Do you enjoy the current state of legacy?

[janchu88]

Hi,

just to make one thing clear, i dont want to bitch about certain cards, decks, or state the format is unhealthy or anything like this. Afterall looking at legacy by numbers i think the format is more or less fine in terms of diversity and where its at right now.

But even though the meta seems to be fine by numbers, i cant really enjoy legacy right now... i was wondering how you guys feel about it?

feel free to discuss

and here just my 2 cents on the topic:
In my specific case i think it began with the Eldrazi entering the arena, with tons of chalice decks, Loam-lock decks, Miracles still at the top and so on i think the Meta got "controllier" than before and lots of the more dynamic decks disappered. Its not as if i wasnt able to beat those strategies, but many of the currently well doing decks feel to me as if if they were just trying to slam as many lock pieces as possible and hope that they eventually will get there. The latest episode in the game of hatebears was adding Leovold to BUG... and this is the only thing that really changed over the course of recent legacy history, hatebears and stompy decks were added, thats it

edit: here my first attempt to analyze the metagame

as promised, here are the first results of my research (Attention, wall of text incoming)


Just for better comprehension of the results: What have i done? I split the analyzed timespan into quarters for each year. Then i have built a list of all cards, that were played in this whole timespan. Then i looked up for each single card how big the metashare was for that timespan... There were to methods that came up to my mind for doing so

A: Count all decks that play a certain card during a quarter and divide by the total decks played in that quarter. This gives you a view on how many decks play a specific card, but it doesnt really represent how many copies.

or B: Count the exact numbers of the chosen cards that were played during that quarter and divide by the total of deck played that quarter.

Method B gives you the average Count of that Card over all Decks. For Example over all decks in that quarter 3.1 Brainstorms were played on average. To build a saturation out of that, i divided that number by 4. This means that (3.1/4) * 100 = 77.5% of the possible Brainstorms were played during that era. If the Value reached 100% that meant that all decks would have played 4 Brainstorms. The Issue on this method is that you cant tell wether half of the decks played for 4 Brainstorms or all of the decks played 2 Brainstorms, but it is a lot more precise in terms of getting subtle changes, for example if Miracles played only 3 or 4 Counterbalances during that era or another 4-Off went down to only one copy for example.

I know both methods have heir strengths and weaknesses, but I personally chose B, because i think it is more streamlined to measure the performance of a specific card, rather than the deck it features. And now lets get on to the data. I set the treshhold to a change of 5% in saturation between the quarters and here are the uncommented results:

Important note: The percentages describe how much the meta-share increased or decreased absolutely

I. Q 11 -> II. Q 11

Winners:

Mental Misstep 22,05%
Green Sun's Zenith 12,74%
Hive Mind 7,86%
Ancient Tomb 7,63%
Pact of Negation 7,52%
Leyline of Sanctity 7,42%
Summoner's Pact 6,91%
Grim Monolith 6,83%
Pact of the Titan 6,27%
City of Traitors 5,87%
Underground Sea 5,78%
Flooded Strand 5,73%
Intuition 5,51%
Polluted Delta 5,31%

Losers:

Scalding Tarn -5,23%
Preordain -5,31%
Tropical Island -5,31%
Duress -5,77%
Counterbalance -5,99%
Sensei's Divining Top -6,54%
Progenitus -7,40%
Tarmogoyf -7,64%
Lotus Petal -7,65%
Pithing Needle -7,70%
Aether Vial -8,64%
Krosan Grip -10,21%

II. Q 11 -> III. Q 11

Winners:

Mental Misstep 43,47%
Vendilion Clique 17,47%
Stoneforge Mystic 15,09%
Swords to Plowshares 13,24%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 13,23%
Tundra 12,96%
Brainstorm 12,68%
Force of Will 12,48%
Wasteland 11,36%
Ancestral Vision 10,86%
Flooded Strand 10,41%
Mishra's Factory 7,77%
Wrath of God 7,73%
Daze 7,68%
Angel's Grace 7,44%
Knight of the Reliquary 7,30%
Meddling Mage 6,79%
Spellstutter Sprite 6,27%
Batterskull 6,13%
Green Sun's Zenith 5,85%
Mutavault 5,80%
Surgical Extraction 5,78%
Disenchant 5,58%
Wooded Foothills 5,18%
Mox Diamond 5,17%

Losers:

Ponder -5,06%
Seat of the Synod -5,22%
Ravenous Trap -5,36%
Krosan Grip -5,60%
Sensei's Divining Top -6,80%
Engineered Plague -7,46%
Ethersworn Canonist -9,52%
Mindbreak Trap -9,61%

III. Q 11 -> IV. Q 11

Winners:

Snapcaster Mage 26,00%
Delver of Secrets 20,00%
Wasteland 15,81%
Lightning Bolt 15,74%
Spell Snare 14,92%
Stifle 13,80%
Volcanic Island 13,54%
Silence 13,29%
Mother of Runes 12,24%
Tarmogoyf 12,09%
Mindbreak Trap 12,06%
Tormod's Crypt 11,27%
Punishing Fire 10,40%
Grove of the Burnwillows 9,62%
Duress 9,06%
Dismember 8,60%
Lion's Eye Diamond 8,51%
Dark Ritual 8,26%
Lotus Petal 8,09%
Hymn to Tourach 7,83%
Marsh Flats 7,24%
Nimble Mongoose 6,94%
Gitaxian Probe 6,55%
Orim's Chant 6,38%
Ravenous Trap 5,92%
Arid Mesa 5,86%
Phyrexian Revoker 5,49%
Chrome Mox 5,32%
Ethersworn Canonist 5,22%
Cabal Ritual 5,05%

Losers:

Exhume -5,05%
Engineered Plague -5,10%
Slaughter Pact -5,11%
Summoner's Pact -5,15%
Entomb -5,32%
Ancient Grudge -5,35%
Mishra's Factory -5,37%
Grim Monolith -5,40%
Disenchant -5,46%
Wooded Foothills -5,54%
Careful Study -5,62%
Standstill -5,87%
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn -6,05%
Pact of Negation -6,36%
Pact of the Titan -6,39%
Stoneforge Mystic -6,41%
Noble Hierarch -6,56%
Mutavault -6,66%
Polluted Delta -6,70%
Ancient Tomb -7,01%
Cabal Therapy -7,08%
Hive Mind -7,23%
Intuition -7,25%
Angel's Grace -7,55%
Meddling Mage -7,88%
Spell Pierce -7,94%
Swords to Plowshares -9,81%
Natural Order -9,93%
Underground Sea -10,65%
Show and Tell -11,29%
Ancestral Vision -12,05%
Flooded Strand -12,56%
Misty Rainforest -13,57%
Tundra -14,19%
Vendilion Clique -14,52%
Brainstorm -16,74%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -18,96%
Force of Will -21,65%
Mental Misstep -61,52%

IV. Q 11 -> I. Q 12

Winners:

Surgical Extraction 10,48%
Brainstorm 9,91%
Force of Will 9,87%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 9,17%
Cabal Therapy 9,13%
Intuition 8,48%
Spell Pierce 8,35%
Show and Tell 7,83%
Gemstone Mine 7,83%
Rite of Flame 7,83%
Ancient Tomb 7,52%
Counterbalance 6,74%
Burning Wish 6,09%
Nature's Claim 6,09%
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 5,96%
Chalice of the Void 5,87%
Tundra 5,83%
Flooded Strand 5,74%
City of Brass 5,65%
Engineered Plague 5,22%
Grim Monolith 5,22%
Hive Mind 5,22%
Leyline of Sanctity 5,17%
Underground Sea 5,13%
Polluted Delta 5,09%

Losers:

Grove of the Burnwillows -5,09%
Progenitus -5,13%
Karakas -5,48%
Ravenous Trap -5,61%
Mox Diamond -5,74%
Ethersworn Canonist -5,91%
Spell Snare -5,96%
Punishing Fire -6,09%
Silence -6,74%
Swords to Plowshares -6,83%
Stifle -7,26%
Lightning Bolt -7,61%
Delver of Secrets -7,83%
Mother of Runes -7,96%
Hymn to Tourach -8,22%
Daze -8,35%
Thoughtseize -8,70%
Umezawa's Jitte -9,00%
Scrubland -9,04%
Relic of Progenitus -9,26%
Qasali Pridemage -9,26%
Tormod's Crypt -9,74%
Mindbreak Trap -9,96%
Knight of the Reliquary -10,39%
Marsh Flats -15,09%
Wasteland -15,48%
Tarmogoyf -20,78%

I. Q 12 -> II. Q 12

Winners:

Swords to Plowshares 9,49%
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 8,93%
Mother of Runes 8,62%
Force of Will 8,54%
Noble Hierarch 7,96%
Misty Rainforest 7,91%
Counterbalance 7,55%
Sensei's Divining Top 7,20%
Inquisition of Kozilek 7,18%
Leyline of Sanctity 6,87%
Knight of the Reliquary 6,44%
Lingering Souls 6,00%
Savannah 5,97%
Show and Tell 5,86%
Faithless Looting 5,68%
Submerge 5,55%
Guided Passage 5,36%
Figure of Destiny 5,36%
Ethersworn Canonist 5,22%

Losers:

Cabal Ritual -5,22%
Goblin Piledriver -5,22%
Krosan Grip -5,45%
Bayou -5,66%
Chalice of the Void -5,87%
Dark Confidant -6,19%
Infernal Tutor -6,21%
Gempalm Incinerator -6,52%
Dismember -6,64%
Aether Vial -6,96%
Goblin Lackey -6,96%
Goblin Matron -6,96%
Goblin Ringleader -6,96%
Dark Ritual -8,92%
Spell Snare -9,71%
Delver of Secrets -9,79%
Verdant Catacombs -9,86%
Stifle -11,74%
Wasteland -12,59%

II. Q 12 -> III. Q 12

Winners:

Terminus 13,82%
Cavern of Souls 12,16%
Scalding Tarn 11,46%
Ponder 9,51%
Daze 9,45%
Omniscience 8,89%
Aether Vial 8,62%
Griselbrand 8,46%
Delver of Secrets 7,45%
Goblin Lackey 7,18%
Goblin Matron 7,00%
Goblin Ringleader 7,00%
Oblivion Ring 6,83%
Thoughtseize 6,49%
Stifle 6,37%
Pithing Needle 6,33%
Goblin Warchief 5,92%
Gempalm Incinerator 5,83%
Karakas 5,82%
Volcanic Island 5,35%
Goblin Piledriver 5,34%
Entreat the Angels 5,34%
Faerie Macabre 5,34%
Verdant Catacombs 5,19%

Losers:

Ethersworn Canonist -5,16%
Guided Passage -5,36%
Inquisition of Kozilek -5,56%
Gemstone Mine -5,62%
Stoneforge Mystic -5,91%
Intuition -5,94%
Lightning Bolt -6,39%
Snapcaster Mage -6,97%
Lion's Eye Diamond -7,42%
Leyline of the Void -7,67%
Tormod's Crypt -7,72%
Pyroblast -7,73%
Bloodbraid Elf -7,74%
Nature's Claim -9,04%
Grove of the Burnwillows -10,58%
Punishing Fire -10,58%
Leyline of Sanctity -13,26%

III. Q 12 -> IV. Q 12

Winners:

Abrupt Decay 23,52%
Deathrite Shaman 16,31%
Polluted Delta 16,28%
Brainstorm 13,51%
Tarmogoyf 10,66%
Ponder 8,64%
Tropical Island 8,55%
Duress 7,81%
Force of Will 7,53%
Underground Sea 7,49%
Lion's Eye Diamond 7,38%
Verdant Catacombs 6,61%
Engineered Plague 6,42%
Dark Ritual 5,86%
Cabal Ritual 5,65%
Bayou 5,60%
Hymn to Tourach 5,28%
Infernal Tutor 5,18%

Losers:

Oblivion Ring -5,02%
Choke -5,17%
Red Elemental Blast -5,19%
Sensei's Divining Top -5,24%
Engineered Explosives -5,32%
Omniscience -5,50%
City of Traitors -5,61%
Qasali Pridemage -5,77%
Ancient Tomb -6,06%
Cavern of Souls -6,87%
Mother of Runes -7,28%
Path to Exile -7,79%
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben -8,01%
Windswept Heath -9,17%
Savannah -9,48%
Noble Hierarch -9,61%
Swords to Plowshares -10,07%
Knight of the Reliquary -11,98%
Green Sun's Zenith -12,48%

IV. Q 12 -> I. Q 13

Winners:

Thoughtseize 9,85%
Deathrite Shaman 8,10%
Leyline of Sanctity 7,23%
Lotus Petal 6,59%
Griselbrand 5,74%
Lightning Bolt 5,66%
Verdant Catacombs 5,49%
Wooded Foothills 5,45%
Burning Wish 5,08%
Rite of Flame 5,02%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -5,22%
Terminus -5,29%
Tropical Island -5,57%
Scalding Tarn -5,73%
Vendilion Clique -6,36%
Force of Will -6,71%
Brainstorm -6,95%
Polluted Delta -7,10%

I. Q 13 -> II. Q 13

Winners:

Misty Rainforest 14,97%
Tarmogoyf 14,46%
Force of Will 14,07%
Brainstorm 13,93%
Shardless Agent 12,51%
Delver of Secrets 11,46%
Ancestral Vision 10,40%
Tropical Island 10,19%
Lightning Bolt 9,41%
Nimble Mongoose 8,66%
Baleful Strix 8,66%
Wasteland 8,50%
Daze 8,09%
Volcanic Island 7,91%
Surgical Extraction 7,40%
Spell Pierce 7,36%
Scalding Tarn 6,92%
Ponder 6,38%
Submerge 6,25%
Stifle 5,81%

Losers:

Burning Wish -5,03%
Engineered Plague -5,24%
Lingering Souls -5,32%
Inquisition of Kozilek -5,46%
Seething Song -5,49%
Stoneforge Mystic -5,55%
Dark Confidant -5,72%
Relic of Progenitus -6,14%
Rite of Flame -6,69%
Progenitus -7,37%
Gitaxian Probe -7,90%
Lotus Petal -8,68%

II. Q 13 -> III. Q 13

Winners:

Gitaxian Probe 10,56%
Flooded Strand 6,92%
Swords to Plowshares 6,28%
Flusterstorm 5,66%

Losers:

Grim Lavamancer -5,03%
Underground Sea -5,09%
Scalding Tarn -5,23%
Submerge -5,32%
Baleful Strix -5,66%
Nimble Mongoose -5,70%
Shardless Agent -5,77%
Wasteland -6,00%
Wooded Foothills -6,19%
Snapcaster Mage -6,38%
Daze -6,39%
Spell Pierce -7,38%
Delver of Secrets -7,61%
Force of Will -7,72%
Tropical Island -7,88%
Ponder -8,34%
Brainstorm -9,75%
Lightning Bolt -10,81%
Surgical Extraction -11,12%
Misty Rainforest -11,19%
Tarmogoyf -13,01%

III. Q 13 -> IV. Q 13

Winners:

Lotus Petal 6,13%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -6,59%

IV. Q 13 -> I. Q 14

Winners:

True-Name Nemesis 14,65%
Swords to Plowshares 10,02%
Stoneforge Mystic 9,78%
Wasteland 8,52%
Aether Vial 6,45%
Daze 5,63%
Rishadan Port 5,27%
Pithing Needle 5,07%
Meddling Mage 5,05%
Arid Mesa 5,04%

Losers:

Misty Rainforest -5,06%
Stifle -5,14%
Nimble Mongoose -5,30%
Dark Ritual -5,38%
Duress -6,71%
Lotus Petal -6,79%
Tarmogoyf -6,81%
Cabal Therapy -7,14%
Gitaxian Probe -10,73%

I. Q 14 -> II. Q 14

Winners:

Cabal Therapy 8,68%
Lion's Eye Diamond 8,15%
Gitaxian Probe 7,34%
Deathrite Shaman 6,40%

Losers:

True-Name Nemesis -5,29%
Tundra -5,48%
Flooded Strand -5,88%
Red Elemental Blast -6,53%
Force of Will -6,83%
Stoneforge Mystic -8,98%
Swords to Plowshares -10,85%

II. Q 14 -> III. Q 14

Winners:

Force of Will 8,11%
Flusterstorm 7,37%
Misty Rainforest 7,25%
Sensei's Divining Top 6,44%
Terminus 5,65%
Verdant Catacombs 5,30%
Council's Judgment 5,16%
Arid Mesa 5,02%

Losers:

Dark Confidant -5,10%
Deathrite Shaman -5,29%
Surgical Extraction -5,37%
Thoughtseize -5,85%
Wasteland -11,04%
Polluted Delta -13,98%

III. Q 14 -> IV. Q 14

Winners:

Treasure Cruise 31,85%
Ponder 22,68%
Gitaxian Probe 20,33%
Volcanic Island 20,30%
Polluted Delta 18,66%
Flooded Strand 18,05%
Young Pyromancer 17,47%
Monastery Swiftspear 16,13%
Lightning Bolt 15,17%
Pyroblast 13,56%
Brainstorm 10,46%
Delver of Secrets 10,19%
Dig Through Time 8,33%
Forked Bolt 7,04%
Stoneforge Mystic 6,42%
Daze 6,32%
Force of Will 5,96%
Lotus Petal 5,51%
Tundra 5,10%

Losers:

Hymn to Tourach -5,24%
Goblin Guide -5,59%
Wasteland -5,62%
Ancestral Vision -6,08%
Shardless Agent -6,10%
Underground Sea -6,27%
Misty Rainforest -6,64%
Thoughtseize -6,88%
Liliana of the Veil -7,19%
Abrupt Decay -7,20%
Tropical Island -7,48%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -7,57%
Tarmogoyf -10,79%
Verdant Catacombs -15,55%
Deathrite Shaman -15,76%

IV. Q 14 -> I. Q 15

Winners:

Dig Through Time 17,72%
Polluted Delta 13,86%
Underground Sea 11,81%
Tarmogoyf 8,64%
Tropical Island 7,85%
Deathrite Shaman 7,57%
Wasteland 6,79%
Force of Will 6,42%
Stifle 5,24%
Brainstorm 5,07%

Losers:

Arid Mesa -5,24%
Lightning Bolt -5,78%
Volcanic Island -7,11%
Gitaxian Probe -7,15%
Young Pyromancer -7,28%
Scalding Tarn -7,76%
Pyroblast -8,60%
Monastery Swiftspear -9,63%
Treasure Cruise -24,51%

I. Q 15 -> II. Q 15

Winners:

Dig Through Time 10,63%
Flooded Strand 7,48%
Snapcaster Mage 6,68%
Young Pyromancer 5,80%
Gitaxian Probe 5,74%
Counterspell 5,54%
Flusterstorm 5,44%
Terminus 5,10%

Losers:

Thoughtseize -5,07%
Delver of Secrets -5,32%
Daze -6,08%
Misty Rainforest -6,55%
Treasure Cruise -7,34%
Wasteland -7,99%

II. Q 15 -> III. Q 15

Winners:

Wasteland 15,01%
Deathrite Shaman 6,94%
Surgical Extraction 5,87%
Abrupt Decay 5,43%
Mox Diamond 5,33%
Trinisphere 5,11%

Losers:

Grafdigger's Cage -5,03%
Polluted Delta -5,32%
Force of Will -5,65%
Volcanic Island -6,24%
Brainstorm -6,56%
Flooded Strand -10,86%

III. Q 15 -> IV. Q 15

Winners:

Verdant Catacombs 6,50%
Stifle 6,02%
Abrupt Decay 5,67%

Losers:

Polluted Delta -5,04%
Trinisphere -5,20%
Preordain -5,28%
Lightning Bolt -5,29%
Flusterstorm -5,36%
Force of Will -5,44%
Brainstorm -5,76%
Volcanic Island -6,17%
Young Pyromancer -6,60%
Pyroblast -6,64%
Gitaxian Probe -9,28%
Ponder -9,30%
Dig Through Time -35,82%

IV. Q 15 -> I. Q 16

Winners:

Ancient Tomb 7,69%
Warping Wail 7,43%
Thought-Knot Seer 7,43%
Eldrazi Temple 7,40%
Reality Smasher 7,40%
Eldrazi Mimic 7,10%
Endless One 6,53%
City of Traitors 6,50%
Dismember 6,07%
Cavern of Souls 6,06%
Eye of Ugin 5,91%
Chalice of the Void 5,17%
Thorn of Amethyst 5,13%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -5,42%
Force of Will -5,72%
Ponder -7,17%

I. Q 16 -> II. Q 16

Winners:

Flooded Strand 6,82%
Ponder 6,40%
Sensei's Divining Top 5,76%
Terminus 5,67%
Swords to Plowshares 5,06%

Losers:

none above treshhold

II. Q 16 -> III. Q 16

Winners:

Surgical Extraction 5,75%
Lightning Bolt 5,02%

Losers:



III. Q 16 -> IV. Q 16

Winners:

Abrupt Decay 6,78%
Deathrite Shaman 5,25%

Losers:

Volcanic Island -5,24%
Lightning Bolt -5,99%
Gitaxian Probe -7,72%

IV. Q 16 -> I. Q 17

Winners:

Ponder 13,54%
Abrupt Decay 11,93%
Brainstorm 11,84%
Force of Will 11,19%
Deathrite Shaman 10,63%
Misty Rainforest 10,58%
Polluted Delta 8,76%
Underground Sea 7,71%
Delver of Secrets 7,03%
Tarmogoyf 6,85%
Daze 6,55%
Leovold, Emissary of Trest 6,15%
Thoughtseize 5,98%
Verdant Catacombs 5,93%
Tropical Island 5,75%
Surgical Extraction 5,53%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 5,10%
Hymn to Tourach 5,06%

Losers:

Chalice of the Void -5,37%
Matter Reshaper -6,32%
Eye of Ugin -6,46%
Thorn of Amethyst -6,48%
Eldrazi Mimic -6,49%
Endless One -6,61%
Eldrazi Temple -6,73%
Thought-Knot Seer -6,75%
Reality Smasher -6,90%
Ancient Tomb -7,71%
Cavern of Souls -8,23%

so yeah... this is it, lots of things to see there. Sry for the Treshhold, but i had to limit the amount of displayed data somehow. But i think there is a lot of interesting information hidden in there so feel free to discuss

[Dice_Box]

I think there is always a danger at looking at the past with Sunglasses of Urza. (Hehe) But I think magic is unique in the fact that data can actually pin point changes. Do I miss when RUG, High Tide and Maverick fought for top spot? Yea. Do I think that was a better time? Yea, I do.

The issue we face now is that spells where (mostly) strongest in the old boarder, creatures mostly stronger in the new. So if you have been playing long enough, you will have felt the shift. You will have seen the real impact and change. But I caution against some thinking. Thinking that the Eldrazi are a recent addition to the game. The creature type is sure, but the deck is not. "Stompy" as a deck type is older than Legacy. Chalice with Sol lands is not a new phenomenon. Neither is the style of deck that Lands employs with Loam. Stax did that with a card called Crucible of Worlds long ago.

The issue today is not that these things are new, it's that we see them more. In 2004 I did not have the internet, but I had Legacy. In 2009 I had both, but I did not connect the two. The hybridisation of the internet and TCG happened for me much much later. I also feel like it had the same impact on many other people. You can ask my friends from 04, I was Wastelanding them then too. Much like I am now. I just did not have the kind of information and access to cards that I do now. Remember, Tog was a thing because easy access to cards long ago was not simple and he had to play proxy for Jon Finkel.

Time has changed Legacy thanks to technology, information and access. Anyone who bitches about Eldrazi today is just someone who was not getting punched by Pit Dragon yesterday. Anyone who thinks Loam is an issue now likely never had to face down Stax in the mid naughties. Not because these were not options, but because the information was not as board.

Is Legacy better now than it was? No, I don't think so, but I don't think that's totally on new printings and new decks. I think a lot has changed in the last 10 years and Legacy is just one of the things that has ridden that tide with time.

That said, God dam have creatures gotten stronger.

[nedleeds]

A friend of mine summed it all up recently, I'm paraphrasing but "That the play patterns have become so repetitive that it isn't interesting anymore.". Since Innistrad block there hasn't been anything interesting or different. The same play pattern emerges, only the end game is more absolute because of some of the simian printings. But I have the long view, as Dice alludes to. I remember 30 person 1.5 weeklies with a bunch of decks, people bringing their own takes on things because the edges of the format weren't so absolute. The format was more or less a 75 card deck building experience. Zendikar was like one dry finger. Scars was a fist. By the time we got Innistrad we were elbow deep.

My only solution, as I've repeated a million times is to keep unbanning cards that are clearly worse than cards that are currently ubiquitous and if you run out then ban the ubiquitous cards because something is broken.

[Tormod]

It's getting old... just like me.

There's a big hole since the absence of the SCG Sunday Legacy. In their dying days their broad cast got pretty bad when the showcased the same decks it their usual player/contributors.

There isn't the incentive for a lot of the best magic minds out there to come up with new decks and no where to see them in action. So often some of us are left with our glory days and the memories we had of good times.

That being said I really do miss Canadian Thresh and Maverick, Stoneblade...

[thefringthing]

I think the two comments above me form an interesting contrast. I think part of the phenomenon nedleeds is talking about was caused by the SCG Legacy Opens. The format became more competitive, and the result was that the more diverse but semi-casual format of the past went away. This wasn't everything though; new printings definitely had an effect, but that's just the power creep that's inevitable in a non-rotating format.

[Barook]

It has gotten pretty stale.

Miracles is still the best deck of the format and current "Flavor of the Week" Delver continues to be a thing since 2011.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/legacy

Just look at that. Aside from the usual suspects BS/FoW/Ponder, ~60% of all decks play Abrupt Decay, ~50% play DRS and ~25% of all decks are Delver. Pure fucking cancer right there. I'm so glad I sold out of MTGO again since I couldn't stomach that shit anymore.

Looking at the paper numbers, the numbers are less bad, but then again, looking at the DTB section, paper tournaments are getting more sparse, not to mention coverage. However, who wants to cover a GP located in a goddamn horse barn? :really:

[Teluin]

I voted Not Really, but that's not entirely accurate. Amongst the 'official' formats, Legacy is my second favourite after Vintage. The problem(s) with these formats, and why I have semi-sold out of them for 93/94, are the result of years of R&D promoting creatures and planeswalkers as being 'the game'.

As mentioned above, the strategies being employed today are the same as those that have been around for years. The issue now is that the creatures have gotten stupidly good, and as a result the decks have gotten incredibly efficient at winning. The chance of a good comeback story in Legacy has lessened, which I think has at least partially resulted in Control/Prison being so prevalent these days. The strategy now seems to be you stop your opponent from developing a board and then drop a threat that gives them 2-3 draws to find an answer; whereas before, that win condition might have taken 4-5 to win you the game.

The sad thing is that I think we're officially screwed in the sense that we can't fix this without banning a ton of creatures. MaRo has stated numerous times that creatures used to suck compared to spells and he just balanced it out. He chooses to ignore the fact that we used to have things such as fast mana, reanimate, Show & Tell etc to put them into play. Legacy continues to have those things (well, maybe not 'fast' mana like Vintage), but the creatures just do stupid things or are ridiculously efficient, thus resulting in the state of the meta today.

[btm10]

I think the two comments above me form an interesting contrast. I think part of the phenomenon nedleeds is talking about was caused by the SCG Legacy Opens. The format became more competitive, and the result was that the more diverse but semi-casual format of the past went away. This wasn't everything though; new printings definitely had an effect, but that's just the power creep that's inevitable in a non-rotating format.

