[Premium Article] The New Legacy Banned List, and What it Means for You

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

ANT and Reanimator are very easy decks to pilot.

Legacy ANT is not even remotely as difficult to play as Vintage Storm Combo decks. And Reanimator is about as intuitive as you can possibly have a deck be. Both decks are fairly linear, and their play sequences can be easily learned and applied.

I don't get the hoopa over how 'difficult' these decks are. Counterbalance decks, like the one Nassif used to win GP Chicago, are much more difficult to pilot than either one of those decks.

Iggy Pop was alot harder than ANT.

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I completely disagree with your statement that Counterbalance lists are harder to pilot than ANT. People all seem to be playing the (worse) version of the deck Saito played, which is in principle a quite easy deck. Playing it optimal is much more difficult than playing Counterbalance optimal. ANT can easily lose games to a Thoughseize/Duress cast one turn early, a Ponder not shuffled or general failure on playing Brainstorm correctly (I swear about 95% of the legacy community plays their Brainstorms ineffectively).

There's no reason to compare Legacy ANT to Vintage combo. Of course Vintage combo is harder to pilot correctly than Legacy ANT. On the other hand, decks like DDANT and mainly NLS are harder to pilot that any form of vintage combo. Bringing up another deck that is harder to play doesn't imply the aforementioned deck isn't hard.

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Originally Posted by Bahamuth

I completely disagree with your statement that Counterbalance lists are harder to pilot than ANT. People all seem to be playing the (worse) version of the deck Saito played, which is in principle a quite easy deck. Playing it optimal is much more difficult than playing Counterbalance optimal. ANT can easily lose games to a Thoughseize/Duress cast one turn early, a Ponder not shuffled or general failure on playing Brainstorm correctly (I swear about 95% of the legacy community plays their Brainstorms ineffectively).

There's no reason to compare Legacy ANT to Vintage combo. Of course Vintage combo is harder to pilot correctly than Legacy ANT. On the other hand, decks like DDANT and mainly NLS are harder to pilot that any form of vintage combo. Bringing up another deck that is harder to play doesn't imply the aforementioned deck isn't hard.

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If 95% of the legacy community plays Brainstorms ineffectively, than that almost certainly implies tha CounterTop decks are harder to play than ANT, since Countertop decks run 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, and 4 Ponder. Manipulating Top optimally an entire game requires many, many more decision trees than what 4 Mystical Tutor presents.

People just think that ANT is difficult because they have maybe played Dark Ritual decks before. Vintage combo decks like Grim Long, Pitch Long and TPS are all much more difficult than ANT, as they actually have many, many different tutors that interact differently (DT, Vamp, Imperial Seal, Mystical, Tinker, Grim Tutor, etc).

I believe that people say that ANT is harder than it really is because the errors are more salient than in a deck like Countertop or Goblins or Zoo, where when you make a mistake in ANT, the mistake is usually proximate to losing, where as a similar mistake with CounterTop (i.e. putting the wrong card ontop with Top) is less proximate to the end result. that doesn't make ANT harder to pilot. It just makes the error more visible.

Hell, Goblins has just as many tutoring decisions as ANT, and you could lose just as easily to the wrong kind of deck or answer.

I see absolutely no evidence or reason to think that the skill distribution for ANT is any different than the skill distribution for any other deck in Legacy. the mistakes are just more salient.

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

If 95% of the legacy community plays Brainstorms ineffectively, than that almost certainly implies tha CounterTop decks are harder to play than ANT, since Countertop decks run 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, and 4 Ponder. Manipulating Top optimally an entire game requires many, many more decision trees than what 4 Mystical Tutor presents.

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This is tunnelvisioning. First of all, most decent ANT lists run close to 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder. Also, a lot of CB lists don't run Top and Ponder at all.

