren't playing Brainstorm are doing it wrong."

[Dice_Box]

Do not think I am talking about just BS, (Remember I am quite firmly in the "Do not ban BS" camp) but I am talking about the Meta as a whole. I do not think that BS is actually the issue here. I personally think that the issue is that of late, Blue has been given the best of everything. This means that while BS has always been the best card, its showings have been artificially inflated due to the presence of new, strong Blue creatures. This has made the format more blue as a whole, not just one card in it. BS gets the flack because it is simply the best at what it does, but personally, my view is that it is cards like Delver that are truly to blame here, not BS.

Like I said, the meta is all inbreed, and if he wanted to do more than rant he could have shaped a great article. Because this is a problem and it is not going away. But I feel like some people here have blinders on. Some think everything is fine and are openly hostile at the people that suggest otherwise, others like to point at BS and claim that banning it would solve everything. I personally would like to see Delver and TNN gone, I think that would do more good than the removal of BS would. But I also feel like that ship has sailed and I would not blame someone for getting out of the format now if they do not like the direction that Legacy is taking.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I think the problem about the state of Legacy is the percentage of blue-goodstuff-aggrocontrol in the higher tiers, and player preferance creating a huge metagame saturation for these decks. To me the transitional difference between Deathblade, Esperblade, UW Stoneblade, UWr Delver, RUG Delver, BUG Delver, Shardless BUG is so little, I just think that picking up any deck from that list is basically a tactical preferance in your expected metagame. I remember reading somewhere Steve Menendian calling this a tactical diversity while lacking strategic diversity and I agree with that. Synergistic deckbuilding is almost a thing of past and decks like Lands, UB Tezz or Elves are niche gems of the format. It's mostly about building around packages and goodstuff and binding them with a blue shell nowadays. That's the problem I see with oversaturation of blue decks.

And I think it is important to make the disctinction between FoW blue decks and all Brainstorm decks because Storm isn't a blue deck goddammit. Decks like Storm are also a beauty of Legacy and contribute to the diversity of this format, again imo.

Yep, that's the trouble. While the many Brainstorm/Delver based decks are distinct enough to warrant different names, they're basically the same when speaking of tactic. Things like Jund/k or whatever else are exactly the same, a goodstuff deck stuffed with good stuff, although non-blue. The only decks that come to MY mind that are build solely on synergy, are DnT and Elves, with DnT being a metagame shark while Elves being a kind of aggro-combo deck without blue.
And yeah, while Storm definitely cotributes to format's diversity, it further presses players into the blue/black/DnT. Unless they love to hunt down tigers with airgun.



...myriad of top performing non-Brainstorm decks...
http://media.giphy.com/media/3x1ZGSBZlwXcY/giphy.gif

[maharis]

The thing is, there are two points he's making:

1) Brainstorm decks are ubiquitous in Legacy. This is unquestionably true. I don't think this is the time or place to debate how to solve that problem but he is right.

However it's the second point that really bugs me:

2) Modern is more diverse and open than Legacy. This is not true. Modern has been dominated by 4 strategies since its outset: BGx, URx, Affinity, and Pod. All the data shows that.

In the Reddit thread Jeff and others will point to such-and-such a PTQ where Tron or Faeries won and say that proves Modern's diversity, while ignoring that, for example, Burn, D&T, and Loam have won some of the biggest Legacy events this year.

Jeff complains of ubiquity in Legacy, but he hasn't played a Modern deck that didn't include 4 Snapcaster Mage, the most ubiquitous nonland card in the format, in a long time (to my knowledge, based on reading his articles and posts and watching his stream). Snapcaster-Lightning Bolt is a powerful package that many decks run to great effect, including his tempo deck and his cat/dragon deck. But in the end, it doesn't matter whether you finish the game with Delver, Stormbreath, Splinter Twin, or Colonnade, the horse you rode to get there was SCM-bolt. That's very similar to how Brainstorm + Force hold together fringy strategies like Food Chain, Omnitell or Reanimator and occasionally pop it into the top 8 of a tournament.

Another point he makes is that you can't die on turn 1 or 2 in modern, so it's more brewable. There is a huge caveat to that though. The speed of Affinity, the heavy disruption of BGx, and the infinite threat of Twin and Pod strategies means that your deck has to be able to interact heavily in the first few turns, almost the same way a Legacy deck does. While there is no true degeneracy like 1-land Belcher, in the end if you can't deal with an Inkmoth Nexus in the first couple turns, the Affinity player will Plating or Ravager it and you will die. Similarly, if you can't recover from a turn 1 Thoughtseize, you will die slowly and painfully. If you can't break up a Pod chain or get rid of a flashed-in Exarch on turn 3, you are dead turn 4. Modern has just as clear a threshold for playability as Legacy does.

Finally, Modern is curated heavily to allow decks like Twin and Pod to be good. Storm, Elves, Dredge, Thopter-Sword, Stoneblade are explicitly banned from the format. Those are all strategies deployed in Legacy regularly. But if you are into that kind of environment, great! I have no problem with that. I personally would rather play in a format where I can play against wonky strategies like Tezz and Aluren here and there even though I have to slog through a lot of blue decks. And even then, there is an actual difference between S&T and Delver and Storm as opposed to only a surface difference between Twin and URW control and Pyromancer decks in Legacy.

[maharis]

And yeah, while Storm definitely cotributes to format's diversity, it further presses players into the blue/black/DnT. Unless they love to hunt down tigers with airgun.

Right, in order to beat Storm, you have to play either black, blue or white, or the red/green deck that plays chalice on 1 and can make a 20/20 out of nowhere.

Storm is not the problem. Dice Box is right about Delver, TNN, and I would add S&T (because every new fattie breaks that thing again and again).

I am hopeful that there will be action taken by WotC at some point to improve this format. I know, don't hold your breath...

[Vicar in a tutu]

I play almost exclusively legacy. Although I have the cardpool to build anything, at tournaments I play mostly Jund and Imperial Painter (for casual play I occasionally bring out Pox, my pet deck). Especially Jund I think is a strong deck, although it can be weak to fast combo. My sideboard is in many ways built to destroy blue decks:

1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Engineered Plague
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Golgari Charm
2 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Choke

Choke single-handedly wins me games, especially against opponents who are not prepared for it. Chains is good against Brainstorm, sure, but it's mainly in the SB to deal with degenerate draw-engines, like Griselbrand, Glimpse of Nature, Time Spiral, etc. Game 1 Sneak & Show usually wins, but my sideboard games are not bad. I side in blasts, surgicals, golgari charms, toxic deluge, chains and choke. I side out bloodbraid, lightning bolt, abrupt decay and sylvan library.

tl;dr I enjoy playing Jund in the current meta.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

However it's the second point that really bugs me:

2) Modern is more diverse and open than Legacy. This is not true. Modern has been dominated by 4 strategies since its outset: BGx, URx, Affinity, and Pod. All the data shows that.
Definitely. From what little I know about the format, I think he'll be quite disappointed. It's not like his KotR deck will be any less awful than in Legacy, esp. as he'll lose Wasteland, cycling lands and whatnot.



Right, in order to beat Storm, you have to play either black, blue or white, or the red/green deck that plays chalice on 1 and can make a 20/20 out of nowhere.

Storm is not the problem. Dice Box is right about Delver, TNN, and I would add S&T (because every new fattie breaks that thing again and again).

I am hopeful that there will be action taken by WotC at some point to improve this format. I know, don't hold your breath...
Yeah, I also think that the worst offender is Delver, followed closely by TNN. The thing with SnT is that it breaks not every new fatty (and we all know that WotC cannot print anything else than big fat dudes), but every permanent, see Omniscience. But maybe it's somehow good, at least it forces control decks to split forces between stack and creature control, thus leaving place for aggro... oh well, like that Boros, Gruul and Selesnya decks that everybody speaks about?

I don't know about any mysterious 20/20 RG deck that has access to turn1 CotV@1, but I guess it's some build of lands with Depth/Stage combo and Chalice to give Marit Lage a virtual Pro:StP. I don't consider it important enough, but maybe I'm wrong and it places quite often. I guess it runs over the usual Your Best Choice of Internet Delver Decklist, as those have troubles beating CotV, LftL and such, but I don't believe it's powerful enough to stop combo, as non-Tezzeret Chalice decks have troubles with some real consistency. But then again I played Fae Stompy years ago when the world was young, so maybe it's different today; I can't tell, I quit playing FS when Wasteland became the second most played land after a generic blue fetch, which was not long before Abrupt Decay was printed.




2 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Choke

It's a bit painful to notice that the best way how to beat Brainstorm, an € 0,02 card, one must incorporate two Chains of Meph. But ok, I do understand it has other applications; you listed them.

[Dosferra]

I’m a bit perplexed.

Complaining that your deck of choice is not competitive when it won the last BoM, beating Miracles, Elves and Shardless in the top8?

It would make sense if this came from, let’s say, a Goblins or Enchantress pilot.

With that said, many of his opinions are perfectly valid.
Of course blue is the “best” color in legacy, everyone knows that, even people not playing legacy knows that.
It is however not (too) oppressive and objectively more powerful than everything else the format has to offer.
As several here have already stated, DnT, Elves, Jund/Junk, Imperial Painter, 4-Color Loam are perfectly viable and able to win the largest of events.
Compare this to modern where Pod, BGx, Twin, Affinity and UWR win approximately 99% of all large events.

[Lemnear]

Right, in order to beat Storm, you have to play either black, blue or white, or the red/green deck that plays chalice on 1 and can make a 20/20 out of nowhere.

Storm is not the problem. Dice Box is right about Delver, TNN, and I would add S&T (because every new fattie breaks that thing again and again).

I am hopeful that there will be action taken by WotC at some point to improve this format. I know, don't hold your breath...

They won't ban S&T no matter how absurd and dumb it gets as WotC don't give a fuck. It's Legacy's autopilot equivalent to Vintage's Lodestone Golem (kinda).

If you wanna rant about combo as a concept in Legacy, test my perspective: WotC prints storm- & graveyard-hate in every fucking expansion like they feed S&T/Sneak Attack with every dumb I-win-fatty they print. Ergo: chaining spells and navigate your mana-development through softcounters towards either a 4cc or 5cc card is not fine for Legacy; tapping 3-4 mana for a single I-win-card (which you can run in a full blue shell) is.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

They won't ban S&T no matter how absurd and dumb it gets as WotC don't give a fuck. It's Legacy's autopilot equivalent to Vintage's Lodestone Golem (kinda).