This is spot on. The problem with Legacy is that the SCG series from ~2011/2012 until 2014 created incentives for lots of low-level (and some high-level) pros and the GP/PTQ grinder set to put serious time into deckbuilding and testing for Legacy. These are people who aren't interested in being different, or trying to modify something they saw do well, or even necessarily in deckbuilding - they want to win, and they need pretty compelling reasons to deviate from established decks and established lists. A few years from now the waters will likely have been muddied enough by new printings that we'll end up back at some semblance of pre-SCG Legacy, but the bar for entering Legacy's top tier will be higher than it 'should be' given the semi-competitive nature the format is growing in.

[Megadeus]

Interesting that as of right now, It's Great is the leader, but seemingly none of the people chimed in to say why, whereas people who said not really said why they feel the way that they do. I would be interested to see what people see in this meta that we currently have that makes it so great to them.

[lordofthepit]

My enjoyment of Legacy is negatively correlated with the presence of Eldrazi. I think it's good right now, but certainly nowhere near as it was before BFZ/OGW.

[JBlaze]

I still enjoy the format but rising prices and falling support have had a homogenizing effect there's not much incentive to brew and most players have adopted a grinder mentality. I mean if your only going to own one deck might as well be Miracles or Delver or whatever combo deck suits your fancy.

[Megadeus]

I still enjoy the format but rising prices and falling support have had a homogenizing effect there's not much incentive to brew and most players have adopted a grinder mentality. I mean if your only going to own one deck might as well be Miracles or Delver or whatever combo deck suits your fancy.

This pretty much spot on. The sheer efficiency of what the format has become with decks being 8-12 cantrips with different win conditions has pretty much pushed out any room to brew.

[Barook]

This is spot on. The problem with Legacy is that the SCG series from ~2011/2012 until 2014 created incentives for lots of low-level (and some high-level) pros and the GP/PTQ grinder set to put serious time into deckbuilding and testing for Legacy. These are people who aren't interested in being different, or trying to modify something they saw do well, or even necessarily in deckbuilding - they want to win, and they need pretty compelling reasons to deviate from established decks and established lists. A few years from now the waters will likely have been muddied enough by new printings that we'll end up back at some semblance of pre-SCG Legacy, but the bar for entering Legacy's top tier will be higher than it 'should be' given the semi-competitive nature the format is growing in.
Of course the format gets solved faster if more people play it more. However, 2011/12 was the time of Innistrad block that altered the format forever to the worse - Delver, Griselbrand and Terminus haunt the format to this very day and neither of them encourage good game play in their own ways.

And looking at the data above, DRS and AD from RTR (also 2012) are part of the problem as well.

WotC's neglect of the format brought this upon us:
- Miracles has been the top deck for years, but was left alone, despite buff after buff after buff. So people adapted by punching through Counterbalance with AD, the only 100% reliable answer to it.
- Cantrips have been left untouched, despite being too good. So those nonblue decks who can afford to do so retaliate with Chalice to punish them for that.
- Being sick and tired to put up with Counterbalance and Chalice, more cantrip decks picked up DRS (for great consisteny and utility) and AD to retaliate against CotV,CB and the overall way too counter-heavy meta to have a reliable, highly flexible kill spell.

[btm10]

This pretty much spot on. The sheer efficiency of what the format has become with decks being 8-12 cantrips with different win conditions has pretty much pushed out any room to brew.

That's true now, but I suspect that it will become less true as time goes on. The incentives to build the most streamlined deck possible will go away as the grinders leave the format, and once the meta becomes more loosely defined you end up with a lot more room to brew and focus on building a deck that's extremely powerful rather than on minimizing the rate at which your deck loses to itself/variance (which is a key reason why Delver and Miracles put up proportionally more top 8s in 15 round events than they do in local events)


Of course the format gets solved faster if more people play it more. However, 2011/12 was the time of Innistrad block that altered the format forever to the worse - Delver, Griselbrand and Terminus haunt the format to this very day and neither of them encourage good game play in their own ways.
And looking at the data above, DRS and AD from RTR (also 2012) are part of the problem as well.

WotC's neglect of the format brought this upon us:
- Miracles has been the top deck for years, but was left alone, despite buff after buff after buff. So people adapted by punching through Counterbalance with AD, the only 100% reliable answer to it.
- Cantrips have been left untouched, despite being too good. So those nonblue decks who can afford to do so retaliate with Chalice to punish them for that.
- Being sick and tired to put up with Counterbalance and Chalice, more cantrip decks picked up DRS (for great consisteny and utility) and AD to retaliate against CotV,CB and the overall way too counter-heavy meta to have a reliable, highly flexible kill spell.

I think you're focusing way too much on specific cards that bother you rather than the players who are playing them. Innistrad block could have been a dud and it wouldn't have impacted the rate at which the format evolved once someone like SCG started aggressively promoting it. The top decks that arose then are 'sticky' for reasons that go beyond simply how powerful some cards are; the cost of key staples leads to memory effects that slow the rate at which people adapt to major changes, and WotC has (likely) decided that it's better to try to influence Legacy through targeted printings rather than through an aggressive ban list policy, which is likely correct given the cost of Duals and their experience with Modern.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

The format is fine, the problem is, there aren't many new things happening. Sure, someone may have some spicy brew, but it's almost assuredly something that has been done before and is simply being revisited. Everything has been done and wizards isn't printing cards that are both good enough and interesting enough to better the format.

Eldrazi was the most "different" thing to happen but it isn't exactly attacking the format in a way that hasn't been done before (or at least, in a dramatically new fashion)

[Stevestamopz]

The chance of a good comeback story in Legacy has lessened

This right here.

It's still hilarious to me that Delver has become the good-guy of the format, aka the only deck that can actually have a comeback that is enjoyable. Even then, sometimes it just topdecks a True Name and any semblance of an interesting game is thrown under the bus.

What's the rest of the format doing?
- blind Terminus/Entreat off the top and obliterate your opponent
- blind draw the piece you are missing whether it's Emrakul/Grisel/Show/Sneak to obliterate your opponent
- Topdeck anything relevant in Storm or just obliterate you on turn 1
- Topdeck Sanctum Prelate or find it with Recruiter and make your opponent's 4 card hand a 0 card hand without even trying or having to remember triggers.
- t1chalicet2tkst3smasherlolgg or just topdeck multiple smashers in a row.

Fuck I miss the Maverick v Canadian v High Tide v Storm (pre PiF) v Goblins v literally anything sensible meta-game. I even miss when people thought Goyf should be banned because it was "too powerful for 2 mana."

The current meta just feels really un-interactive and it's getting old now. I don't think it's horrible like Modern is, but if I didn't own blue dual's I probably wouldn't bother at this stage. Even DnT, a deck I loved 7 months ago has become so boring and over-powered that I can't bring myself to play it, even with Foil MM Ports separating me from all the plebs who picked it up 2 weeks ago because you can buy it with 2 centrelink payments now.

[JBlaze]

The Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time era had a streamlining effect on the format in that it made people realize how powerful the consistency of the blue cantrip shell really was.

[nedleeds]

I feel bad for all the people who started playing eternal after Scars. They don't even know any better.

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

I think a big problem for alot of people on here is that they play too much MtGO or against too many ubercompetitive opponents who play the same old ____ every game because everyone says it's good. I think players of legacy should start playing different decks, decks that aren't considered top tier although I'd argue that alot of top tier decks aren't really as good as people think they are and seem to win alot of competitive tournaments mainly because of the illusion that they're tier 1 causing more people to play them. If you look at the established section of this forum you will see many decks that aren't played very much in the "competitive" tournaments, decks like Enchantress, Dragon Stompy, Nic Fit, Maverick, High Tide, Pox, MUD, Jund, Burn, Merfolk and others. I think that if people opened up to the immense variety of decks in Legacy and started playing them, the format would get alot better. Now personally for me, I am lucky enough to play in an environment where people don't care about playing the decks that are deemed competitive and play what they enjoy, hence there is tremendous variety every friday night I go to play. Obviously if you play too much against the same decks you are going to get burned out of the format, but ideally, legacy can be as diverse as your playgroup wants(or, admittedly, can afford) it to be. The only problem I have with legacy right now is the lack of unbans which is another story...

[twndomn]

OP should clarify the context. What kind of state, the financial state or the meta-game state? I would imagine OP's referring to the meta, not the reserved-list availability aspect of Legacy.

[from Cairo]

I picked "it's ok"

I don't feel that excited about Legacy at the moment. Feels like "tiers" are sort of established, there's still room for 20ish random decks to spike an event. Nothing has really shaken things up like the Delve cards did. I imagine Fatal Push will put up some results and the recent-ish printings of Leovold, Recruiter/Prelate, Nissa (and probably a few others I'm not thinking of) have boosted some established decks. I'm happy enough playing in this metagame, but would not be opposed to seeing some shake ups.

[btm10]

OP should clarify the context. What kind of state, the financial state or the meta-game state? I would imagine OP's referring to the meta, not the reserved-list availability aspect of Legacy.

While I get what you're saying, those two factors are inextricably linked.


I picked "it's ok"

I don't feel that excited about Legacy at the moment. Feels like "tiers" are sort of established, there's still room for 20ish random decks to spike an event. Nothing has really shaken things up like the Delve cards did. I imagine Fatal Push will put up some results and the recent-ish printings of Leovold, Recruiter/Prelate, Nissa (and probably a few others I'm not thinking of) have boosted some established decks. I'm happy enough playing in this metagame, but would not be opposed to seeing some shake ups.

I basically share this feeling. I'd be up for just about any nonland card getting banned or unbanned just to shake the meta up, but I have a lot of advantages over other players that allow me to change decks easily if something happens to one that I like.

[Megadeus]

The Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time era had a streamlining effect on the format in that it made people realize how powerful the consistency of the blue cantrip shell really was.

I agree with this. The delve cards were when I started disliking the format for this exact reason. It homogenized decks far too much.

[square_two]

It feels stale to me. Ok, but stale. The "new" Leovold deck doesn't really seem that different, despite using 2 of a new card.

I was watching Romariovidal on twitch last night, having a hilarious time playing Legacy Birds (this list (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/shiny-hawks/)). A friend on the stream mentioned how inbred the meta seems, and legacy in general. This deck with crappy removal, anthems, and tokens, seemed like a breath of fresh air and I stayed up for multiple hours despite tiredness and a headache because of how great it was. Even went 6-1 in league matches with it before he called it a night.

[maharis]

I wish there was an "it's complicated" option. I'd rather play Legacy than any other format or no magic at all, and I value getting a midweek reprieve from work and stuff more than I really care about winning.

But there really is nothing like playing at big, competitive tournaments, and for Legacy right now it just seems like your legitimate options for doing well at one are very narrow.

I agree with much of what's been said in this thread. This format desperately needs a major banned list update, multiple cards going on and off. Deckbuilding is too on rails at the moment and I think that's what's bothering people the most.

[ironclad8690]

I also picked "It's ok".

The period between 2009-2012 was my favorite because things were pretty constantly changing, and a very wide range of fair decks were possible (even outside of the "blue shell"). Since 2013, the developments have been relatively few and far between. We had the delve era and the onset of eldrazi, a couple new combo decks popped up, but mostly the same cast.

[Stuart]

I wish there was an "it's complicated" option. I'd rather play Legacy than any other format or no magic at all, and I value getting a midweek reprieve from work and stuff more than I really care about winning.

But there really is nothing like playing at big, competitive tournaments, and for Legacy right now it just seems like your legitimate options for doing well at one are very narrow.

I agree with much of what's been said in this thread. This format desperately needs a major banned list update, multiple cards going on and off. Deckbuilding is too on rails at the moment and I think that's what's bothering people the most.

This sums up my feelings completely. I'm always happy to go play Thursday night Legacy, and prefer it to every other format, but I'd like to see some shakeups via bannings, unbannings, and new printings (as long as those printings aren't more prisony creatures like Sanctum Prelate or Leovold).

[Jonathan Alexander]

Feel free to yell at me for this, but if you dislike creature power creep and miss diversity and brews, you should try out Pauper. It has many of the things people seem to look for in Legacy plus it doesn't have that stupid 1k USD pricetag for every deck.

[raudo]

Survival of the Fittest banned while Show and Tell is not just force me to say "it's okay". I think Survival was the favourite deck for many people and banning non-blue power cards is just plain stupid while keeping blue unharmed.

[Asthereal]

I voted "It's okay". It's still the coolest format, but they did their sweet best to cock it up. I mean: printing Emrakul, Delver, Treasure Cruise and Griselbrand... Really? It didn't take a genius to see that those were going to be a problem. And just when they printed a solution for a format that was getting too fast and overpowered, they banned it because eveybody was playing it. Yeah, what did you expect? The card didn't cost mana to cast, so everybody actually could play it. Their second reason was even worse: there were even more decks playing blue than before the printing of Misstep. But they never gave the format time to adapt to that fact. Besides, they of course completely ignored the fact that Delver was a much bigger reason for the abundance of blue in that time.

After the Alara block, only one good thing happened in Legacy: the printing of Liliana of the Veil. Everything else just made things worse.

[Spam]

The format it's quite enjoyable at the moment. You have a good amount of choice between decks and the games are quite fun. Sure, you might smash into a T1 kill or a chalice, but it's part of the game. To be fair, I'm enjoying it that much that I've finally dumped my modern deck forever.

Enviado desde mi Moto G (4) mediante Tapatalk

[sco0ter]

I feel like Legacy has become less interactive and therefore less fun.

Nowadays there are so many strategies, which are hard to stop or at least to interact with or just have the "I win"-button.

Turn 2: Show and Tell, Emrakul
Recurring Thespian's Stage + Dark Depths
Turn 1: Reanimate, Griselbrand
Dredge
Elves Combo

There are still the slower fair/good stuff decks, but I feel their number has decreased.

I miss the days when Survival was still legal.... Goblins, Landstill, High Tide, Survival, Threshold, Zoo. When you played
decks which actually led you play the game at least for a few turns (except Belcher) and relatively slowly advanced to the win, instead of winning in one attack phase with Emrakul or Marit Lage in the early turns.

[Megadeus]

I voted "It's okay". It's still the coolest format, but they did their sweet best to cock it up. I mean: printing Emrakul, Delver, Treasure Cruise and Griselbrand... Really? It didn't take a genius to see that those were going to be a problem. And just when they printed a solution for a format that was getting too fast and overpowered, they banned it because eveybody was playing it. Yeah, what did you expect? The card didn't cost mana to cast, so everybody actually could play it. Their second reason was even worse: there were even more decks playing blue than before the printing of Misstep. But they never gave the format time to adapt to that fact. Besides, they of course completely ignored the fact that Delver was a much bigger reason for the abundance of blue in that time.

After the Alara block, only one good thing happened in Legacy: the printing of Liliana of the Veil. Everything else just made things worse.

I never played legacy with misstep, but I've played it in vintage. It's fucking miserable.

[Lemnear]

The format is going downhill since Innistrad.

Just look what happened there and afterwards: Delver, DRS, Terminus, Entreat, TNN, Griselbrand, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Decay, Eldrazi, snapcaster mage, etc.

[sco0ter]

The format is going downhill since Innistrad.

Just look what happened there and afterwards: Delver, DRS, Terminus, Entreat, TNN, Griselbrand, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Decay, Eldrazi, snapcaster mage, etc.

QFT!

Or let's just start one set before, New Phyrexia. Phyrexian Mana was a mistake as well.

[mistercakes]

i listed that the format is great. there's still a variety of decks to play and each time i go to a tournament, i am still surprised at the diversity in my matchups. counterbalance/abrupt decay is generally a problem for me, but other than that i'm quite happy with the format.

i'm also glad that there are other ways to deal with these cards/decks! i'm not a delver, miracles, s&t or eldrazi player out of spite.

i think just the fact that there are this many decks that you can show up with is great, even if many of them are blue based. i've played in many tournaments and there are many times where i dodge a lot of the mainstream decks and play vs tier 2 decks all day long.

i'm guessing this depends on how spikey your local meta is. i can see having a different opinion if i showed up each week and there were 3 miracles players out of 8.

[Zombie]

Feel free to yell at me for this, but if you dislike creature power creep and miss diversity and brews, you should try out Pauper. It has many of the things people seem to look for in Legacy plus it doesn't have that stupid 1k USD pricetag for every deck.

Been playing Pauper a lot lately and it's fun as hell. The only thing I miss is being able to play an actually good combo deck since they all seem to accrue insane amounts of whining and get banned.

But apart from that, it's really fun. There's no cantrip cartel, you actually get to play. The format's a ton about eking out value, playing interactive magic without humongous haymakers or Planeswalkers and coming out ahead. Plus how can I lie, Capsize-locking people after drowning them in hardcast Mulldrifters is as fun as it is evil.

Seriously. It's a format where Mulldrifter is the best card that's gotten away with murder and is somehow still legal. That can't be an entirely bad thing.


After the Alara block, only one good thing happened in Legacy: the printing of Liliana of the Veil. Everything else just made things worse.

As an Elves player, I liked the printing of Deathrite and Decay.

[Crimhead]

I would be interested to see what people see in this meta that we currently have that makes it so great to them.First off, I was not a big fan of the Thresh, Maverick, Stoneblade era. The meta was too heavy with fair decks; and too many of those decks were just good-stuff.

I like Legacy now because it feels more diverse (to me). Looking at our DTB, we have:

One fast combo deck
One classic "hard control" deck
One midrange value deck
One big-mana stompy deck
One aggressive tempo deck
One weenie-prison deck.
We have six decks with radically different play-styles, each one running a distintive set of threats and answers. Looking back, it's hard to find another time when the top decks were this different in terms of play-styles, threats, and answers.

Even looking to the next tier, the second best decks include UB Reanimator, Sneak Show, Pyromancer, Lands, Elves, Aggro Loam, Burn, and maybe a couple others? These decks add a lot of variety too.


The format is fine, the problem is, there aren't many new things happening. Sure, someone may have some spicy brew, but it's almost assuredly something that has been done before and is simply being revisited. Everything has been done and wizards isn't printing cards that are both good enough and interesting enough to better the format.

Eldrazi was the most "different" thing to happen but it isn't exactly attacking the format in a way that hasn't been done before (or at least, in a dramatically new fashion)I have to disagree. Eldrazi is quite a bit different than MUD; but more importantly the meta now has a tier one Stompy deck, which is quite a big difference.

Then there is the new Reanimator shell. Two new tier-one decks in a single year seems like a lot to me.



and here just my 2 cents on the topic:
In my specific case i think it began with the Eldrazi entering the arena, with tons of chalice decks, Loam-lock decks, Miracles still at the top and so on i think the Meta got "controllier" than before and lots of the more dynamic decks disappered. Its not as if i wasnt able to beat those strategies, but many of the currently well doing decks feel to me as if if they were just trying to slam as many lock pieces as possible and hope that they eventually will get there. The latest episode in the game of hatebears was adding Leovold to BUG... and this is the only thing that really changed over the course of recent legacy history, hatebears and stompy decks were added, thats itFunny, but I feel the opposite! If anything, the control decks are more aggressive now than in the earlier days.

Used to be decks like Enchantress, Pox, or Geddon Stax were a lot more competitive. But those creature decks keep getting better and better, while pure prison is left in their dust! Nowadays the best "prison" decks need to be loaded with speedy threats (D&T or Eldrazi), or include a fast combo which can end a game out of nowhere (Lands).

That said the format is still incredibly fun and diverse - at least from the perspective of a Lands player where I find great strategic variety from one match to the next. Also I play a lot of RUG Lands - and while it doesn't put up significant numbers I find the deck powerful, well positioned, and (for the most part) a hard-control prison deck.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I have to disagree. Eldrazi is quite a bit different than MUD; but more importantly the meta now has a tier one Stompy deck, which is quite a big difference.

Then there is the new Reanimator shell. Two new tier-one decks in a single year seems like a lot to me.


Eh, both can be boiled down to "play lock piece, beat face", and while MUD can go for a more prison oriented game, they play out similarly.

Aggressive Griselbrand with disruption, I've seen that a couple of times.

Do agree people are looking at 2012 with rose colored glasses, remember RUG playing Counterbalance as the sideboard plan for the mirror?

[Dice_Box]

Legacy today is very Xerox like in nature. I expect to see the same thing happening from the same cards who have all taken up a larger and larger meta share. Am I looking at the past with Sunglasses of Urza? No, I don't feel like I am.

[hymnyou]

The issue we face now is that spells where (mostly) strongest in the old boarder, creatures mostly stronger in the new. So if you have been playing long enough, you will have felt the shift. You will have seen the real impact and change. But I caution against some thinking. Thinking that the Eldrazi are a recent addition to the game. The creature type is sure, but the deck is not. "Stompy" as a deck type is older than Legacy. Chalice with Sol lands is not a new phenomenon. Neither is the style of deck that Lands employs with Loam. Stax did that with a card called Crucible of Worlds long ago.

The issue today is not that these things are new, it's that we see them more. In 2004 I did not have the internet, but I had Legacy. In 2009 I had both, but I did not connect the two. The hybridisation of the internet and TCG happened for me much much later. I also feel like it had the same impact on many other people. You can ask my friends from 04, I was Wastelanding them then too. Much like I am now. I just did not have the kind of information and access to cards that I do now. Remember, Tog was a thing because easy access to cards long ago was not simple and he had to play proxy for Jon Finkel.

Time has changed Legacy thanks to technology, information and access. Anyone who bitches about Eldrazi today is just someone who was not getting punched by Pit Dragon yesterday. Anyone who thinks Loam is an issue now likely never had to face down Stax in the mid naughties. Not because these were not options, but because the information was not as board.

Is Legacy better now than it was? No, I don't think so, but I don't think that's totally on new printings and new decks. I think a lot has changed in the last 10 years and Legacy is just one of the things that has ridden that tide with time.

That said, God dam have creatures gotten stronger.

I think you have some great points. On Eldrazi, it seems much more aligned to Zoo than MUD.

Coming back to the game about 3 years ago (played heavily beta/Unlimited-Homelands) after a random occurrence, the game has really changed. The cards are genuinely going to get stronger and stronger. I didn't ever really think there would be stronger cards then some of the ones I played with during the first years of magic- nonetheless completely unplayable. I hear the same cries from another generation years later. As the game grows the power creep will get more intense, that is how they sell cards, its the games natural progression.

Technology and competitive play/coverage I am sure had a lot to do with changing the format. Magic pre-internet was more of a wild west in general. I can only assume these factors strayed it away from its organic roots.

I really enjoy Legacy overall. I have some minor complaints, but no competitive format comes close in my opinion. it's the closest I can get to what I enjoy about Magic from back in the days. Omnitell/Dig era was the only time I felt Legacy was in a 'bad place' as of late.
Note I am not a blue mage, I rarely play blue and when I do it's fringe blue decks like Tezz, Post, Slivers and recently Food Chain. I was created in the bayous on Dominaria.

[maharis]

First off, I was not a big fan of the Thresh, Maverick, Stoneblade era. The meta was too heavy with fair decks; and too many of those decks were just good-stuff.

If this is how you felt back then, you're about to hate what's coming.

The Brainstorm Show posted four new deck ideas. All of them had:

4 DRS
4 Decay
4 Force
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

Then there were several cards that appeared in three of the four decks... Snapcaster Mage, Leovold, Counterspell, you get the point.

Now this isn't to pick on them. Their show is about competitive decks and finding the best build. And this was a focus on Fatal Push. But I think this is a harbinger of things to come. I was incredulous when Barook pointed out that Decay is now at 60% saturation. That's Brainstorm/Force level... and we are talking about two-color, non-blue, conditional removal.

I love a good Rock deck but part of that was finding the right tools to navigate the meta. Now it's just ramp & horizontally good disruption and creatures that are total beatings. I was excited for Leovold and Fatal Push, but I am now more interested in finding ways to beat them. Hopefully the format can adjust and there's another kind of fair deck worth playing.

[Begle1]

I don't think I'd ever get tired of 4-5 round Legacy tournaments.

I don't know if I'd ever not get tired of 14-16 round tournaments, though. You guys actually have fun doing that?

[CptHaddock]

I think you have some great points. On Eldrazi, it seems much more aligned to Zoo than MUD.


Yeah i'd say so as well. Most stompy decks are essentially just chalice aggro decks. MUD is more along the lines of a ramp deck with prison pieces (atleast if we are talking about the post versions of the deck).

@Topic
I'm in the it's okay school as well. I think that both the printing of Eldrazi and the played conspiracy cards are a nice breath of life to the format. This is all anecdotal but it seems like people are more eager to go out and play decks that are outside of the top decks in the format. It feels like the format has opened up slightly so there is some room to brew although brews most likely aren't going to be top 8ing larger events.

This comic is about dota 2 but I think it easily applies to Legacy at any given point in time. (http://i.imgur.com/anoTQ.gif)

[Barook]

QFT!

Or let's just start one set before, New Phyrexia. Phyrexian Mana was a mistake as well.
Most of the cards were okay as far as Legacy is concerned. Surgical Extraction is a great card, for example, and doesn't distort the color pie, given that various cheap artifact solutions to graveyards exist as well.

Dismember breaks the color pie, but isn't broken in terms of power level.

The only real problems were Mental Misstep (for obvious reasons) and Gitaxian Probe (which is hated by the majority of Sourcers for good reason).


Do agree people are looking at 2012 with rose colored glasses, remember RUG playing Counterbalance as the sideboard plan for the mirror?
There's a difference between a SB plan and a deck running it in the main which has been THE top deck of the format for years.


If this is how you felt back then, you're about to hate what's coming.

The Brainstorm Show posted four new deck ideas. All of them had:

4 DRS
4 Decay
4 Force
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

Then there were several cards that appeared in three of the four decks... Snapcaster Mage, Leovold, Counterspell, you get the point.

Now this isn't to pick on them. Their show is about competitive decks and finding the best build. And this was a focus on Fatal Push. But I think this is a harbinger of things to come. I was incredulous when Barook pointed out that Decay is now at 60% saturation. That's Brainstorm/Force level... and we are talking about two-color, non-blue, conditional removal.

I love a good Rock deck but part of that was finding the right tools to navigate the meta. Now it's just ramp & horizontally good disruption and creatures that are total beatings. I was excited for Leovold and Fatal Push, but I am now more interested in finding ways to beat them. Hopefully the format can adjust and there's another kind of fair deck worth playing.
I was shocked as well when I saw the numbers of AD and DRS. Numbers look less rough in paper. But in the highly competitive meta where people actually give a shit about running a good deck for the most part, it shouldn't come as a suprise. Just look at Reid's article:

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/winning-with-sultai-in-louisville/

It boils down to this:
1. Run Brainstorm or get fucked over by consistency issues,
2. run Miracles, the best deck of the format, or
3. run Abrupt Decay as a starting point to answer Miracles.

All this "Miracles vs BUG vs the rest" does lead to alot of homogenization where huge amounts of the core are the same, with just a few wincons and disruption elements differing.

[janchu88]

ive spent the last 2 days scripting and gathering data... just finished and ill analyze it the upcoming days. Just a random thing i wanted to check as a small teaser .... some random staples of the format and their part of the meta pver the years. Nice to See How Abrupt decay and Chalice / CB interact with each other for example.... and some losers of the recent history like stoneforge and tarmogoyf. Expect much more spohisticated analyzes, this is just a first quick thing after i just finished collecting ~18000 decklists beginning from 2011.


https://abload.de/img/blaaap5s3z.jpg (http://abload.de/image.php?img=blaaap5s3z.jpg)

just to add some data to discussion

[maharis]

I was shocked as well when I saw the numbers of AD and DRS. Numbers look less rough in paper. But in the highly competitive meta where people actually give a shit about running a good deck for the most part, it shouldn't come as a suprise. Just look at Reid's article:

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/winning-with-sultai-in-louisville/

It boils down to this:
1. Run Brainstorm or get fucked over by consistency issues,
2. run Miracles, the best deck of the format, or
3. run Abrupt Decay as a starting point to answer Miracles.

All this "Miracles vs BUG vs the rest" does lead to alot of homogenization where huge amounts of the core are the same, with just a few wincons and disruption elements differing.