But aside from that, you can't, as a combo player yourself (right?) imply that you have to make the same decisions with your cantrips in Counterbalance lists as in any form of combo. That's just not true. When you see a Goyf or a StP on top, all you need to do is consider the board position and consider if that particular card is going to put you ahead. If it doesn't, you fetch. If you see a certain combination of card with your Top, you'll have to consider your entire hand, your opponents hand AND board, your life total, your viable wins in your deck, wether or not you're better off with other cards, wether or not you can expect certain kinds of hate or not AND, in the case of DD combo, what route to victory you plan on taking.

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

People just think that ANT is difficult because they have maybe played Dark Ritual decks before. Vintage combo decks like Grim Long, Pitch Long and TPS are all much more difficult than ANT, as they actually have many, many different tutors that interact differently (DT, Vamp, Imperial Seal, Mystical, Tinker, Grim Tutor, etc).

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Wait, what? They think the deck is difficult BECAUSE they played other forms of Dark Ritual combo? Like, Dark Ritual combo in vintage, which is cleary harder?

Thanks for pointing out that vintage combo is actually more difficult. If you had read my post, you might've noticed that I agreed with that.

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

I believe that people say that ANT is harder than it really is because the errors are more salient than in a deck like Countertop or Goblins or Zoo, where when you make a mistake in ANT, the mistake is usually proximate to losing, where as a similar mistake with CounterTop (i.e. putting the wrong card ontop with Top) is less proximate to the end result. that doesn't make ANT harder to pilot. It just makes the error more visible.

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How does that make ANT not harder to pilot? We're talking about a situation where we want to win out matches. That means we have to make our decisions to such an extend that we make our deck win. If we're allowed to make less optimal plays with a deck, that is definitely an argument to claim that deck is less skill-intensive than a deck that loses when you make a single mistake?

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

Hell, Goblins has just as many tutoring decisions as ANT, and you could lose just as easily to the wrong kind of deck or answer.

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Aside from the fact that that's not even true (Goblins has Matron, which is in 80% of the times a trivial decision anyway, ANT has 4 Mystical and at least 3 Infernal Tutor, which, as I hope you know, are used as tutors quite often in both pre-combo and mid-combo to up the storm count), the decisions are harder than those you make with Goblins. Also, the fact that you may or may not have more tutors doesn't directly imply that a deck is harder to pilot than any other, just like the 'salientness' of a deck and the amount of cantrips does or doesn't.

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Double post

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

ANT and Reanimator are very easy decks to pilot.

Legacy ANT is not even remotely as difficult to play as Vintage Storm Combo decks. And Reanimator is about as intuitive as you can possibly have a deck be. Both decks are fairly linear, and their play sequences can be easily learned and applied.

I don't get the hoopa over how 'difficult' these decks are. Counterbalance decks, like the one Nassif used to win GP Chicago, are much more difficult to pilot than either one of those decks.

Iggy Pop was alot harder than ANT.

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Oh of course. The problem was that despite how easy they were to learn, people could still manage to fuck up with them.


Silent Requiem pretty much struck gold here:

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Originally Posted by Silent Requiem

Actually, if they were indeed out to tone down ANT and Reanimator, then banning Mystical was absolutely the right thing to do.

What Wizards has effectively said is NOT that combo has no place, but that combo should be tricky to play, and that the tradeoff for avoiding interaction with your opponent is increased interaction with your deck. Mystical Tutor made combo too easy to play.

They didn't ban Entomb because they think Entomb is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did not ban Ad Nauseam because they think Ad Nauseam is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did ban Mystical Tutor because it is a force multiplier that makes otherwise reasonable cards and strategies too powerful and consistent.

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Not much more needs to be said.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

The issue here is that we've now lost an important boogeyman for the format. Combo is essentially dead in that most people who could play it, won't, or won't play it well enough to stay out of the 0-X-drop bracket.

