Team Unified Legacy

[Barachai]

Reading/watching about team unified modern, and the struggles its limitations present got me to thinking, what if they did a team unified legacy? I'd be rather curious to see what happens when brainstorm, force, DRS and wasteland are put under contention, and what exactly teams would pick. If anything, it'd be interesting to see what the metagame looks like when only one third of the field is allowed to play blue.

[Whitefaces]

I think it'd be pretty awful. With only one set of Forces available it would just be loads of degenerate combo decks, nice experiment to see how important Force is for the format though!

[[SLAYER]chaos]

I think it'd be pretty awful. With only one set of Forces available it would just be loads of degenerate combo decks, nice experiment to see how important Force is for the format though!

I don't think so. It could easily end up being something like Miracles, Chalice deck, and BUG in heavy black without force. 3 decks that probably all have >50% combo matchups that share very few if any cards between them.

[Philipp2293]

Miracles/Elves/RB Reanimator shouldn't share too many cards.

[Barachai]

I think it'd be pretty awful. With only one set of Forces available it would just be loads of degenerate combo decks, nice experiment to see how important Force is for the format though!

You think so? Chalice and Thalia are pretty solid cards, not to mention all the potential sideboard hate people could pack.

[emidln]

SAINT, Miracles, and some Chalice/Loam deck.

SAINT (you might play Belcher, I'd prefer SAINT) because it's a blistering fast linear combo deck that doesn't need Brainstorm.
Miracles because it's the best deck in the format, and it'll be more difficult to fight Miracles if you're forced to dedicate slots to fast combo. I'd be sorely tempted to play Ubg Omni with maindeck Boseijus and extra disruption to fight other combo decks and still beat Miracles. The deck is probably too slow and not controlling enough to beat DnT in that configuration.
A Chalice/Loam deck to punish (probably via Punishing Fire) fair strategies.

[Barachai]

Thinking about it, some decks that offer low contention include:
Miracles, Eldrazi, Elves, Death and Taxes, Lands, Dredge, RB Reanimator, Belcher, Enchantress

What might be funny is that the field might end up being 33% miracles, 66% non-blue mess.

[rlesko]

I agree with one of the early posters that it would likely not be very interesting due to the high number of "core" cards in legacy such as wasteland, brainstorm, force of will, swords to plowshares, abrupt decay, etc. It sounds like it would be interesting (because legacy is better than modern in every way :laugh: ), but I think almost every team would be identical -

I foresee the following "cores" to start from

brainstorm / force : wasteland / port : Chalice of the Void : glimpse / NO : lion's eye diamond / Dark Ritual

Then once each player has taken a "core", select a "removal" suite to add

lightning bolt / punishing fire : swords to plowshares : abrupt decay : no removal because you are playing degenerate combo

voila. You have your trio. What I envision happening most is groups picking miracles (best deck in the format, doesn't need wastelands so it doesn't overlap with another "core"). Then next thing is probably Eldrazi / Lands / 4C Loam (to use wastelands and/or chalices and play red removal or BG removal). Notably absent here are D&T (because swords to plowshares is already taken by miracles) and any Delver variants (Needs brainstorm / force AND wastelands). Then lastly you play either Elves or degenerate combo (RB Reanimator / LED Dredge / Belcher ).

And I don't think there is anything wrong with having core cards in the format. Legacy isn't a worse format because a unified event wouldn't be terribly interesting. Its like if you did it in vintage you would play a bazaar deck, a shops deck, and a blue deck - and EVERY team would do this.

[Julian23]

We discussed this ~2 weeks ago on my Twitter. Jarvis made a very good point that Elves is the ultimate trap of that format: unfavorable matchups vs both Miracles and all-in combo before sideboarding.

[Noctalor]

In my opinion the meta should look like

1 Miracle
1 Eldrazi
1 Sneak n Show

You pick miracles because it's the best deck, then eldrazi and sneak because both have a good shot against miracles and can fight against most of the field.

But there wold be a LOT of room for innovation, for example stax has a positive MU against all those decks

[rlesko]

We discussed this ~2 weeks ago on my Twitter. Jarvis made a very good point that Elves is the ultimate trap of that format: unfavorable matchups vs both Miracles and all-in combo before sideboarding.

This is an interesting point. Though, you keep putting up amazing results, so how bad can it be? :tongue:


In my opinion the meta should look like

1 Miracle
1 Eldrazi
1 Sneak n Show

You pick miracles because it's the best deck, then eldrazi and sneak because both have a good shot against miracles and can fight against most of the field.

But there wold be a LOT of room for innovation, for example stax has a positive MU against all those decks

Do you know what "unified" means? 2/3 of your decks are playing brainstorm / force, and 2/3 are playing Sol lands...