I mean, other than the fact that he won while I flamed out, Reid and I had remarkably similar thought patterns on the way up to the GP. I knew I was playing BUG for all those reasons.

Abrupt Decay was a solution to a problem that should've been solved by just banning Counterbalance. Now we're probably stuck with it which means it's mutually assured destruction for fair decks. I mean is there any deck that doesn't want to try and stick at least one CMC<4 permanent?

DRS is overpowered but I don't think exceedingly so -- especially since it eats it to a STP and now a Fatal Push. But Storm is now up to 4 decay in the side and most Reanimator decks splash for it as well. Lands splashes for it. None of these are DRS decks. And what has that done about the preeminent Counterbalance deck? Absolutely nothing.

To be fair, these games can still be interesting to a point, but part of the fun of the game is deckbuilding and the meaningful decisions there are increasingly vanishing.

[Zombie]

Could you make a plot of:
Decay
Chalice
Counterbalance
Delver
Stoneforge
Show and Tell
Dark Ritual
Glimpse of Nature
Green Sun's Zenith
Loam
Dark Confidant

[Barook]

@janchu88: Interesting. What sources do you use to collect your data?

Edit:

I mean, other than the fact that he won while I flamed out, Reid and I had remarkably similar thought patterns on the way up to the GP. I knew I was playing BUG for all those reasons.

Abrupt Decay was a solution to a problem that should've been solved by just banning Counterbalance. Now we're probably stuck with it which means it's mutually assured destruction for fair decks. I mean is there any deck that doesn't want to try and stick at least one CMC<4 permanent?

DRS is overpowered but I don't think exceedingly so -- especially since it eats it to a STP and now a Fatal Push. But Storm is now up to 4 decay in the side and most Reanimator decks splash for it as well. Lands splashes for it. None of these are DRS decks. And what has that done about the preeminent Counterbalance deck? Absolutely nothing.

To be fair, these games can still be interesting to a point, but part of the fun of the game is deckbuilding and the meaningful decisions there are increasingly vanishing.
Let's not dive to deep into B&R discussion before the thread unnecessary escalates like every other thread. I do feel like the problem stems from Miracles being the uncontested best deck for several years now as it clearly warps the meta around it. The increase in AD is just the symptom, not the cause.

But let's assume Wizards actually gave a shit and axed one part of the Counterbalance combo. How much would the AD ratio actually decrease? It's still an incredible flexible removal spell that can't be countered.

As for DRS, let's not forget how much GY abuse we had to suffer before DRS became mainstream. It may be a broken creatures, but it also has good sides.

[twndomn]

I love a good Rock deck but part of that was finding the right tools to navigate the meta. Now it's just ramp & horizontally good disruption and creatures that are total beatings. I was excited for Leovold and Fatal Push, but I am now more interested in finding ways to beat them. Hopefully the format can adjust and there's another kind of fair deck worth playing.

Be good at Goblins. No, I'm serious. It's a bye against Miracles as a Goblin player. You have all the SB tools to fight combo decks. These BUG decks have no board wipe, they rarely run Pernicious deed, you just need to kill Jitte, TNN isn't that big of a deal.

[janchu88]

@Zombie

ill do it tomorrow, it got too late for today ;)

as mentioned i want to go more into detail anyway!

@Barook

collected by some vba scripts from "known" decklist sites...

[Julian23]

I still like Legacy and enjoy it for most of the time. But the current status quo is far from the glory days. For me, the most I enjoyed the entire metagame was around late 2011 when the stupidest things you could face were "just" Maverick mirors and the Dream Halls matchup.


Esper Stoneblade vs GW Maverick? GW Maverick vs Canadian? Now that was some really great Magic. Games felt closer to chess than Super Punch-Out, like they often feel now.

[Jonathan Alexander]

I still like Legacy and enjoy it for most of the time. But the current status quo is far from the glory days. For me, the most I enjoyed the entire metagame was around late 2011 when the stupidest things you could face were "just" Maverick mirors and the Dream Halls matchup.


Esper Stoneblade vs GW Maverick? GW Maverick vs Canadian? Now that was some really great Magic. Games felt closer to chess than Super Punch-Out, like they often feel now.

Lingering Souls came out in 2012. (Agree on that tieframe though, Innistrad up until RTR was great.)

[Julian23]

I never contested Lingering Souls coming out in 2012. I assume you're trying to say that Esper Stone Stoneblade didn't exist before that. It did and had pretty epic games with Maverick. From my perspective, it all went somewhat downhill with Innistrad, especially Avacyn Restored.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Why would anyone ever play that? There are no good black cards except Painful Truths & Storm shit.

[ironclad8690]

It was good enough with Thoughtseize at the time.

[Crimhead]

If this is how you felt back then, you're about to hate what's coming.

The Brainstorm Show posted four new deck ideas. All of them had:

4 DRS
4 Decay
4 Force
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

Then there were several cards that appeared in three of the four decks... Snapcaster Mage, Leovold, Counterspell, you get the point.
Haven't listened to their show in a while - sounds interesting. I'm not sure I'd dislike this. Delver decks come in all sorts of flavours while running many of the same cards. But as long as their collective meta share is modest that's fine - even arguably a good thing. Having a number of fair BUG variants wouldn't bother me either. I don’t actually mind fair good stuff decks - I just don't want that to be too much of the meta. My memory of the Thresh/Blade/Maverick era was a meta where combo decks, prison decks, and synergy based decks where far too scarce for my liking.

Don't get me wrong - I still absolutely loved playing Legacy! I loved rocking my Time Spirals and Candelabras, and I still had fun struggling with Pox and Enchantress (and other decks too). It was just way too fair and good stuff oriented for my preference. But I've never disliked Legacy.


I was incredulous when Barook pointed out that Decay is now at 60% saturation. That's Brainstorm/Force level... and we are talking about two-color, non-blue, conditional removal.
I also don't mind if a few very good cards show up in a lot of decks - especially generic answers and versatile enablers. Things like Bolt, Plow, Wasteland, Force, Cantrips, GSZ, Seize, etc. I guess the higher the saturation of a card, the more different styles of deck I want to see running it. Decay sees play in midrange, tempo, combo, and prison, so I'm not personally bothered by this saturation.

These are just the things I like - the things that help keep me fascinated with meta. Different things are important to different people I guess.

[Jonathan Alexander]

My memory of the Thresh/Blade/Maverick era was a meta where combo decks, prison decks, and synergy based decks where far too scarce for my liking.

Only randomly quoting you for being the last person to mention this.

Combo not really being a thing in this era has been brought up a couple times, but it had nothing to do with combo not being good then. It's just that people didn't want to play combo for whatever reason. I played Storm exclusively from Innistrad until AVR and this era was without a doubt the heyday of Storm. The deck destroyed all of the common decks with 5+ sideboard slots to spare for fringe metagame players. I honestly have no idea why the deck wasn't played at the time. Hell, it was so good that Timo won Ghent playing a terrible list really badly, and that was with AVR (i.e. Miracles + Griselbrand).

[Megadeus]

I played a fair amount of storm the past few years and I think it's more of at a local level it's just not a recipe for interesting games sometimes and therefore people don't want to play it week in and out

[thefringthing]

Storm is pretty interesting but only for the Storm player, and only on average. Lots of games are rote but once in a while the winning line is insane.

[Ronald Deuce]

I don’t actually mind fair good stuff decks - I just don't want that to be too much of the meta. My memory of the Thresh/Blade/Maverick era was a meta where combo decks, prison decks, and synergy based decks where far too scarce for my liking.

This is an important point. I don't mind playing decks that win by linear progression, and that's pretty much all I played during my days as a dirty casual player. But Legacy is the big leagues. This is where you've got decks that fire a Goblin of Arson Gun for 52 on the first turn, or sacrifice a land to make a 20/20 creature, or don't pay mana for any spell in the deck, or force opponents to draw hundreds of cards. I definitely don't think those should be the only ways to play, but I think it's a beautiful thing that those things are possible in Legacy. If all that stuff suddenly stops being viable, what's really separating Legacy from Modern? The tempo of the tempo decks? The fact that Green is the new Blue? The price tag?

I digress, but if someone with more time and sobriety cares to check my calculations, I did a quick count of banned cards from Legacy and Modern last night when I was getting turnt. Barring a number of cards that either are P9 or simply don't work in tournament play (i.e. ante cards, Chaos Orb, Falling Star, Shahrazad, Conspiracy stuff), Legacy had—I think—42 banned cards, and Modern had 35. So given the precept that the aforementioned cards don't count, for a cardpool with [EDIT: a bit more than] half the lifespan of Legacy, Modern has 5/6 as many banned cards. The goal is obvious, and I can understand the idea that it's a worthy endeavor to create a format that's guaranteed to give players games longer than four turns. But there are problems with that: the cards don't police themselves; Wizards hasn't picked up the slack; nobody likes watching their pet deck disintegrate because the Fun Police showed up; and almost every deck in the format is a linear value deck.

I bring this up in part because I think there's an inherent (necessary?) contrast between formats, and in part because I'm new to Legacy and a refugee of Standard (the real MtG money pit) and Modern (because one can only weather so many bans). I don't want to spread the fires of the Banlist Wars here, but I have no interest in seeing the same thing that's happened to Modern happen to Legacy. Our format is resilient enough to weather a terribly designed set. Our format is diverse. Our format is fair. Our format isn't. Our format caters to a huge number of viable strategies and axes on which a person can win.

Since before I started playing the format, there's been an obvious attempt to push certain decks and archetypes—which is to say, value decks—at the expense of other archetypes and strategies. I don't have a problem with those decks, but—and I don't mean offense to anyone when I say this—they don't feel like they define the format to me. I can attack into Tarmogoyf with a Knight of the Reliquary in Modern. I can play a 4/X with an EtB on turn 3 there, too. Taxing spells with a creature? Check. Paying one mana for a 3-power flyer? Ditto.

Now I'd think this was fine if the decks getting the boosts did anything to really upset the top deck in the format, which was there before I bothered to pay much attention to Legacy (and which I think is a fine deck, though I don't think I'd like to play it personally). Or, for that matter, if it kept a lid on combo decks and grindier control decks and provided an alternative to the prevailing currents of the metagame. Instead, these printings are boosting specific strategies that really feel quite a bit like the ones that predominate in Modern and Standard, and they've started pushing the other styles of play to the periphery (excepting, again, that one deck). And though it's good that people like to play that way, that's not the reason I started playing Legacy, and it's not what makes the format stand out to me.

[thecrav]

Well phrased question.

Perhaps it's rose colored glasses as some others have said, but I do not enjoy the format as much as I have in the past. However, I'm definitely enjoying playing legacy more than I ever have before.

Our legacy (and vintage!) community has exploded in the last several months. Between myself and the other players, I never worry about being able to play whatever deck I want. In fact, I borrowed ~75% of my legacy deck and all-but-the-power of my vintage deck for Eternal weekend with <24 hours notice. After most of our twice-weekly tournaments people get together for anything ranging from a couple drinks to hours of intense board gaming. We got "team" shirts because nedleeds wouldn't let me have a Tusk shirt. We had around 8 people at Eternal Weekend, Louisville, and it looks like we're on track to keep that running at GP Vegas.

Changes in Legacy since I started playing that I'm less than thrilled about:

* In 2008, built Merfolk off of two days worth of lunch shift tips and I did well with it. I miss Merfolk being a strong deck.
* Tarmogoyf used to be the nuts. The first duals I bought were Tropical Islands ($60/ea) so I could play Tarmogoyf ($48/ea) in my Merfolk deck - and that was pretty standard
* Delver means no more Zoo.
* Miracles (the cards) created a clear-best Counterbalance deck. I like the presence of Counterbalance/Top in the format but I don't like it being dominant. I'm going to bring my CounterThopters deck with E-Tutor, Moat, and Humility to our Thursday legacy this week for a bit of a throwback.
* Thespian's Stage did something similar. It turned lands from a slow deck that insane people (I wanted to be one of them) piloted to a combo control deck that anyone could pilot and do okay with.

Less cards, more outside factors that changed for the worse:
* No SCG coverage means the format develops much more slowly. Additionally, I think some people who might have played for the hope at a sliver of fame aren't pushing themselves.
* When modern prices spiked, a lot of people sold out and bought into legacy. While it's hard for me to argue against expanding the format, I think since then there's been a lot more bitching and moaning about what's wrong with the format instead of how to address it. Stop telling me CB/Top should be banned and start telling me what you're doing to hedge your pre-board games against it.

[Rome]

I like the current state of Legacy.
For me Leovold changed a lot.

It is such a strong hatebear. It is Zenithable and fits in a lot of decks. It makes a lot of BUG Versions stronger. Can be splashed into Zenith Decks. Makes random Decks like food chain a way better.
And its a card against Brainstorm :D :D

I am very happy about this card in the format!

[Lemnear]

This discussion is basically repeating what Dice, Barook and I had last year in the B&R thread pointing at the "Miracles vs Decay vs. Chalice" metagame structure. You play either one of the softlock.decs, a deck which gets around them due to cmc of your cards or you play Decay. Period.

What most likely frustrates the people despite the fact that we have several viable supertypes like tempo (D&T), combo (S&T), control (miracles) and aggro (Eldrazi) is that ALL OF THEM aim to achieve ZERO INTERACTION with the player sitting across the table. There is no dance of trading cards forth and back if you are locked out by Thalia+Wasteland or Chalice+TKS or Counterbalance+SDT or T1 Tendrils or Emrakul+SneakAttack or Griselbrand+S&T. Legacy developed from a format where players were fighting for small advantages and stability of the board to a vintage-esque stage for various blowouts (often by 2-card-combos).

[Mr Miagi]

What most likely frustrates the people despite the fact that we have several viable supertypes like tempo (D&T), combo (S&T), control (miracles) and aggro (Eldrazi) is that ALL OF THEM aim to achieve ZERO INTERACTION with the player sitting across the table. There is no dance of trading cards forth and back if you are locked out by Thalia+Wasteland or Chalice+TKS or Counterbalance+SDT or T1 Tendrils or Emrakul+SneakAttack or Griselbrand+S&T. Legacy developed from a format where players were fighting for small advantages and stability of the board to a vintage-esque stage for various blowouts (often by 2-card-combos).

Good point indeed. There are too many cards that are hard to interact with and the overall powercreep brought legacy to this "still okay, befascue it's legacy, but then again not really okay, we had way better times" level.


On a side note, you should give pauper a try. It has many good elements you are missing in legacy ;)

[Julian23]

I can only speak from the Elves perspective, but I enjoy playing against Storm a lot. DRS gives the matchup more depth than fair decks used to have in the past.

[Quasim0ff]

I think most decks, besides Eldrazi and SnT, are heavily invested into interaction.

Delver is bigger than it ever was, DnT is a deck fundamentaly based around interaction, Miracles is, unless you are dead to the lock in turns 2 or something, a deck based around interaction.

Storm as an archetype is much less goldfishy than it used to be.

The only part I actively dislike about the format is Gitaxian Probe. That card is, in every single way, fucking frustrating to play against.

[Whitefaces]

This discussion is basically repeating what Dice, Barook and I had last year in the B&R thread pointing at the "Miracles vs Decay vs. Chalice" metagame structure. You play either one of the softlock.decs, a deck which gets around them due to cmc of your cards or you play Decay. Period.

What most likely frustrates the people despite the fact that we have several viable supertypes like tempo (D&T), combo (S&T), control (miracles) and aggro (Eldrazi) is that ALL OF THEM aim to achieve ZERO INTERACTION with the player sitting across the table. There is no dance of trading cards forth and back if you are locked out by Thalia+Wasteland or Chalice+TKS or Counterbalance+SDT or T1 Tendrils or Emrakul+SneakAttack or Griselbrand+S&T. Legacy developed from a format where players were fighting for small advantages and stability of the board to a vintage-esque stage for various blowouts (often by 2-card-combos).

"Miracles vs Decay vs. Chalice" - DnT, Infect and BR Rea, 3/6 of the DTB at the moment don't fall under your metagame structure. Lands was in the DTB for a while too. I wouldn't call them decks with diverse enough CMC to get around CotV/CB either, they get under them with Cavern/Vial or speed. At any rate, even if you want to argue that they do, 'a deck which gets around them due to cmc of your cards' is a hugely broad term, hardly a good argument. See the rise of SnS recently, that's because people are reacting to this CotV/CB metagame by playing decks that are good vs them!

Never heard DnT be called tempo before :really:

Thalia + Wasteland is absolutely interaction, it's mana denial. If they weren't doing it you would be able to play spells, but since they're INTERACTING with you you can't. It's not enjoyable interaction, but is nonetheless. Chalice has largely been adapted to and that's noticeable by the results, or lack of, Eldrazi has been putting up recently. It's still a boring card, but far from the GG it was when Eldrazi entered the format. TKS is just a creature. Pushed, yes, but you can put removal spells in your deck.

On your comment of combo, sure, they exist and have done for a long time. Not sure what your point is here? They're not dominating the format because people play INTERACTION to stop them.

This is all spoken like you're more content to moan about the state of the format (which is pretty obvious), rather than play it and adapt to what's going on.

[mistercakes]

just to play devil's advocate here: can you provide some examples where i am interacting with an opponent? i just need to better understand where the bar is being set for "interaction" before i can make a comment regarding what playable decks still interact.

[Barook]

"Miracles vs Decay vs. Chalice" - DnT, Infect and BR Rea, 3/6 of the DTB at the moment don't fall under your metagame structure. Lands was in the DTB for a while too. I wouldn't call them decks with diverse enough CMC to get around CotV/CB either, they get under them with Cavern/Vial or speed. At any rate, even if you want to argue that they do, 'a deck which gets around them due to cmc of your cards' is a hugely broad term, hardly a good argument. See the rise of SnS recently, that's because people are reacting to this CotV/CB metagame by playing decks that are good vs them!

Never heard DnT be called tempo before :really:
BR Reanimator can be an Abrupt Decay deck as well. The list that got in the finals of GP Horsebarn before losing to Reid Duke ran 3 copies in the SB.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/542214#online

D&T isn't tempo, it's a control deck.

Edit: The latest paper results for December (DTB doesn't account for this yet) has exactly one deck that doesn't fit the "Miracles/Decay/Chalice" meta, which is Grixis Pyromancer at #5. The next one is Burn at #9.

MTGO has S&T at 6.49%, D&T at 2.60% and Infect at 1.62% in the Top 17, which accounts for 78.57% of the total metagame. The share of decks that don't fit into one of those 3 categories isn't that great anymore.

[Whitefaces]

BR Reanimator can be an Abrupt Decay deck as well. The list that got in the finals of GP Horsebarn before losing to Reid Duke ran 3 copies in the SB.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/542214#online

D&T isn't tempo, it's a control deck.

Can =/= is, it's far from a SB staple. Most lists run Reverent Silence to answer CB, rather than Decay. Decay is just a super flexible answer to lots of things like Shaman, Cage, Chalice etc, it's not necessarily played for its uncounterability (is that a word?) like Delver decks do.

Agree on DnT.

[Quasim0ff]

Can =/= is, it's far from a SB staple. Most lists run Reverent Silence to answer CB, rather than Decay. Decay is just a super flexible answer to lots of things like Shaman, Cage, Chalice etc, it's not necessarily played for its uncounterability (is that a word?) like Delver decks do.

Agree on DnT.

Fwiw, most people run Reverent Silence to answer Leyline, not cb =)

Other than that I agree.

*B/R Reanimator is 100% not a decay deck. It's a deck that can include decay because it's a clean answer to a lot of problems for the deck, but it is in no way a guarentee in that deck.

[Whitefaces]

Fwiw, most people run Reverent Silence to answer Leyline, not cb =)

Other than that I agree.

*B/R Reanimator is 100% not a decay deck. It's a deck that can include decay because it's a clean answer to a lot of problems for the deck, but it is in no way a guarentee in that deck.

You're right about Silence, but I'd assume they board it in vs Miracles? If not, someone tell me to shut up and I'll drop this point :tongue:

[Megadeus]

Well phrased question.

Perhaps it's rose colored glasses as some others have said, but I do not enjoy the format as much as I have in the past. However, I'm definitely enjoying playing legacy more than I ever have before.

Our legacy (and vintage!) community has exploded in the last several months. Between myself and the other players, I never worry about being able to play whatever deck I want. In fact, I borrowed ~75% of my legacy deck and all-but-the-power of my vintage deck for Eternal weekend with <24 hours notice. After most of our twice-weekly tournaments people get together for anything ranging from a couple drinks to hours of intense board gaming. We got "team" shirts because nedleeds wouldn't let me have a Tusk shirt. We had around 8 people at Eternal Weekend, Louisville, and it looks like we're on track to keep that running at GP Vegas.

Changes in Legacy since I started playing that I'm less than thrilled about:

* In 2008, built Merfolk off of two days worth of lunch shift tips and I did well with it. I miss Merfolk being a strong deck.
* Tarmogoyf used to be the nuts. The first duals I bought were Tropical Islands ($60/ea) so I could play Tarmogoyf ($48/ea) in my Merfolk deck - and that was pretty standard
* Delver means no more Zoo.
* Miracles (the cards) created a clear-best Counterbalance deck. I like the presence of Counterbalance/Top in the format but I don't like it being dominant. I'm going to bring my CounterThopters deck with E-Tutor, Moat, and Humility to our Thursday legacy this week for a bit of a throwback.
* Thespian's Stage did something similar. It turned lands from a slow deck that insane people (I wanted to be one of them) piloted to a combo control deck that anyone could pilot and do okay with.

Less cards, more outside factors that changed for the worse:
* No SCG coverage means the format develops much more slowly. Additionally, I think some people who might have played for the hope at a sliver of fame aren't pushing themselves.
* When modern prices spiked, a lot of people sold out and bought into legacy. While it's hard for me to argue against expanding the format, I think since then there's been a lot more bitching and moaning about what's wrong with the format instead of how to address it. Stop telling me CB/Top should be banned and start telling me what you're doing to hedge your pre-board games against it.
I agree with most of these points. Especially the lands point. Lands used to be an incredible interesting deck that has turned into a pile of snoozefest.

Your last point though about what are you bringing to beat CB Top, the issue I have is that a majority of the time the answer is, I play abrupt decay. The color restrictive part of the card is nice, but you basically end up like what Reid Duke said in his article. I want to play brainstorm because I have to to win. I'm in blue. I want to have good answer to counter balance, but not play counter balance myself. I'm BUG. Boom. From there you already have 75% of a deck build simply because when you're in those colors you have to play certain cards. It's homogenizing and it kind of sucks

[Lemnear]

"Miracles vs Decay vs. Chalice" - DnT, Infect and BR Rea, 3/6 of the DTB at the moment don't fall under your metagame structure. Lands was in the DTB for a while too. I wouldn't call them decks with diverse enough CMC to get around CotV/CB either, they get under them with Cavern/Vial or speed. At any rate, even if you want to argue that they do, 'a deck which gets around them due to cmc of your cards' is a hugely broad term, hardly a good argument. See the rise of SnS recently, that's because people are reacting to this CotV/CB metagame by playing decks that are good vs them!

I said you are either part of the Miracles/Chalice/decay triangle or have a gameplan to get around the softlock. Infect, Reanimator, D&T and Lands all fit, especially as the later is running Chalice itself. S&T with its 3cc/4cc enablers is another example of that




Never heard DnT be called tempo before :really:

Is there a technical difference to Delver.dec at all? You pound your opponent with small creatures, while manadenial and taxing effects like Daze, Port, Wasteland, Stifle or Thalia delay their gameplan.




Thalia + Wasteland is absolutely interaction, it's mana denial. If they weren't doing it you would be able to play spells, but since they're INTERACTING with you you can't. It's not enjoyable interaction, but is nonetheless. Chalice has largely been adapted to and that's noticeable by the results, or lack of, Eldrazi has been putting up recently. It's still a boring card, but far from the GG it was when Eldrazi entered the format. TKS is just a creature. Pushed, yes, but you can put removal spells in your deck.

Ensuring your opponent can't play spells at all is no sign of promoting interaction. As for that it does not matter if you get killed by T1 Tendrils or die in 5 turns against TKS + Chalice with a hand full of 1cc cards.

While we are at TKS: Running removal is nice, but TKS exiles it from your hand anyways




On your comment of combo, sure, they exist and have done for a long time. Not sure what your point is here? They're not dominating the format because people play INTERACTION to stop them.

Which results into cards like Boseiju or Caverns being maindecked to dive deeper into the no-interaction rabbithole of Legacy



This is all spoken like you're more content to moan about the state of the format (which is pretty obvious), rather than play it and adapt to what's going on.

Bad assumption here. I switched to S&T because its so easy to get free wins off a 3cc sorcery rather than trying to durdle with storm. It just doesnt mean I have to enjoy the path of dumbing down the game to my opponent pretty much slamming tomb into chalice and expecting the fold just to die to an Emrakul the next turn

[Ingo]

* Thespian's Stage did something similar. It turned lands from a slow deck that insane people (I wanted to be one of them) piloted to a combo control deck that anyone could pilot and do okay with.


I agree with most of these points. Especially the lands point. Lands used to be an incredible interesting deck that has turned into a pile of snoozefest.


I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning.
Your posts suggests that you don't like the combo because it's too powerful or uninteractive?
But given the dominance of the blue package, don't we need more of these powerful, nonblue interactions?

Because synergy with lands (like crop rotation, Loam, etc) is usually found on green cards, it's hard to combine them with FOW.
RUG Lands is one of the only decks running blue but totally lacking any of the usual blue cards.
On the other hand, blue decks have a hard time including Stage/Depths, as they rely on shuffle-effects and are too mana-efficient to include non-mana-producing lands.
Stage/Depths is a combo that perfectly suits nonblue strategies, and launched Lands and Turbo Depths (and to some degree 4cLoam?) just below T1 status.

Isn't that what we need, more diversity besides brainstorm/ponder/FOW?

[Lemnear]

Isn't that what we need, more diversity besides brainstorm/ponder/FOW?

I see two problems with Lands: First its that anfles to interact with the deck are fringe and pretty much boil down to yardhate and second, the absurd pricetag of the niche cards the deck needs to run. The deck can't really go the way of Budget like D&T

[Captain Hammer]

Lobby your local shop to host a fringe deck night where only fringe decks are allowed.

Or if that won't fly, lobby them to offer a price for the fringe decks that performed the best each night, a deck that doesn't share 90% of its cards with stuff on Mtgtop8, Mtggoldfish, SCG top 8s, decks to beat on this forum.

Or just play more fringe decks and ask your friends and local players to do the same.

There's plenty of fun interactive powerful decks in legacy that can and do win tournaments.

NicFit
Food Chain
Dark Depths
Aluren
Dozens of other alternative decks that routinely put up top 8s.

Or alternatively, just don't obsess with winning every tournament and play something for fun like say Dragon Stompy or Pox, Geddon Stax, The Gate, Quinn, Zoo, Twisted Metal, Stoneblade, Tradewind Rider, Affinity, Goblins or Oracle Opposition or if you miss Canadian Thresh play that or whatever strikes your fancy. Visit the Developmental forum once in a while if you want some new ideas to try.

There are literally hundreds of effective strategies in legacy. I bring my Gamekeeper deck of all things to my local shop and do pretty well with it most

Mtgtop8, Mtggoldfish, SCG top 8s, decks to beat on this forum should not define the metagame. We the players should. If people didn't obsess over always playing the "best deck" even in local 20 person tourneys with a weak price pool, legacy is by far the best format in the history.

[Julian23]

people play INTERACTION to stop them.

Calling Counterbalance "interaction" sounds really weird when it makes for games where one player often pass on multiple turns without action because he's been locked out. It's in the same league as Chalice.