I mean, Storm was less of an issue than Reanimator. I realize that you, as a storm pilot, would be unhappy with incompetent combo players, but in most cases they were pretty innocuous in terms of the wider metagame - basically, the same as bad Dredge pilots. If you didn't know the matchup and didn't have the hate, they'd get you, but if you did then it wasn't an issue. Reanimator was a deck that people with half a brain and playtesting experience could destroy tournaments with, although that hasn't happened of late because many of the recent Reanimator pilots seem to have lacked one or the other property. Regardless, most of the hate people were packing was laughably ineffective. Karakas? Inkwell. Crypt, Relic, and Faerie Macabre? Needle and Show and Tell. Bounce? Counters already in the main, but Spell Pierce is a fine backup. I mean, the deck was this close to being completely idiot proof, which is kind of scary.

I don't appreciate the collateral damage done by the ban decision. If the DCI had wanted to stop Reanimator, they could have just admitted they fucked up and re-banned Entomb. Storm combo is more of an issue in Europe than America, so just looking at GP Madrid and assuming the worst is pretty loose. If they looked at the Top 8 results of all the SCG events this year, they would have seen that both Force of Will and Tarmogoyf showed up far more often than Mystical Tutor. Mystical also enabled a bunch of funky Tier II strategies like Nightmare's Mossnought-Emrakul deck. Why mess with all of that? Storm and Reanimator could be targeted with surgical precision by banning Ad Noz and Entomb, respectively (Menendian says as much in the article, for those of you who can't read it).

This just feels so...unnecessary. Like, yeah, all of the cool kids in Magic think Zoo is just a dumb little kid's deck and that all Legacy players suck and that if REAL Magic players played Legacy, it would be all storm decks, all the time, but the point is that the real metagame is reasonably healthy and diverse, with an aggro deck currently on a winning streak.

Whatever. What's done is done, and now that combo is gone I might even play Aggro Loam in Columbus (assuming I go).

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I wasn't really unhappy with terrible storm combo players. I was unhappy because I had to work much harder to win my matches because the number of storm decks increased by such a huge quantity. The result was more storm hate and more decks that kick the shit out of storm. Granted, it probably made me a better player having to fight through more hate than usual so I will concede there.

You explained the nature of Reanimator very well. It really is idiot proof. But isn't that the point? Magic is supposed to be about skill vs. skill, not skill vs. cards. Though it really does come down to skill vs. cards sometimes, having idiot proof decks takes more skill out of the equation than WoTC was comfortable with.

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Originally Posted by Bahamuth

Wait, what? They think the deck is difficult BECAUSE they played other forms of Dark Ritual combo? Like, Dark Ritual combo in vintage, which is cleary harder?

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The word 'never' was missing in that sentence.

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Also, the fact that you may or may not have more tutors doesn't directly imply that a deck is harder to pilot than any other, just like the 'salientness' of a deck and the amount of cantrips does or doesn't.

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It's not the salience of the deck that makes a deck harder to play. That's not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the salience of the error, and it's proximity to the conclusion of the game, make it seems like ANT is a harder deck to play than it really is, or compared to other decks.

That is, when you mess up with ANT, usually the crowd behind you can see it easily, and you lose the game in the next turn or so. When you mess up with a Top with CounterTop, or play the wrong creature on turn two with Zoo, or drop the wrong land on turn one or two with Lands, the error doesn't manifest in a game loss until much, much later in the game. So the error is both less proximate and therefore less salient, but also just less visible, and therefore less salient. But no less present.

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Originally Posted by Smmenen

It's not the salience of the deck that makes a deck harder to play. That's not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the salience of the error, and it's proximity to the conclusion of the game, make it seems like ANT is a harder deck to play than it really is, or compared to other decks.

That is, when you mess up with ANT, usually the crowd behind you can see it easily, and you lose the game in the next turn or so. When you mess up with a Top with CounterTop, or play the wrong creature on turn two with Zoo, or drop the wrong land on turn one or two with Lands, the error doesn't manifest in a game loss until much, much later in the game. So the error is both less proximate and therefore less salient, but also just less visible, and therefore less salient. But no less present.

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Actually, that error is not going to manifest in many cases at all. But even if it does, the fact that it is, for two reasons, less salient, is an argument to state that it is less difficult to play.