If you wanna rant about combo as a concept in Legacy, test my perspective: WotC prints storm- & graveyard-hate in every fucking expansion like they feed S&T/Sneak Attack with every dumb I-win-fatty they print. Ergo: chaining spells and navigate your mana-development through softcounters towards either a 4cc or 5cc card is not fine for Legacy; tapping 3-4 mana for a single I-win-card (which you can run in a full blue shell) is.
Yes. Which brings us back to the article: a guy decided to let this sandpit where cats shit for the others. Why so much flak?
Otoh, I guess he'll be pretty disappointed with Modern and its meta of four decks, but w/e.

Bye.

[Zombie]

2) Modern is more diverse and open than Legacy. This is not true. Modern has been dominated by 4 strategies since its outset: BGx, URx, Affinity, and Pod. All the data shows that.

To post this here in addition to Reddit: "Yet what if the colors amount to a few cards, overall? You don't need terribly large changes for the deck to feel dramatically different - Patriot and RUG feel very different, yet the core changes are Tarmogoyf to Stoneforge and the inclusion of Stifle, little else. Yet those differences create a profound change in the feel of the deck.

Same with decks like ANT and TES - a couple cards change, and the feel of the deck is altered dramatically.

The character of Elves changed dramatically with the inclusion of Natural Order.

Sometimes it is as simple as Overseer or Thoughtcast.

But really, though? The arguments of Legacy vs. Modern diversity are always the same: Take your format, look at the high-level shell game, then compare that to the nuance of my own format down to a tactical level and proclaim my format superior.

It's hilarious how people conjure up a world of difference between two Delver tempo decks and broadly complain about Pod or BG/x midrange goodstuff or do the opposite and list Pod variations out while complaining about Mystic or the aforementioned Delver.

Internet dickwaving, hooray!"



Definitely. From what little I know about the format, I think he'll be quite disappointed. It's not like his KotR deck will be any less awful than in Legacy, esp. as he'll lose Wasteland, cycling lands and whatnot.



Yeah, I also think that the worst offender is Delver, followed closely by TNN. The thing with SnT is that it breaks not every new fatty (and we all know that WotC cannot print anything else than big fat dudes), but every permanent, see Omniscience. But maybe it's somehow good, at least it forces control decks to split forces between stack and creature control, thus leaving place for aggro... oh well, like that Boros, Gruul and Selesnya decks that everybody speaks about?

I think one of the biggest things that can be done to format health is paying attention to possible axes of play. It's why Dredge feels so bad usually - it plays along axes basically no other deck does with mechanisms most cards don't interact well with (a massive amount of abilities and a shitton of action in the graveyard instead of a couple key cards) which leaves you feeling helpless. If the opposing deck plays along axes you can actually do anything at all about, the game is suddenly much more interesting - hell, playing against an active Jitte with Elves is fine, even interesting. Add TNN to remove a fundamental axis of interaction (the red zone) and the game immediately goes to shit.

I think that's one thing that's kind of good about Modern - stuff happens on the battlefield, which all colors are able to interact with at least. It's why I think Elves is a healthier example of an engine combo deck than say Storm or the like - it's still delicious engine combo but it doesn't blank half the opponent's deck. Instant frustration reduction. How to get a variety of onboard engine combo decks is another matter entirely though, but I think it's one thing that should be seriously looked at.

In that way I don't feel that Delver is a problem despite it basically being a 1-mana TNN against me game 1. It doesn't remove axes of interaction and I know basic, generalized tools from the board help me deal with one. Whereas against TNN or Dredge or dumb shit from S&T I have to bring in quite narrow hate to be able to do anything meaningful or just play past them and kill them first.


If you wanna rant about combo as a concept in Legacy, test my perspective: WotC prints storm- & graveyard-hate in every fucking expansion like they feed S&T/Sneak Attack with every dumb I-win-fatty they print. Ergo: chaining spells and navigate your mana-development through softcounters towards either a 4cc or 5cc card is not fine for Legacy; tapping 3-4 mana for a single I-win-card (which you can run in a full blue shell) is.

A full blue shell capable of easily integrating Leyline of Fuck You which immunizes your two/three-card combo deck to discard, the natural form of hate, for no mana investment leaving you to cantrip your little mouthbreathing heart out and the opponent to play lottery with his mulligans. Is this three hate piece hand gonna be great or just complete shit? The joy, right?

I die a little inside every time SCG commentary goes "Ooh" over a S&T being cast like something brilliant was just done. Yay, you cast a single card that dodges basically every traditional "broken shit afoot" indicator used to build hate cards. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27217-DTB-Sneak-and-Show&p=815102&viewfull=1#post815102) You don't even have to expose your second piece. Now you won. Skill(tm).

[Adryan]

I have the opinion that the majority of non blue decks are just built wrong. The best card selection spell is not blue, it's an artifact called SDT.

Once upon a time i enjoyed playing a Jund Control list with SDT, Xenagos and zero BBE. Well it was really consistent and good. I also played a Jund list with 3 Sylvan Libraries in the MD, because why not? Card is super powerful and if you have multiples in your hand... yeah guess what? card is still amazing.

Modern more diverse than Legacy? good joke. Well good luck winning with Mono W against Pod, Affinity, Splinter Twin, BGx. Oh and good luck with a KotR deck. You will need it.

[iamajellydonut]

Laying aside Legacy's faults (still my #1 boo), it's worth noting that Modern is not an inherently "healthy" format like it's purported to be. All of the broken cards that people are complaining about are now. All of these "non-interactive" and-other-such-descriptors aren't being pumped into Legacy only. Modern is "saved" only by its extensive ban list, which creates immense havoc in the grand scheme of things. Certain bannings had to and have to happen in order to maintain the status quo. Things like Bloodbraid Elf. How can a format that has to ban Bloodbraid Elf possibly be considered "healthy"? What if this September Wizards comes along and announces that Glimpse of Nature, Green Sun's Zenith, and Natural Order are banned in Legacy? As well as Deathrite Shaman. There would be utter outrage in the Legacy community. But this is the day-to-day of Modern.

I don't see how a format that has to live like that is optimal. The only solution, in both formats, is to prevent further pieces like those from being printed. On a long enough timescale, as it always has been, the formats would heal themselves. Unfortunately, for the purposes of "growth" and other business related nonsense that I really don't care about, Wizards is hellbent on more planeswalkers and more mythics which can only mean we'll be having more of these threads representing this format or another some time very soon.

[bakofried]

Do it. I enjoyed the article. It pretty sums the thoughts of a non-blue mage, and I find it interesting, though a bit bitter. I don't know why anyone not satisfied with how Legacy looks like must be ridiculed, and his opinion and frustration is equally legitimate as an opinion and enjoyment of you and the others.
Personally I find Legacy a bit boring and everytime I ride for the torunament, I struggle with a strong urge to stay at home, often times saying to myself "what am I doing here". This is definitely a mix of tireness from game, bad manners in our lgs, etc., but frankly, if the prices would be less intimidating, I'd migrate to Modern long ago, as it's a natural place for my beloved GW-and-creatures style of play.

Do not give up the fight! One day we rockers of the Savannah will have our chance to shine again!

[HSCK]

From TNN till now using the TC database for 33+ player tournaments the top 12 decks in the format are 50% of all top 8 decks over that time period. Two decks are at 7% and the other 10 are between 2.6% and 4%. Modern isn't even close in terms of diversity.

[(nameless one)]

It's funny because all his arguments also apply to Fetchlands.

[Richard Cheese]

I am just going to repost what I think are some of the strongest counter-arguments on the Reddit thread, for those that don't feel like slogging through it:



Modern has the same fucking problem in reverse.
Card selection is the defining attribute of Legacy that Modern lacks - Modern decks are forced to be redundant to consistently execute their plans. That's why B/Gx continues to be the best deck in Modern and the popular choice of pro players; it specifically attacks decks on the axis of consistency with discard and has the likes of Tarmogoyf to end the game before the second copy of X or a critical mass of Y and Z can be drawn.
Thoughtseize (and to a lesser extent, Inquisition) is the reason Black shells are consistently good in Modern - and variants of the black discard suite with a clock (it's called B/G/x because Tarmogoyf is the best clock) will ALWAYS be the best deck until something to the effect of Ponder or Brainstorm is allowed. They can ban Deathrite and Bloodbraid until they're blue in the face; these are inessential cards. As long as you have Thoughtseize, cheap removal, and a clock the deck is simply more consistently good than the linear strategies in other decks.
The problem with the argument that Legacy isn't diverse is that the only really difference between a Brainstorm format and a non-Brainstorm format is the consistency with which you can draw the other 56 cards. Modern isn't more "diverse" - the decks are simply less consistent, so the format has enough variance to allow for more types of decks containing super-powered cards to mise. That doesn't make the decks good and it drastically decreases the competitive value of Modern.
(Two exceptions to the discard / high-VAR strategy are Twin and your U/R Delver deck, which just try to do their best Legacy impression with Serum Visions. Grats on playing inferior versions of Legacy decks that are only good for all the reasons you supposedly hate that format.)
Yes, in Legacy you really want to be playing Brainstorm because it reduces the variance of your deck. And in Modern, you really want to be playing Thoughtseize to increase the variance of your opponent's deck. What you do besides that in either format is pretty irrelevant.


Same guy, in response to 'but less consistency = more variance = more diversity':



You're entitled to your opinion wrt B/Gx. I would contend it's the best deck, but there's room for debate. I'd also accept Twin strictly because it does everything it can to counter the fundamental strategy of B/Gx.
As for whether or not less consistency leads to more diversity, I would argue that Modern's diversity is pretty overstated - especially if we're contending it's greater than Legacy's and thus means Modern is a better format.
Modern decks have the benefit of occasionally spiking an event because of the lack of consistency inherent to the format. This creates perceived diversity, but the reality is that Legacy has a variety of viable non-Brainstorm strategies too. They just don't win very often given how consistently the Brainstorm decks perform - but every Legacy tournament is full of Burn, Belcher, Oops!, Jund, Elves, Death and Taxes, Loam / Depths decks, and the like.
The inherent lack of consistency in Modern due to the lack of cantrips and prevalence of hand disruption means that VAR is playing a bigger factor. If we're going to write an article all about how Brainstorm is bad for a format in terms of competitive characteristics, I'm going to point right to all the Thoughtseize decks in Modern and ask why we're taking a format characterized (rightly or wrongly) by an anti-consistency spell and choosing more VAR over less VAR.
VAR is fine in Magic - in fact it's the feature that makes the game great. But Brainstorm is amazing for competitive play because it reduces the impact of VAR in the hands of skilled players and emphasizes other aspects of the game - like the other 56 cards and how they're deployed. I have seen too many pro players lose their cool over the river card or the topdeck or the Miracle mechanic to think that a higher-variance format is superior in their minds, and personally I came away from this article pretty unconvinced.
The best format isn't the one that's friendliest to the biggest deckbuilding iconoclast. It's the one that rewards skill. And a skilled player always chooses Brainstorm over his topdeck.


