I miss him already. Like Painter Died for another's sins Elves got dick punched for another's mistakes. It's borderline criminal.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
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I miss him already. Like Painter Died for another's sins Elves got dick punched for another's mistakes. It's borderline criminal.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
Well, I think Top was likely right in the grand scheme of things, but the Deathrite ban is a poor, poor precedent. For the first time, I actually dread Wizard's announcement, since the ideological precedent they set there is very dangerous to the idea of Legacy itself, akin to what they do in culling the top Modern decks from time to time. I think it's fine for Modern, because that is part and parcel of Modern from the get-go. It never was, nor should it ever be part of Legacy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
From this it sounds like you have the general view of "Legacy should exhibit the most powerful strategies available to MTGs entire card pool" which implies a sort of "don't ban anything" philosophy. Can you articulate why you think DRS shouldn't have been banned but the top ban was ok?Quote:
Well, I think Top was likely right in the grand scheme of things, but the Deathrite ban is a poor, poor precedent. For the first time, I actually dread Wizard's announcement, since the ideological precedent they set there is very dangerous to the idea of Legacy itself, akin to what they do in culling the top Modern decks from time to time. I think it's fine for Modern, because that is part and parcel of Modern from the get-go. It never was, nor should it ever be part of Legacy.
You can still play Nic Fit now if you want, it's just as competitive as it's ever been (i.e. not very) and in fact Caleb just recently 5-0d a legacy league playing battle of wits, of all things. This complaint is blatant nostalgia-piningQuote:
It's just a frustration that the format feels stagnant and while legacy is a slow shifting format it feels to me that the format only gets smaller and smaller in terms of diversity which is what drew me and many others to it in the first place. I remember reading Durwards Nic Fit articles and loving the deck. I remember seeing really cool painter decks and a maverick deck with multiple tool boxes built in and a 4 color lands deck that has a million different tools to fight any situation. Even the tempo decks were cool because they got to use a card like stifle to pair with wasteland to mana screw people. I'm just disappointed that the format has moved away from cool innovation and interesting deck building choices to being "if you want to win 12 of your cards have already been chosen for you now just go figure out what cards you want to kill with".
There isn't any way to prove the following assertion, but I would put money on the fact that if he has less viewer interest playing legacy than modern it's because the modern fanbase is much larger, because the format is more accessible, not because the gameplay in legacy is less interestingQuote:
Legacy has so boring gameplay from a viewers perspective he doesnt even play it. (because he is rarely playing tiers)
Here is something that you say:Quote:
I'll repeat why I think you're wrong here. The purpose of the analogy was to explain why someone who wants to make a change to X may not be interested in Y. In more general terms, the purpose of the analogy is to illustrate another situation where the same relation between X and Y appears.
"I believe, is that banning Brainstorm would be a giant leap in the direction of flattening out the dense concentration of decks that build their consistency mainly on Brainstorm. It is by far the most powerful consistency tool."
I claim that what you want (an eternal format without dominant consistency tools) already exists - modern. (Analogy: "You can buy a car with a stereo - Volvo")
In your car analogy you attempt to counter this suggestion with "I don't want a volvo, I want a Ferrari with a stereo". Therefore, for this analogy to work:
1) You need to explain what legacy without brainstorm uniquely offers that can't be found in modern. (It's trivial to to explain what a Ferrari with a stereo offers that you can't get with a Volvo, don't assume that brainstorm-less legacy has the same obvious unique appeal)
2) You aren't only asking for your own Ferrari to have a stereo, but for everyone's Ferrari to have a stereo, so you need to justify that your desire for Ferraris to have stereos is so correct that it's right to install a stereo in everyone's Ferrari, many of whom don't want a stereo and like their Ferrari specificlly because it doesn't have a stereo in it (e.g. other manufacturers don't offer a performance vehicle without extraneous technological luxuries, other formats don't have brainstorm + fetchlands)
LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by NeckBird
You do realize you are completely misrepresenting it. Actually it was more like:
Dice: blue dominance, therefore metagame sucks, therefore I'll go play modern
Me: goodbye
He: don't you dare deny that legacy is too expensive and too many people are abandoning the format!