Why haven't you adressed any of the other points I made? Those are much more important that this anyway.

Its not that relevant when the error manifests / becomes apparent, as i doesnt change the outcome.
It lies in the nature of (storm) combo decks that they are harder to play as they are less forgiving since you put everýthing in one basket (simply put). Aggro control is far more forgiving compared to that.

"Pure" ANT is easier to play than Vintage combo, simply because the deck is streamlined to use this one engine AN, compared to Vintage decks, which use a large amount of singleton bombs, which all need a different approach.
This changes if you add a couple of other engines like NLS does. At that point you can no longer say that such a deck is easier to play than any vintage storm combo deck.
There metagame considerations aswell, e.g. which is the more combo friendly format...

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Originally Posted by deadlock

Its not that relevant when the error manifests / becomes apparent, as i doesnt change the outcome.
It lies in the nature of (storm) combo decks that they are harder to play as they are less forgiving since you put everýthing in one basket (simply put).

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But being less forgiving doesn't mean that they are harder to play. The gravity of the harm may be greater, but that doesn't mean that the decision was harder. It just meant more.

Be careful about essentializing the 'nature' of storm combo.

Less forgiving = harder to play
If you fuck up with a non-storm deck, at least you can recover from your mistake. Play mistakes don't put you behind; they literally kill you. This can be said of pretty much any storm combo deck in the format. If you fuck up, it isn't likely you will be going off again for a few turns. Those few turns is all a deck with a half decent clock needs to kill you.

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Originally Posted by Bahamuth

First of all, most decent ANT lists run close to 4 Top, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder. Also, a lot of CB lists don't run Top and Ponder at all.

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really ?

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Originally Posted by denial

really ?

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I think he was referring more to threshold (which use to be synonymous with counterbalance decks). Most Threshold decks in this day and age do not actually run sensei's top or even counterbalance anymore. Not as sure about Ponder though.

Here's my problem.

Legacy is [as of july 2010, WAS] a Rocks---Papers---Scisors format. Combo--->Aggro------>Control. Now that Rocks is gone, Scissors is the best. Paper just can't win. This is in no way good for the format.

People look at Mystcial and say it was dominating, but this is false, much like how in Vintage, people thought Flash was this unbeatable deck, while it only was in 10 % of top 8s. Timmy Toughnuts with Zoo doesn't like to lose to tendrils, so everytime he plays it, its going to seem like he's played it more. This creates complaints about how good combo is, while in reality, Zoo and New Horizons have been CRUSHING everything in the latest SCGs.

Now, WoTC is biased towards Aggro, creature based decks, and dislikes combo. Aaron Forsythe admitted this in his interview with SCG. That being said, it was sort of the perfect storm for combo to get nuked----> There are 2 tier 1 combo decks, Timmy Toughnuts hates loosing to them and makes a scene, despite that Timmy and his buddies have been crushing everything---> WoTC, the figurative mommy, who Timmy Toughnuts goes running to sends mystical tutor to its room for a while, for being a bad boy, and making Timmy Toughnuts cry.

Now, if they REALLY had to ban a card, why not goyf? There were 24 copies of goyf in the top 8 of SCG Philly and only 4 copies of mystical in that top 8. The same stat holds true for SCG Seattle. In GP Madrid, there were 12 copies of Mystical in the top 8, and 20 copies of Goyf in that same top 8. Also, goyf has infiltrated many archtypes, while mystical is excluseveliy in storm and reanimator decks. Without mystical to keep goyf out of every top 8 spot, how long until he gets banned?

Goyf is WAYYY more dominant than mystical, and if WoTC truely NEEDED to ban something, and truely cared about archetype equality, goyf should have been hit.

First they fucked up Vintage, and now they've set thier sights on legacy. I am truely and thoughorly disguisted with the DCI and their unfair bias towards aggro

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Originally Posted by honestabe

Here's my problem.