Edit: Also, Hoogland is on the Source, and at least in the past has been pretty good about responding to questions/comments, so maybe ease off on the pitchforks a bit. I agree with Dice_Box that he may have some valid points, but went about making it in an unnecessarily contentious way.

[Lord Seth]

But really, though? The arguments of Legacy vs. Modern diversity are always the same: Take your format, look at the high-level shell game, then compare that to the nuance of my own format down to a tactical level and proclaim my format superior.

It's hilarious how people conjure up a world of difference between two Delver tempo decks and broadly complain about Pod or BG/x midrange goodstuff or do the opposite and list Pod variations out while complaining about Mystic or the aforementioned Delver.

Internet dickwaving, hooray!This is a very valid point I think people need to pay attention to.


Modern more diverse than Legacy? good joke. Well good luck winning with Mono W against Pod, Affinity, Splinter Twin, BGx. Oh and good luck with a KotR deck. You will need it.Actually, Soul Sisters (a monowhite deck) was able to go undefeated on Day 1 of the last Grand Prix. Then again, it looks like it only won a single match on Day 2, as it ended up at 10-5.

[Dragonslayer_90]

Kudos on reposting those high quality posts Richard Cheese. I saw them yesterday scouring through the reddit thread and loved them. Not to stir the discussion away from the topic of my original post, but I've always been of the opinion that Thoughtseize is massively overpowered in modern because of the lack of quality card selection.

[T-101]

Do not give up the fight! One day we rockers of the Savannah will have our chance to shine again!

Preach it, brother!

- - - - -

Like everyone with a head on their shoulders has mentioned, his article reeks of saltiness. He has backed himself into a corner by refusing to change strategies. He is called 'The Loam Guy' for a reason. I'm all for pet decks, and having fun, but you have to step back an examine your strategy from time to time.

I see a big problem in his approach to play Legacy.

1.) He wants to win, and if he doesn't feel like he can win, he quits the format.
2.) He wants to play the same strategy, no matter what.

1 and 2 do not mix.

He has to either change his strategy (abandon Loam and start playing Brainstorm so that he feels he can win), or he has to accept that running Loam will not always put him in Top 8.

That said, I agree that Brainstorm is absurdly powerful, and ubiquitous. In all fairness, it deserves a ban (honestly, you feel that way too, but we all know it won't be).

[Lemnear]

I add my thanks here Richard. This repost added a new POV to our discussion here and I salute the writer of the reddit response for using the big word "iconoclasm" in his post.

[Koby]

I read this article yesterday. I chuckled.

As other mentioned, the article is not about Legacy, or Modern; at least not on a deeper reading.
The article is about one man, whom has difficulty playing to win because he constructs rules and modes for which he intends to win with. He is a scrub, not a spike. It's oddly amusing that Mr Hoogland refers to reducing variance from playing Brainstorm, all the meanwhile ranting on his twitter about being a victim to the same variance.

He has selected to play Legacy in a very scruby way, picked a pet-deck, found that he can beat medium skilled players on skill alone, and concluded it was his deck selection. Anyone playing Aggro Loam for more than a few weeks finds that the deck is soft to decks such as Merfolk, RUG, and Counterbalance. Welcome to the Legacy Format, Mr Hoogland.



http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

The scrubs will play “for fun” and not explore the extremities of the game. They won’t find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they’ll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite subtle and difficult to discover. Knowing the counter tactic prevents the other player from using his tactic, but he can then use a counter to your counter. You are now afraid to use your counter and the opponent can go back to sneaking in the original overpowering tactic.

I don't think the Legacy community needs the voice of this player. His is whiny and damaging to the appeals of the format.

[Tormod]

I read this article yesterday. I chuckled.

As other mentioned, the article is not about Legacy, or Modern; at least not on a deeper reading.
The article is about one man, whom has difficulty playing to win because he constructs rules and modes for which he intends to win with. He is a scrub, not a spike. It's oddly amusing that Mr Hoogland refers to reducing variance from playing Brainstorm, all the meanwhile ranting on his twitter about being a victim to the same variance.

He has selected to play Legacy in a very scruby way, picked a pet-deck, found that he can beat medium skilled players on skill alone, and concluded it was his deck selection. Anyone playing Aggro Loam for more than a few weeks finds that the deck is soft to decks such as Merfolk, RUG, and Counterbalance. Welcome to the Legacy Format, Mr Hoogland.



I don't think the Legacy community needs the voice of this player. His is whiny and damaging to the appeals of the format.

QFT

Everything I wanted to say about this is right here, and said far better than I could.

[nedleeds]

2) Modern is more diverse and open than Legacy. This is not true. Modern has been dominated by 4 strategies since its outset: BGx, URx, Affinity, and Pod. All the data shows that.


Modern is dominated by the 3 netdecks because the average SCG barnacle can't build a deck. It's a PT/GP format and people just buy 75s off TCG. You can crush modern with any well crafted deck ... but you may not every week, or over a long evnt because the card quality in modern is suspect, the tutoring is suspect. That turns many people off from the format, e.g. I can hedge my board vs. Pod but simply never draw any of those cards and die.

[Undomian]

Koby's post sums up my thoughts on this quite nicely. If there was one thing I learned about Hoogland during the short time I had him followed on social media, it is that all the guy does is complain. Literally every Monday after the weekend's SCG results had been published, Hoogland would be on Twitter bitching about the percentage of Brainstorm decks present there. He has an idea of what he wants Legacy to be, and he is not happy that reality does not mesh well with his fantasy.

[Megadeus]

I used to hate playing against death rite and stone forge. Then I played with them and was like, holy shit these cards are insane. So now I play them. If you can't beat em...

[nedleeds]

1.) He wants to win, and if he doesn't feel like he can win, he quits the format.
2.) He wants to play the same strategy, no matter what.



I think he's saying the format is stale as a fart. One card is so clearly better than half a dozen that are already banned that he's frustrated and can only play one event every Sunday, so he's choosing modern. The article comes off as salty, but I'm not sure about number 2. I think it's more like, I don't want to play Brainstorm and Force of Will in every deck, but if I don't I'm clearly just crippling myself, and I'm not up for that.

[nedleeds]

I used to hate playing against death rite and stone forge. Then I played with them and was like, holy shit these cards are insane. So now I play them. If you can't beat em...

The format from a SCG/GP perspective is

1) Brainstorm decks
2) Stoneforge decks
3) Delver decks
4) 2 and 3 are often brainstorm decks as well
5) Burn
6) various awful combo decks that are miserable to play and cave to hate but sometimes an ape in a tank top makes it to top 8 because he doesn't face Force all day

He also discounts the cost of switching decks in Legacy, once a barnacle buys into U/x/x deck even if he wants to play Lands or Staxx it's $2,000 to jump out. He may only play legacy in opens or GPs.

If you can't deal with that then I would recommend taking a break from Legacy ... which it what his article is saying. Decks like lands are pretty good, but the average dork can't afford those cards and to keep his blue dual / fow shell.

[Megadeus]

Essentially. From time to time you get a few non blue decks (like DnT or Elves) which top 8, but one is fairly committed to shitting on blue decks and the other is a combo deck that non blue decks struggle with and has a solid back up beats plan. and sometimes those decks stumble over themselves because they have no way to smooth out draws.

Everyone always says that we should keep brainstorm but print better answers to it. Anything that is better than Spirit of the Lab or Chains either will be too narrow to be playable or would be completely OP.

[iamajellydonut]

One card is so clearly better than half a dozen that are already banned that he's frustrated and can only play one event every Sunday, so he's choosing modern. The article comes off as salty, but I'm not sure about number 2. I think it's more like, I don't want to play Brainstorm and Force of Will in every deck, but if I don't I'm clearly just crippling myself, and I'm not up for that.

"My deck is bad because it doesn't play Brainstorm" is not a thing. Jund, Painter, and Pox are all incredible decks. I don't think there's a deck in the format that isn't scared to sit down across from of any of them. Same with a fair number of other non-blue decks. You can bring any of them to a local and fairly make a clean four or five round sweep. Hell, I bet he could force some non-blue Loam engine to money. The issues start to arise when you try to slug out eight, nine, or ten rounds and a top eight without Brainstorm or some other comparable piece of consistency. Eventually you'll open a hand with quadruple situationally-useless-shit and get blown out.

Anyway, if he's upset at not being able to top 16 a major event with a Johnny-brew, he's got brain problems. If he's upset at not being able to reliably hit money at a local level, he sucks.

[iamajellydonut]

I used to hate playing against death rite and stone forge. Then I played with them and was like, holy shit these cards are insane. So now I play them. If you can't beat em...

I know, right? Deadguy Ale is like my favorite deck.

[Admiral_Arzar]

He also discounts the cost of switching decks in Legacy, once a barnacle buys into U/x/x deck even if he wants to play Lands or Staxx it's $2,000 to jump out. He may only play legacy in opens or GPs.

Decks like lands are pretty good, but the average dork can't afford those cards and to keep his blue dual / fow shell.

This. I don't like piloting midrange or tempo blue shells, but I have access to the cards to play fringe decks like Lands, High Tide, and Imperial Painter. Many (if not most) players you'll find at a SCG don't have this option and I agree that this dramatically influences deck choice.


"My deck is bad because it doesn't play Brainstorm" is not a thing. Jund, Painter, and Pox are all incredible decks. I don't think there's a deck in the format that isn't scared to sit down across from of any of them.

With the exception of Jund, which is mostly built out of core Legacy/Modern staples (the only real exception is Chains in the board occasionally) Nedleeds explained the lack of frequency of those decks. Both the perception of blue being best, and a lot of people not having the expensive fringe staples (I think a lot more players own Goyfs and Jaces than own Tabernacle, Imperial Recruiter, or Chains) limits the number of those decks that get played. People aren't generally going to fork over a ton of money to pick up staples for decks that nobody plays and they never see win anything, it's too much of a risk when they could just build Deathblade or BUG whatever and be playing a proven DTB. Even if the fringe strategies are good enough to win (debatable, but I've done quite a bit of winning with fringe decks over the years so it's possible) it's a question of numbers. If there are 3 Lands players in the room and 50 Stoneblade players, which deck is more likely to be represented in the top eight? Even if Lands crushes the majority of the format those few pilots still have to contend with variance, bad matchups, etc. weeding them out. Just a few losses mean that deck doesn't show up for the top eight.

[nedleeds]

"My deck is bad because it doesn't play Brainstorm" is not a thing.

What the fuck does "is a thing" mean?

"My deck is inconsistent across an 8+ round event because it doesn't play Brainstorm and fetches" is a fact. You then go on to cite a 5 round local vs. a longer event proving the point further.