[Whitefaces]

I said you are either part of the Miracles/Chalice/decay triangle or have a gameplan to get around the softlock. Infect, Reanimator, D&T and Lands all fit, especially as the later is running Chalice itself. S&T with its 3cc/4cc enablers is another example of that

Er, sure? There aren't many decks that don't fall under that huge blanket statement. CB and Chalice are part of the format, if you're weak to them by having a low curve, play answers for them. If you're not, don't. Lands rarely runs more than one CotV in the SB anyway, it's hardly a 'chalice deck'.



Is there a technical difference to Delver.dec at all? You pound your opponent with small creatures, while manadenial and taxing effects like Daze, Port, Wasteland, Stifle or Thalia delay their gameplan.

There's a huge difference to DnT and Delver, I'm very surprised you're even asking.



Ensuring your opponent can't play spells at all is no sign of promoting interaction. As for that it does not matter if you get killed by T1 Tendrils or die in 5 turns against TKS + Chalice with a hand full of 1cc cards.

While we are at TKS: Running removal is nice, but TKS exiles it from your hand anyways

Of course it's interacting, maybe our definitions differ then, but they're stopping you from doing things by interacting...I don't know how else to put it. Would you also argue that Storm is not an interactive deck?

If you're dying to a TKS with all 1cmc cards in hand, put other cards in your deck! Have you seen how Delver decks have adapted to more CotV in the meta, or how Miracles are playing MD EEs now? The format changes, and people adapt. Moaning about hyperbolic situations won't solve anything

TKS exiles, TS discards...these are all interacting, you know you can cast a removal spell in response to the TKS trigger? You're not ALWAYS tapped out, and they don't ALWAYS have it T2. I can't remember the last time I lost to Eldrazi with Grixis Delver playing online since I put removal spells in the deck that get around Chalice.


Bad assumption here. I switched to S&T because its so easy to get free wins off a 3cc sorcery rather than trying to durdle with storm. It just doesnt mean I have to enjoy the path of dumbing down the game to my opponent pretty much slamming tomb into chalice and expecting the fold just to die to an Emrakul the next turn

That's a crap excuse. Whatever your personal reasons, and that's what you've just said, SnT has become a lot better in the metagame while storm has gotten worse. The skill behind the deck shouldn't be a factor in this, I do agree SnT is a deck a monkey could play though.


Calling Counterbalance "interaction" sounds really weird when it makes for games where one player often pass on multiple turns without action because he's been locked out. It's in the same league as Chalice.

I will admit, CB is a much tougher card to beat than Chalice and falls into Lemnears theory. Whether it's healthy interaction is debatable, but it's still interacting as without the CB they're casting spells. I think CB is leagues ahead of Chalice in promoting bad gameplay.

EDIT - Probably worth pointing out that I hate CB, it doesn't promote good gameplay in the slightest, thankfully Decay is in the format. But I don't see it being banned in the near future, if ever, so rather than moan it's better to be prepared for it.

[maharis]

I agree with most of these points. Especially the lands point. Lands used to be an incredible interesting deck that has turned into a pile of snoozefest.

Your last point though about what are you bringing to beat CB Top, the issue I have is that a majority of the time the answer is, I play abrupt decay. The color restrictive part of the card is nice, but you basically end up like what Reid Duke said in his article. I want to play brainstorm because I have to to win. I'm in blue. I want to have good answer to counter balance, but not play counter balance myself. I'm BUG. Boom. From there you already have 75% of a deck build simply because when you're in those colors you have to play certain cards. It's homogenizing and it kind of sucks

Seconding this.

The upshot is that Decay is the only guaranteed way to get rid of a counterbalance in the format. (Other than weird stuff like Cavern -> creature with ETB nuke enchantment.) Everything else can be hit off the CB trigger or just Forced from hand if need be. And its presence hasn't done anything to make CB/Top a less attractive option; in fact, CB/Top has been the best deck in the format the entire time Decay has been legal.

The collateral damage from that is what's also impeding enjoyment of the format. More Decays -> less ability to build around CMC<3 permanents. Think decks like Painter or Stiflenought or even Thopters. Then, you have all the cards in UB that are good against Decay: Angler, TNN, Jace, etc.

Obviously you don't HAVE to play blue with your BG spell, but there's not a really good reason not to. Playing the blue cantrips lets you skimp on lands so you can play more of the strong cards in BG. Between counterspells, hand disruption, and decay you're probably ready to answer 90% of the commonly played cards in the format. And you're best equipped to fight those cards as well.


I do feel like the problem stems from Miracles being the uncontested best deck for several years now as it clearly warps the meta around it. The increase in AD is just the symptom, not the cause.

But let's assume Wizards actually gave a shit and axed one part of the Counterbalance combo. How much would the AD ratio actually decrease? It's still an incredible flexible removal spell that can't be countered.

As for DRS, let's not forget how much GY abuse we had to suffer before DRS became mainstream. It may be a broken creatures, but it also has good sides.

Decay is obviously good, but it is mostly tempo-negative. There are a number of cards that getting Decayed is just sort of meh or impossible. The only card I would say it really keeps in check is Delver of Secrets, since Delver doesn't do much but hit for a few points before getting hit by Decay. But letting someone untap with a DRS or Mom, or spending your turn getting rid of their Bob or Stoneforge so it doesn't get active, are not really swingy plays. That Decay looks pretty bad against the turn 2 TNN because you couldn't tag their DRS. Or even if it's something like Knight... they still have a DRS which is a threat in and of itself. Decay vs. Thalia is pretty bad.

There also may be more diverse threats outside of Decay's range since the fear of such a threat eating a Force or STP or Terminus reduces a little bit. Miracles owning the late game right now holds a lot of other late-game decks back. Nic Fit may be the No. 1 example of this.

This is sort of an optimistic view because obviously Decay is a very powerful card and there's plenty of support around it. But I don't think it's an auto 4-of in decks as long as the threat of Counterbalance doesn't loom as large.

[Lemnear]

Er, sure? There aren't many decks that don't fall under that huge blanket statement. CB and Chalice are part of the format, if you're weak to them by having a low curve, play answers for them. If you're not, don't. Lands rarely runs more than one CotV in the SB anyway, it's hardly a 'chalice deck'.

I will not argue over list x from event y running z Chalice. The point is that the list of card which can answer Chalice and Counterbalance is VERY limited



There's a huge difference to DnT and Delver, I'm very surprised you're even asking.

The only difference is that one deck has parts of its tempo components in hand until needed while the other deck has all on the battlefield. That does not affect the general strategy of the decks.



Of course it's interacting, maybe our definitions differ then, but they're stopping you from doing things by interacting...I don't know how else to put it. Would you also argue that Storm is not an interactive deck?

You are missing the point. Storm does not want the opponent to interact, that however does not mean that it can't run cards to react to its opponents. "Interaction" means for me that BOTH players are able to DO something during a game. That is not the case if you get killed T1 or locked out from doing anything other than dropping lands.

[janchu88]

as i mentioned earlier, im going to add some sophisticated data (2011 - 2017) to the discussion. After a long day at work, ive managed several things, but now i´ll leave it for several hours to compute.

What i did so far:

- I extracted all the played cards
- Increased Resolution to Quarters for each year
- Wrote the code to analyze the Metashare for each played card by quarter... This step will take several hours and is currently running

Coming Up
- Analyze the Meta for changes at a certain Treshhold for each single card in between quarters. The question i can anwser by that is: Which cards came into the format and which in conclusion got pushed out. The computing on this wont take long, so ill test with different treshholds to give a conclusive image... but i wont make it today anymore, since i gotta get up early tomorrow again

And for everyone who is interested: This is what the data looks like being computed now (2193 different cards were played in legacy during this era btw)

https://abload.de/thumb/legacy4ws0c.png (https://abload.de/img/legacy6xspc.png)

So stay tuned for more

[Phoenix Ignition]

I picked "not really."

After playing Vintage a bunch it's clear to me that having 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder in every deck is just absurd. If Vintage allowed you to choose either:

1) 1x Ancestral Recall, 1x Time Walk, 1x Brainstorm, 1x Ponder, fill in the rest of cantrips with Preordain
or
2) 4x Brainstorm, 4x Ponder, fill in the rest with whatever

I would strongly consider the 4x Brainstorm 4x Ponder package. With all that variance reduction it's no wonder the game has grown stale.

[thecrav]

I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning.
Your posts suggests that you don't like the combo because it's too powerful or uninteractive?

It's not that stage/depths is too powerful that I don't like. I don't like that it's not interesting. It's classic herp+derp combo.

[Lemnear]

I picked "not really."

After playing Vintage a bunch it's clear to me that having 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder in every deck is just absurd. If Vintage allowed you to choose either:

1) 1x Ancestral Recall, 1x Time Walk, 1x Brainstorm, 1x Ponder, fill in the rest of cantrips with Preordain
or
2) 4x Brainstorm, 4x Ponder, fill in the rest with whatever

I would strongly consider the 4x Brainstorm 4x Ponder package. With all that variance reduction it's no wonder the game has grown stale.

This statement is absolutely pointless. Your case 1) would be more accurate if you list Treasure Cruise, Demonic Tutor, Mystical Tutor and Vampric Tutor instead of the Preordains and set it in powerlevel-context of the cards you grab with that "variance reduction" tools. Do you really want to tell me that casting Ponder is more reliable than Demonic Tutor from a variance point of view?

[CutthroatCasual]

It's okay. I like that the power players are well defined, but that they're not so dominant that you need to play one of them to succeed. In other words, it's nice to have pillars of the format but not ones that are unbeatable. Do I wish more decks had a more equal share of the meta? Sure. But that's just not realistically going to happen. I'd much rather have what we have now, a more or less stale tier 1 but with several top performing tier 1.5 and tier 2 decks rather than a rotating tier 1 and nonviable tier 1.5 and tier 2 decks (aka a rock-paper-scissors meta).

[Megadeus]

It's not that stage/depths is too powerful that I don't like. I don't like that it's not interesting. It's classic herp+derp combo.

This. The lands decks went from an interesting deck with many options each turn and varying ways to gain an average to "end of turn crop rotation make a 20/20 GG"

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

"I liked it better when it sucked"

[Megadeus]

"I liked it better when it sucked"

It was a very good deck then. People just didn't play it then because it was a difficult deck to pilot correctly and the internet never told them to play it.

[Chatto]

It's not that stage/depths is too powerful that I don't like. I don't like that it's not interesting. It's classic herp+derp combo.
This. The lands decks went from an interesting deck with many options each turn and varying ways to gain an average to "end of turn crop rotation make a 20/20 GG"

Which is awesome! :laugh: I love the deck, and how it looks like, feels like, and plays like a (non-Blue) combo deck (which I think is the reason people are starting to dislike the deck), or go the 'classic' route of looking your opponent out of the game.


It's okay. I like that the power players are well defined, but that they're not so dominant that you need to play one of them to succeed. In other words, it's nice to have pillars of the format but not ones that are unbeatable. Do I wish more decks had a more equal share of the meta? Sure. But that's just not realistically going to happen. I'd much rather have what we have now, a more or less stale tier 1 but with several top performing tier 1.5 and tier 2 decks rather than a rotating tier 1 and nonviable tier 1.5 and tier 2 decks (aka a rock-paper-scissors meta).

I agree, but I still miss 'the old days' with Goblins and weird brews, though.

[Crimhead]

I can only speak from the Elves perspective, but I enjoy playing against Storm a lot. DRS gives the matchup more depth than fair decks used to have in the past.
I like playing against Storm with Lands. I need to be very lucky G1, but postboard is an interesting race. Usually I can land a lock piece to stall them. Then I need to either win quickly or else drown them with mana denial and more Prison pieces. I can also sometimes Bog their yard with PiF on the stack. I find the decisions interesting and the games intense. I'm usually a good favourite post board, but I need to win twice in a row. Fun times!


I agree with most of these points. Especially the lands point. Lands used to be an incredible interesting deck that has turned into a pile of snoozefest.

RUG Lands, my good man! It's slower, more "tool-boxy", and still takes a certain type of insanity to want to pilot. I believe it's very well positioned right now - and overall strong against the format's top decks.


This is where you've got decks that fire a Goblin of Arson Gun for 52 on the first turn, or sacrifice a land to make a 20/20 creature, or don't pay mana for any spell in the deck, or force opponents to draw hundreds of cards. I definitely don't think those should be the only ways to play, but I think it's a beautiful thing that those things are possible in Legacy. If all that stuff suddenly stops being viable, what's really separating Legacy from Modern?

...Since before I started playing the format, there's been an obvious attempt to push certain decks and archetypes—which is to say, value decks—at the expense of other archetypes and strategies. I don't have a problem with those decks, but—and I don't mean offense to anyone when I say this—they don't feel like they define the format to me...

...these printings are boosting specific strategies that really feel quite a bit like the ones that predominate in Modern and Standard, and they've started pushing the other styles of play to the periphery
This was worrying me a lot more during Maverick summer than now. I'm still worried now! Just not as much because we have such a wide range of decks in the top tier.

For me it's not about format contrast. It's just what MTG should be!

[rlesko]

RUG Lands, my good man! It's slower, more "tool-boxy", and still takes a certain type of insanity to want to pilot. I believe it's very well positioned right now - and overall strong against the format's top decks.


This is just a side question, but what is the benefit of running RUG vs RG? Don't get me wrong, I like EE lock, tolaria west, etc, and that style of play appeals to me way more than "turbo 20/20" does. But it seems like you may as well just make a 20/20 instead of trying to get the opponent to 0 permanents.

[nedleeds]

LOL at Brainstorm on that ubiquity spreadsheet ... nah nothing to see here, carry on.


I picked "not really."

After playing Vintage a bunch it's clear to me that having 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder in every deck is just absurd. If Vintage allowed you to choose either:

1) 1x Ancestral Recall, 1x Time Walk, 1x Brainstorm, 1x Ponder, fill in the rest of cantrips with Preordain
or
2) 4x Brainstorm, 4x Ponder, fill in the rest with whatever

I would strongly consider the 4x Brainstorm 4x Ponder package. With all that variance reduction it's no wonder the game has grown stale.

It's even more depressing when you consider more facts. More decks play Brainstorm as part of the field than play Ancestral Recall in Vintage. Essentially any description you could apply to Ancestral Recall, besides money, apply to Brainstorm in the context of why the card is banned.

- Card quality and draw at far too low a cost
- Promotes homogeneity and warps the format around trying to beat the card, or giving up and playing 4 yourself
- which reduces the deck building experience to a 56 card experience

I enjoy Vintage for what it is, I look to legacy to be free from the restricted list and not have to start my deck building experience at ~50 cards to be competitive.

#inb4banisland

[Phoenix Ignition]

This statement is absolutely pointless. Your case 1) would be more accurate if you list Treasure Cruise, Demonic Tutor, Mystical Tutor and Vampric Tutor instead of the Preordains and set it in powerlevel-context of the cards you grab with that "variance reduction" tools. Do you really want to tell me that casting Ponder is more reliable than Demonic Tutor from a variance point of view?

A lot of decks are blue without black in vintage, so I don't see how not including Demonic would completely invalidate my point. UW Mentor is probably the best deck right now, and obviously doesn't use it.

It doesn't matter though, my point is that 4x Brainstorm 4x Ponder is at least on the same level as the equivalent playable blue cards in vintage. Brainstorm is virtually an Ancestral every time you cast it.

[ESG]

The sheer efficiency of what the format has become with decks being 8-12 cantrips with different win conditions has pretty much pushed out any room to brew.

Yes, the efficiency is higher than it used to be, but there's always room to brew. Every time a new set is released or people move to different decks, you have a new opportunity. The Seattle area is always experimenting, and you can watch our streams/VODs to see the latest brews. In the past six months, you could have seen people playing around with the Monarch mechanic, vehicles, Leovold brews, Shared Fate, Tainted Pact, a Nykthos Leylines deck, a four-color Vial deck with Notion Thief AND Phyrexian Obliterator, and more. If you're bored with the format, you need to see what other players are doing and get inspired.

[Ronald Deuce]

For me it's not about format contrast. It's just what MTG should be!

Oh, right on; it's not that I feel like every format should play differently. I just don't like the way Modern plays, and that's because there isn't really anything crazy in the format. Sure, I think it's fair to say that the default setting for a good deck shouldn't be "do something nuts," but when there isn't anything like that in a format, it feels a bit quotidian.

I guess a counterargument is that things feel samey when many of the top decks (and a majority of winning decks) run the same 8-12 cards. I don't necessarily think that's a problem, though. For comparison, Vintage has a similar suite of "must-play" cards that largely constitutes the separation in the cardpool from Legacy's. And sure, those cards are restricted, but that doesn't mean that eight of the P9 (plus X other cards) aren't going to be in two-thirds of decks in the room.

I keep considering the debate over format diversity. To a point, I don't think the saturation of certain cards in a format constitutes a homogenous metagame. Equally important is whether the strategies people can employ (perhaps using those cards) regress to a specific mode of play or path to victory, and in a format like Modern, where the most played cards take a much smaller share of the total cards, that's a much bigger problem than it is in Legacy.

[pandaman]

... even with Foil MM Ports separating me from all the plebs who picked it up 2 weeks ago because you can buy it with 2 centrelink payments now.

Digging this reference.

[Lemnear]

A lot of decks are blue without black in vintage, so I don't see how not including Demonic would completely invalidate my point. UW Mentor is probably the best deck right now, and obviously doesn't use it.

It doesn't matter though, my point is that 4x Brainstorm 4x Ponder is at least on the same level as the equivalent playable blue cards in vintage. Brainstorm is virtually an Ancestral every time you cast it.

Its just that your topics were [Variance reduction] and [Vintage vs. Legacy] in that context, so we should look at the available cardpool and not just at a single color because a player choose to not run black for whatever reason. Its like choosing to not play blue in Legacy and complaining that there "is no good card selection in Legacy".

Vintage isn't a real format these days if GP Vintage sideevents cant even attract a dozen players and WotC outsourced the B&R management of that format to a "council of known players" who like to play 60-card-blue-highlander-goodstuff + 4x FoW.

[Megadeus]

Its just that your topics were [Variance reduction] and [Vintage vs. Legacy] in that context, so we should look at the available cardpool and not just at a single color because a player choose to not run black for whatever reason. Its like choosing to not play blue in Legacy and complaining that there "is no good card selection in Legacy".

Vintage isn't a real format these days if GP Vintage sideevents cant even attract a dozen players and WotC outsourced the B&R management of that format to a "council of known players" who like to play 60-card-blue-highlander-goodstuff + 4x FoW.

Vintage side events in Louisville looked too have around 40 each round

[iatee]

who like to play 60-card-blue-highlander-goodstuff + 4x FoW.

So vintage players like to play...vintage...

[frogczar]

No.

Brainstorm still legal? Show and Tell still legal?

Enjoy your broken blue format and let me know when you want to actually play Magic with the rest of the colors. I'll be enjoying my '94 Magic cube and Commander until then.

[CptHaddock]

No.

Brainstorm still legal? Show and Tell still legal?

Enjoy your broken blue format and let me know when you want to actually play Magic with the rest of the colors. I'll be enjoying my '94 Magic cube and Commander until then.

Lmfao what? I'm pretty sure i've seen more degenerate blue stuff on a daily basis in commander than I have in legacy.

[nedleeds]

Vintage side events in Louisville looked too have around 40 each round

please stop quoting him, or ill have to block you also ... we had between 24-40 ... less for the one right in the main event Saturday.

[bruizar]

Yes, the efficiency is higher than it used to be, but there's always room to brew. Every time a new set is released or people move to different decks, you have a new opportunity. The Seattle area is always experimenting, and you can watch our streams/VODs to see the latest brews. In the past six months, you could have seen people playing around with the Monarch mechanic, vehicles, Leovold brews, Shared Fate, Tainted Pact, a Nykthos Leylines deck, a four-color Vial deck with Notion Thief AND Phyrexian Obliterator, and more. If you're bored with the format, you need to see what other players are doing and get inspired.

Link to the recording of the Nykthos leyline deck please :-)

[Nielsie]

Legacy players can be so funny. Brainstorm is running rampant for years but now suddenly the biggest culprits in legacy are Eldrazi, Chalice and Abrupt Decay. Seriously?

I actualy think Legacy is a lot more enjoyable lately thanks to new printings and a complete new blueless delverless deck in Eldrazi. For me, legacy was very stale since the printing of the hideous TNN (which gave blue yet another threat they should not have) untill about the printing of Eldrazi's. The KTK period with Cruise and Dig was the worst period and I even momentarily just stopped playing because that meta realy sucked.

At the moment I feel like there is a lot of unexplored territory with Vehicles, Revolt and maybe even stuff like the new Expertises that have something like a semi-cascade attached. People are just netdecking too much, I am guilty of it myself, but I think if some smart people would start brewing, new decks would emerge.

PS: I voted for 'it´s okay'

[Lemnear]

Vintage side events in Louisville looked too have around 40 each round

Latest MKM Series stop in prague had 39 in the mainevent. What a vibrant format lol

[nedleeds]

Latest MKM Series stop in prague had 39 in the mainevent. What a vibrant format lol

I knew this would be a mistake ....

MKM Series London had 26 for Standard? What does that make Vintage? Clearly a rousing fucking success and far more popular than Type II. Ever think maybe the MKM series is a colossal failure?

.... back on the list ...



We're going to play a game called stop insulting other members or I'll ban you. I can't wait to see who wins! ^___________^

- zilla

[Lemnear]

Ignoring the usual personal attack: No, I don't bother much about Standard since ~2009 and Vintage since ~2011. Both can go to hell, given how they are managed. Legacy is on a good way achieving the same standing by getting more linear/dumber each year

[twndomn]

Vintage side events in Louisville looked too have around 40 each round

Vintage events exist because VSL pushes it on Twitch very hard. People on this forum tried Legacy Mediocre League, has a reasonable degree of success.

[Julian23]

One of the reasons we haven't seen LML Season #2 yet is because WotC was hesitant to support us because Mike and I were observed to be too critical of MTGO.

[Barook]

One of the reasons we haven't seen LML Season #2 yet is because WotC was hesitant to support us because Mike and I were observed to be too critical of MTGO.
That's pretty interesting. Kinda understandable, as they don't want to make their terrible product look bad.

Now if somebody like Reid Duke tried to promote LML, it would probably be different, since he has more mass appeal. Seriously, how high is the opportunity cost for WotC? Give out a bunch of god accounts and a few cards for free, be done with it and get free promotion.

[Dice_Box]

One of the reasons we haven't seen LML Season #2 yet is because WotC was hesitant to support us because Mike and I were observed to be too critical of MTGO.
A truth that's told with bad intent
beats all the lies you can invent.

[janchu88]

as promised, here are the first results of my research (Attention, wall of text incoming)


Just for better comprehension of the results: What have i done? I split the analyzed timespan into quarters for each year. Then i have built a list of all cards, that were played in this whole timespan. Then i looked up for each single card how big the metashare was for that timespan... There were to methods that came up to my mind for doing so

A: Count all decks that play a certain card during a quarter and divide by the total decks played in that quarter. This gives you a view on how many decks play a specific card, but it doesnt really represent how many copies.

or B: Count the exact numbers of the chosen cards that were played during that quarter and divide by the total of deck played that quarter.

Method B gives you the average Count of that Card over all Decks. For Example over all decks in that quarter 3.1 Brainstorms were played on average. To build a saturation out of that, i divided that number by 4. This means that (3.1/4) * 100 = 77.5% of the possible Brainstorms were played during that era. If the Value reached 100% that meant that all decks would have played 4 Brainstorms. The Issue on this method is that you cant tell wether half of the decks played for 4 Brainstorms or all of the decks played 2 Brainstorms, but it is a lot more precise in terms of getting subtle changes, for example if Miracles played only 3 or 4 Counterbalances during that era or another 4-Off went down to only one copy for example.