Legacy is [as of july 2010, WAS] a Rocks---Papers---Scisors format. Combo--->Aggro------>Control. Now that Rocks is gone, Scissors is the best. Paper just can't win. This is in no way good for the format.

People look at Mystcial and say it was dominating, but this is false, much like how in Vintage, people thought Flash was this unbeatable deck, while it only was in 10 % of top 8s. Timmy Toughnuts with Zoo doesn't like to lose to tendrils, so everytime he plays it, its going to seem like he's played it more. This creates complaints about how good combo is, while in reality, Zoo and New Horizons have been CRUSHING everything in the latest SCGs.

Now, WoTC is biased towards Aggro, creature based decks, and dislikes combo. Aaron Forsythe admitted this in his interview with SCG. That being said, it was sort of the perfect storm for combo to get nuked----> There are 2 tier 1 combo decks, Timmy Toughnuts hates loosing to them and makes a scene, despite that Timmy and his buddies have been crushing everything---> WoTC, the figurative mommy, who Timmy Toughnuts goes running to sends mystical tutor to its room for a while, for being a bad boy, and making Timmy Toughnuts cry.

Now, if they REALLY had to ban a card, why not goyf? There were 24 copies of goyf in the top 8 of SCG Philly and only 4 copies of mystical in that top 8. The same stat holds true for SCG Seattle. In GP Madrid, there were 12 copies of Mystical in the top 8, and 20 copies of Goyf in that same top 8. Also, goyf has infiltrated many archtypes, while mystical is excluseveliy in storm and reanimator decks. Without mystical to keep goyf out of every top 8 spot, how long until he gets banned?

Goyf is WAYYY more dominant than mystical, and if WoTC truely NEEDED to ban something, and truely cared about archetype equality, goyf should have been hit.

First they fucked up Vintage, and now they've set thier sights on legacy. I am truely and thoughorly disguisted with the DCI and their unfair bias towards aggro

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Thats a really pessimistic way of looking at the format. Rock/Paper/Scissor isn't how this game works or nobody would play it. Winning is determined by skill, not by what you get paired against.

Control isn't dead just because aggro doesn't have to deal with as much combo. On the contrary, Landstill has been on the rise and thats not because ANT exists. Countermagic is good against everything you know, not just combo.

As for, "lol ban Goyf!!!" If they did ban Goyf, ANT and Reanimator would kick the shit out of absolutely everything so your argument fails pretty hard there.

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Originally Posted by Vacrix

Thats a really pessimistic way of looking at the format. Rock/Paper/Scissor isn't how this game works or nobody would play it. Winning is determined by skill, not by what you get paired against.

Control isn't dead just because aggro doesn't have to deal with as much combo. On the contrary, Landstill has been on the rise and thats not because ANT exists. Countermagic is good against everything you know, not just combo.

As for, "lol ban Goyf!!!" If they did ban Goyf, ANT and Reanimator would kick the shit out of absolutely everything so your argument fails pretty hard there.

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Countermagic is pretty bad against Zoo.

Also, pairings do influence whether or not you win. That's the basis of the theory behind the skill of "metagaming" - namely, that you're much more likely to win if you choose a deck with good matchups against the expected field. If you show up to a tournament with Merfolk and play against Zoo for the first three rounds, you're probably going home early no matter how good you are.

Oh of course they influence whether or not you win. That wasn't his point.

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Paper just can't win.

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Originally Posted by Vacrix

Oh of course they influence whether or not you win. That wasn't his point.

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Well, making allowance for some hyperbole, he actually does have a point. The current and probably future Legacy metagame is made up largely of little rock-paper-scissors dynamics.