You can run hot with all the decks you listed, and I've played all of them, and Chalice decks for a while but most of the time over an 8+ round event the hyper-geometric distribution catches up with you and you get awful hands that can't be salvaged for the low cost of {U} and a fetchland.

[iamajellydonut]

What the fuck does "is a thing" mean?

"My deck is inconsistent across an 8+ round event because it doesn't play Brainstorm and fetches" is a fact. You then go on to cite a 5 round local vs. a longer event proving the point further.

You can run hot with all the decks you listed, and I've played all of them, and Chalice decks for a while but most of the time over an 8+ round event the hyper-geometric distribution catches up with you and you get awful hands that can't be salvaged for the low cost of {U} and a fetchland.

This is literally exactly what I said.

[maharis]

Modern is dominated by the 3 netdecks because the average SCG barnacle can't build a deck. It's a PT/GP format and people just buy 75s off TCG. You can crush modern with any well crafted deck ... but you may not every week, or over a long evnt because the card quality in modern is suspect, the tutoring is suspect. That turns many people off from the format, e.g. I can hedge my board vs. Pod but simply never draw any of those cards and die.

Right, that's the thing. Modern has the same problem as Legacy in that there are clearly optimal shells that are played by a majority of the field. Hoogland himself plays Snapcaster-Bolt decks almost exclusively. Those are the two most played non-land cards in the format. It's the equivalent of playing Brainstorm and Force in Legacy. He's not trying to force Loam in the format, so he thinks its more fun and open. That's garbage.

I agree, and you agree, with him that the format is Brainstorm saturated right now. His tone and unwillingness to accept any data that contradicts his view are very disappointing. He is a good player and I largely appreciate his contributions to Magic content, but this article was really poorly conceived.

[HammafistRoob]

Do not think I am talking about just BS, (Remember I am quite firmly in the "Do not ban BS" camp) but I am talking about the Meta as a whole. I do not think that BS is actually the issue here. I personally think that the issue is that of late, Blue has been given the best of everything. This means that while BS has always been the best card, its showings have been artificially inflated due to the presence of new, strong Blue creatures. This has made the format more blue as a whole, not just one card in it. BS gets the flack because it is simply the best at what it does, but personally, my view is that it is cards like Delver that are truly to blame here, not BS.

Like I said, the meta is all inbreed, and if he wanted to do more than rant he could have shaped a great article. Because this is a problem and it is not going away. But I feel like some people here have blinders on. Some think everything is fine and are openly hostile at the people that suggest otherwise, others like to point at BS and claim that banning it would solve everything. I personally would like to see Delver and TNN gone, I think that would do more good than the removal of BS would. But I also feel like that ship has sailed and I would not blame someone for getting out of the format now if they do not like the direction that Legacy is taking.
You know the old saying "Goyf is the best blue creature"? That's because the blue shells are much better than non blue ones and it's very easy to splash 2-3 colors and rarely be punished for it. You have the same removal other decks have on top of counters to slow the opponent down while your cantrips pull your head above the water. If Delver and TNN ever get the axe, that just means we'll be seeing more Stoneforge Mystics, Goyfs, Cliques, Snapcasters, and Deathrites. The problem isn't the creatures, it's the glue that holds these seemingly unstable shells together. Could you imagine Deathblade or Sneak and Show being tier 1 without brainstorm? I can't.

Even though I believe Brainstorm is too powerful fir Legacy, I think this article was trash. He's never going to get better if he quits when he can't top 8 consistently with one deck.

[thecrav]

Three points I gleaned about Mr. Hoogland that may or may not affect his credibility.

1. He actually likes the way that WotC has shaped the Modern format with bannings.
2. He appears to have only played Aggro Loam in Legacy, and hasn't tried to attack the format from other angles once that deck became worse-positioned. I guess everyone's pet deck deserves to be Tier 1?
3. He states that there is an "objective best" in the format, ignoring non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.

You forgot the part where he frequently insists that 61 is the correct number of cards to play.

[Koby]

You forgot the part where he frequently insists that 61 is the correct number of cards to play.

I feel the need to jump on this point. 61 is not necessarily the correct number, but the counter argument that 60 is the correct is not set in stone either.

Sixty-one is a fine number given a good threshold of deck tutoring. It's basically a zero risk move when you've got enough tutoring and the strategy is pursuing non-turn-1-broken-plays.*

* Tin Fins not included, because I am a rebel, and the 61st card is either the 14th land or the 4th Probe. #YOLO #SWAGMCBALLER

[Barook]

Anything that is better than Spirit of the Lab or Chains either will be too narrow to be playable or would be completely OP.
I contest that.

Anything that is slower than Brainstorm won't stop its dominance in the slightest. Why didn't Spirit see widespread adaption (at least in D&T, which seems tailor-made for it)? Because it's

a) too slow (sorcery speed vs instant speed without Vial),
b) too expensive (2 mana vs. 1 mana) and
c) too narrow (Opponent plays creatures and doesn't need to draw cards immediately? Good luck with your shitty Blade of the Sixth Pride).

Spirit would have at least needed Flash to be actually impactful instead of being a cute random "Screw you"-combo with Vial.

As I see it, the bane of Brainstorm and savior of the format needs at least the following attributes to actually put a dent into the Brainstorm numbers:

Costing 1 or less mana (alternate casting costs, or "Trap"-triggers), being instant speed, being symmetrical to prevent blue shells from adopting it and being good enough to be ran by quite a few decks in the MD as 4-of. Being uncounterable would be a nice bonus, but depending on the powerlevel, not a necessarity.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If you desperately hate Brainstorm & Co. while still not willing to play one of the very few strong counter-strategies, Legacy isn't for you.

I'm really amused whenever I encounter this kind of attitude of faux-wise fatalism from people who've played the format a few years.

[HammafistRoob]

I like how my off topic post got deleted instantly. Go clean up the commander 2014 thread if you're bored.

[Megadeus]

I contest that.

Anything that is slower than Brainstorm won't stop its dominance in the slightest. Why didn't Spirit see widespread adaption (at least in D&T, which seems tailor-made for it)? Because it's

a) too slow (sorcery speed vs instant speed without Vial),
b) too expensive (2 mana vs. 1 mana) and
c) too narrow (Opponent plays creatures and doesn't need to draw cards immediately? Good luck with your shitty Blade of the Sixth Pride).

Spirit would have at least needed Flash to be actually impactful instead of being a cute random "Screw you"-combo with Vial.

As I see it, the bane of Brainstorm and savior of the format needs at least the following attributes to actually put a dent into the Brainstorm numbers:

Costing 1 or less mana (alternate casting costs, or "Trap"-triggers), being instant speed, being symmetrical to prevent blue shells from adopting it and being good enough to be ran by quite a few decks in the MD as 4-of. Being uncounterable would be a nice bonus, but depending on the powerlevel, not a necessarity.

that's essentially what I said though right? That the current answers are alright, but not amazing and that making anything better would probably be OP or too narrow

[shopshopshop]

Sounds like a pretty close description of Mental Misstep except for the part where blue decks couldn't use it. Then it got banned.

[Megadeus]

I know, right? Deadguy Ale is like my favorite deck.

Don't get me wrong, I still hate both cards (well batterskull more than stoneforge itself), but I play them because of their power level.

[Lemnear]

I'm really amused whenever I encounter this kind of attitude of faux-wise fatalism from people who've played the format a few years.

You mean "few years" like playing the game since '94, Legacy & Vintage till 2008 then exclusively Legacy till now?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You mean "few years" like playing the game since '94, Legacy & Vintage till 2008 then exclusively Legacy till now?

If you'd played the entire run of Legacy, I doubt it would occur to you to say, "If you don't want to play Brainstorm Legacy just isn't for you."

I mean unless you're like the guy in Memento and you have no actual recollection of what the format was like in 2005 or 07 or even really 09/10 to some extent.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The dominance of blue isn't some abstract inevitability, it is a result of specific decisions about what cards to ban or not, and the power level of new printed cards (and in some cases rather bizarre decisions about where to slot them in the color wheel.)

[iamajellydonut]

The dominance of blue isn't some abstract inevitability, it is a result of specific decisions about what cards to ban or not, and the power level of new printed cards (and in some cases rather bizarre decisions about where to slot them in the color wheel.)

Griselbrand, Stoneforge, Deathrite! Oh my!

Damn those overly powerful blue cards like Tarmogoyf that prohibit any other color from being the most predominant core of the format. Damn them!

[Admiral_Arzar]

Griselbrand, Stoneforge, Deathrite! Oh my!

Damn those overly powerful blue cards like Tarmogoyf that prohibit any other color from being the most predominant core of the format. Damn them!

Everyone knows Griselbrand actually costs 2U, and Tarmogoyf is only green to prevent him from being pitched to FOW (it would be the wrong play, he's too good).

[Barook]

that's essentially what I said though right? That the current answers are alright, but not amazing and that making anything better would probably be OP or too narrow
Not really. I do question the part where making better answers to Brainstorm than the current ones (which do jackshit in the grand scheme of things, or did the Brainstorm numbers actually decrease aside from the natural few % fluctuations each month?) are automatically considered OP.

Playing Brainstorm should be a choice, not a prerequisite of the format.

[iamajellydonut]

Everyone knows Griselbrand actually costs 2U.

I always thought he cost B and eight life?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

You mean "few years" like playing the game since '94, Legacy & Vintage till 2008 then exclusively Legacy till now?
He only reads ppl's join dates. Also...:


If you'd played the entire run of Legacy, I doubt it would occur to you to say, "If you don't want to play Brainstorm Legacy just isn't for you."

I mean unless you're like the guy in Memento and you have no actual recollection of what the format was like in 2005 or 07 or even really 09/10 to some extent.
What has it to do with state of the format in 2014? Should we bring Erhnam-and-Burn-em to discussion?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

He only reads ppl's join dates. Also...:


What has it to do with state of the format in 2014? Should we bring Erhnam-and-Burn-em to discussion?

Legacy circa 2004-2008 was a pretty small world, if I have no recollection of someone they probably weren't very active in deck design in that format.

And your question, as I understand it, is, "What relevance does what Legacy has looked like over most of its history have to a discussion about what Legacy can be expected to look like," is that unfair for some reason?

People that are generally not interested in the deck design aspect of the game, because that's generally who this camp is made up of really with a few exceptions, feel entitled to the fairly stagnant metagame Legacy has devolved into, dominated by a few decks that are mostly the same with interchangeable parts, and a few random combo decks. This format is easier for them to navigate because it's dependent more on playskill and sideboarding decisions than on deck design and metagaming calls.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with their preference but they often go to this place of saying, well, this is what Legacy looks like, in this essentialist tone of argument. But Legacy can look lots of ways. And has. Legacy doesn't have to look anything like the sea of Brainstorm decks it is now. And hasn't, in the past.