I know both methods have heir strengths and weaknesses, but I personally chose B, because i think it is more streamlined to measure the performance of a specific card, rather than the deck it features. And now lets get on to the data. I set the treshhold to a change of 5% in saturation between the quarters and here are the uncommented results:

Important note: The percentages describe how much the meta-share increased or decreased absolutely

I. Q 11 -> II. Q 11

Winners:

Mental Misstep 22,05%
Green Sun's Zenith 12,74%
Hive Mind 7,86%
Ancient Tomb 7,63%
Pact of Negation 7,52%
Leyline of Sanctity 7,42%
Summoner's Pact 6,91%
Grim Monolith 6,83%
Pact of the Titan 6,27%
City of Traitors 5,87%
Underground Sea 5,78%
Flooded Strand 5,73%
Intuition 5,51%
Polluted Delta 5,31%

Losers:

Scalding Tarn -5,23%
Preordain -5,31%
Tropical Island -5,31%
Duress -5,77%
Counterbalance -5,99%
Sensei's Divining Top -6,54%
Progenitus -7,40%
Tarmogoyf -7,64%
Lotus Petal -7,65%
Pithing Needle -7,70%
Aether Vial -8,64%
Krosan Grip -10,21%

II. Q 11 -> III. Q 11

Winners:

Mental Misstep 43,47%
Vendilion Clique 17,47%
Stoneforge Mystic 15,09%
Swords to Plowshares 13,24%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 13,23%
Tundra 12,96%
Brainstorm 12,68%
Force of Will 12,48%
Wasteland 11,36%
Ancestral Vision 10,86%
Flooded Strand 10,41%
Mishra's Factory 7,77%
Wrath of God 7,73%
Daze 7,68%
Angel's Grace 7,44%
Knight of the Reliquary 7,30%
Meddling Mage 6,79%
Spellstutter Sprite 6,27%
Batterskull 6,13%
Green Sun's Zenith 5,85%
Mutavault 5,80%
Surgical Extraction 5,78%
Disenchant 5,58%
Wooded Foothills 5,18%
Mox Diamond 5,17%

Losers:

Ponder -5,06%
Seat of the Synod -5,22%
Ravenous Trap -5,36%
Krosan Grip -5,60%
Sensei's Divining Top -6,80%
Engineered Plague -7,46%
Ethersworn Canonist -9,52%
Mindbreak Trap -9,61%

III. Q 11 -> IV. Q 11

Winners:

Snapcaster Mage 26,00%
Delver of Secrets 20,00%
Wasteland 15,81%
Lightning Bolt 15,74%
Spell Snare 14,92%
Stifle 13,80%
Volcanic Island 13,54%
Silence 13,29%
Mother of Runes 12,24%
Tarmogoyf 12,09%
Mindbreak Trap 12,06%
Tormod's Crypt 11,27%
Punishing Fire 10,40%
Grove of the Burnwillows 9,62%
Duress 9,06%
Dismember 8,60%
Lion's Eye Diamond 8,51%
Dark Ritual 8,26%
Lotus Petal 8,09%
Hymn to Tourach 7,83%
Marsh Flats 7,24%
Nimble Mongoose 6,94%
Gitaxian Probe 6,55%
Orim's Chant 6,38%
Ravenous Trap 5,92%
Arid Mesa 5,86%
Phyrexian Revoker 5,49%
Snow-Covered Mountain 5,36%
Snow-Covered Mountain 5,36%
Chrome Mox 5,32%
Ethersworn Canonist 5,22%
Cabal Ritual 5,05%

Losers:

Exhume -5,05%
Engineered Plague -5,10%
Slaughter Pact -5,11%
Summoner's Pact -5,15%
Entomb -5,32%
Ancient Grudge -5,35%
Mishra's Factory -5,37%
Grim Monolith -5,40%
Disenchant -5,46%
Wooded Foothills -5,54%
Careful Study -5,62%
Standstill -5,87%
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn -6,05%
Pact of Negation -6,36%
Pact of the Titan -6,39%
Stoneforge Mystic -6,41%
Noble Hierarch -6,56%
Mutavault -6,66%
Polluted Delta -6,70%
Ancient Tomb -7,01%
Cabal Therapy -7,08%
Hive Mind -7,23%
Intuition -7,25%
Angel's Grace -7,55%
Meddling Mage -7,88%
Spell Pierce -7,94%
Swords to Plowshares -9,81%
Natural Order -9,93%
Underground Sea -10,65%
Show and Tell -11,29%
Ancestral Vision -12,05%
Flooded Strand -12,56%
Misty Rainforest -13,57%
Tundra -14,19%
Vendilion Clique -14,52%
Brainstorm -16,74%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -18,96%
Force of Will -21,65%
Mental Misstep -61,52%

IV. Q 11 -> I. Q 12

Winners:

Surgical Extraction 10,48%
Brainstorm 9,91%
Force of Will 9,87%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 9,17%
Cabal Therapy 9,13%
Intuition 8,48%
Spell Pierce 8,35%
Show and Tell 7,83%
Gemstone Mine 7,83%
Rite of Flame 7,83%
Ancient Tomb 7,52%
Counterbalance 6,74%
Burning Wish 6,09%
Nature's Claim 6,09%
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 5,96%
Chalice of the Void 5,87%
Tundra 5,83%
Flooded Strand 5,74%
City of Brass 5,65%
Engineered Plague 5,22%
Grim Monolith 5,22%
Hive Mind 5,22%
Leyline of Sanctity 5,17%
Underground Sea 5,13%
Polluted Delta 5,09%

Losers:

Grove of the Burnwillows -5,09%
Progenitus -5,13%
Karakas -5,48%
Ravenous Trap -5,61%
Mox Diamond -5,74%
Ethersworn Canonist -5,91%
Spell Snare -5,96%
Punishing Fire -6,09%
Silence -6,74%
Swords to Plowshares -6,83%
Stifle -7,26%
Lightning Bolt -7,61%
Delver of Secrets -7,83%
Mother of Runes -7,96%
Hymn to Tourach -8,22%
Daze -8,35%
Thoughtseize -8,70%
Umezawa's Jitte -9,00%
Scrubland -9,04%
Relic of Progenitus -9,26%
Qasali Pridemage -9,26%
Tormod's Crypt -9,74%
Mindbreak Trap -9,96%
Knight of the Reliquary -10,39%
Marsh Flats -15,09%
Wasteland -15,48%
Tarmogoyf -20,78%

I. Q 12 -> II. Q 12

Winners:

Swords to Plowshares 9,49%
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 8,93%
Mother of Runes 8,62%
Force of Will 8,54%
Noble Hierarch 7,96%
Misty Rainforest 7,91%
Counterbalance 7,55%
Sensei's Divining Top 7,20%
Inquisition of Kozilek 7,18%
Leyline of Sanctity 6,87%
Knight of the Reliquary 6,44%
Lingering Souls 6,00%
Savannah 5,97%
Show and Tell 5,86%
Faithless Looting 5,68%
Submerge 5,55%
Guided Passage 5,36%
Figure of Destiny 5,36%
Ethersworn Canonist 5,22%

Losers:

Cabal Ritual -5,22%
Goblin Piledriver -5,22%
Krosan Grip -5,45%
Bayou -5,66%
Chalice of the Void -5,87%
Dark Confidant -6,19%
Infernal Tutor -6,21%
Gempalm Incinerator -6,52%
Dismember -6,64%
Aether Vial -6,96%
Goblin Lackey -6,96%
Goblin Matron -6,96%
Goblin Ringleader -6,96%
Dark Ritual -8,92%
Spell Snare -9,71%
Delver of Secrets -9,79%
Verdant Catacombs -9,86%
Stifle -11,74%
Wasteland -12,59%

II. Q 12 -> III. Q 12

Winners:

Terminus 13,82%
Cavern of Souls 12,16%
Scalding Tarn 11,46%
Ponder 9,51%
Daze 9,45%
Omniscience 8,89%
Aether Vial 8,62%
Griselbrand 8,46%
Delver of Secrets 7,45%
Goblin Lackey 7,18%
Goblin Matron 7,00%
Goblin Ringleader 7,00%
Oblivion Ring 6,83%
Thoughtseize 6,49%
Stifle 6,37%
Pithing Needle 6,33%
Goblin Warchief 5,92%
Gempalm Incinerator 5,83%
Karakas 5,82%
Volcanic Island 5,35%
Goblin Piledriver 5,34%
Entreat the Angels 5,34%
Faerie Macabre 5,34%
Verdant Catacombs 5,19%

Losers:

Ethersworn Canonist -5,16%
Guided Passage -5,36%
Inquisition of Kozilek -5,56%
Gemstone Mine -5,62%
Stoneforge Mystic -5,91%
Intuition -5,94%
Lightning Bolt -6,39%
Snapcaster Mage -6,97%
Lion's Eye Diamond -7,42%
Leyline of the Void -7,67%
Tormod's Crypt -7,72%
Pyroblast -7,73%
Bloodbraid Elf -7,74%
Nature's Claim -9,04%
Grove of the Burnwillows -10,58%
Punishing Fire -10,58%
Leyline of Sanctity -13,26%

III. Q 12 -> IV. Q 12

Winners:

Abrupt Decay 23,52%
Deathrite Shaman 16,31%
Polluted Delta 16,28%
Brainstorm 13,51%
Tarmogoyf 10,66%
Ponder 8,64%
Tropical Island 8,55%
Duress 7,81%
Force of Will 7,53%
Underground Sea 7,49%
Lion's Eye Diamond 7,38%
Verdant Catacombs 6,61%
Engineered Plague 6,42%
Dark Ritual 5,86%
Cabal Ritual 5,65%
Bayou 5,60%
Hymn to Tourach 5,28%
Infernal Tutor 5,18%

Losers:

Oblivion Ring -5,02%
Choke -5,17%
Red Elemental Blast -5,19%
Sensei's Divining Top -5,24%
Engineered Explosives -5,32%
Omniscience -5,50%
City of Traitors -5,61%
Qasali Pridemage -5,77%
Ancient Tomb -6,06%
Cavern of Souls -6,87%
Mother of Runes -7,28%
Path to Exile -7,79%
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben -8,01%
Windswept Heath -9,17%
Savannah -9,48%
Noble Hierarch -9,61%
Swords to Plowshares -10,07%
Knight of the Reliquary -11,98%
Green Sun's Zenith -12,48%

IV. Q 12 -> I. Q 13

Winners:

Thoughtseize 9,85%
Deathrite Shaman 8,10%
Leyline of Sanctity 7,23%
Lotus Petal 6,59%
Griselbrand 5,74%
Lightning Bolt 5,66%
Verdant Catacombs 5,49%
Wooded Foothills 5,45%
Burning Wish 5,08%
Rite of Flame 5,02%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -5,22%
Terminus -5,29%
Tropical Island -5,57%
Scalding Tarn -5,73%
Vendilion Clique -6,36%
Force of Will -6,71%
Brainstorm -6,95%
Polluted Delta -7,10%

I. Q 13 -> II. Q 13

Winners:

Misty Rainforest 14,97%
Tarmogoyf 14,46%
Force of Will 14,07%
Brainstorm 13,93%
Shardless Agent 12,51%
Delver of Secrets 11,46%
Ancestral Vision 10,40%
Tropical Island 10,19%
Lightning Bolt 9,41%
Nimble Mongoose 8,66%
Baleful Strix 8,66%
Wasteland 8,50%
Daze 8,09%
Volcanic Island 7,91%
Surgical Extraction 7,40%
Spell Pierce 7,36%
Scalding Tarn 6,92%
Ponder 6,38%
Submerge 6,25%
Stifle 5,81%

Losers:

Burning Wish -5,03%
Engineered Plague -5,24%
Lingering Souls -5,32%
Inquisition of Kozilek -5,46%
Seething Song -5,49%
Stoneforge Mystic -5,55%
Dark Confidant -5,72%
Relic of Progenitus -6,14%
Rite of Flame -6,69%
Progenitus -7,37%
Gitaxian Probe -7,90%
Lotus Petal -8,68%

II. Q 13 -> III. Q 13

Winners:

Gitaxian Probe 10,56%
Flooded Strand 6,92%
Swords to Plowshares 6,28%
Flusterstorm 5,66%

Losers:

Grim Lavamancer -5,03%
Underground Sea -5,09%
Scalding Tarn -5,23%
Submerge -5,32%
Baleful Strix -5,66%
Nimble Mongoose -5,70%
Shardless Agent -5,77%
Wasteland -6,00%
Wooded Foothills -6,19%
Snapcaster Mage -6,38%
Daze -6,39%
Spell Pierce -7,38%
Delver of Secrets -7,61%
Force of Will -7,72%
Tropical Island -7,88%
Ponder -8,34%
Brainstorm -9,75%
Lightning Bolt -10,81%
Surgical Extraction -11,12%
Misty Rainforest -11,19%
Tarmogoyf -13,01%

III. Q 13 -> IV. Q 13

Winners:

Lotus Petal 6,13%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -6,59%

IV. Q 13 -> I. Q 14

Winners:

True-Name Nemesis 14,65%
Swords to Plowshares 10,02%
Stoneforge Mystic 9,78%
Wasteland 8,52%
Aether Vial 6,45%
Daze 5,63%
Rishadan Port 5,27%
Pithing Needle 5,07%
Meddling Mage 5,05%
Arid Mesa 5,04%

Losers:

Misty Rainforest -5,06%
Stifle -5,14%
Nimble Mongoose -5,30%
Dark Ritual -5,38%
Duress -6,71%
Lotus Petal -6,79%
Tarmogoyf -6,81%
Cabal Therapy -7,14%
Gitaxian Probe -10,73%

I. Q 14 -> II. Q 14

Winners:

Cabal Therapy 8,68%
Lion's Eye Diamond 8,15%
Gitaxian Probe 7,34%
Deathrite Shaman 6,40%

Losers:

True-Name Nemesis -5,29%
Tundra -5,48%
Flooded Strand -5,88%
Red Elemental Blast -6,53%
Force of Will -6,83%
Stoneforge Mystic -8,98%
Swords to Plowshares -10,85%

II. Q 14 -> III. Q 14

Winners:

Force of Will 8,11%
Flusterstorm 7,37%
Misty Rainforest 7,25%
Sensei's Divining Top 6,44%
Terminus 5,65%
Verdant Catacombs 5,30%
Council's Judgment 5,16%
Arid Mesa 5,02%

Losers:

Dark Confidant -5,10%
Deathrite Shaman -5,29%
Surgical Extraction -5,37%
Thoughtseize -5,85%
Wasteland -11,04%
Polluted Delta -13,98%

III. Q 14 -> IV. Q 14

Winners:

Treasure Cruise 31,85%
Ponder 22,68%
Gitaxian Probe 20,33%
Volcanic Island 20,30%
Polluted Delta 18,66%
Flooded Strand 18,05%
Young Pyromancer 17,47%
Monastery Swiftspear 16,13%
Lightning Bolt 15,17%
Pyroblast 13,56%
Brainstorm 10,46%
Delver of Secrets 10,19%
Dig Through Time 8,33%
Forked Bolt 7,04%
Stoneforge Mystic 6,42%
Daze 6,32%
Force of Will 5,96%
Lotus Petal 5,51%
Tundra 5,10%

Losers:

Hymn to Tourach -5,24%
Goblin Guide -5,59%
Wasteland -5,62%
Ancestral Vision -6,08%
Shardless Agent -6,10%
Underground Sea -6,27%
Misty Rainforest -6,64%
Thoughtseize -6,88%
Liliana of the Veil -7,19%
Abrupt Decay -7,20%
Tropical Island -7,48%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -7,57%
Tarmogoyf -10,79%
Verdant Catacombs -15,55%
Deathrite Shaman -15,76%

IV. Q 14 -> I. Q 15

Winners:

Dig Through Time 17,72%
Polluted Delta 13,86%
Underground Sea 11,81%
Tarmogoyf 8,64%
Tropical Island 7,85%
Deathrite Shaman 7,57%
Wasteland 6,79%
Force of Will 6,42%
Stifle 5,24%
Brainstorm 5,07%

Losers:

Arid Mesa -5,24%
Lightning Bolt -5,78%
Volcanic Island -7,11%
Gitaxian Probe -7,15%
Young Pyromancer -7,28%
Scalding Tarn -7,76%
Pyroblast -8,60%
Monastery Swiftspear -9,63%
Treasure Cruise -24,51%

I. Q 15 -> II. Q 15

Winners:

Dig Through Time 10,63%
Flooded Strand 7,48%
Snapcaster Mage 6,68%
Young Pyromancer 5,80%
Gitaxian Probe 5,74%
Counterspell 5,54%
Flusterstorm 5,44%
Terminus 5,10%

Losers:

Thoughtseize -5,07%
Delver of Secrets -5,32%
Daze -6,08%
Misty Rainforest -6,55%
Treasure Cruise -7,34%
Wasteland -7,99%

II. Q 15 -> III. Q 15

Winners:

Wasteland 15,01%
Deathrite Shaman 6,94%
Surgical Extraction 5,87%
Abrupt Decay 5,43%
Mox Diamond 5,33%
Trinisphere 5,11%

Losers:

Grafdigger's Cage -5,03%
Polluted Delta -5,32%
Force of Will -5,65%
Volcanic Island -6,24%
Brainstorm -6,56%
Flooded Strand -10,86%

III. Q 15 -> IV. Q 15

Winners:

Verdant Catacombs 6,50%
Stifle 6,02%
Abrupt Decay 5,67%

Losers:

Polluted Delta -5,04%
Trinisphere -5,20%
Preordain -5,28%
Lightning Bolt -5,29%
Flusterstorm -5,36%
Force of Will -5,44%
Brainstorm -5,76%
Volcanic Island -6,17%
Young Pyromancer -6,60%
Pyroblast -6,64%
Gitaxian Probe -9,28%
Ponder -9,30%
Dig Through Time -35,82%

IV. Q 15 -> I. Q 16

Winners:

Ancient Tomb 7,69%
Warping Wail 7,43%
Thought-Knot Seer 7,43%
Eldrazi Temple 7,40%
Reality Smasher 7,40%
Eldrazi Mimic 7,10%
Endless One 6,53%
City of Traitors 6,50%
Dismember 6,07%
Cavern of Souls 6,06%
Eye of Ugin 5,91%
Chalice of the Void 5,17%
Thorn of Amethyst 5,13%

Losers:

Flooded Strand -5,42%
Force of Will -5,72%
Ponder -7,17%

I. Q 16 -> II. Q 16

Winners:

Flooded Strand 6,82%
Ponder 6,40%
Sensei's Divining Top 5,76%
Terminus 5,67%
Swords to Plowshares 5,06%

Losers:

none above treshhold

II. Q 16 -> III. Q 16

Winners:

Surgical Extraction 5,75%
Lightning Bolt 5,02%

Losers:



III. Q 16 -> IV. Q 16

Winners:

Abrupt Decay 6,78%
Deathrite Shaman 5,25%

Losers:

Volcanic Island -5,24%
Lightning Bolt -5,99%
Gitaxian Probe -7,72%

IV. Q 16 -> I. Q 17

Winners:

Ponder 13,54%
Abrupt Decay 11,93%
Brainstorm 11,84%
Force of Will 11,19%
Deathrite Shaman 10,63%
Misty Rainforest 10,58%
Polluted Delta 8,76%
Underground Sea 7,71%
Delver of Secrets 7,03%
Tarmogoyf 6,85%
Daze 6,55%
Leovold, Emissary of Trest 6,15%
Thoughtseize 5,98%
Verdant Catacombs 5,93%
Tropical Island 5,75%
Surgical Extraction 5,53%
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 5,10%
Hymn to Tourach 5,06%

Losers:

Chalice of the Void -5,37%
Matter Reshaper -6,32%
Eye of Ugin -6,46%
Thorn of Amethyst -6,48%
Eldrazi Mimic -6,49%
Endless One -6,61%
Eldrazi Temple -6,73%
Thought-Knot Seer -6,75%
Reality Smasher -6,90%
Ancient Tomb -7,71%
Cavern of Souls -8,23%

so yeah... this is it, lots of things to see there. Sry for the Treshhold, but i had to limit the amount of displayed data somehow. But i think there is a lot of interesting information hidden in there so feel free to discuss

[CptHaddock]

One of the reasons we haven't seen LML Season #2 yet is because WotC was hesitant to support us because Mike and I were observed to be too critical of MTGO.

Not to be that guy but WoTC pulled their support for VSL in 2015ish after season 3 and decided to sponsor the Community League instead. It seems to me like WoTC would like to build Magic's persona online with some of the more popular personalities out there rather than content for eternal enthusiasts. You guys could always do what the VSL did and set up a Patreon.

[Julian23]

As far as I know, WotC still supports VSL with god accounts and coverage on twitch.tv/magic.

[Captain Hammer]

Legacy players can be so funny. Brainstorm is running rampant for years but now suddenly the biggest culprits in legacy are Eldrazi, Chalice and Abrupt Decay. Seriously?

I actualy think Legacy is a lot more enjoyable lately thanks to new printings and a complete new blueless delverless deck in Eldrazi. For me, legacy was very stale since the printing of the hideous TNN (which gave blue yet another threat they should not have) untill about the printing of Eldrazi's. The KTK period with Cruise and Dig was the worst period and I even momentarily just stopped playing because that meta realy sucked.

At the moment I feel like there is a lot of unexplored territory with Vehicles, Revolt and maybe even stuff like the new Expertises that have something like a semi-cascade attached. People are just netdecking too much, I am guilty of it myself, but I think if some smart people would start brewing, new decks would emerge.

PS: I voted for 'it´s okay'

Very well said. The format is better than ever, with more viable strategies than ever before. Black, Green and White are at an incredible power level right now and many viable decks and strategies exist that don't play the blue cantrip package. The problem is all the netdeckers that play the same Miracles, Delver, Show and Tell decks over and over again.

Stores need to encourage creative decks, a seperate prize pool for decks that either don't play blue or aren't found on Mtgtop8 if they do play blue.

Players need to encourage their local stores to hold such tournaments and stop neckdecking themselves. Or atleast netdeck creative decks like Aluren, Nic Fit, Big Red or Food Chain.

Wizards need to hurry up and unban Survival and Goblin recruiter so that two new decks can jump into the format.

[janchu88]

feel free to ask for specific cards u want to see together

https://abload.de/img/decayterminuschaliced9o5r.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=decayterminuschaliced9o5r.png)
https://abload.de/img/sfm4ir20.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=sfm4ir20.png)

[iatee]

All 10 fetchlands would be interesting.

[janchu88]

at least i can see the reprint, but other than that i dont see much there :laugh:

https://abload.de/img/fetchlandsyoush.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=fetchlandsyoush.png)

[Lemnear]

Janchu, would you mind making an extra post with the metagame shift data you just posted so one can make it sticky and/or bookmark it? Its an incredible piece of work, which I would like to chew through but would have to so manually.

If you feel funny, I would be interrested in the combined share of Counterbalance/Chalice/Decay in the metagame to see how the development curve is through the release/banning of the Delve spells and Eldrazis rise.

Amazing work regardless. Chapeau

[janchu88]

thanks for the appreciation, i edited the wall of text into the first post, so you can bookmark it better

[Lemnear]

Thanks!

[Phoenix Ignition]

feel free to ask for specific cards u want to see together

First off, fantastic work, I love seeing stuff like this.

I'd like to see (using method B as you listed there), Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, Cavern of Souls in a chart if you get the time.

[ESG]

Link to the recording of the Nykthos leyline deck please :-)

I don't recall what week it was on camera. There are 107 videos stored on the Twitch page right now (https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/videos/all), but some of those are from Modern, Pauper, and Vintage. There's also a six-month gap in the video archive, which I think is due to a storage limit. The archive is worth browsing through, especially because it's so easy to skip ahead to a different match if you want to see different players or a different deck in action. Videos are usually stored for about two weeks and then rotate out, but I'm not sure why there are a lot from last May still in the archive.

Round 4 from last Monday's weekly had a great match between Stoneblade Landstill and the Vial Obliterator BUG deck I mentioned. Match coverage begins at 02:02:10.
https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/v/116921035

The Nykthos Leyline deck was based around Serra's Sanctum and Nykthos and was similar to Parfait. It had Nevermore, Ghostly Prison, Runed Halo, Increasing Devotion, and Leyline of the Meek, and I think it had the Land Tax + Scroll Rack draw engine.

Legacy is streamed every Monday at 6:30 p.m. Pacific time. Modern is streamed every Thursday night at 6:30. Also, there will be a Legacy 1K this Saturday, with coverage starting shortly after noon.

[janchu88]

First off, fantastic work, I love seeing stuff like this.

I'd like to see (using method B as you listed there), Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, Cavern of Souls in a chart if you get the time.

thanks, there you go

https://abload.de/img/bsponderforcegqu0a.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=bsponderforcegqu0a.png)

[Sidneyious]

"do I enjoy the current legacy?"

Yes

[Fjaulnir]

thanks, there you go

https://abload.de/img/bsponderforcegqu0a.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=bsponderforcegqu0a.png)

Thanks a lot! The Eldrazi and DTT bumps are clearly visible there lol. Any chance Gitaxian Probe could be added to that as the 3rd cantrip menace? :-)

[l33twash0r]

If you add Gitaxian Probe I'm curious to see how it relates to Cabal Therapy.

[janchu88]

https://abload.de/img/therapyprobelraao.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=therapyprobelraao.png)

[Lemnear]

You can pretty mich tell when the format just became hostile towards storm xD

[bruizar]

I don't recall what week it was on camera. There are 107 videos stored on the Twitch page right now (https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/videos/all), but some of those are from Modern, Pauper, and Vintage. There's also a six-month gap in the video archive, which I think is due to a storage limit. The archive is worth browsing through, especially because it's so easy to skip ahead to a different match if you want to see different players or a different deck in action. Videos are usually stored for about two weeks and then rotate out, but I'm not sure why there are a lot from last May still in the archive.

Round 4 from last Monday's weekly had a great match between Stoneblade Landstill and the Vial Obliterator BUG deck I mentioned. Match coverage begins at 02:02:10.
https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/v/116921035

The Nykthos Leyline deck was based around Serra's Sanctum and Nykthos and was similar to Parfait. It had Nevermore, Ghostly Prison, Runed Halo, Increasing Devotion, and Leyline of the Meek, and I think it had the Land Tax + Scroll Rack draw engine.

Legacy is streamed every Monday at 6:30 p.m. Pacific time. Modern is streamed every Thursday night at 6:30. Also, there will be a Legacy 1K this Saturday, with coverage starting shortly after noon.

Thanks for the response. Are you one of the admins of the account? If so, I'd suggest renaming the videos such that the matchups are in the title. That also helps a bunch on youtube.

[Gheizen64]

Damn Eldrazi and Chalice were really a faerie fire. I guess it got really popular at first because it was a new thing and relatively cheap, but now that the meta is settled it's just not a good deck as expected. Can't beat the cantrip cartel. At this point, i doubt there's anything that can impact the prevalence of the cantrip cartel. Survival and Recruiter being the two best shots at it.

[Crimhead]

Damn Eldrazi and Chalice were really a faerie fire. I guess it got really popular at first because it was a new thing and relatively cheap, but now that the meta is settled it's just not a good deck as expected.
I guess that depends how good you expected it to be. MTG top8 has it at 6% - the only decks doing better (by their count) are Miracles and BUG Midrange. It's been a DTB most constantly since its inception. It isn't broken, and hasn't supplanted Miracles as the top placing deck. But it's a solid deck - not a fairy fire I think.

[Fjaulnir]

https://abload.de/img/therapyprobelraao.png

Thanks! I had expected Probe to be more like 30% since both Delver decks and combo decks play it

[Dice_Box]

That fantastic info. You should start a new thread for it.

[Fox]

Can't beat the cantrip cartel. At this point, i doubt there's anything that can impact the prevalence of the cantrip cartel. Survival and Recruiter being the two best shots at it.
I'd take a real close look at that graph on the previous page and look at the Abrupt Decay graph; there's no way a Survival unban results in more diverse fair decks, and every Survival deck is going to run Decay. This card isn't an effective policeman of the format, nor does it lead to intellectually interesting matchups. I wonder if the OP could create a graph highlighting decks which lack Brainstorm but have Decay vs no BS and no Decay?

Removal-based magic is fine, but you can generally scratch that itch by playing Modern/Standard/Limited, so it's always a bit hard to understand why people want legacy (or vintage) to feel like those. Board removal is small-minded/narrow and by itself pretty much an admission that you're not willing to compete on the stack. Legacy is incredibly varied and the cantrip cartel decks generally point their removal stack-ward letting them interact with both fair and unfair approaches. Sure you have to be in blue to have the most diverse interactive scope (i.e. countermagic)...and that warps color representation of the format but still you hear all this outrage from the crowd that conveniently forgets that they gave up on multi-dimensional interaction. I don't really hear discard enthusiasts (like Pox) going around claiming that their one-dimensional hand attack should be without inherent weakness. Imperfect, unconventional solutions are what make legacy/vintage fun, and [for instance] I'd rather watch or play these formats with/against solutions like Tabernacle than a mindless piece of spot removal.

I voted for the current state of legacy being okay, and a large part of that is this more represented mindset that players only want to play 'their' type of magic - and many new border cards are absolving such [fair] mindsets from needing to have holistic approaches to interaction.

[Megadeus]

"'d take a real close look at that graph on the previous page and look at the Abrupt Decay graph; there's no way a Survival unban results in more diverse fair decks, and every Survival deck is going to run Decay. This card isn't an effective policeman of the format, nor does it lead to intellectually interesting matchups. I wonder if the OP could create a graph highlighting decks which lack Brainstorm but have Decay vs no BS and no Decay?"

So what? Show and tell and reanimate griselbrand aren't particularly interesting or intellectual. If intellectual and interesting games were part of a reason to keep or not keep cards then show and ape and griseltard would've been banned long ago.

[Fox]

So what? Show and tell and reanimate griselbrand aren't particularly interesting or intellectual. If intellectual and interesting games were part of a reason to keep or not keep cards then show and ape and griseltard would've been banned long ago.
There's nothing stopping the other player from going large as well off that opponent's SnT; but yes, SnT is not fun to face if you don't play countermagic and you're not trying to do anything heroic. :tongue:
In my experience though an enemy SnT creates the most hilarious boards and is tremendously fun and balanced (in the sense that anything can happen, and anyone can win off it). I don't see why "SnT isn't fun and should be banned" opinion is any more valid than that of 2 combo pilots' opinion.

[Dice_Box]

This is about to dive into ban discussion. Please shift the talk on this part of the topic there.

[Gheizen64]

I'd take a real close look at that graph on the previous page and look at the Abrupt Decay graph; there's no way a Survival unban results in more diverse fair decks, and every Survival deck is going to run Decay. This card isn't an effective policeman of the format, nor does it lead to intellectually interesting matchups. I wonder if the OP could create a graph highlighting decks which lack Brainstorm but have Decay vs no BS and no Decay?

Removal-based magic is fine, but you can generally scratch that itch by playing Modern/Standard/Limited, so it's always a bit hard to understand why people want legacy (or vintage) to feel like those. Board removal is small-minded/narrow and by itself pretty much an admission that you're not willing to compete on the stack. Legacy is incredibly varied and the cantrip cartel decks generally point their removal stack-ward letting them interact with both fair and unfair approaches. Sure you have to be in blue to have the most diverse interactive scope (i.e. countermagic)...and that warps color representation of the format but still you hear all this outrage from the crowd that conveniently forgets that they gave up on multi-dimensional interaction. I don't really hear discard enthusiasts (like Pox) going around claiming that their one-dimensional hand attack should be without inherent weakness. Imperfect, unconventional solutions are what make legacy/vintage fun, and [for instance] I'd rather watch or play these formats with/against solutions like Tabernacle than a mindless piece of spot removal.