LOL again, what a kind of non sequitur!
It's a conversation like "can you tell me what time is it?" "sure, my favorite color is yellow (I hate blue of course)"
As for GP Richmond numbers, one occurrence doesn't mean anything. Maybe wizards should stop be so USA-centric, plan a couple GP less in America and a couple more GP legacy in Europe.
Oh no, you start being serious just about when I was going to suggest wizards should not ban Brainstorm nor fetchland but should indeed ban those fetches that let you find a basic island.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Seriously, I had a laugh at you above but you have good points here. I'm afraid we can't do much about the aging issue and those are the major thing, not people dissatisfied with the format. But there's hope, in my city the legacy community is actually growing, we even have people with kids who is starting playing again. Something we can do is organize playing with proxy for younger people and letting them borrow what they lack for the real tournaments. We are having some new players in this way.
I disagree with the part where the format would be narrowing. We just had an almost new introduction in the metagame (death shadow), one that incidentally addresses also some of the money issues letting you play with shocklands and less Abu duals.
Modern players could come into legacy with Humans.deck. It already made some appearances and I expect it to become at least tier 1.5 in a couple of months, as the new death and taxes.
Agree with almost everything except maybe the TL;DRQuote:
Originally Posted by H
OH! And the answer is Brainstorm of course
Isn't this premodern already?Quote:
Originally Posted by H
You're absolutely correct here, and this is precisely the reason I quit Modern—probably for good.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
Witnessed an interesting conversation the other week, in which one of the participants argued that any card with ≥40% metagame penetration (whatever the hell that means) should be banned. I'd say "Discuss," but given the tenor of his arguments for such a proposition (and the obvious consequences of such an approach that we can predict with certainty), it'd probably be better if we didn't.
If I heard correctly the GP richmond legacy still had higher participation than GP richmond standard
This...but most people do believe they need a tuned legacy tier 1 or possibly tier 2 deck to be able to even compete at weeklies...sadly.Quote:
Originally Posted by mistercakes
Didn’t have to wait a month for people to say DRS wasn’t a problem.
Think that beats “top wasn’t a problem” by a month right?
OK, well, allow me to preface this by saying I do not believe in Dataism, or in this case, we can say succinctly that decisions should be solely (or even mostly) data driven. As in, it isn't simply numerical prevalence that should inform Banned and Restricted decisions. Indeed, I do believe generally speaking Wizards does conform to this ideal for Legacy and Vintage, although how much relative weight they give to it I don't know. That being said, data is important in formulating a reasonable "picture" of the metagame. As are other considerations.Quote:
Originally Posted by kombatkiwi
Now, why would Top be a reasonable ban, where Deathrite, in my opinion, was not? Well, first, I did not advocate specifically for a Top ban before it happened. Simply though, I did feel that Miracles (the deck itself) was too "good" in the meta and that the meta was not aptly able to self-correct itself. I do recall mentioning that part of that issue was with how Sensei's Diving Top was designed, as in, it was relatively uniquely difficult to simultaneously defeat while not unduly harming other other matchups. In this way, where we found ourselves, in a perception of the metagame sense, was that Miracles was the "best deck" and so BUG was the defacto "best" way to defeat it. Again, not analytically true, per se, but perceptually true in that this is how it seemed and was not demonstrably untrue.
A monentary aside, I do not believe in "no Ban action for Legacy." Rather, I believe in minimal Ban actions. So, if, as we had in the case of the pre-Top Ban era, the perception of Miracles being the "best deck" and so then the format slowly devolving into Deck vs. counter-Deck(s). This is not what I would call "good." Now, is that the exact road we were on? It is hard to say, but perceptually it seemed that way. Analytically? Very debatable.