I mean it's just a crutch argument anyway but it's pretty well worth pointing out how weak it is so people can feel compelled to get to their real arguments about how they personally like an all Brainstorm meta.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Griselbrand, Stoneforge, Deathrite! Oh my!

Damn those overly powerful blue cards like Tarmogoyf that prohibit any other color from being the most predominant core of the format. Damn them!

Is your cunning plan here to pretend that Delver, Snapcaster, TNN, Jace, etc., haven't been printed in recent years, nor cards that work basically only in blue shells like Griselbrand and Terminus?

[menace13]

I mean unless you're like the guy in Memento and you have no actual recollection of what the format was like in 2005 or 07 or even really 09/10 to some extent.
This is actually evidenced by the post Lord of the Pit made in response to my asking for non-brainstorm GP placings. I think Zoo, Goblins, Maverick, Junk decks being able to place consistently are a sign of diversity and health of a format.

2010 was really the year it started getting away. At that time I would even play Zoo if the meta was soft to it. That all changed for me when Mystical grabbed Entomb/Reanimate, Misstep in any blue deck, and Show and Tell got Emrakul. It now takes a very good reason to not run Brainstorms for me. Only reason I would have is Bazaar, but that's not in format, so. I dont defend any of the cards I love. Theyre all too easy to execute, leverage less skill over can you beat this right now buttons?

Out of all those decks I feel Reanimator w Mystical was the most powerful deck i have ever played in this format. Largely because of Tutor. 8 tutors, 8 combo pieces, 10 disruption/protection cards, and Brainstorm/Ponder while being allowed to get away with singleton sideboard slots to cover every base with no hiccups. I didnt get to play Flash decks though.

[iamajellydonut]

Is your cunning plan here to pretend that Delver, Snapcaster, TNN, Jace, etc., haven't been printed in recent years, nor cards that work basically only in blue shells like Griselbrand and Terminus?

Well, it was more of a joke than a plan, but yeah. Basically.

Anyway, bitching aside and "hrm durg you don't know the format, '09er" aside and "I'm going to get irrationally pissed" aside, did you seriously just put Snapcaster Mage on that list?

[Lemnear]

If you'd played the entire run of Legacy, I doubt it would occur to you to say, "If you don't want to play Brainstorm Legacy just isn't for you."

I mean unless you're like the guy in Memento and you have no actual recollection of what the format was like in 2005 or 07 or even really 09/10 to some extent.

Well, it doesn't matter what the format looked like during the time I played Rec.Survival into Spirit of the Night. What matters is todays design (reads: since MaRo's 7-year-plan started) which gives actual threats to all colors for the sake of drafts which conflicts with the old strenghts of the colorpie and created an imbalance which was not present in the days of old (reads: till the release of Future Sight in May 2007 which I mark the beginning of creature power creep). The era of Survival and Maverick in 09/10 was a nice time after Alara and Zendikar added a lot of GW stuff to the Legacy cardpool but Delver and the next level Tarmogoyf aka SFM as well as the printing of dumb S&T combo pieces unwinded the improvements to the colorbalance made with Alara.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Legacy circa 2004-2008 was a pretty small world, if I have no recollection of someone they probably weren't very active in deck design in that format.
Uhm... no.

And your question, as I understand it, is, "What relevance does what Legacy has looked like over most of its history have to a discussion about what Legacy can be expected to look like," is that unfair for some reason?
Also - and it's unnecessary nitpick, but whatever - 2004-08 isn't most of Legacy's history. It's four years out of ten. The biggest change was the lists split, but then the next great changes happened in last four years or so.



People that are generally not interested in the deck design aspect of the game, because that's generally who this camp is made up of really with a few exceptions, feel entitled to the fairly stagnant metagame Legacy has devolved into, dominated by a few decks that are mostly the same with interchangeable parts, and a few random combo decks. This format is easier for them to navigate because it's dependent more on playskill and sideboarding decisions than on deck design and metagaming calls.
So, what's that Brainstormless metagame breaker that we, the lazy crowd, were unable to invent?



There's nothing intrinsically wrong with their preference but they often go to this place of saying, well, this is what Legacy looks like, in this essentialist tone of argument. But Legacy can look lots of ways. And has. Legacy doesn't have to look anything like the sea of Brainstorm decks it is now. And hasn't, in the past.
But Legacy does look like that... A sea of Brainstorms. Maybe there are those amazing non-blue decks, but I don't see them emerging. (It'll be pretty helpful if an unmulligan device called Brainstorm would be available in other colors so that they may compete with blue's power.)
Legacy in the past wasn't blue because there were other options available, options at least comparable in power to any "blue" deck. But I simply can't imagine how I'd fight a usual today's metagame consisting of blue based combo and control with some kind of outdated concept like RGx Creatures and stuff. Again, feel free to prove me wrong and I'm really interested in the list of those non-blue winning decks that I don't know about.
But this has nothing to do with laziness, but with the fact that "good cards are good" and people play powerful cards/decks that win: SFM, SnT, DRS, SCM, JTMS, LOTV, BS, LED, etc. I'm not sure how one may break this with anything non-broken. One may defeat Werebears and Mystic Enforcer with random draft pile, but I'm not sure it can be said about nowadays decks.



I mean it's just a crutch argument anyway but it's pretty well worth pointing out how weak it is so people can feel compelled to get to their real arguments about how they personally like an all Brainstorm meta.
Sorry, I don't understand this.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Well, it doesn't matter what the format looked like during the time I played Rec.Survival into Spirit of the Night. What matters is todays design (reads: since MaRo's 7-year-plan started) which gives actual threats to all colors for the sake of drafts which conflicts with the old strenghts of the colorpie and created an imbalance which was not present in the days of old (reads: till the release of Future Sight in May 2007 which I mark the beginning of creature power creep). The era of Survival and Maverick in 09/10 was a nice time after Alara and Zendikar added a lot of GW stuff to the Legacy cardpool but Delver and the next level Tarmogoyf aka SFM as well as the printing of dumb S&T combo pieces unwinded the improvements to the colorbalance made with Alara.

Yeah this is what I mean. RecSur was never a good Legacy deck (sadly) and absolutely never good with Spirit of the Night, so when you're saying you played Legacy what you mean is you played Legacy-legal casual.

But there was actually a competitive Legacy scene in the aughts and it featured lots and lots of non-blue decks being viable. Not because people weren't serious or joking around but because the format was actually relaaaaatively color balanced.

So I mean yeah it can happen.

It's just that all these dumb cards we've talked about being printed in the past five years+ tend to fall into two categories:

1) Helping the blue decks or

2) Not hurting the blue decks

Exceptions that come to mind would be Abrupt Decay, Thoughtseize and Thalia, but that's about it, so it's like three down a dozen up.

[lordofthepit]

I notice that Hoogland has gotten quite antagonistic towards and vocal about Legacy. Even aside from this article, I see entirely unprovoked comments on SCG articles about Legacy decks, Reddit threads about Legacy development, tweets regarding #SCGKC, etc. about the dominance of blue/Brainstorm in the format. Keep in mind that I'm not deliberately seeking out his writing, especially now that I'm aware of the low bar he's set with this Meadery article--I'm finding it in the comments section of Legacy content I would normally read.

And while he may be right about that aspect (I agree only that Brainstorm is a dominant card in the format), there is a time and place for those complaints, and hijacking every single discussion about Legacy in that direction is not useful criticism. It's one thing if he just wrote an article about why he personally finds Modern more appealing than Legacy right now, but it looks like he's trying to go out like Tony Montana shooting haphazardly in every direction. It's like watching an angry puppy take a shit all over your house and yard just because.

I wonder whether this is in part due to the respect that he lost from many Legacy players for the stunts he tried to pull against Lossett on MODO. Might as well burn all bridges, I guess.

[iamajellydonut]

Abrupt Decay, Thoughtseize

Son of a bitch, blue is using our own technology against us!

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Uhm... no.

Yes.


Also - and it's unnecessary nitpick, but whatever - 2004-08 isn't most of Legacy's history. It's four years out of ten. The biggest change was the lists split, but then the next great changes happened in last four years or so.

1) 5. It's 5 years. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. And again really 2009 and 2010 mostly count into the bargain before things start noticeably dropping off.

2) I don't know what you mean by "great changes," we've entered a period of deepening stagnation? But I wouldn't describe it as a great changes, it's just a strong drift towards everyone playing Thresh variants.


So, what's that Brainstormless metagame breaker that we, the lazy crowd, were unable to invent?

I have no idea I haven't actually thought through what the Brainstorm-less metagame would look like. Probably something like Eva Green would be a lot stronger, discard in general gets a big leg up, but that's like a first stage reaction.


But Legacy does look like that... A sea of Brainstorms. Maybe there are those amazing non-blue decks, but I don't see them emerging. (It'll be pretty helpful if an unmulligan device called Brainstorm would be available in other colors so that they may compete with blue's power.)

Uh...... yeah that's my point. What the eff?


Legacy in the past wasn't blue because there were other options available, options at least comparable in power to any "blue" deck. But I simply can't imagine how I'd fight a usual today's metagame consisting of blue based combo and control with some kind of outdated concept like RGx Creatures and stuff. Again, feel free to prove me wrong and I'm really interested in the list of those non-blue winning decks that I don't know about.
But this has nothing to do with laziness, but with the fact that "good cards are good" and people play powerful cards/decks that win: SFM, SnT, DRS, SCM, JTMS, LOTV, BS, LED, etc. I'm not sure how one may break this with anything non-broken. One may defeat Werebears and Mystic Enforcer with random draft pile, but I'm not sure it can be said about nowadays decks.

Okay fuck off with that you'd defeat it with a random draft pile, modern-bias is especially annoying when it's applied to like things a handful of years ago and more recent than the fucking i-phone, also what? I'm not arguing with this. I don't understand what you think my argument is.


Sorry, I don't understand this.

People need to explain why they want a metagame as blue as it is now, not just say, "Oh, well Legacy was always going to look like this" in this essentialist, quasi-deterministic manner.

[Lord Seth]

I wonder whether this is in part due to the respect that he lost from many Legacy players for the stunts he tried to pull against Lossett on MODO. Might as well burn all bridges, I guess.What happened here?

[lordofthepit]

What happened here?

He was infinitely behind in board position and dead in one swing, but Joe had about 15 seconds left on the clock. He kept trying to put ridiculous activated abilities on the stack that had no relevance whatsoever to the board so that Joe would have to click through more stuff to get to combat, which would cause him to lose time on the clock. It didn't work, but it was absolutely bush league.

[Lemnear]

People need to explain why they want a metagame as blue as it is now, not just say, "Oh, well Legacy was always going to look like this" in this essentialist, quasi-deterministic manner.

No one said Legacy was ever in the current state of "20 flavors of Ponder + Brainstorm + Fetchlands".