I voted for the current state of legacy being okay, and a large part of that is this more represented mindset that players only want to play 'their' type of magic - and many new border cards are absolving such [fair] mindsets from needing to have holistic approaches to interaction.

I have literally no idea what this wall of text has anything to do with what i said. Literally the weirdest tangent i've seen in a while lol.

[Fox]

I have literally no idea what this wall of text has anything to do with what i said. Literally the weirdest tangent i've seen in a while lol.
It's more directed at the angle you were discussing with cantrip cartel. It's important to point out that a decrease in cantrip cartel dominance would correlate with an ever higher spike in Abrupt Decay overuse. There's an underlying unhealthiness in legacy which cantrip cartel is disguising. As far as your post's sentiment would have legacy go, the end result is blue combo severely diminishing and a meta of Counterbalance vs Decay+Survival. Newer cards keep steering vintage/legacy in a less diverse direction, and fair deck mentalities seem to think this is progress b/c they get to play more removal based magic. Why is moving the focus as far away from the stack as possible creating a more enjoyable state of legacy?

[Crimhead]

Removal-based magic is fine, but you can generally scratch that itch by playing Modern/Standard/Limited, so it's always a bit hard to understand why people want legacy (or vintage) to feel like those.
Some people want to play Modern style magic without the fear of bans and/or with the more powerful "fair" cards not available in Modern (DRS, BS, SFM, GSZ, etc). Other people might want a format like Modern but with RL cards so their decks will rise in value.

Other people I think just want a tier-one fair deck that doesn't run blue and doesn't run prison elements. I have limited sympathy for this - I am a prison enthusiast (non-aggro prison) and have had times when there is no tier one prison deck at all. I am glad I have a prison deck I can play (Lands), and I'm certainly not going to complain about my colour options!

Of course there are some people who want all the best decks to be fair and anything else to be fringy jank (note that very few people complained about CotV when the best Chalice deck was MUD). I guess these are the people who want a super-charged Modern format. WotC has always respected Legacy as a refuge for old-school players who enjoy strategies that WotC frowns upon in their more mainstream formats, and I hope it remains so.

[Phoenix Ignition]

https://abload.de/img/therapyprobelraao.png (http://abload.de/image.php?img=therapyprobelraao.png)

This is awesome, thanks!

Also basically reaffirms my beliefs about cards that need bannings, but I won't say more since it's been beaten to death already.

[Lemnear]

This is awesome, thanks!

Also basically reaffirms my beliefs about cards that need bannings, but I won't say more since it's been beaten to death already.

...or you actually try to balance it out with powerful cards printed in other colors which can't be easily splashed. Instead WotC goes the opposite road and prints Shardless Agent, Delver, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, True Name Nemesis, Gitaxian Probe, etc

[Phoenix Ignition]

...or you actually try to balance it out with powerful cards printed in other colors which can't be easily splashed. Instead WotC goes the opposite road and prints Shardless Agent, Delver, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, True Name Nemesis, Gitaxian Probe, etc

I actually agree with you here, which is rare. But as we've seen they have no idea how to do that.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Well, how is the question. thanks to Cantrips, ABUR duels + fetches and DRS, the blue decks have a lot of options to fix their mana at low cost, so even Abrupt Decay (one of the most color intensive staples in the format) is easily playable turn 2 for the blue decks.

[Megadeus]

Well, how is the question. thanks to Cantrips, ABUR duels + fetches and DRS, the blue decks have a lot of options to fix their mana at low cost, so even Abrupt Decay (one of the most color intensive staples in the format) is easily playable then 2 for the blue decks.

Agreed with this. With the power of deathrite plus 8-12 cantrips it's very easy to play some fairly color intensive things. You just have to look at the 4 color deck playing decays and kcommand and painful truths and such. Also a card needs to be not only incredibly powerful, but incredibly color intensive for you to say "this card is worth losing the incredibly consistency and flexibility of the cantrip cartel" and devote to it. Chalice isn't color intensive, but it's restrictive in the way you need to build a deck around it and it's powerful enough when it lands that people are willing to go that route. I guess Thalia is a similar thing, but even then I'm not sure that in a world where card availability wasn't an issue that people would choose DnT over Cantrips.

[thecrav]

Our legacy (and vintage!) community has exploded in the last several months. Between myself and the other players, I never worry about being able to play whatever deck I want. In fact, I borrowed ~75% of my legacy deck and all-but-the-power of my vintage deck for Eternal weekend with <24 hours notice. After most of our twice-weekly tournaments people get together for anything ranging from a couple drinks to hours of intense board gaming.

Last night's Legacy tournament brought all these things back. I enjoyed the time spent much more than the Magic.

I showed up without a deck because I was being lazy and someone handed me Death and Taxes. Another player showed up just to hang out and was handed Sneak and Show. I went 2-2 with a deck I've never played, losing to the guy who borrowed (and had never played) Sneak and Show and to a player new to our community (and a little bit of communication issues).

After Magic, five of us went out for margaritas and tacos and Tim very loudly and animatedly explained why Aliens is the best action movie of all time.

[Dice_Box]

I have a large card pool, I still tend not to play Blue by choice. The sad fact is that you really have to choose to handicap yourself if you have the duals to play Blue. You have to willingly play a deck you know is substandard against other things in your collection.

I have posted in the Stax thread before that "If you take Stax into a room you have to admit your playing the deck because you want to, not because it is in any way the best choice." I stand by this. I will play Bomberman soon, again choosing to play something I think is enjoyable over what I think is best. But fuck it, I am there for fun, not to win. If I wanted to win I would be playing Lands.

[Stuart]

On topic: if Miracles gave a few percantage points of meta share to ANT, I'd probably like Legacy a lot more.



After Magic, five of us went out for margaritas and tacos and Tim very loudly and animatedly explained why Aliens is the best action movie of all time.

Was he also loudly proclaiming that Merfolk is Tier 1? BTW I'll be up in Houston next weekend to meet Ben's new dog, so yeah.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Psh, not even the best alien movie.

[ESG]

I have a large card pool, I still tend not to play Blue by choice. The sad fact is that you really have to choose to handicap yourself if you have the duals to play Blue. You have to willingly play a deck you know is substandard against other things in your collection.

I also default to non-blue, but I don't feel it's a handicap. My consistent results over the years suggest that it's not a handicap. For me, wins and losses have had more to do with playing decks that are natural predators of whatever the top decks are in my area. Even in periods of brokenness immediately preceding bans, I've been successful in creating meta decks that attack those top performers.


I have posted in the Stax thread before that "If you take Stax into a room you have to admit your playing the deck because you want to, not because it is in any way the best choice." I stand by this. I will play Bomberman soon, again choosing to play something I think is enjoyable over what I think is best. But fuck it, I am there for fun, not to win. If I wanted to win I would be playing Lands.

In fairness, Stax is not every non-blue deck. Stax has struggled to reach Tier 2 since about 2010. Sometimes the deck is well-positioned, but usually it isn't. Lands is a Tier 1 deck, as is Death & Taxes. Elves is great in an environment low on Miracles, and other non-blue decks can be good foils to blue decks.

[ESG]

Thanks for the response. Are you one of the admins of the account? If so, I'd suggest renaming the videos such that the matchups are in the title. That also helps a bunch on youtube.

I'm not an admin, but I can pass along your suggestion.

[thecrav]

Was he also loudly proclaiming that Merfolk is Tier 1?

He insisted that Merfolk is the best deck in legacy. Then he refused my bet that there would be no Merfolk in the top 64 of Vegas. Then he accepted a bet that he wouldn't day 2 with it but only after I gave him 2:1 odds.

[btm10]

It's more directed at the angle you were discussing with cantrip cartel. It's important to point out that a decrease in cantrip cartel dominance would correlate with an ever higher spike in Abrupt Decay overuse. There's an underlying unhealthiness in legacy which cantrip cartel is disguising. As far as your post's sentiment would have legacy go, the end result is blue combo severely diminishing and a meta of Counterbalance vs Decay+Survival. Newer cards keep steering vintage/legacy in a less diverse direction, and fair deck mentalities seem to think this is progress b/c they get to play more removal based magic. Why is moving the focus as far away from the stack as possible creating a more enjoyable state of legacy?

I have to admit that I find your distaste for Decay odd. In the pre-Khans meta (where Shardless, BUG Delver, and briefly Jund all saw significant play at the same time) it was pretty common to see cards like Divert and Misdirection in sidebaords, especially in Delver decks. Unlike the other two major creators of uninteractive exchanges (Cavern of Souls and, to a lesser extent, Counterbalance), there are a lot of ways to answer Decay, and Decay hardly warps the game around it the way a permanent does.

As for the "fair" cards hurting the diversity of Legacy and Vintage, I really don't see that being the case. Mentor is essentially a better 1-card combo than Oath, but it's probably the biggest culprit when it comes to homogenizimg Vintage (and has largely eliminated my interest in that format). Following on my point about Decay, I'm not sure why Eternal should uniquely privilege stack-based interaction over its actually unique feature, which is broad-based interaction. I think I'm pretty well known an someone who prefers BUG and bUrg decks, and the reason for that is that those color combinations give you the ability to interact on basically every axis. Saying that stack-based interaction(and really, what you mean is countermagic) ought to be priveleged is just as detrememtal to the format as a lack of instant-speed interaction was to the previous Standard.

[Dice_Box]

In fairness, Stax is not every non-blue deck. Stax has struggled to reach Tier 2 since about 2010. Sometimes the deck is well-positioned, but usually it isn't. Lands is a Tier 1 deck, as is Death & Taxes. Elves is great in an environment low on Miracles, and other non-blue decks can be good foils to blue decks.Oh I do understand. The argument is though that if you do not wish to play Blue and you want to be in the running to win an event (I know this is slightly hyperbolic) your option are limited to "Redundancy.dec" (DnT, Eldrazi) or "Four Demonic, Four Tinker and Four Recall" (Lands or Elves) to be relevant.

The flip side of "Do you want to play Blue?" means you have what, Miracles, Delver in 3 stripes, SnT, BUG Control, Shardless, Infect, Omni science... So on. I guess there is the new Reanimator deck. That's something.

It bothers me that a buch of people have to activately choose to hamstring themselves so the illusion that Blue is not a white wash in this format can continue. Then those who are on the Blue side bitch about Thorn, Chalice or whatever else is "Not fun" and just dance down hypocrite lane. You don't get to play the most powerful cards in the format and then bitch when someone finally says no. You also don't get to bitch that it's not fun when someone finally tells you no instead of voyeuristicly watching you masturbate with Cantrips.

//end rant

[Mr.C]

Metagame is fine. Not having people to play with due to cost is not.

[Megadeus]

There's plenty of decks that can be built for less than the price of the average tier modern deck. That aren't blue brainstorm decks which inherently means they're basically unplayable, but they can be built.

[Ronald Deuce]

I also default to non-blue, but I don't feel it's a handicap. My consistent results over the years suggest that it's not a handicap.

A thousand times this.

Decks run Brainstorm because they have to. Decks that rely on combo pieces and specific (perhaps hideously) undercosted attackers and counterspells can't survive without cantripping. Take it out and watch half the decks in the format collapse and everything that remains become "Modern at -50% off!"

Again, how is specific cards' supposed saturation worse than a single gameplan's saturation, across colors and (as the times would suggest) across formats?

And when did this turn into the B/R thread?

Also, this:
Metagame is fine. Not having people to play with due to cost is not.

[Sidneyious]

Can we please stop using unintelligent use of self gratification and words that don't exist to point out you are angry because you think blue is the problem when it's wotc who doesn't want standard or modern to be a mess with powerlevel and as such you have to wait longer to get a good card for your pet deck than we do for an unban.

[Fox]

I have to admit that I find your distaste for Decay odd. In the pre-Khans meta (where Shardless, BUG Delver, and briefly Jund all saw significant play at the same time) it was pretty common to see cards like Divert and Misdirection in sidebaords, especially in Delver decks. Unlike the other two major creators of uninteractive exchanges (Cavern of Souls and, to a lesser extent, Counterbalance), there are a lot of ways to answer Decay, and Decay hardly warps the game around it the way a permanent does.

As for the "fair" cards hurting the diversity of Legacy and Vintage, I really don't see that being the case. Mentor is essentially a better 1-card combo than Oath, but it's probably the biggest culprit when it comes to homogenizimg Vintage (and has largely eliminated my interest in that format). Following on my point about Decay, I'm not sure why Eternal should unique privelege stack-based interaction over its actually unique feature, which is broad-based interaction. I think I'm pretty well known an someone who prefers BUG and bUrg decks, and the reason for that is that those color combinations give you the ability to interact on basically every axis. Saying that stack-based interaction(and really, what you mean is countermagic) ought to be priveleged is just as detrememtal to the format as a lack of instant-speed interaction was to the previous Standard.
Decay as a poor policeman precludes its ability to warp the meta game around it. Its overuse is entirely due to Counterbalance; so in this hypothetical where cantrip cartel isn't getting things done your "diversity" of non-:u: decks pretty much all started with DRS+Decay or the other uninteractives (Chalice, Cavern, Vial, Boseju). Following the next part of @Gheizen64's hypothetical, even more diversity is lost as DRS+Decay team up with Survival. Casting/resolving Decay does nothing in the grand scheme of things, but casting/resolving CB pretty much ends every game unless an uninteractive plan is/has been discovered...being anti-cantrip cartel here translates to actively wanting to lose diversity in the form of fighting [mostly] CB on the stack. Sure it feels bad to lose to two cards in hand (i.e. SnT + target), but for the same 2 card total and 3 cmc total you could just run out SDT into CB; it's less of an over-the-top win out of nowhere, but it's also safer (both cards are individually castable, built in discard protection, invalidates as many cards in hand/possible topdecks as emmy annihilating all your lands).

A card whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the battlefield is simplistic, making legacy less enjoyable to watch or play. Removal based magic is fine, it's effective, and some players actually find this kind of magic to be fun...but they generally proceed from a point of having given up on the stack to whining about getting smashed by strategies their narrow definition of interaction (removal from board) can't affect. Stack-based interaction is mostly countermagic and discard (i.e. stopping things before they've happened), and many strategies will largely require you to combat them off the battlefield. Stack-based interaction is broader than Decay type cards can hope to be, but they are also less perfect (i.e. less simplistic, requiring correct usage at different points in a game and generally not reversing a situation already on board). A stack-based approach is also more likely to present a coordinated plan to win a game given its ability to out-position an opponent on the stack. I would also include prison pieces (Chalice, Thorn, mana denial) under stack-based interaction.

I find hatebears to be generally negative influences on game design as the best ones are generally used to force opponents to compete on a fair axis without any real build-around. These types of cards also lead to non-games after boarding where their strategy is often little better than mull to Leyline/discard/white card that says "can't lose to strategy x." Imagine their outrage if they were ever subject to a post-board 4+ cmc card like: Leyline of any nontoken creature with cmc 3 or less trying to enter the battlefield from the hand goes to exile instead...or just Leyine of cannot use mana to cast creature spells.

[Gheizen64]

/rant

Can you just not quote me at all please? All of the times you've brought me up you brought out arguments that had nothing at all to do with what i said at best and were just nonsene at worst like here. Survival wouldn't even be T1 if it were to be unbanned tomorrow, i can't see how a slightly better maverick deck could "ruin" the format. Seriously what the fuck is this.

[Fjaulnir]

A card whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the battlefield is simplistic,

How's that more simplistic than a Counterspell, whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the stack?

Both are reactive, only discard/hatebears are proactive and try to do stuff before your opponent has played anything these cards would affect.

[Fox]

How's that more simplistic than a Counterspell, whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the stack
Which is why you pair it often times with a way to win, that wins b/c you can also protect it.

@Gheizen64 sure man. Just keep going on about how cantrip cartel is bad for diversity, when the moment they diminish Decay spikes to Misstep levels of play. More diversity = more enjoyable legacy; hitting cantrips kills diversity...you just get the same deck strats using different colors. :tongue:

[Dice_Box]

I am over arguing about what should and should not be banned. On the flip side, if your going to ask me about my views on if the format is fun I will answer.

As for my Pet Deck, Lands is in a fine place right now.

Blue is a problem. If you were to build a deck right now I would ask what set of cards are you playing besides Brainstorm, Ponder and Force. You have three options: Top and CB, SnT and Petal or DRS and Decay. If you choose something else your hamstringing yourself. That I feel is a problem with the format. What should be done about it? What the fuck do I care anymore. I am playing on and off at a FNM style event. I am not bothering about the top tier decks anymore. It's not like I can watch them being played anymore.

As for Blue. I do not hate Blue, I dislike the hybridisation of Blue bases. I remember being in my teens and opening a box of old cards. I pulled out a High Tide and, eyes of wonder, saying to myself "That's a combo card". It would be a few years before I saw what the card did, and that amazement never went away. The deck was so sweet, and I enjoyed watching it.

The issue with the modern metagame is one of changing development goals. It's not one I blame the players for. I mean, why would I? If you want to win, why not play Miracles or BUG? That's not the fault of guy who hopes to win a GP. But I don't have to like it. I don't have to agree with things as they are. I can wish that Wizards would take some action. But they won't. So fuck it.

But hey, if you want to look at the modern meta and tell me it's ok but what we need to do is get rid of Chalice and Thorn I will argue. Because what's not fun is watching those players who do masturbate with Brainstorm, Ponder and Top take up so much time and bitch about answers. So if I can play a turn one Chalice, turn two Trinisphere that's a good time for me. You can say that's not fun, but you also enjoyed your ability to stomp on the metagame unapologetically and unopposed until Eldrazi came along. Meh.

On the bright side, at lest when I do finally get jack of this shit I can have a month long cruise or something.

[Lemnear]

As for my Pet Deck, Lands is in a fine place right now.

Blue is a problem.

Just to get this right: T2 S&T into Emrakul is a no go, but T2 Marit Lage is "fine"? Why? Because "blue"? I see two low-investment, highly-overpowered wincons. That shit is ehat I hinted at lately labeling it "Vintage-esque blowouts".

In regards to your earlier post, I think that cantrip-hate like Leovold is a much more elegant solution to the omnipresent of these cards than Chalice, which denies spells of all kind and color and ergo does not present a "fix" non-blue decks profit from in general either directly or via metagame shifts. However, Leopold offers the same facepalm-factor like Snapcaster Mage by being printed with BLUE mana cost. Printing a metagame hatebear in BUG colors is a total fail as it's just a natural fit with the usual Decay+DRS cores. It was too much to request a non-white, non-blue anti-cantrip hatebear to break open the stale viable colorcombos

[Dice_Box]

For the record, I play Lands because I can Loam back Wasteland, how the deck wins past that is a non issue for me. I was building it (Purchased my first Tabernacle) before the rules change.

The decks are very different though. If someone is planing to play balls to the wall Marit Lage, there is a Deck for that. It's not Lands. Lands is a Prison deck with a combo finish, SnT and Depths are combo decks alone. I would rather play the Prison deck.

There are a ton of White hatebears that stop you drawing or limit your ability to cast spells, most don't see a lick of play because they have no external use outside of "Hate Piece". The thing Leo has in his favour is he becomes a Card Advantage engine. I think he would still see limited play if his anti draw clause was removed.

[Lemnear]

For the record, I play Lands because I can Loam back Wasteland, how the deck wins past that is a non issue for me. I was building it (Purchased my first Tabernacle) before the rules change.

The decks are very different though. If someone is planing to play balls to the wall Marit Lage, there is a Deck for that. It's not Lands. Lands is a Prison deck with a combo finish, SnT and Depths are combo decks alone. I would rather play the Prison deck.

There are a ton of White hatebears that stop you drawing or limit your ability to cast spells, most don't see a lick of play because they have no external use outside of "Hate Piece". The thing Leo has in his favour is he becomes a Card Advantage engine. I think he would still see limited play if his anti draw clause was removed.

Actually, I think these days the attraction of the deck is paying GhostQuarter and Loam and combining a Prison.dec with a combo.dec within 60 card, from my perspective. I have no problem with lands.dec due to it having natural weaknesses and isn't locking out players within two turn without any chance for a comeback.

I agree that Spirit of the Labyrinth was shit due to being so limited. Leovold is however a different tier as he brings combat stats, cantrips if getting killed by a spell, unsymetrical, fucks over opponsing cantrips and invalidates targeted discard. Leovold is so much ahead

[Crimhead]

...if you do not wish to play Blue and you want to be in the running to win an event (I know this is slightly hyperbolic) your option are limited to "Redundancy.dec" (DnT, Eldrazi) or "Four Demonic, Four Tinker and Four Recall" (Lands or Elves) to be relevant...

...I guess there is the new Reanimator deck. That's something.

It bothers me that a buch of people have to activately choose to hamstring themselves so the illusion that Blue is not a white wash in this format can continue.
I don't think 'hamstring' is the word you want. Either that or you are contradicting yourself. What (I think) you mean is that people have to pigeon-hole themselves; aka, by playing one of the five relevant non-blue decks you have mentioned (though I think Elves is struggling these days). You only have to hamstring yourself if you are not willing to play blue or any of the relevant non-blue decks.

Of course there are also blue decks which are not relevant, and you have to hamstring yourself if you want to play one of those. Rdal,y you have to hamstring yourself if anf only if you want to play a deck that's not relevant, which is hardly profound. The actual "issue" is thst there are more relevant decks with blue than without, and also more flexibility for brewing.



I guess Thalia is a similar thing, but even then I'm not sure that in a world where card availability wasn't an issue that people would choose DnT over Cantrips.
I like to imagine a world where csrd availability is not an issue (also one where players are skilled in every deck and are completely competitive in their choice of deck).

But if you think about this it becomes very obvious (to anyone with a passing familiarity of game theory) that you won't get a meta of 100% cantrip decks! That meta would be too easily exploited by a Chalice deck like Loam. There is a limit to how saturated the format can be with cantrip decks before a threshold is hit where an exploitive deck is clearly a better choice.

This could actually be a game theory problem, where the correct meta call would be to randomly chose a deck from a set list. You might want to play the "best" cantrip deck more often than any other deck, but certainly not 100% of the time! Playing, eg, Miracles every time is only sound because you know the majority of people will be playing something else (or possibly playing Miracles but badly).

[dte]

Actually, I think these days the attraction of the deck is paying GhostQuarter and Loam and combining a Prison.dec with a combo.dec within 60 card, from my perspective. I have no problem with lands.dec due to it having natural weaknesses and isn't locking out players within two turn without any chance for a comeback.

I agree that Spirit of the Labyrinth was shit due to being so limited. Leovold is however a different tier as he brings combat stats, cantrips if getting killed by a spell, unsymetrical, fucks over opponsing cantrips and invalidates targeted discard. Leovold is so much ahead

Actually, the main advantage of leovold is that he is not symmetrical. But then, it does not push cantrips decks out, it gives an edge to the cantrip decks which plays leovold.
Spirit has advantages on its own, mainly costing 1W compared to tricolor.
But if Spirit of the Labyrinth was not symmetrical, I am sure it would see play. It's actual problem is that it is less good than Thalia, which is also symmetrical.
So either you dont play cantrips and go for Thalia, or you do and cannot go for spirit. But you may go for leovold.

[Barook]

Just to get this right: T2 S&T into Emrakul is a no go, but T2 Marit Lage is "fine"? Why? Because "blue"? I see two low-investment, highly-overpowered wincons. That shit is ehat I hinted at lately labeling it "Vintage-esque blowouts".

In regards to your earlier post, I think that cantrip-hate like Leovold is a much more elegant solution to the omnipresent of these cards than Chalice, which denies spells of all kind and color and ergo does not present a "fix" non-blue decks profit from in general either directly or via metagame shifts. However, Leopold offers the same facepalm-factor like Snapcaster Mage by being printed with BLUE mana cost. Printing a metagame hatebear in BUG colors is a total fail as it's just a natural fit with the usual Decay+DRS cores. It was too much to request a non-white, non-blue anti-cantrip hatebear to break open the stale viable colorcombos
Things Leovold did right: Being powerful enough to be a maindeckable card.

Things Leovold did wrong: Being one-sided. He doesn't discourage the use of cantrips since he can be played alongside them. We're currently seeing an uptick in cantrips instead of a downtick, despite Leovold being the new hotness. Color is also an issue, although a minor one, given how easy it is to splash colors in Legacy.

That's why I like Chalice. It puts restrictions on your deckbuilding due to being symmetrical. Sure, it isn't fun to play against, but I see it as a necessary evil like FoW preventing the format being overrun by glasscannon combo.

A cheap hatebear which jams cantrips on both sides with a usable body (bonus points for intercepting Delvers) and a :wg: hybrid mana cost could probably do wonders for the format.

[Megadeus]

Decay as a poor policeman precludes its ability to warp the meta game around it. Its overuse is entirely due to Counterbalance; so in this hypothetical where cantrip cartel isn't getting things done your "diversity" of non-:u: decks pretty much all started with DRS+Decay or the other uninteractives (Chalice, Cavern, Vial, Boseju). Following the next part of @Gheizen64's hypothetical, even more diversity is lost as DRS+Decay team up with Survival. Casting/resolving Decay does nothing in the grand scheme of things, but casting/resolving CB pretty much ends every game unless an uninteractive plan is/has been discovered...being anti-cantrip cartel here translates to actively wanting to lose diversity in the form of fighting [mostly] CB on the stack. Sure it feels bad to lose to two cards in hand (i.e. SnT + target), but for the same 2 card total and 3 cmc total you could just run out SDT into CB; it's less of an over-the-top win out of nowhere, but it's also safer (both cards are individually castable, built in discard protection, invalidates as many cards in hand/possible topdecks as emmy annihilating all your lands).

A card whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the battlefield is simplistic, making legacy less enjoyable to watch or play. Removal based magic is fine, it's effective, and some players actually find this kind of magic to be fun...but they generally proceed from a point of having given up on the stack to whining about getting smashed by strategies their narrow definition of interaction (removal from board) can't affect. Stack-based interaction is mostly countermagic and discard (i.e. stopping things before they've happened), and many strategies will largely require you to combat them off the battlefield. Stack-based interaction is broader than Decay type cards can hope to be, but they are also less perfect (i.e. less simplistic, requiring correct usage at different points in a game and generally not reversing a situation already on board). A stack-based approach is also more likely to present a coordinated plan to win a game given its ability to out-position an opponent on the stack. I would also include prison pieces (Chalice, Thorn, mana denial) under stack-based interaction.

I find hatebears to be generally negative influences on game design as the best ones are generally used to force opponents to compete on a fair axis without any real build-around. These types of cards also lead to non-games after boarding where their strategy is often little better than mull to Leyline/discard/white card that says "can't lose to strategy x." Imagine their outrage if they were ever subject to a post-board 4+ cmc card like: Leyline of any nontoken creature with cmc 3 or less trying to enter the battlefield from the hand goes to exile instead...or just Leyine of cannot use mana to cast creature spells.

This might be the most asinine thing I've ever read on here. Implying hate bears have no build around is completely baffling to me. Also the implication that a ban of cantrips means a rise in decay to "mental misstep levels" (of which brainstorm has surpassed already) is a complete guess and has no basis. You're either trolling at this point or have never actually built a deck without a pile of cantrips

[Crimhead]

Saying that stack-based interaction(and really, what you mean is countermagic) ought to be priveleged is just as detrememtal to the format as a lack of instant-speed interaction was to the previous Standard.
I don't know what you mean by 'privledged'. I only mean that I'm happy that this is still viable in Legacy - not only as a tool for fair decks, but also as a primary strategy.