[Darkenslight]

In my opinion the meta should look like

1 Miracle
1 Eldrazi
1 Sneak n Show

You pick miracles because it's the best deck, then eldrazi and sneak because both have a good shot against miracles and can fight against most of the field.

But there wold be a LOT of room for innovation, for example stax has a positive MU against all those decks

Miracles/MUD/Glass Cannon is more likely, but the most interesting aspect of the Team format would be the seating arrangement.

[Noctalor]

This is an interesting point. Though, you keep putting up amazing results, so how bad can it be? :tongue:



Do you know what "unified" means? 2/3 of your decks are playing brainstorm / force, and 2/3 are playing Sol lands...

Yup, I fucked up

[CptHaddock]

Yup, I fucked up

You can always play all in sneak!

[Megadeus]

I think it would prove to create interesting deck building constraints. Non blue decks have access to leyline and mindbreak trap if all in combo is viewed as an issue. And you get a million hate bears. Plus discard. I would definitely be interested to play this sort of event, though I agree that the blue deck of the group is relegated to basically being miracles + whatever else you decide. If you would play a non blue super fast combo deck you would gt punished by stuff like MB Trap and both white or black leylines pretty easily, while the blue decks would have the usual suite of counter magic. Or you get to play multiple blue decks maybe but one is delver with efficient cantrips plus force and daze, and one could be a bigger blue control deck with impulse, mana leaks, pirce and stuff as well as preordain. And you wouldn't get as punished by wasteland because the opposing team can only have 4 between them. I would be very interested to see this format and how it would play out. I think the problem is that people default to thinking about current meta decks and are unwilling to think outside the box on playable cards.

[Stuart]

Having just played the Team Modern GP this weekend, I'd love to play Team Unified Legacy. Team stuff's a blast, and everyone seemed more relaxed than they do at normal events.

[apple713]

Thinking about it, some decks that offer low contention include:
Miracles, Eldrazi, Elves, Death and Taxes, Lands, Dredge, RB Reanimator, Belcher, Enchantress

What might be funny is that the field might end up being 33% miracles, 66% non-blue mess.


Miracles & Turbo Depths & 1 variable deck... maybe Painter, Dredge, or Stax

I dont know exactly how 12 posts matchups are outside of miracles but having a virtual guaranteed win vs 1/3rd of the meta sounds like a good starting point. Maybe it garners a slot, idk.


Miracles gets picked to keep the format in check. Turbo depths is a solid combo deck that doesn't share slots with almost any deck. The last deck is up for grabs.

[jrsthethird]

Death & Taxes, 4 Color Control, Dredge.

Nobody is packing hate for D&T because they expect every team to be on Miracles. Nobody expects the Czech Pile for the same reason, and it's also very greedy for Unified. Dredge is much better in a meta that's very low on Deathrite Shaman and grave hate is spread well between the decks (or just non-existent).

EDIT:

Watching the GP coverage, it seemed like most teams were on Death's Shadow, because it is the de facto best deck in the format. Modern is so wide-open with playable and diverse archetypes that including the best deck as a shoo-in is relatively easy. Legacy is a format with a diverse card pool, but most of the playable decks fall underneath a larger pillar, which has been addressed already. While many teams will include the "best deck", you have specialists in other top-tier decks that want to use Brainstorm. Dedicated Storm pilots come to mind. If their team wants Force of Will, they'll need to be playing Manaless Dredge or Merfolk.

I mean, there's only 2 of the 7 current Tier 1 decks that don't play the Brainstorm/FOW combo. If you have a great D&T player, you're not going to give up your STP to a player who's never triggered a Miracle before. They're getting Swords and Wasteland and you'll need a non-Wasteland, non-white deck for your FOWs. Either that, or someone's playing Path. :cry:

[Namida]

I've actually played Unified Legacy before, and what we ended up playing was Doomsday, Affinity, and MUD. It was terrible because our Affinity player refused to play without Ancient Tombs so our MUD player used Crystal Veins and lost every match where he actually played a Crystal Vein.

If we had more time to prepare I actually would have just given one of them Merfolk to play since it uses Force of Wills and none of the cantrips I was using in my deck.

[mistercakes]

Burn would probably be pretty good and there would be a greater need for cards like surgical and mindbreak trap in sb's.

Format could be fine. Would be worth a one time try.

[TheArchitect]

This would be a lot of fun! I don't think it would just be 1/3rd of the field playing miracles. Stuff like BUG decks would be good if the meta is Miracles-combo-chalice decks. I could see a good team being something like BUG Delver, Death and Taxes, BR Reanimator.

I have not played unified before, but like 6+ years ago I played Legacy 2-headed giant in a tournament and it was awesome! It has similar rules (only 4 copies between both decks) but unlike unified it is a 2v2 player game with just 1 game per match. Me and my teammate won with Burn and Merfolk. But there were some cool combinations people came up with, Dredge + Landstill being one of the scary combos when there is no SB games.