[Bed Decks Palyer]

2) I don't know what you mean by "great changes," we've entered a period of deepening stagnation? But I wouldn't describe it as a great changes, it's just a strong drift towards everyone playing Thresh variants.
Ok, call it as you wish, what's the matter if you call it change or drift? But ok, lets say Legacy (and its card pool) didn't change in last four or five years, it drifted. And...?



I have no idea I haven't actually thought through what the Brainstorm-less metagame would look like. Probably something like Eva Green would be a lot stronger, discard in general gets a big leg up, but that's like a first stage reaction.
Wait, what's that? You wrote that All_Brainstorm meta happened due to a lazy deck designing, so I specifically asked for a deck(s) that do not use BS, decks that we are unable to invent because of our laziness.


Uh...... yeah that's my point. What the eff?
Well, the point is that I'd love to read the decklists of those non-blue metagame breakers. I still got my set of Savannahs (for now), so maybe, maybe there'll be something I may tinker with.



Okay fuck off with that you'd defeat it with a random draft pile, modern-bias is especially annoying when it's applied to like things a handful of years ago and more recent than the fucking i-phone, also what? I'm not arguing with this. I don't understand what you think my argument is.
Calm down, dude.
I defeated UGw Legacy Thresh game after game with my GW Extended Haterator. You know what UGw loved to see on the opposite side of table? Eight one mana dudes followed by Troll Ascetic and Worship and/or Jitte. Nice. Deck.
Try this today.



People need to explain why they want a metagame as blue as it is now, not just say, "Oh, well Legacy was always going to look like this" in this essentialist, quasi-deterministic manner.
What's more anti-essentialist anti-quasi than providing the decklists of those mysterious decks we're lazy to invent by ourselves?

[Phoenix Ignition]

It looks like everyone is twisting his article to be the argument they want to argue against. That's not surprising, but what I took from his article is that 1. He had an assumption that players playing different, but still relatively even decks both had an equal chance of winning and 2. Due to blue's ability to smooth out bad draws with Brainstorm, this is completely untrue. Blue (a.k.a. brainstorm) decks have consistency on their side which will automatically make them do better over larger tournaments. Losing to your own deck, like anything playing chalice or sol lands, is going to eventually come back to bite you, and it's just flat out incorrect to play them if you want every percent you can get towards your win rate. No one's saying dragon stompy can't win a tournament, they're just saying you're still wrong for choosing it.

It is entertaining to see the reactions of people who obviously explode whenever anyone even mentions brainstorm anymore. I'm of the position that when you ban the few cards that are far more powerful than any other cards in a format, you make the "playable" card pool larger, not smaller. It opens up new deck options and strategies completely.

[Aggro_zombies]

Looks like he finally discovered the reasons why I've been telling people not to play Aggro Loam for, well, years now.

He's also discovered why the same blue shells stay on top of the format for years at a time while non-blue decks rotate in and out of favor. The consistency you get in blue, plus the flexibility cards like Brainstorm and Force give you, is just really hard to beat going long. Those advantages are only compounded the better you get at Magic or the more you understand the format.

Standard players got a taste of this when Caw-Blade went big. Randoms taking the deck to a tournament could do okay with it but it never felt overpowered until you put it into the hands of someone who actually knew what he was doing. The fact that the deck was naturally solid and scaled very well with skill made it oppressive. I feel like the Legacy format these days is dominated by the same sorts of decks, except the greater raw power of the cards makes it difficult to brew your way around a problem and expect to do well outside of a local metagame.

Anyway, I know this is difficult given that Brainstorm is being discussed, but let's try to keep this thread from getting too heated.

[Lemnear]

It is entertaining to see the reactions of people who obviously explode whenever anyone even mentions brainstorm anymore. I'm of the position that when you ban the few cards that are far more powerful than any other cards in a format, you make the "playable" card pool larger, not smaller. It opens up new deck options and strategies completely.

Are you sure you don't want to read the last 20 pages of the B&R thread instead as there was a discussion going of how the banning of brainstorm would shape the metagame? Hint: not for the better in regards of rewarding playskill or for a more even distribution between aggro/control/combo

You might want to look at modern as well as people claimed that the banning of BBE would open up the metagame to dozens of playable decks, which is plain nonsense proven again and again in the history of MTG. Bannings don't diversify the metagame from like 6 top decks to like 20+ but simply create a new cream of the crop of like 6 ... just with other cards. The number of playable (reads: chase cards) remains the same.

[Aggro_zombies]

The problem with Modern specifically is the ascendancy of midrange as the platonic ideal of Magic decks in the past several years. WotC keep trying to ban BG/x Midrange decks back into the stone age but it turns out that it's really difficult to attack a deck that is literally just all the best cards in its colors. It also turns out that decks like that are going to be really good forever because powerful cards are, well, powerful.

I guess there's also the issue of the format being weirdly split between degenerate combo decks and ridiculously powerful midrange fair decks. It's very hard to build something that isn't just dead to one or another of those axes.

[Lemnear]

The problem with Modern specifically is the ascendancy of midrange as the platonic ideal of Magic decks in the past several years. WotC keep trying to ban BG/x Midrange decks back into the stone age but it turns out that it's really difficult to attack a deck that is literally just all the best cards in its colors. It also turns out that decks like that are going to be really good forever because powerful cards are, well, powerful.

I guess there's also the issue of the format being weirdly split between degenerate combo decks and ridiculously powerful midrange fair decks. It's very hard to build something that isn't just dead to one or another of those axes.

Sounds like you have VERY DIVERSE deck choices in Modern ;P

[Aggro_zombies]

Eh, I would totally play Modern if it were 50% cheaper or so. BGW Birthing Pod reminds me a lot of the Legacy Survival decks of yore, and it's one of my favorite cards to boot.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Are you sure you don't want to read the last 20 pages of the B&R thread instead as there was a discussion going of how the banning of brainstorm would shape the metagame? Hint: not for the better in regards of rewarding playskill or for a more even distribution between aggro/control/combo

You might want to look at modern as well as people claimed that the banning of BBE would open up the metagame to dozens of playable decks, which is plain nonsense proven again and again in the history of MTG. Bannings don't diversify the metagame from like 6 top decks to like 20+ but simply create a new cream of the crop of like 6 ... just with other cards. The number of playable (reads: chase cards) remains the same.

I'm not saying there will be more than 6 tier 1 decks due to bannings, I'm saying that the diversity of those decks will be far greater. In Modern the top 6 decks are BGx, Splinter Twin, Affinity, Birthing Pod, UWr, and scapeshift. Those decks are wildly different not only in card choice but also in play style. I can't think of any card that even half of them share other than Snapcaster (which isn't even played as 4-ofs in most versions of these decks). Legacy's top 6 have probably 4 brainstorm decks with 3 of them playing the same initial blue shell. But even if it was a single shell dominating the format, the problem isn't necessarily that, it's more that brainstorm leads to variance being less important, which is always better.

[Barook]

Are you sure you don't want to read the last 20 pages of the B&R thread instead as there was a discussion going of how the banning of brainstorm would shape the metagame? Hint: not for the better in regards of rewarding playskill or for a more even distribution between aggro/control/combo
"Brainstorm in response" is rarely the pinnacle of skill. The comparison someone made about it being the training wheels of Legacy doesn't sound too far-fetched. How a ban of Brainstorm would change the metagame, if at all, would be another topic that's hard to predict.


I'm not saying there will be more than 6 tier 1 decks due to bannings, I'm saying that the diversity of those decks will be far greater. In Modern the top 6 decks are BGx, Splinter Twin, Affinity, Birthing Pod, UWr, and scapeshift. Those decks are wildly different not only in card choice but also in play style. I can't think of any card that even half of them share other than Snapcaster (which isn't even played as 4-ofs in most versions of these decks). Legacy's top 6 have probably 4 brainstorm decks with 3 of them playing the same initial blue shell. But even if it was a single shell dominating the format, the problem isn't necessarily that, it's more that brainstorm leads to variance being less important, which is always better.
Out of the current 7 DtB, there are 6 Brainstorm decks and Elves at the 6th place. D&T rotates in and out, depending on how lucky the pilots get each month, which brings us back to the consistency factor.

Blue shells win because they're way more consistent than non-blue shells which gives them statistically an undeniable edge the longer a tournament goes. Brainstorm is just the worst offender since it does several things other cantrips can't do. For the same reason are CotV decks terrible since they're relying on powerful, but very inconsistent openings AND winning the dice roll.

[Lemnear]

"Brainstorm in response" is rarely the pinnacle of skill. The comparison someone made about it being the training wheels of Legacy doesn't sound too far-fetched. How a ban of Brainstorm would change the metagame, if at all, would be another topic that's hard to predict.

No, but being able to reduce the variance within the game and your own deck results into the pilots skill being more of a factor for a victory or defeat than drawing random cards from the top of your deck and hoping that they are the right ones. That is the reason i consider SDT (outside of miracles) and Sylvan Library underplayed and GSZ such an all-star.

P.S.: A Sylvan Library with legs would be really nice btw.

P.P.S.: Are you trying to make a point based on some idiots using Brainstorm to justify keeping bad hands or eot brainstorming without a fetchland just to use all their mana each turn?

[ESG]

I'll still be Loaming.

[Barook]

P.P.S.: Are you trying to make a point based on some idiots using Brainstorm to justify keeping bad hands or eot brainstorming without a fetchland just to use all their mana each turn?
No, as I said, "Brainstorm in response" to everything - mana denial or looking for counters/removal whenever something bad happens. Zero planning ahead required since you can always look for answers on the fly, unlike sorcery speed draw.

Yes, a Mirri's Guile or Library variant on legs would be nice, but what exactly would prevent blue decks from incorporating as well? If they're good enough, I fail to see why they wouldn't run 1-2 GSZ as well for greater consistency.

Remember: If it's good, blue runs it. If it's good against blue, then blue decks run in the sideboard.

Creating good cards without them being run by blue decks is a tall order nowadays, especially since R&D rarely gives a damn about symmetry. R&D just cuts the middle man and prints the bullshit cards directly in blue (see: TNN).

I think one problem worth mentioning is the depth of the card pool. Blue has a long history of doing everything and it shows. Although even some of the more recent designs are more than questionable (e.g. why does blue need hand disruption in form of Clique?).

[Lord Seth]

You might want to look at modern as well as people claimed that the banning of BBE would open up the metagame to dozens of playable decks, which is plain nonsense proven again and again in the history of MTG. Bannings don't diversify the metagame from like 6 top decks to like 20+ but simply create a new cream of the crop of like 6 ... just with other cards. The number of playable (reads: chase cards) remains the same.I don't remember anyone claiming that Bloodbraid Elf would make there be 20 or more top decks. But what people thought it would do, and what it did do, was make it so you could play something other than Jund or anti-Jund. (as well as have there be an actual reason to play Junk or Rock)

[HammafistRoob]

No, but being able to reduce the variance within the game and your own deck results into the pilots skill being more of a factor for a victory or defeat than drawing random cards from the top of your deck and hoping that they are the right ones. That is the reason i consider SDT (outside of miracles) and Sylvan Library underplayed and GSZ such an all-star.