I find hatebears to be generally negative influences on game design as the best ones are generally used to force opponents to compete on a fair axis without any real build-around. These types of cards also lead to non-games after boarding where their strategy is often little better than mull to Leyline/discard/white card that says "can't lose to strategy x."
I don't mind hatebears, but I'm concerned that WotC pushes these so much and gives little love to any other strategies besides fair value decks. I think Legacy is fine right now - fantastic. But I'd hate for us to get go the point where these hatebears are so powerful and omnipresent that there are just no tier one decks running unfair strategies or hard control.


This might be the most asinine thing I've ever read on here. Implying hate bears have no build around is completely baffling to me.
Most hatebears are about as awkward go build around as Treasure Cruise.

DRS? You'd better run fetchlands!
Thalia and Prelate? You'd better run a creature deck!
Containment Priest? You'd better run a fair non-Vial deck!
Leotard? You'd better run... permanents?

[Fox]

This might be the most asinine thing I've ever read on here. Implying hate bears have no build around is completely baffling to me. Also the implication that a ban of cantrips means a rise in decay to "mental misstep levels" (of which brainstorm has surpassed already) is a complete guess and has no basis. You're either trolling at this point or have never actually built a deck without a pile of cantrips
A lot of games in legacy are won b/c a deck's removal package was stack-based but an opponent managed to resolve a wincon that reads 'can't lose to your deck.' The opponent has an entire deck with deliberate design, while the hatebear player tapped 2 lands and deployed their creature. Certainly that hatebear deck needs deliberate construction to be competitive (otherwise it can't overcome the dies to Goyf issue, as an example of a primary flaw), but there's not much build-around in tap 2 lands -> put creature into play. What you have in such a case is now a non-game, because the hatebear effectively says you can only keep playing this game by reducing yourself to removal based magic. The opposite is not true, there are no Leylines (or other no build-around cards) that preclude the use of creatures in a game of magic; a hatebear player will never be forced to win through a single card that directs them to win off board or otherwise ameliorate the situation with a non-creature response.

If you don't have cantrip cartel, you don't have countermagic. If you don't have countermagic, you have to be able to ignore or kill a resolved Counterbalance. Cavern/Vial/Boseju are all options, but even with cantrip cartel doing well right now just look at those Abrupt Decay numbers: 45-50%. Misstep only got up to ~65%. Complete guess? No, because as it turns out most choose to confront the CB menace with Decay as their uninteractive of choice (currently about 5:1 ratio). Now certainly cantrips allow some of those Decay numbers, but the real mana fixer there is DRS and fetchlands.

So again, cantrip cartel down means you're not coping with Counterbalance using countermagic; your ~5x more likely to revert to killing it over ignoring it (conversely you're sleeving up your own copies). Throw around talk of Survival of the Fittest into that mix and we're talking even more Decay spam. This is the issue with the anti-cantrip mentality: if they got their way, you'd only really be able to play removal based magic or mindless, hyper-linear combos for the most part. Sure losing Brainstorm to set up Terminus hurts Counterbalance, but you're still not playing a better deck by reverting to a Blade control variant or Standstill. If you don't like cantrips, you don't like diversity of strategies.

[Megadeus]

If your deck folds to a single 2 mana creature resolving, then you should reevaluate your deck. Are we actually saying Gaddock Teeg is uninteractive because it single-handidly beats storm? And sure you can just throw in creatures into your thalia deck. Every Thalia deck is just 22 lands and 38 creatures. Figured it out.

[Fox]

If your deck folds to a single 2 mana creature resolving, then you should reevaluate your deck. Are we actually saying Gaddock Teeg is uninteractive because it single-handidly beats storm? And sure you can just throw in creatures into your thalia deck. Every Thalia deck is just 22 lands and 38 creatures. Figured it out.
And what is the card the storm player gets to play which helps him/her win which says creature combat (or perhaps the ability for a creature to enter play) is no longer a valid wincon? Mind you, we're looking for an instant or sorcery - i.e. something a hatebear deck isn't really capable of interacting with, if we want to pose a perfect counter-scenario.

[Megadeus]

And what is the card the storm player gets to play which helps him/her win which says creature combat is no longer a valid wincon? Mind you, we're looking for an instant or sorcery - i.e. something a hatebear deck isn't really capable of interacting with.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2650&type=card
Creature decks cannot interact on the stack so they cannot defeat an instant or sorcery.

[Crimhead]

And sure you can just throw in creatures into your thalia deck. Every Thalia deck is just 22 lands and 38 creatures. Figured it out.
I know you are being facetious, but you're almost spot on! Thalia.dec runs 8 1cc non creature spells, and 3 more spells which it doesn't usually cast because it cheats them into play with a creature.

[Megadeus]

I know you are being facetious, but you're almost spot on! Thalia.dec runs 8 1cc non creature spells, and 3 more spells which it doesn't usually cast because it cheats them into play (with a creature).

And maverick runs 4 1 CMC spells, 4-of an X spell (really bad with Thalia and Teeg in your deck), a couple 2 CMC 2 color spells, a 2 CMC enchantment, and 2-3 artifacts that are varying CMC's of 2,3, and 5. But you're right. Building a creature deck is pretty mindless and takes 0 build around while playing 8-12 cantrips and fetch lands and simply inserting different countermagic and win conditions is far more skill intensive.

[Fox]

Creature decks cannot interact on the stack so they cannot defeat an instant or sorcery.
So let me get this straight, Teeg down and Storm literally cannot win (g1). Storm packs Pyroclasm (g1), and it helps them win (b/c +1 storm count???)...and casting Pyroclasm continually and completely invalidates the entire capability of hatebear deck to win? Don't get me wrong, if Pyroclasm had some kind of "epic" mechanic where it kept firing every single upkeep I'd agree - alas it does not.

This kind of card evaluation is a problem in legacy. You cast Decay: doesn't matter. They cast CB: you lost (until you find the answer). In the same way Storm finds Pyroclasm, they aren't winning. Hatebears finds Teeg and Storm just lost. You're forcing Storm to play removal based magic, but will never be forced to play stack-based magic yourself.

[Megadeus]

I defeated a deck playing Teeg and Thalia in my run to top 8 because Pyroclasm. I have no idea what you're even on at this point other than it seems to be that you hate removal and think it's mindless while daze and force of will are the only true ways to interact.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76829

[Crimhead]

And maverick runs 4 1 CMC spells, 4-of an X spell (really bad with Thalia and Teeg in your deck), a couple 2 CMC 2 color spells, a 2 CMC enchantment, and 2-3 artifacts that are varying CMC's of 2,3, and 5. But you're right. Building a creature deck is pretty mindless and takes 0 build around while playing 8-12 cantrips and fetch lands and simply inserting different countermagic and win conditions is far more skill intensive.

Easy there! I never said building a creature deck is mindless, nor that building cantrip decks is skill intensive.

Loam needs to be built around. Glimpse needs to be built around. Hatebears obvioulsy need to go in a balanced deck with a smooth curve and cohesive game plan, but you don't exactly have to build around the hatebear - just don't don't put it on the style of deck that the bear happens to hate (assuming it's not a one sided effect like Leotard).

[CptHaddock]

I defeated a deck playing Teeg and Thalia in my run to top 8 because Pyroclasm. I have no idea what you're even on at this point other than it seems to be that you hate removal and think it's mindless while daze and force of will are the only true ways to interact.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76829

Yeah it's not like storm can proactively try to stop the hatebear deck from getting him out with their discard spells. :rolleyes: Sometimes the stars align and the hatebear deck gets him out no problem, I don't see how that is any different from any of the absurd stuff that can happen and completely shut down a deck in legacy. That's legacy, stuff happens and you move on with your life.

[hymnyou]

So let me get this straight, Teeg down and Storm literally cannot win (g1). Storm packs Pyroclasm (g1), and it helps them win (b/c +1 storm count???)...and casting Pyroclasm continually and completely invalidates the entire capability of hatebear deck to win? Don't get me wrong, if Pyroclasm had some kind of "epic" mechanic where it kept firing every single upkeep I'd agree - alas it does not.

This kind of card evaluation is a problem in legacy. You cast Decay: doesn't matter. They cast CB: you lost (until you find the answer). In the same way Storm finds Pyroclasm, they aren't winning. Hatebears finds Teeg and Storm just lost. You're forcing Storm to play removal based magic, but will never be forced to play stack-based magic yourself.

This is one of the most insane posts I have read on mtgthesource.com.

[Megadeus]

So let me get this straight, Teeg down and Storm literally cannot win (g1).

God forbid that the deck with 1 win condition gets shut down by a single card. If my deck was all non flying creatures and my opponent played a Moat then what? I just lose because I had a narrow win condition and my opponent had a trump? I've played storm at an SCG and had an opponent drop a turn 0 white leyline game 1. it sucked. But I built a deck that was incredibly powerful, but folds to certain hate. It happens. That's what a sideboard is for. Anywhere from 50-66% of your games will involve your sideboard. The upside of storm is I get to win on turn 1 some number of times. The downside is sometimes my opponent plays a gaddock teeg or a leyline and I just lose. Seems pretty fair to me.

[Lemnear]

Things Leovold did right: Being powerful enough to be a maindeckable card.

Things Leovold did wrong: Being one-sided. He doesn't discourage the use of cantrips since he can be played alongside them. We're currently seeing an uptick in cantrips instead of a downtick, despite Leovold being the new hotness. Color is also an issue, although a minor one, given how easy it is to splash colors in Legacy.

That's why I like Chalice. It puts restrictions on your deckbuilding due to being symmetrical. Sure, it isn't fun to play against, but I see it as a necessary evil like FoW preventing the format being overrun by glasscannon combo.

If you want to make color requirements balancing out the powerlevel, you don't start with BUG colors which already runs DRS and cantrips for colorfixing, but also have the best removal in the format, but choose a fringe played color combination. Its like hoping to balance a DemonicTutor-effect by making the card UB instead of mono-B and hope its an issue for Storm lol.

I would agree on Chalice if running SolLands would present a real downside for deckbuilding. There is a reason MUD was never an issue for the metagame at all, while Eldrazi is Tier 1. Eldrazi has no significant stability or variance issues

[Dice_Box]

Eldrazi does have variance issues. This is born out by the fact that it's penetration in both day 2 and top 32 standings is slipping. The deck is not as effected by variance as previous Stompy decks, but it's no Workshop deck that's for sure. But on the bright side, it's done a lot of good this past year.

[Fox]

I defeated a deck playing Teeg and Thalia in my run to top 8 because Pyroclasm. I have no idea what you're even on at this point other than it seems to be that you hate removal and think it's mindless while daze and force of will are the only true ways to interact.
You didn't defeat them because you ran Pyroclasm; you wasted time removing cards you can't win through, and somehow had enough left over to kill them in spite of drawing a card that impedes your ability to win (in a vacuum). Holding onto cards in hand that serve zero purpose other than to kill potential enemy things on the field is the lowest form of strategy - many enjoy this type of magic, and indeed it is a competitive way to play...but it's not really strategic so much as it is anti-strategic.

I don't hate removal, I hate wasting my time and my opponents' time drawing cards whose only purpose is to drag games on to the point that we're hellbent topdecking like standard champs. I prefer bi-modal interaction which alternates between disrupting opponents and supporting/protecting my wincon - cards like these are imperfect, and they can often create strange interactions or emphasize sequencing. Combo pilots are more prone to associate strange/hilarious gamestates with enjoyment of legacy; we're not really interested in "but then someone topdecked [insert removal card]" or "I was able to mull to [insert hate card]" stories. Everyone enjoys legacy in their own way, but it should also be noted that the format is devolving into removal based play. If board removal is the interaction you enjoy this is great news for you; you're being rewarded for choosing a narrow interaction path...but going around insisting everyone play removal based magic like you do is opposed to format diversity and unintentionally undermines how others may enjoy legacy.

It's a pretty shortsighted path to go down if you're of the mindset that CB is ok b/c you play [insert uninteractive card/s], and continue to cantrip cartel is the real problem in legacy. You need to acknowledge the existing diversity problem posed by CB before we move to a serious look at cantrips; to ignore it simply exacerbates the problem.

[Lemnear]

Eldrazi does have variance issues. This is born out by the fact that it's penetration in both day 2 and top 32 standings is slipping. The deck is not as effected by variance as previous Stompy decks, but it's no Workshop deck that's for sure. But on the bright side, it's done a lot of good this past year.

If you define "done a lot of good" as "reduce the penetration of Delver and cantrips for a while", its fitting. Personally, I would not label the fact, that the format is now completely dominated by blow-/lockouts within the first 3 turns, "doing a lot of good".

[Dice_Box]

I believe that the current diversity issue is caused by hybridisation of deck building into one extraordinary streamlined and fine tuned set of cards. CB is not one of those cards. CB does play it's part in making a mess of the format sure, but the only reason to even look at attacking CB is because we have come to accept other problem cards are never going to face the fate they deserve.

On the flip side, I would not argue against the idea that CB has done its part to push cards like Decay to their current highs. I also don't feel the removal of CB would actually dampen Decays popularity. But that is talk for another thread. In the flip side, my views on a few things have changed since reading this thread. I will post in B/R about it later. What's the worst that could happen...

Edit:

If you define "done a lot of good" as "reduce the penetration of Delver and cantrips for a while", its fitting. Personally, I would not label the fact, that the format is now completely dominated by blow-/lockouts within the first 3 turns, "doing a lot of good".Do a lot of good to me means "Make people think about choices they make in deck building and not default to the old norms". Leovold seems to be the new card for that though. The wheel forever turns.

[Whitefaces]

You didn't defeat them because you ran Pyroclasm; you wasted time removing cards you can't win through, and somehow had enough left over to kill them in spite of drawing a card that impedes your ability to win (in a vacuum). Holding onto cards in hand that serve zero purpose other than to kill potential enemy things on the field is the lowest form of strategy - many enjoy this type of magic, and indeed it is a competitive way to play...but it's not really strategic so much as it is anti-strategic.

Are you for real?

'You didn't defeat them because you ran Pyroclasm;' - no, that's exactly what he did. He played a card that interacted with the opponents strategy so that he was able to win. This can come in many forms. Stack based (countermagic), removal based (destroy/sac effects etc), permanent based (hatebears, null rod effects etc) to name a few. Of course it's strategic, you're anticipating your opponent interacting and countering that with more interaction!

There will be hard counters to every strategy. If said strategy is a known quantity, like storm, then people will play hard counters if possible. The pilot of these strategies needs to then anticipate the hate. It's not all removal based, look at BR Reanimator for example. The best SB card for them is Faerie Macabre and Surgical Extraction.

[Fox]

Are you for real?

'You didn't defeat them because you ran Pyroclasm;' - no, that's exactly what he did. He played a card that interacted with the opponents strategy so that he was able to win.
Let's rehash: opponent casts a Teeg, Storm can't win. Storm casts Pyroclasm, who cares - Pyroclasm doesn't refire every upkeep. Can Pyroclasm create a moment in a game where Storm can win while diluting deck with a card that is antagonistic to winning, yes. Teeg in play is game over, and that doesn't change unless he's removed - there is no timing window built into Teeg, he has no Culm. Upkeep, he creates a non-game that only really changes if Storm resorts to removal based magic.

Simply because a card worked in a given scenario does not make it statistically correct. A better example would be using Chain of Vapor to bounce one's own LED/Petal before targeting it at Teeg - this is an actual engine card (or rather it can be an engine card, though it would be rare that critical mass of storm count could only have been assured by double-casting a mana rock). There are a few cards out there which provide imperfect interaction but still feed into the engine behind which a deck wins. This is perhaps a foreign concept to the fair mindset where all they care about is jamming whatever card they topdeck. Their deck is deliberately constructed sure, but everything is unlinked - they get a creature? jam it and call it a day, mission accomplished, one card combo, got there. The thing is not everyone is interested in tapping lands to drop an unlinked wincon even though it allows you to get away with running cards that don't win games/don't protect your wincon without a compliant opponent deploying targets - that's a luxury. If your deck runs on linked cards, every card like Pyroclasm that you run makes your deck weaker.

Now there's a second level to this: if someone has a game-ender like Teeg and your only option is a card that removes it, you are severely disadvantaged from a game theory standpoint. The most correct response would be to have a [one card] game-ender of your own which by itself trumps theirs (for the rest of the game, unless it's dealt with) - sadly this does not exist in magic when an opponent's strategy is creature based; alas there is no Leyline of you can't deploy creatures. The next best thing would be to approach the game in a novel way such that you completely invalidate the text of a game-ender without even addressing it - the linked concept of Tabernacle and mana denial (obviously not an option in Storm) would be an excellent example of ignoring away hatebear nonsense. The next best thing then is subpar engine piece that can provide imperfect interaction (Chain of Vapor for example). The last resort is to settle upon an [B]anti-engine card which provides perfect interaction and does nothing [by itself] to an opponent's ability to win the game at a later point (Pyroclasm from the example). A fair deck mindset sees the worst possible approach to solving problems as normal and even optimal precisely because their vantage point is skewed. Acknowledge your bias, put disclaimers on removal based solutions...there is more than one vantage point in legacy, yours is merely equivalent. When removal based approaches are the most reasonable ways forward regardless of one's vantage point (how they view and enjoy legacy), a problem exists - the cost is decreased playerbase.

[Megadeus]

I have no idea what you're rambling about. It seems you're unhappy that a storm deck might have to fight through permanent based hate rather than stack based hate. And that maybe you have to run a card that isn't exactly perfect in your strategy to answer one that completely shuts down your strategy. Another way to not care about the gaddock teeg deck is to win on turn 1. And the teeg deck might have to run Mindbreak trap, a very narrow card that is the antithesis of what the deck is trying to do. It sucks that maybe you have to run cards that aren't perfect for your deck to not auto lose to certain things. Sorry you have to actually think about whether it maybe dilutes your deck a slight amount. That's part of the deck building and sideboarding process.

[Whitefaces]

Does it not make sense to you that a narrow deck (storm) has specific hate cards (Teeg etc)? And because of that the cards needed to fight them aren't necessarily going to be synergistic with the rest of your deck.

It's really hard to understand your posts, and I'm not trying to be an arsehole about it, it just doesn't make much sense beyond a personal agenda that you want the game to meet.

[Crimhead]

it just doesn't make much sense beyond a personal agenda that you want the game to meet.
To be fair guys, this thread is about whether each of us personally enjoys this format and why. Storm is struggling right now, and WotC keeps printing hatebears. I can see a Storm player might not like that.

[Fox]

It's more that were magic perfectly made for legacy, we might see the Teeg effect of 'Storm can't win' on a card like Solitary Confinement with all the supporting cards that allows an Enchantress'y deck to indefinitely sustain it (let's pretend for a moment that Enchantress and Storm are equally viable in the meta and have a 'real' game of magic when they meet). The more effortless [i.e. unlinked] a card is, the less likely that it should indefinitely hose entire decks unless the opponent submits a deck which plays a type of magic which makes it actively less competitive, particularly in pre-board submissions. When the only[ish] answer is just play removal, it's not a good enough answer for format health. In the same way, just play blue in the DTT era was merely a viable answer, but one that still hurt the format.

[thecrav]

Scroll up slightly. This is what I don't like about the current state of Magic.

[Zombie]

It's more that were magic perfectly made for legacy, we might see the Teeg effect of 'Storm can't win' on a card like Solitary Confinement with all the supporting cards that allows an Enchantress'y deck to indefinitely sustain it (let's pretend for a moment that Enchantress and Storm are equally viable in the meta and have a 'real' game of magic when they meet). The more effortless [i.e. unlinked] a card is, the less likely that it should indefinitely hose entire decks unless the opponent submits a deck which plays a type of magic which makes it actively less competitive, particularly in pre-board submissions. When the only[ish] answer is just play removal, it's not a good enough answer for format health. In the same way, just play blue in the DTT era was merely a viable answer, but one that still hurt the format.

So... Show and Tell? Doesn't even care what you play, they play a single card and you lose. Teeg is unbelieveably narrow in comparison, same kind of thing as maindecking Blood Moon to hose BUG is. Maindecking Teeg is, indeed, actively hosing yourself. It's a very low-impact slot in most matchups, and we have even Elves players reporting that it underperforms for them. And if any deck stereotypically wants a card to hose Storm and Miracles, it's Elves.

As far as Teeg vs. Storm goes, Storm plays your multi-axis removal stuff with discard and Daze, so...

[Lormador]

Storm was a tier 1 deck not so long ago, and I think we can fully expect it to return to that status someday. It's true that they haven't gotten a card in awhile though.

The current state of the meta is fine, Legacy is normally like this. We aren't at one of the peaks, like the Summer of Maverick when one could actually play Goblins almost credibly. We also aren't at one of the valleys, like the Treasure Cruise / Dig Through Time or Mental Misstep days.

Right now there's a good variety of tier 1 decks, from old classics to the combo flavor of the month, and a horde of tier 1.5 decks that one can perfectly well expect to encounter in a tournament.

The part about the format that I don't like is the lack of good coverage these days.

[Zombie]

Yeah, finally figured out what's up with Fox: https://xkcd.com/1112/

Bad jokes aside and actually genuinely: Fox, the point is not to play game theoretically optimally. It is true that when we don our competitor-hats, our job is to make the game a nongame, as much as possible. The closer we get to turning the opponent into a goldfish, the better. The thing is, that's rarely actually very enjoyable gameplay for most people. Look at Modern, especially back in the past: People gave the format no end of hell because the format's decks really did do that sidestepping thing. They all played on different axes and games ended up being two players fiddling with their own stuff and not really able to do anything about the opponent doing anything. When we're not thinking as a competitor intent only on winning - and when talking about format health, we shouldn't, our concern should be people having fun and games testing skill - that optimal state should not be a goal or consideration: If anything, our job is to prevent it. Games become really good usually when players have to fight over a shared axis and have good tools to do it - that's why eg. Delver vs. Storm plays well, or Elves v. Blade tends to be more interesting than Elves v. old D&T.

More to the point, though, you lord over people as if they don't get that answers that can work as engines are beneficial - they do, they damn well do. There's a reason Storm pilots preferred Chain as an answer for troublesome permanents for ages on end, or why Elves pilots are routinely excited about any answer that happens to be a green Elf. The thing is, the simple removal you decry is also part of an engine - a fair deck is an engine out to create a one-sided boardstate where the player's dumb little critters can swing in freely and the opponent has no hope of clawing their way back. Killing their shit is literally both an answer, keeping them from getting ahead, and a tool to advance the engine, maintaining a maximal boardstate disparity when ahead to cement the win. It just doesn't involve fiddling with other cards you have the way engine decks do.

[Fox]

So... Show and Tell? Doesn't even care what you play, they play a single card and you lose. Teeg is unbelieveably narrow in comparison, same kind of thing as maindecking Blood Moon to hose BUG is.
Not quite correct. SnT requires 3 mana, it requires another card in hand [weak to discard], it directs you to play a deck with ~8 cards it basically can't ever cast (assume the deck is SnS or OmniSneak), and the opponent gets to put just about whatever they want into play as well. Teeg and other hatebears only requirement is that you can make 2, sometimes 3, correctly colored mana and have as little as a single copy of that hatebear in your list to potentially create a non-game that doubles as a clock. Blood Moon is not a clock, and has incredibly significant manabase/deck construction implications. Hatebears are very much unlinked [standalone] non-game creators; that's a key difference. To illustrate this point, a Storm mirror can be easily won on the spot by one player going Land -> Petal -> Teeg, Thalia, or Ethersworn; it doesn't matter that neither deck can win as its design intends since that hatebear has zero build around while still being a wincon. (this is a waste of a slot, but as idiotic as it is, that turn one play is more than good enough to crush the mirror)

[Chatto]

Fox, I'm sorry, but I can't make any sense of your posts. People will do anything to win the MU, it being reactive or proactive. I personally don't see anything bad in this. Is there anything you do enjoy in this format?

[Lemnear]

There's a reason Storm pilots preferred Chain as an answer for troublesome permanents for ages on end, or why Elves pilots are routinely excited about any answer that happens to be a green Elf. The thing is, the simple removal you decry is also part of an engine - a fair deck is an engine out to create a one-sided boardstate where the player's dumb little critters can swing in freely and the opponent has no hope of clawing their way back. Killing their shit is literally both an answer, keeping them from getting ahead, and a tool to advance the engine, maintaining a maximal boardstate disparity when ahead to cement the win. It just doesn't involve fiddling with other cards you have the way engine decks do.

Well, the reason storm used to play CoV isn't because its working as a storm engine because for that Legacy Storm runs not enough artifacts (in Vintage it's fine to be labeled as engine). The reason people ran Chain is that its 1cc ONCOLOR GENERIC INSTANT REMOVAL for all hate dropped from Leyline to Thalia, which no other card offers to this date. Moreover, CoV isn't playable these days just because of Chalice/Counterbalance everywhere and lost its SB slots to Decay (plus Krosan Grip at times), which does absolutely nothing for the decks own gameplan.

[taconaut]

I get what Fox is trying to say; he's saying there's no analogous "anti-fair hatebear" that a storm player can play that would hose Maverick or other fair decks in the same way Teeg does storm (I've felt this way at times, too). He's asking, why isn't there something like:

Leyline of Peace - 2WW
Enchantment
If ~ is in your starting hand, you may begin the game with it on the battlefield.
Skip all combat steps.
"Can't we all just get along?"

Or, for a main-deckable example:

Study Door - :1:
Artifact
Creatures with power less than the number of cards in your hand can't attack you.
At the beginning of your main phase, if you have seven or more cards in your hand, sacrifice ~. If you do, add :3: to your mana pool.
After years of cloistered study, the wizard burst from his study, ready to share his arcane discoveries with the world.

However, cards like that actually do exist: basically, Ad Nauseam/Tendrils of Agony. The difference is, the storm cards that hose the fair decks just end the game, whereas Teeg and friends have to attack. From a storm perspective, sometimes it's hard to realize it, because games where you get Teeg'd or Thalia'd feel awful when you're just trying to find a way to remove it so you can play, but the converse is, Maverick guy feels the same way watching us flip over a bunch of cards to Ad Naus.

On balance, both decks have some sort of draw where the other person just has to watch, and realizing it has made me feel better about the times I get locked out by hatebears, because for every time that happens, some other poor schmuck has to watch me get the nuts on turn one and draw a million cards to Ad Nauseam or something. That's just Legacy, and that's why it's fun!

(that being said, I really do hate Ramen Stompy, even if I get on an intellectual level why people enjoy it. There's just no sweeter justice than making twelve goblins on turn one before their chalice comes down :cool:)

[Lemnear]

I get what Fox is trying to say; he's saying there's no analogous "anti-fair hatebear" that a storm player can play that would hose Maverick or other fair decks in the same way Teeg does storm (I've felt this way at times, too).

~snip~

However, cards like that actually do exist: basically, Ad Nauseam/Tendrils of Agony. The difference is, the storm cards that hose the fair decks just end the game, whereas Teeg and friends have to attack.

Soooooo for S&T Elesh Norn is an anti-weenie hatebear, Griselbrand the anti-burn hatebear and Emrakul the anti-removal hatebear?

[Dice_Box]

What was the topic of the thread again? Hatebears?

[GoblinSettler]

What was the topic of the thread again? Hatebears?

I hatebears legacy.

Actually, I think it's OK. Things were more interesting several years ago. But I have a healthy weekly event. I can run Goblins or Stax with plenty of old frame cards. Can't complain much.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I think this thread is trying to figure out what the cancer that is killing legacy is exactly, so as to be discussed in the B&R thread later in a few months time.

[Julian23]

I feel matchups these days are more lopsided that they used to be on average. Maybe I'm misremembering, but back in 2009 I was much more scared of whom I played than what they played.

[taconaut]

Soooooo for S&T Elesh Norn is an anti-weenie hatebear, Griselbrand the anti-burn hatebear and Emrakul the anti-removal hatebear?

Hahaha, I get the sense this was mostly a joke, but the Elesh Norn example is kinda illustrative of the point: if she cost two mana and were hexproof, the feeling for fair deck players when she dropped would be analogous to how storm deck players feel when Teeg is (that is, your normal gameplan gets shut down, and the interaction you have maindeck isn't relevant anymore).