I mean, let's speculate a bit here. Zoo is an obvious deck going forward. NO Counterbalance has lost one of its main reasons for existence (a strong and relatively prevalent combo deck) and will likely spin off a variety of Counterbalance child decks that are more control-oriented. Most of these will probably opt for Enlightened Tutor and either Thopter-Sword or Painter-Stone as a combo kill, but otherwise be light on creatures. Many of them will need to be built specifically with beating Zoo in mind because of how mediocre blue is in general against that deck. However, in doing so, many of them are likely to lose points to a tempo-oriented Merfolk build using Spell Pierce, Daze, Cursecatcher, Wasteland, and possibly substituting Ports in for manlands (or moving the manlands to the sideboard). However, that deck will pretty much be a dog to Zoo and its relevance in the format will depend entirely on there being a sufficient amount of blue-based control available. This works for Jace TMS control builds eschewing Counterbalance as well.

Lands is also an obvious deck going forward. Setting aside the expense of the deck, its presence is likely to warp regional metagames around it. An unopposed Lands deck is pretty good against Zoo and can board specifically to beat blue control decks, so it would do well in inbred blue-v-Zoo metagames. However, successful but sparse Lands decks may cause shifts in the meta towards Counterbalance strategies with maindeck ways to answer EE and Lands' other card advantage elements. Those decks tend to be slower, Supreme Blue-ish decks using Trinket Mage packages and perhaps a combo kill (Chain-Swans, maybe?). They would also be soft to Zoo.

Midrange decks like The Rock or Aggro Loam can be built to beat Zoo while punishing other aggro-control decks, especially blue-based ones. However, they tend to be soft to heavy control decks in the Jace TMS Landstill vein. Those decks in turn are soft to Merfolk and tempo strategies like New Horizons that may in turn be favorable matchups for midrange decks.

Combo will exist in small quantities on a regional scale. It will most likely beat Zoo, but not beat blue control decks. However, its presence may increase the chances of a deck like Merfolk doing well because of its ability to knock out red aggro decks early on, leaving the control decks Merfolk is favored against. This effect will be heavily dependent on pairings, pilot skill, and the amount of combo.

Similarly, Reanimator will likely be too slow to consistently beat a Zoo deck with hate, but it will probably be able to rumble with the control decks. That would increase Zoo and midrange's power at the expense of Landstill evolutions and the decks that prey on them (Merfolk).

The point is that any deck with variable matchups will have some where it is heavily unfavored and some where it is the clear favorite. The degree of "clear" or "heavily" are dependent on the deck in question, but some archetypes are just strategically inferior to others in a given matchup. Merfolk will not consistently beat Zoo even in the hands of a skilled pilot (without sacrificing tons of board space, anyway). Zoo will not consistently beat a Lands deck built to not keel over to PoP. These aren't "just can't win," but for a lot of players and in a lot of situations, it will certainly feel like it.

One interesting thing to note from this analysis is that correct metagaming may now be more important than ever. Decks have very defined matchups and there aren't a lot of confounding factors anymore. The loss of Mystical is likely to re-consolidate the format around a different set of good decks: Zoo, New Horizons, and blue control of various types, with Lands, Merfolk, storm, and Reanimator all being viable Tier 1.5 or metagame decks. In that sense, regional metagames may very well become rock-paper-scissors affairs.

Regardless, he automatically loses the argument by asking for Tarmogoyf to be banned. At this point, banning Tarmogoyf would be as format-destroying as banning Brainstorm.

That pretty much sums up the format. Good analysis sir.
But you proved my point. It isn't as well defined a metagame as rock/paper/scissors.
Its more like rock/paper/scissors/magnet/papershredder/paperweight/hammer/gun/sword. :D

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Originally Posted by Vacrix

That pretty much sums up the format. Good analysis sir.
But you proved my point. It isn't as well defined a metagame as rock/paper/scissors.
Its more like rock/paper/scissors/magnet/papershredder/paperweight/hammer/gun/sword. :D

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wouldn't the sword go before the gun?

And yes I think that those decks that are able to adapt to the widest variety of decks are probably going to be the ones that become the new Tier 1 in this new meta. Unfortunately I am not sure how many of said decks there are. I know Zoo will likely be very popular due to its ease of play, but in all honesty I am not sure how configurable that deck happens to be.

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Originally Posted by denial

really ?

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Yeah, that was a typo. Wanted to say ponder.