To be honest you kinda countered your own argument. People seem to think that without Brainstorm, all decks become piles of inconsistency which is blatantly false. It makes blue decks have to adopt certain deck building philosophies that all non blue decks have to do currently. You brought up Top and Sylvan which I agree are great tools for consistency, but there's also other cards like Ponder, Preordain, and GSZ among others. Getting rid of Brainstorm would actually make the format more skill testing in my opinion because, like Barook brought up, it makes planning ahead and spell sequencing much more important. Deck building would also become a little more of a challenge since you'd probably need to have a little more redundancy in your card selection. 4 Color manabases and clunky combo like SneakShow become a lot harder to build and play without Cheatstorm.

P.S.: A Sylvan Library with legs would be really nice btw.

That is actually an amazing idea and I'd be super pumped if it ever happens. I would instantly jam some weird Bant deck with GSZ and Brainstorm :).
P.P.S.: Are you trying to make a point based on some idiots using Brainstorm to justify keeping bad hands or eot brainstorming without a fetchland just to use all their mana each turn?
Keeping sub par hands because of Brainstorm is a common and practical occurence as long as you're not playing something like Storm. Brainstorm doesn't usually get countered unless your opponent has a sick read or an excessive amount of soft counters. The only thing to really punish the un-mulligan line that Brainstorm offers is a turn 1, on the play Gitaxian Probe. That being said, I'm not sure why more players don't sling Pierces or REBs at Brainstorms. I actually do that a lot more than most players and it seems to work out well for me.

[Bertrand Hustle]

Three points I gleaned about Mr. Hoogland that may or may not affect his credibility.

1. He actually likes the way that WotC has shaped the Modern format with bannings.
2. He appears to have only played Aggro Loam in Legacy, and hasn't tried to attack the format from other angles once that deck became worse-positioned. I guess everyone's pet deck deserves to be Tier 1?
3. He states that there is an "objective best" in the format, ignoring non-Brainstorm decks like D&T, Lands, Elves, and Jund that might have better win percentages than most Brainstorm decks.
This. He reads like a shill for WotC praising Modern. There's much less mechanical variance in terms of how decks in Modern operate since there are less relevant options on the table.
Wizards has stated that there is a way that they want Magic to look and Legacy doesn't look like that. Sad, but they don't like the very game they created being optimized and picked apart in the way that many "degenerate" Legacy combos do.

[Dice_Box]

I do not think the man is a shill, I mean personally I find myself agreeing with many of his points. I am a Goblins player at heart whom switched to Elves, Painter and Jund to stay competitive. I see many of his issues mirrored in the days where I tried in desperation to keep Goblins viable. I fully understand what he is going though, I empathise but I do not sympathise. I adapted, he quit. He could have done far better than throw a tantrum and run off, but alas he did not. At lest we got some semblance of a decent conversation out of this mess.

[Finn]

I am pretty sure that Mr. Hoogland is correctly identifying Brainstorm as being overly powerful. And in this case I also completely agree with IBA that chalking it up to "Well, that's Legacy. Blue gets a free pass on consistency" is foolish. Brainstorm is flat busted, folks. I hope to God that this is not something we need to dissect and bicker about. Anyone who would argue the contrary, I am just going to say has not played enough to see it. I did not always feel this way. But over time I have recognized how this is undeniably so. And it has gotten more broken with each excellent card blue has been able to add to its arsenal.

Yep, he has given up too easily, probably because he feels butthurt about his pet deck losing. But that is just his reaction to the truth he has discovered. The guy hit the nail squarely on the head. Brainstorm does exactly what he says it does. And I think the guys here are by and large acting predictably defensive about it. Oh, I feel the same as you folks. I just recognize the unhelpful place where that feeling comes from.

I also hope Brainstorm never gets banned. There is no easy fix here. But you can't just ban this iconic card. Then there really would be nothing preventing Modern from ruining Legacy. We just need more cards that are unusable by blue and that weaken Brainstorm. I hope that effects randomly pepper the format over the next few years to bring the card down a notch. Just a notch...or even better yet, give the other colors equally as fun and skill-intensive staples of the same power. Kudos if they can get these cards to hose each other and Brainstorm, thus accomplishing both and limiting their ubiquity at the same time.

The takeaway is that Mr. Hoogland has it right in what Brainstorm does. He is just reacting poorly by complaining into a microphone.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Dice_Box

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I adapted, he quit. He could have done far better than throw a tantrum and run off, but alas he did not.
This isn't a concentration camp. He may leave.

Speaking of BS and Ponder vs. Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile:
One thing people seem to not care about is that one-mana cantrips are not only cheaper, but their effect happens immediatelly. Brainstorm even "unmulligans". Ponder (and BS to some extent) allows mediocre keeps and they very often turn them into powerful hands. One example: would you keep a one lander with Library? I don't think so...
Moreover, cantrips make for "virtual card density" as they dig for w/e you need whenever you need it without any other prerequisite, like having a fetch or be in a certain phase of turn. Simply said, if you need to kill that goyf NOW, it won't help you to draw Mirri's Guile. Also, having a built-in shuffle effect is world of a difference in those cases where you've kept somehow weaker hand and need to get your land/solution asap. I went through my share of ugly upkeeps when I was Guile-locked, and while Sylvan Library allows to get out of jail with the additional draws, they can hardly be described as free, unless you play against the most controlish control of all the controls.
Not to speak of monetary difference. If building on a budget requires 8x common cantrip, it doesn't hurt. Both Guile and Library are in 10 bucks range. And frankly, Library often times supplements the cantrip suite, while Guile sems to be the one that sees play in predominantly green deck, Enchantress... and nowhere else.

But maybe thisis the way how to do the things. I'm not sure if I love the idea of each and every my deck starting with 4-3 SDT, 3-4 Library, but maybe it's a necessity. Durdle, durdle...

Also, I love how everyone has an opinion on everything, even Hoogland's underwear, but there's zero discussion on LftL.dec in Modern.
This is what I came up with. Note that it's GW. As such, it's hurt by unavailability of Windswept Heath, so lets try something different. (In fact I'm trying this in Legacy but to no avail.)

4 Temple Garden
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Brushland
2 Forest
2 Plains

8 Manadork @ cmc1
4 Goyf
4 Kotr
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Aven Mindcensor

4 LftL
4 PtE

4 slots

Obviously, this is VERY BAD build. Any ideas how to improve it?

Also, what's the best splash color? I guess GWr and GWb are solid choices with Bolt and Bob being powerful cards. Is there any effect similar to Devastating Dreams available in Modern?

[Phoenix Ignition]

Obviously, this is VERY BAD build. Any ideas how to improve it?


http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=7269&d=241659&f=MO seems like an okay build, or just look at the other listings of aggro loam http://www.mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=232

[Lemnear]

Also, I love how everyone has an opinion on everything, even Hoogland's underwear, but there's zero discussion on LftL.dec in Modern.
This is what I came up with. Note that it's GW. As such, it's hurt by unavailability of Windswept Heath, so lets try something different. (In fact I'm trying this in Legacy but to no avail.)

4 Temple Garden
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Brushland
2 Forest
2 Plains

8 Manadork @ cmc1
4 Goyf
4 Kotr
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Aven Mindcensor

4 LftL
4 PtE

4 slots

Obviously, this is VERY BAD build. Any ideas how to improve it?

Also, what's the best splash color? I guess GWr and GWb are solid choices with Bolt and Bob being powerful cards. Is there any effect similar to Devastating Dreams available in Modern?

I would think in the direction of Oracle of Mul Daya and other extra-landdrops + Valakut + Scapeshift + Titan + Wolf Run ... heared Lightning Bolts are the shit in Modern ;)

[MrGlantz]

I'm going to try to avoid talking about Brainstorm at all because you get flamed pretty easily on these forums and I mostly lurk, rather than post so I can easily see myself being flamed just because of something arbitrary like that.

To address many posts in this thread about modern being less diverse or similarity diverse to legacy is in many ways unfair. We have relatively large legacy tournaments every week thanks to SCG. Until very recently there was no such thing for modern. So while modern may really not be more diverse or even less diverse it's pretty hard to say that with much actual data to back it up.

Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.

Also his article reads more about how he likes modern for it's potential, rather than what it currently is. Modern can potentially be very open to players because it's not shackled by the reserve list. Modern can potentially be very healthy because wizards is active in banning and unbanning cards. It's a bit more optimistic than I would be, but in theory those are things I think most people would really enjoy. There just isn't much faith in wizards to do that competently.

[T-101]

I'm going to try to avoid talking about Brainstorm at all because you get flamed pretty easily on these forums and I mostly lurk, rather than post so I can easily see myself being flamed just because of something arbitrary like that.

To address many posts in this thread about modern being less diverse or similarity diverse to legacy is in many ways unfair. We have relatively large legacy tournaments every week thanks to SCG. Until very recently there was no such thing for modern. So while modern may really not be more diverse or even less diverse it's pretty hard to say that with much actual data to back it up.

Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.

Also his article reads more about how he likes modern for it's potential, rather than what it currently is. Modern can potentially be very open to players because it's not shackled by the reserve list. Modern can potentially be very healthy because wizards is active in banning and unbanning cards. It's a bit more optimistic than I would be, but in theory those are things I think most people would really enjoy. There just isn't much faith in wizards to do that competently.

There actually has been a whole lot of innovating attempted in Modern. Ever since it was announced, people have been brewing. In the early days, brews were just smashed to pieces by Hypergenesis, Infect Shoal, and other turn 3ish combos. But its a bit better now, brews crop up (think Ad Naus/Lightning Storm). There is certainly untapped potential, but for some reason there isn't as strong an effort to make sweet decks in Modern. Maybe all the brewers are happily tinkering away in Legacy-Land.

[Richard Cheese]

I am pretty sure that Mr. Hoogland is correctly identifying Brainstorm as being overly powerful. And in this case I also completely agree with IBA that chalking it up to "Well, that's Legacy. Blue gets a free pass on consistency" is foolish. Brainstorm is flat busted, folks. I hope to God that this is not something we need to dissect and bicker about. Anyone who would argue the contrary, I am just going to say has not played enough to see it. I did not always feel this way. But over time I have recognized how this is undeniably so. And it has gotten more broken with each excellent card blue has been able to add to its arsenal.