Again, I think the way it is currently is mostly fine on balance, though it's obvious Wizards prefers to give new toys to the Teeg side of the equation, for better or worse.

[ESG]

I feel matchups these days are more lopsided that they used to be on average. Maybe I'm misremembering, but back in 2009 I was much more scared of whom I played than what they played.

I don't think you're misremembering, Julian. The power level of the format has increased over time -- as is the case for all non-rotating formats -- and there has been little management via bans to compensate. Several cards have been printed that often function as end-the-game haymakers, depending on the matchup. True-Name Nemesis and Terminus did this for aggro decks and creature-based midrange decks. Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omniscience made Show and Tell into a 3-mana bomb, whereas Dream Halls in earlier years was a riskier proposition. People who've been playing Legacy for only a few years won't remember that Show and Tell used to be not played at all in this format. We have new hatebears in Leovold and Sanctum Prelate that put their forebears to shame. Uncounterable, indestructible flying 20/20s can be had on Turn 2.

There's still balance to the format, but matchups are more polarized than they used to be.

I voted "It's okay," but I definitely would ban AND unban cards more often if I were in charge of the list.

[btm10]

I feel matchups these days are more lopsided that they used to be on average. Maybe I'm misremembering, but back in 2009 I was much more scared of whom I played than what they played.

I think this is true, and it has a lot to do with WotC's newly stated preference for 'battle cruiser Magic'. You can only push proactive game plans so far before they start losing the ability to interact with other proactive game plans that focus primarily on other axes. If you can't interact with your opponent's strategy, it pretty obviously follows that the matchup will come down to a race, and races along largely orthogonal axes tend to have matchup percentages that are hard to move since one path is generally 'shorter' than the other.



I voted "It's okay," but I definitely would ban AND unban cards more often if I were in charge of the list.

I feel the same way, but I understand why this isn't a good option for most people.

[Purple Blood]

- Being sick and tired to put up with Counterbalance and Chalice, more cantrip decks picked up DRS (for great consisteny and utility) and AD to retaliate against CotV,CB and the overall way too counter-heavy meta to have a reliable, highly flexible kill spell.

I don't play in any high level tournaments but based on the events I attend I have to agree with this. Basically Chalice and Counterbalance police and constrain the format. Almost every single deck is determined based on those two cards. Either you're playing one of those, or you're playing B/G/x so you can AD those cards, or your playing a combo deck that hopes to sneak in before the lock is in place. It pushes everything out.

The worst part to me is all the "fair" decks just end up being the exact same thing over and over Abrupt Decay, DRS, etc... You have to be in B/G and as a result pretty much 2/3 of your deck is predetermined so the space to tinker with different color combos is severely limited.

Not that I'm advocating for this but I wonder what would happen if they banned Chalice and Counterbalance. Certainly the whole format would be turned on its head. But I think it's almost a guarantee that it would become considerably more diverse.

[ironclad8690]

I actually think the format would become less diverse if they banned those two. Those cards are some of the only reasons anything besides delver or combo are putting up any results right now, both because of those cards efficacy vs said decks, and the decks that prey on the chalice decks (such as aluren for example).

I think there is space to be explored with aether vial and non-miracles counterbalance decks currently.

For instance, I think an old-school UW Vial list could be quite strong, or perhaps rug/bug/burg countertop. I also think deadguy is secretly well positioned at the moment. A nic fit deck packing Hymn to Tourach and at least 3-4 cards that trump Jace could also be good. Just speculations that could be (veteran) explored...

[LeoCop 90]

Maybe they should print more generic, maindeckable answers to permanents in colors that are not b/g. Why boros cannot have a card similar to abrupt decay? after all, red and white combined have the ability to remove any permanent from the battlefield.

[Megadeus]

Having an influx of generic maindeckable answers for things is bad in my opinion. Decay is one of them. I don't ike Decay as a card, but it's a necessity to play as long as it's legal if you're in those colors. I didn't play standard, but I heard that when Dromoka's Command was legal in the format it essentially made enchantments unplayable in the standard format that was supposed to be based on enchantments because it was such a powerful maindeckable card. Pre-Decay there was an interesting meta of if you land a sylvan library or something like that, it's difficult to remove so you debate possibly playing something like a disenchant or a vindicate in the main deck. Now you just have decay that also answers dudes it not only makes those non creatures bad, but it also pushes out other interesting options.

[slave]

The current meta just feels really un-interactive and it's getting old now.
... DnT, a deck I loved 7 months ago has become so boring and over-powered that I can't bring myself to play it, even with Foil MM Ports separating me from all the plebs who picked it up 2 weeks ago because you can buy it with 2 centrelink payments now.
LOL, centrelink - we might be the only peeps who get that. I wouldn't worry, they'll have to pay it back the way Talkbull & ScoMo are going. :eek:

I voted not really.
For me, the prevalence of the DTB (Miracles, D&T, Shardless BUG etc.) compared to the rest of the field is getting larger (where I am in the world)
The variation in decks I can expect to face is getting narrower as time goes on, and the DTB keep gaining new pieces to continue the arms-race, whilst most other decks languish. I can't see this trend changing.... maybe not ever?

When I first started, it was normal for fellaz to be running the odd rogue brew or some silly combo deck, but these days there doesn't seem to be as much imagination, everyone netdecks unashamedly, and plays only the same 2-3 decks for years. Part of this could be that the DTB have just got to the point where they're too powerful, flexible, and have all the answers. Part of this is most definitely that Legacy is so expensive it's restrictive.

My pet decks have gradually been marginalized by hate pieces, some so badly (Dredge) I have to question whether I should simply sell up and buy Miracles or D&T, or maybe even kiss goodbye to Legacy all together for a cheaper format. Spew!

[Megadeus]

LOL, centrelink - we might be the only peeps who get that. I wouldn't worry, they'll have to pay it back the way Talkbull & ScoMo are going. :eek:

I voted not really.
For me, the prevalence of the DTB (Miracles, D&T, Shardless BUG etc.) compared to the rest of the field is getting larger (where I am in the world)
The variation in decks I can expect to face is getting narrower as time goes on, and the DTB keep gaining new pieces to continue the arms-race, whilst most other decks languish. I can't see this trend changing.... maybe not ever?

When I first started, it was normal for fellaz to be running the odd rogue brew or some silly combo deck, but these days there doesn't seem to be as much imagination, everyone netdecks unashamedly, and plays only the same 2-3 decks for years. Part of this could be that the DTB have just got to the point where they're too powerful, flexible, and have all the answers. Part of this is most definitely that Legacy is so expensive it's restrictive.

My pet decks have gradually been marginalized by hate pieces, some so badly (Dredge) I have to question whether I should simply sell up and buy Miracles or D&T, or maybe even kiss goodbye to Legacy all together for a cheaper format. Spew!
I have extremely similar thoughts. I think that the efficiency of the format has gotten to a point that it is impossible to really fit in something that isn't completely streamlined. And like has been said, I think that began during the Treasure Cruise/DTT era when everyone realized that playing 8 cantrip decks and other such things are simply the best things that you can be doing. I think Fatal Push may be another tool that pushes it ever further being a 1 mana removal spell that BUG decks have adapted and now dont have to worry about clunky things like Dead Weight and Disfigure which were far more situationally good.

As an enchantress player I feel the same way too. Leovold being a maindeckabe anti draw permanent that is in the best 3 color combo in the format is probably the death knell for my enchantress days.

[Julian23]

Talking about streamlining during the TC/DTT days: I remember someone on Twitter posting his sideboard of 8 blue blasts and 7 red blasts: "I guess this is my life now"

[Zombie]

Talking about streamlining during the TC/DTT days: I remember someone on Twitter posting his sideboard of 8 blue blasts and 7 red blasts: "I guess this is my life now"

Why numbers that way? Seems really weird O_o'

[ironclad8690]

Funny thing is that would probably still be a fine sideboard.

@zombie blue was to counter swiftspear young pyro bolts pyroblast etc, which turned out to be more important than countering the blue stuff.

[Noctalor]

Talking about streamlining during the TC/DTT days: I remember someone on Twitter posting his sideboard of 8 blue blasts and 7 red blasts: "I guess this is my life now"

It's also fair to say that such overpowered cards are able to shake the format a litle bit, bringing some old forgotten decks back to a decent status.
I remember playing freacking Solidarity again thanks to DTT, it probably was the most fun I had with legacy in the last 6 years :rolleyes:

[btm10]

It's also fair to say that such overpowered cards are able to shake the format a litle bit, bringing some old forgotten decks back to a decent status.
I remember playing freacking Solidarity again thanks to DTT, it probably was the most fun I had with legacy in the last 6 years :rolleyes:

Dig was fun, if totally busted, while it lasted, though it probably lasted about 3 months too long. The Grixis Pyromancer Ascension deck was enormously fun, but Decay seeing widespread play makes it totally unplayable.

[Lemnear]

Funny thing is that would probably still be a fine sideboard.

@zombie blue was to counter swiftspear young pyro bolts pyroblast etc, which turned out to be more important than countering the blue stuff.

Until you face one of the Chalice.decs and instantly regret that you are not playing BUG. That color combination is the only one able to fight a fair fight in a metagame dominated by Counterbalance & Chalice.

Hell, some storm pilots even started to MD Decays!

[LeoCop 90]

Having an influx of generic maindeckable answers for things is bad in my opinion. Decay is one of them. I don't ike Decay as a card, but it's a necessity to play as long as it's legal if you're in those colors. I didn't play standard, but I heard that when Dromoka's Command was legal in the format it essentially made enchantments unplayable in the standard format that was supposed to be based on enchantments because it was such a powerful maindeckable card. Pre-Decay there was an interesting meta of if you land a sylvan library or something like that, it's difficult to remove so you debate possibly playing something like a disenchant or a vindicate in the main deck. Now you just have decay that also answers dudes it not only makes those non creatures bad, but it also pushes out other interesting options.


I don't like super-efficient catch all cards too, but now that decay exists i think it would be better to have at least another similar one in different colors, so that you are not forced to play b/g if you want to beat counterbalance/chalice.

[Quasim0ff]

Hell, some storm pilots even started to MD Decays!

it's honestly insane you've waited this long to adjust to the current metagame.

[Lemnear]

it's honestly insane you've waited this long to adjust to the current metagame.

No, its insane to keep trying to fight uphill battles with a certain deck like storm by adding cards which mess with your own deck. The supertype just isn't playable atm

[Lemnear]

~snip~

Was far too appeling to just post a rant + picture rather than trying to understand the point made, which is the desperation present across the community that people not only splash colors to run certain cards without alternative equivalents, but run MD cards messing with their own deck.

Of course we have long crossed the line where combo players should just switch to "interactive" games with Emrakul rather than durdling with chaining spells to restore the old balance between Aggro & Combo, because these days its obviously more "interactive" to see Emrakul facing Chalice + Worldbreaker or Counterbalance + Plowshares than Storm vs Tempo

[Nielsie]

If Chalice and Counterbalance are banned you also have to ban Brainstorm otherwise the cantrip cartel has full reign again.

Seriously I don't get this. It's only because Eldrazi that some people are suddenly irritated with Chalice. When it was only MUD and Loam playing Chalice it was not a problem. Btw, I still think that Loam is a much much stronger deck than Eldrazi will ever be, it's just a lot harder to play than turning some spaghetti creatures sideways, so people never realy picked that chalice deck up.

What I think is the biggest problem is net-decking and a lack of coverage. It sounds ridiculous and unintuitive but because of a lack of coverage since we have lost the scg legacy opens, people just don't see interesting brews and possible new archetypes popping up on streams. Comming up with a new archetype is fricking insane that only a few realy good players can pull off. But even than, I think that at this moment there are more viable strategies than in the last 2-3 years of legacy which were fully dominated by blue xerox type decks. At least you don't have to play blue these days to have a winning chance, if that means you need to start your deck building with 4 decays or 4 chalices, fine! It's not much different than bunch of islands, 4 brainstorms, 4 ponders, 4 forces (and 4 decays...)

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Seriously I don't get this. It's only because Eldrazi that some people are suddenly irritated with Chalice. When it was only MUD and Loam playing Chalice it was not a problem.

Things that people perceive to be "low skill" irritate people for one reason or another.

Which is amusing because this game has the skill cap of picking your nose but I digress

[Lemnear]

If Chalice and Counterbalance are banned you also have to ban Brainstorm otherwise the cantrip cartel has full reign again.

Seriously I don't get this. It's only because Eldrazi that some people are suddenly irritated with Chalice. When it was only MUD and Loam playing Chalice it was not a problem. Btw, I still think that Loam is a much much stronger deck than Eldrazi will ever be, it's just a lot harder to play than turning some spaghetti creatures sideways, so people never realy picked that chalice deck up.

What I think is the biggest problem is net-decking and a lack of coverage. It sounds ridiculous and unintuitive but because of a lack of coverage since we have lost the scg legacy opens, people just don't see interesting brews and possible new archetypes popping up on streams. Comming up with a new archetype is fricking insane that only a few realy good players can pull off. But even than, I think that at this moment there are more viable strategies than in the last 2-3 years of legacy which were fully dominated by blue xerox type decks. At least you don't have to play blue these days to have a winning chance, if that means you need to start your deck building with 4 decays or 4 chalices, fine! It's not much different than bunch of islands, 4 brainstorms, 4 ponders, 4 forces (and 4 decays...)

First of all, no one wants to see counterbalance or Chalice banned, because they are tools to keep combo in check. What do you mean by "only because Eldrazi"? Forgot that Chalice got stupid good when they printed Lodestone which put MUD over the top for years?

P.S.:
Its kinda pathetic that people were moaning the "lacking format diversity" as every blue deck ran Ponder/Brainstorm/Probe in a dozen different decks and colors, but now as near every deck is blue deck is BUGx and starts with 4 Ponder, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Decay, some players praise the "diversity"? What diversity? Because D&T and colorless aggro now have a bigger metagame share? Seriously, has this new meta emerged even a new deck supertypes (mind that Eldrazi simply is the successor of the MUD aggro variants) or just killed some?

Honestly, all what is requested is some non-BUG options to create diversity in battling Countertop/Chalice instead of sidestepping it with a few fringe deck options

[Sloshthedark]

Until you face one of the Chalice.decs and instantly regret that you are not playing BUG. That color combination is the only one able to fight a fair fight in a metagame dominated by Counterbalance & Chalice.

Hell, some storm pilots even started to MD Decays!

as I'm one of the these people I feel I need to say:

A, I don't see CB or CotV as a problem (for Storm or for legacy), in fact I "like" these cards, CotV is alright as long as it stays where it belongs - in terrible inconsistent decks for people who like to gamble and go against the grain... a minor funpolice to spice things up... CB, I remember when CB was a game over, it's not that long ago, I was fine with back then why would I complain now?

B, MD AD isn't a reaction to CB or CotV, both are way beyond their peak (it seems to me) but because of Leovold or better said with Leovold the threshold where MD AD is a consideration is met for me as almost every deck has a potential "backbreaking" T2 play which makes the overall XP very random, especially since UBG colors can find and defend the Leovold, are widely popular and unpredictable on whether they run it or not


it's honestly insane you've waited this long to adjust to the current metagame.

there are different, less flashy, forms of adjustment in inner-deck ratios and card selection which certainly happened long ago, to MD answers wasn't (and very likely still isn't) worth it

C, I was about to express my opinion on netdecking and deckchoices but then noticed B/R thread isn't active for 2 weeks so I'll save the rant for later :smile:



Which is amusing because this game has the skill cap of picking your nose but I digress

then you're doing something wrong...

actually the skill cap of the game is slowly becoming the only reason I play it, I don't consider it much fun anymore but as long as it stays a challenge I tolerate myself this extravagance

[Nielsie]

First of all, no one wants to see counterbalance or Chalice banned
Well, lately I see this popping up a lot here...


Honestly, all what is requested is some non-BUG options to create diversity in battling Countertop/Chalice instead of sidestepping it with a few fringe deck options
Sure, I would love this to happen. But I don't know if it is that simple. You don't want to offer current BGx decks Decay 4-8 :/

[Megadeus]

Mostly because the BnR rant moved to this thread essentially. Just with less specific choices of cards and more broad in terms of strategies in general and how legacy has become dull to many.

[thefringthing]

Sure, I would love this to happen. But I don't know if it is that simple. You don't want to offer current BGx decks Decay 4-8 :/God forbid they ever print a red card that does anything.

[Megadeus]

God forbid they ever print a red card that does anything.

The problem being you need it to be RR or the blue decks simply play it in their deck because everything is inevitably better when casting brainstorm alongside it. Of course, then you're playing a RR spell in legacy and that means it's really hard to fit brainstorm in your deck, so despite the powerlevel of the RR card, you're just better off cantripping.

[Lemnear]

The problem being you need it to be RR or the blue decks simply play it in their deck because everything is inevitably better when casting brainstorm alongside it. Of course, then you're playing a RR spell in legacy and that means it's really hard to fit brainstorm in your deck, so despite the powerlevel of the RR card, you're just better off cantripping.

We thought that about Decay as well at the beginning and suddenly people were splashing colors. We are long past the point were 2 non-U colors are REALLY restrictive as long as there is excuse to run the other colors.

[Crimhead]

...some players praise the "diversity"? What diversity? Because D&T and colorless aggro now have a bigger metagame share?
The format is diverse - you just have to look at entire decks rather than focusing on a small set of cards.

Do you think Eldrazi, Lands, and Aggro Loam are not very different decks because the all run CotV in the 75?
Do you think Elves, Pyro, Shardless, Loam, and Infect are basically the same because they all run AD or Grip?
Do you think Reanimator, D&T, Burn, and Miracles "don't really count" in terms of format diversity?

If you can't see the diversity, maybe the problem is not with the format.



Seriously, has this new meta emerged even a new deck supertypes (mind that Eldrazi simply is the successor of the MUD aggro variants) or just killed some?
What do you consider to be a "deck supertype"? I'm thinking:

Aggro
Tempo
Midrange (anywhere from aggressove to grindy)
Stompy
Combo
Control
Prison

I don't think MTG has seen a new "supertype" since pretty much forever. If anything we get new hybrids - eg, I don’t think aggro/prison was a thing before D&T.

That said, the current meta boasts a fantastic spread of these play-styles! When was the last time
Legacy was this rich with varying play-styles?



Honestly, all what is requested is some non-BUG options to create diversity in battling Countertop/Chalice instead of sidestepping it with a few fringe deck optionsSo... D&T, Infect, and RB Reanimator are now fringe decks? Why? Please justify your claim that three out of six DTBs are now "fringe decks". I guess this is the age of "alternative facts", but this is so blatantly false I'm almost surprised that you even posted it.

[ESG]

What I think is the biggest problem is net-decking and a lack of coverage. It sounds ridiculous and unintuitive but because of a lack of coverage since we have lost the scg legacy opens, people just don't see interesting brews and possible new archetypes popping up on streams.

I already have one link to our local stream in this thread, but since I keep seeing this same sentiment repeated, I'm going to post it again:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/118607411

This week's matches:
Round 1: Bomberman vs. Jund
Round 2: Dark Bant vs. MUD
Round 2 (backup match): ANT vs. UWR Blade Landstill
Round 3: Enchantress vs. Deathblade
Interview with Enchantress player
Round 4: Mentor Miracles vs. Jund

You don't have to run the same 75 cards that so-and-so did at GP Louisville. It's your choice to do that or do something different. Play Legacy because it's fun and has a huge card pool. If you're feeling jaded, consider what you could do with newly printed cards, and spend some time in the New and Developmental Decks forum. Also, the Seattle scene isn't unique to brewing. If you explore TCDecks, you'll find lots of interesting ideas on display.

[Fox]

as I'm one of the these people I feel I need to say:

A, I don't see CB or CotV as a problem (for Storm or for legacy), in fact I "like" these cards, CotV is alright as long as it stays where it belongs - in terrible inconsistent decks for people who like to gamble and go against the grain... a minor funpolice to spice things up... CB, I remember when CB was a game over, it's not that long ago, I was fine with back then why would I complain now?

B, MD AD isn't a reaction to CB or CotV, both are way beyond their peak (it seems to me) but because of Leovold or better said with Leovold the threshold where MD AD is a consideration is met for me as almost every deck has a potential "backbreaking" T2 play which makes the overall XP very random, especially since UBG colors can find and defend the Leovold, are widely popular and unpredictable on whether they run it or not
Nearly 50% of the format runs Decay and roughly another 10% run Cavern of Souls according to stats provided in the graphs earlier in the thread - in that environment I should certainly hope CB isn't game over. Earlier @Dice_Box made some good points about why Decay would remain popular in a vacuum, but unless we're trying to cascade into a removal spell more likely to find a target than any other, other diverse options exist (including not splashing for Decay)...however, all these decks are running Decay b/c they can't hope to play magic vs CB if they ran any other card. Without that pressure, you're going to see at least some of those 4 slots reverting to cards with more specialized/streamlined effects.

Now the issue with removal based mindsets is that as long as they can find a removal spell, they won't see a problem. This then morphs into everyone should stop complaining and run removal spells like they do - the issues with this sentiment can be found in my previous posts. Instead I'll pose this question: How prevalent does an answer have to be before the card it is primarily targeted at can be called a problem? We're at ~50%, Misstep for Misstep got to 65%; what's the cut-off? Is there a level of Abrupt Decay meta representation after which you can attribute its selection purely to CB?

[Fjaulnir]

tl;dr: don't rely too much on stats that don't distinguish between MTGO and paper - if MTGO is included, those are very inbred because of a larger % "grinder mentality" that you won't encounter in many paper legacy communities.

[Crimhead]

Is there a level of Abrupt Decay meta representation after which you can attribute its selection purely to CB?No, that's silly. In order to believe that AD is run "purely" to hit CB, we would have to believe it would be run even if it literally hit nothing but CB.

If you would not run this card if it didn't have multiple targets, you cannot attribute its inclusion 100% to a single target.

[thecrav]

What do you consider to be a "deck supertype"? I'm thinking:

...

I don't think MTG has seen a new "supertype" since pretty much forever. If anything we get new hybrids - eg, I don’t think aggro/prison was a thing before D&T.


I thought Robert Hahn settled this 21 years ago (http://classicdojo.org/school/SoM54.html). His schools are still pretty much right on the nose for the super types of today but as you point out, most decks are now hybrids and hybrids of hybrids.


The Weissman School: Defense wins games.
The Kim School: Maximum card utility; minimize costs.
The Handelman School: I'm going to come kill you right now with this thing right here unless you do something about it
The Chang School: The best defense is a good offense.
The Obrien School: If you don't have any mana, you can't play.
The Maysonet School: By disrupting the content of the opponent's library itself, you can decrease not only the effectiveness and the strategy of the opposing deck but ultimately destroy the strategy itself.

[Megadeus]

Nearly 50% of the format runs Decay and roughly another 10% run Cavern of Souls according to stats provided in the graphs earlier in the thread - in that environment I should certainly hope CB isn't game over. Earlier @Dice_Box made some good points about why Decay would remain popular in a vacuum, but unless we're trying to cascade into a removal spell more likely to find a target than any other, other diverse options exist (including not splashing for Decay)...however, all these decks are running Decay b/c they can't hope to play magic vs CB if they ran any other card. Without that pressure, you're going to see at least some of those 4 slots reverting to cards with more specialized/streamlined effects.

Now the issue with removal based mindsets is that as long as they can find a removal spell, they won't see a problem. This then morphs into everyone should stop complaining and run removal spells like they do - the issues with this sentiment can be found in my previous posts. Instead I'll pose this question: How prevalent does an answer have to be before the card it is primarily targeted at can be called a problem? We're at ~50%, Misstep for Misstep got to 65%; what's the cut-off? Is there a level of Abrupt Decay meta representation after which you can attribute its selection purely to CB?

Brainstorm was at 87.5% at the latest GP

[Teluin]

I'm actually curious about this thread's meta:

What's the % of posts that didn't bitch about AD (seriously?), CB, Brainstorm or the "cantrip cartel"? <-- the latter being a term generally used by lemmings who don't have anything original to say
How many of Fox's posts have been quoted because of the confusion they've caused the thread's readers?
How many posts aren't near copy/pastes of what the same people have written prior in the B&R thread?
When did this thread stop being posts that answered the actual question?
Puppies or kittens?

[btm10]

tl;dr: don't rely too much on stats that don't distinguish between MTGO and paper - if MTGO is included, those are very inbred because of a larger % "grinder mentality" that you won't encounter in many paper legacy communities.

It's not that uncommon for Legacy communities to be spiky/grinder-focused, which (at least in the US) is probably a holdover from the SCG Legacy every Sunday era. It does slow down the evolution of the format since there's a face-saving element to not bringing a brew or fringe deck to a "serious" tournament and the lower format profile means that innovations are less limely to be noticed, but it's the norm here in my experience.


Nearly 50% of the format runs Decay and roughly another 10% run Cavern of Souls according to stats provided in the graphs earlier in the thread - in that environment I should certainly hope CB isn't game over. Earlier @Dice_Box made some good points about why Decay would remain popular in a vacuum, but unless we're trying to cascade into a removal spell more likely to find a target than any other, other diverse options exist (including not splashing for Decay)...however, all these decks are running Decay b/c they can't hope to play magic vs CB if they ran any other card. Without that pressure, you're going to see at least some of those 4 slots reverting to cards with more specialized/streamlined effects.

Now the issue with removal based mindsets is that as long as they can find a removal spell, they won't see a problem. This then morphs into everyone should stop complaining and run removal spells like they do - the issues with this sentiment can be found in my previous posts. Instead I'll pose this question: How prevalent does an answer have to be before the card it is primarily targeted at can be called a problem? We're at ~50%, Misstep for Misstep got to 65%; what's the cut-off? Is there a level of Abrupt Decay meta representation after which you can attribute its selection purely to CB?

Your earlier posts were at best muddled as to why the "removal mindset" is a problem from a player interaction/quality-of-gameplay perspective, and are unpersuasive even from a purely competitive perspective; especially since you've broadened your definition of "stack interaction" to include cards like Thoughtseize and lock pieces (Winter Orb/Chalice/Thorn). If your problem is that cards exist for which discard and countermagic are insufficient answers are Legacy-playable I have a hard time taking your position seriously since the assumptions underlying it are fundamentally at odds with the things I thinake.for quality Magic from both theoretical and practical points of view.

[Ronald Deuce]

Brainstorm was at 87.5% at the latest GP

Gods forbid a ton of people get to play varied decks that attack one another on multiple angles without implementing one-card shutouts.

And I'm still not sure why this has become a new B/R thread.


I'm actually curious about this thread's meta:

What's the % of posts that didn't bitch about AD (seriously?), CB, Brainstorm or the "cantrip cartel"? <-- the latter being a term generally used by lemmings who don't have anything original to say
How many of Fox's posts have been quoted because of the confusion they've caused the thread's readers?
How many posts aren't near copy/pastes of what the same people have written prior in the B&R thread?
When did this thread stop being posts that answered the actual question?
Puppies or kittens?


This post has the Imperial Seal of Approval. In small part because I'm guilty of at least two of those indictments, obviously excluding the "cantrip cartel."

[Spam]

Puppies or kittens?
I do prefer turtles myself.

Here's my turtle (Justin) destroying my homeworks (it's a joke, he didn't really do that) It's winter in Italy now, so he's sleeping.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170201/92af63892b2568f9dffc2f70a4162e7f.jpg

[ironclad8690]

Thats a rad turtle.

I think they need to print more uncounterable cards, hatebears that rival Thalia and Teeg's powerlevel, and better toolbox options. This might allow for non-blue fair decks to make a comeback, and all of the decks that people love like pox and enchantress that prey on those.