Yep, he has given up too easily, probably because he feels butthurt about his pet deck losing. But that is just his reaction to the truth he has discovered. The guy hit the nail squarely on the head. Brainstorm does exactly what he says it does. And I think the guys here are by and large acting predictably defensive about it. Oh, I feel the same as you folks. I just recognize the unhelpful place where that feeling comes from.

I also hope Brainstorm never gets banned. There is no easy fix here. But you can't just ban this iconic card. Then there really would be nothing preventing Modern from ruining Legacy. We just need more cards that are unusable by blue and that weaken Brainstorm. I hope that effects randomly pepper the format over the next few years to bring the card down a notch. Just a notch...or even better yet, give the other colors equally as fun and skill-intensive staples of the same power. Kudos if they can get these cards to hose each other and Brainstorm, thus accomplishing both and limiting their ubiquity at the same time.

The takeaway is that Mr. Hoogland has it right in what Brainstorm does. He is just reacting poorly by complaining into a microphone.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Dice_Box

Agree almost completely with this. Brainstorm is an inherently powerful card, but like Show and Tell, the things it enables have gotten much more powerful over the last few years. Quality blue creatures have gone up with Delver, TNN, Geist, and Snapcaster. Powerful answer cards like Abrupt Decay, Liliana, Toxic Deluge and Terminus. Griselbrand single-handedly revitalized two combo decks and created at least one more (you're welcome).

It's not just Brainstorm either. Between that, Ponder, Preordain, and Jace, it's hard to argue that Blue isn't going to continue to be the color of consistency for the foreseeable future. It wasn't necessarily always going to be that way, but based on the current card pool and Wizards' design philosophy over the last oh....seven years, it's really hard to see it changing any time soon. I don't think you have to want or like the current meta to recognize that it won't change overnight, if at all.

Oh, and Loam isn't terrible in Modern, but it's a lot slower without Mox Diamond, you lose the card advantage of cycle lands, and the late-game inevitability of Stronghold.

[btm10]

I agree that the article is mostly Hoogland whining about Legacy without a whole lot of justification other than "Brainstorm and Force are good". I don't think that Legacy is as interesting as it could be with some unbannings, but that's a completely different issue. I'll echo the sentiment that several others have made: Brainstorm (and to a lesser extent Ponder) make the format better by minimizing variance and opening up a large deckbuilding space. I think that the drift toward the dominance of midrange strategies is a consequence of how good creatures have gotten recently. If we want something approaching real control strategies other than Miracles (and a lot of builds in the US can get pretty midrange-y) we need better answers, and if we want more combo we need better draw/search and better mana accelerants, and these are all things Wizards are loathe to print. Modern isn't appealing at all because of how controlled it is in general and how bad they've made Storm combo in particular.




Hoogland's angst in the format seems to basically that he feels that legacy has so many powerful options that it's pretty restrictive in what you can do. This is true to an extent, but I also think it's because there isn't a ton of innovation going on in legacy. There's plenty of very powerful cards that don't see any brewing or innovation with in this format. Humility I think is a very good example of something that's really strong, but frequently gets dismissed out of hand by 80% of the people who play the format. There isn't really as much brewing going on so the format can get very stale. Brainstorm feeds into this restrictive brewing environment but I'm trying not to touch on that.


People do brew in Legacy, it's just that the viable design space is constrained because of the power issue, as you said. Humility in particular had a good home in Enchantress, but that deck is just too soft to combo to have its favorable-to-even matchups (RUG Delver) supplanted by even-to-slightly unfavorable matchups (BUG Delver) and simultaneously get hit by random anti-TNN cards to be anything close to viable anymore.

[Dzra]

I notice that Hoogland has gotten quite antagonistic towards and vocal about Legacy. Even aside from this article, I see entirely unprovoked comments on SCG articles about Legacy decks, Reddit threads about Legacy development, tweets regarding #SCGKC, etc. about the dominance of blue/Brainstorm in the format.

He's just sandy about being unable to beat top players with his pet brews.


I think Zoo, Goblins, Maverick, Junk decks being able to place consistently are a sign of diversity and health of a format. 2010 was really the year it started getting away.

Probably a little after that also. I remember Zoo, Maverick/Survival, and Junk all being top decks around that time.


It's not just Brainstorm either. Between that, Ponder, Preordain, and Jace, it's hard to argue that Blue isn't going to continue to be the color of consistency for the foreseeable future. It wasn't necessarily always going to be that way, but based on the current card pool and Wizards' design philosophy over the last oh....seven years, it's really hard to see it changing any time soon.

Honestly, if there is anything negative to be said about the diversity of Legacy, I believe it would be how "midranged good-stuffy" the format is becoming. It isn't Brainstorm and Force of Will that are the problem; if anything they are helping to preserve the diversity. What can be said though is that as Wizards continues to push extremely powerful two and three mana creatures, the format will continue to move more and more towards three-and-a-half color good-stuff decks.

[btm10]

Honestly, if there is anything negative to be said about the diversity of Legacy, I believe it would be how "midranged good-stuffy" the format is becoming. It isn't Brainstorm and Force of Will that are the problem; if anything they are helping to preserve the diversity. What can be said though is that as Wizards continues to push extremely powerful two and three mana creatures, the format will continue to move more and more towards three-and-a-half color good-stuff decks.

Another two or three years of this and they can just unban Balance. I'd lol.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What design space are people arguing that Brainstorm opens up again?

I also notice that people continue to just avoid the part of the discussion where reducing meaningful deck variance- i.e., not just being interchangeable three color goodstuff decks- reduces the number of skill metrics in the format because it makes deck design and metagame prediction much smaller obstacles.

[Tormod]

Yeah brainstorm is powerful.

But to me Deathrite Shaman was printed to be the GB "brainstorm". It fixes mana, its a clock with evasion, its life gain, its a disruption card against by strategies, it ramps, it adds consistency to strategies.

[Julian23]

Has any of those decks ever won a GP? Or how many have top 8'd GPs and how often?

Both D&Ts (GP Straßburg) as well as Elves (BoM Paris) have won major Legacy tournaments as well as had several GP/BoM Top8s. Two of the last 3 BoMs had Elves in the finals. All of them had Elves at least in the Semis. All of them had Death and Taxes at least in the semis. GP Straßburg had two Death & Taxes in the semis including the win by Thomas. GP Washington D.C. had both Elves and Death & Taxes in the Top8. And I'm not even metioning medium-sized stuff like my win in the GP Paris sideevent (2xx players) as well as several SCG Top8s/wins.

Both decks are without question among the top tier of Legacy decks.

['Nilla Pac]

Both D&Ts (GP Straßburg) as well as Elves (BoM Paris) have won major Legacy tournaments as well as had several GP/BoM Top8s. Two of the last 3 BoMs had Elves in the finals. All of them had Elves at least in the Semis. All of them had Death and Taxes at least in the semis. GP Straßburg had two Death & Taxes in the semis including the win by Thomas. GP Washington D.C. had both Elves and Death & Taxes in the Top8. And I'm not even metioning medium-sized stuff like my win in the GP Paris sideevent (2xx players) as well as several SCG Top8s/wins.

Both decks are without question among the top tier of Legacy decks.

This goes back to how some decks are more consistent than others. Elves still has consistency without blue cards due to green sun's zenith and its draw engines. Death and Taxes is consistent because, well... fuck I don't know why. How that deck wins anything is still a mystery to me and I wonder about it every time I lose to it.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.

[Dice_Box]

Elves is rather consistent. I mean I can not speak for DnT but Elves does not need filtering. You use a brute force method of finding what you want by simply drawing more cards than anyone else does. It works so well that often Visionary and Symbiote get removed more than cards like Heritage Druid.

Add in GSZ and I don't see Elves going away for a long while.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Okay well yeah Elves is more in the category of combo decks like Reanimator or TES or Time Spiral. Despite not having Brainstorm it does seem pretty consistent, I've been a big fan in the past, but it is more susceptible to metagame variations than the generic good stuff decks.

[Barook]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.
D&T sure can adapt to the meta (well, except for Elves). Calling them inconsistent is wrong, they're just less consistent than blue decks. Drawing only land and Vials for 11 turns just happens more often than with blue decks and their filtering.

If they were inconsistent, they wouldn't put up results. I agree that they put up less results due to higher random, though.

[Jander78]

Stop with the insults and personal attacks. Keep this thread on topic about the article. Any discussion about bannings should go in the Banned and Restricted (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?14662-All-B-R-update-speculation) thread. Further offenses will results in warnings and site bans.

[LOLWut]

D&T and Elves won't stay at the top. I say this because we've had a pretty stagnant metagame with a rotating cast of non-blue decks for like four years. I mean is D&T even still a top deck, it left the DTB. These non-blue strategies are inconsistent and can't adapt to shifts in the meta like the blue goodstuff decks can.

Obviously there's too much blue (because of player preferences, card availability, and most importantly, recent design philosophy), but don't act like elite nonblue decks are somehow less competitive than elite blue decks. Earlier in the thread, someone tried to gloss over nonblue presence in top 8's of large tourneys by claiming that they only get there and beat other decks in the top 8 by being good against solely the top decks, blue decks in their argument, and getting lucky. The incorrect assumptions in this argument are hilarious. The idea that D&T, Elves, Painter, Lands, etc beat up on all blue decks equally. The idea that "better" nonblue decks can't beat up on all of the "lesser" nonblue decks the way that blue decks can. If people are just playing these decks because they beat "blue decks", and obviously succeeding, it follows that other people can play decks that beat these decks but might not beat the "blue decks". There's so much to pick apart about that argument, but basically, it's simplistic and incorrect. I don't think it was your post, but I meandered.

Also don't act like there hasn't been a similarly "rotating cast" of blue decks. The fact that UW Blade, RUG Order, Landstill, RUG turned into Miracles, Team America, Shardless BUG, Patriot or whatever doesn't mean that blue strategies can't adapt and that each blue deck is doomed to downfall more than nonblue decks.

And of course D&T is "still" a top deck. Other decks that have left the DTB section in the past 3 1/2 months: Sneak & Show, Patriot, Canadian Thresh, Jund, Deathblade.

[zeus-online]

Have not read all the responses....but...

I chose to play legacy for two reasons:
More players, where i live, play legacy than vintage.
and in legacy i get to play with most of my awesome blue cards :)

I also get to play versus a wide variety of decks, possibly greater than the variety in any other format?

On a third note: legacy and vintage are the only places left to go for those of us who do not enjoy playing with creatures.
It is not that i dislike playing with creatures that much, i mean...creature based decks can certainly be fun for me. But i really do like having the choice.

A fourth feature of both vintage and legacy is that they are generally not dominated by a single deck.

[Aggro_zombies]

Thread closed. For issues pertaining to Brainstorm's legality, please see the Banned and Restricted Speculation thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?14662-All-B-R-update-speculation).