I do believe though, that Top's design was obnoxiously good. The cards needed to effectively fight it were not widely playable enough to warrant playing in the numbers that would need to effectively fight the Miracles deck and not simultaneously harm one against the wider meta. Therefor one was not particularly capable (in general) of making a deck simultaneously positive matchup-wise versus Miracles and versus the majority of the meta. So, in this case, we default to one of the fundamental tenets of the Magic metagame: that it is better to just do the thing than try to stop people from doing the thing. This is where things get degenerative. This means that in general, the metagame would slide more toward Miracles as people give up fighting it and just start playing it. This is essentially what happened in the case of Survival of the Fittest, where the European meta did not devolve, but the American one did. Why? Well, it was perceptual not analytical. Americans perceived that the fundamental tenet was at play, where the Europeans did not. Was Survival ban worthy though? Yes, even if it was only too powerful perceptually. The question of if the meta could have eventually self-corrected to Survival is a valid question that I don't know the answer to though.
Miracles found itself in the same sort of position. Except Miracles was given a far longer run (rightly). The metagame never self-corrected though. Whether this is due to people invoking the tenet of "just play it" or there being a lack of adequate tools to fight it is largely irrelevant. The fact is, there was no way to (seemingly) break up Miracles "dominance" (that is, the perception that it was simply the best deck).
This largely would have been incidental, were it not for the fact that Top, by virtue of it's absurd design was also a time sink and detrimental in the long term of design space. To spice it, I doubt if Wizards was outright lying in saying that time considerations were a part, but certainly misleading in how much of a consideration that actually was. All these things, that is: Miracles dominance over a long span of time, the perceptual fact of Miracles being labeled "the best deck" and it's over-the-top design were all nails in the coffin. So, how does this differ from the case of Deathrite?
So, similarly, Deathrite enjoyed widespread play (even more so than Top) and great results. It was even a part of the so proclaimed "best deck in Legacy" (which, incidentally is what I am sure got in banned). The difference however, is that Deathrite was not a driving force toward any deck's dominance. Simply, it was the best available card one could be played in what was the best shell. That is to say, Deathrite Shaman did not make Grixis the "best" deck, which is actually post-facto information borne out now, but it was my intuition back then too. What Deathrite did do, was to make BUG in the neighborhood of Grixis, which is now, sadly, not the case. Deathrite also went a good distance toward making Snapcaster less of the defacto best creature, generally, which ironically enough is exactly what happened for a good portion of time in Modern post-Deathrite.
There were few decks that could not, using maindeck cards, fight off Deathrite. Not that Deathrite wasn't very good. It was, it was the Brainstorm of utility creatures, exceedingly good. And it was highly played because of that. But, like Brainstorm, it did not, in a manner, promote one deck to the detriment of others, or any given strategy over others. It's a nuance thing, but that is my point, these decisions are all nuance. Analytically, Brainstorm should be banned. Except it isn't. Deathrite lay in that category to me.
I disagreed at the time and to me, the results and feel of the format only bore out that Deathrite's influence on the meta was a net-positive. Grixis was an ideal choice preban (just so happened to also have a tiny Green splash) and now it still is. Except now Delve creatures are even better than they already were, as is Snapcaster. Where did we get to? It's flatly regressive.
My point was that your comment makes no sense. Cheering at others dissatisfaction does not help the format itself. So no, he got it pitty much right.Quote:
Originally Posted by talpa
Also the whole "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" attitude amuses me. Because it's not like I personally have anything to lose sleeving up decks in other formats. I just wish the format I enjoyed the most was this one. It's not.
I have said in the past both everything I have said above and that I no longer discuss Brainstorm. So if you want to suggest anything about Brainstorm be my guest, but I will not converse on that topic. No point. My views are known and Wizards has confirmed its a pillar. Why waste my time? It's not like my views are secret.Quote:
Originally Posted by talpa
Also I have never suggested the removal of Fetches. Ever.
Yea, you where being a dick, I noticed. But hey, it's the internet. At least your not an idiot so you have one up on Reddit posters.Quote:
Originally Posted by talpa
As for dissatisfaction. Feline is basicly gone, Einherjer is not really seen anymkre, Megadeus was agreeing with the stagnant nature of the format last page. Slowly, the old guard are fading away. Not for the same individual reasons, we haven't all gotten together to throw a wake for legacy for example, but each individually for our own reasons. Some of it was specialisions in decks that are no longer viable, others it's stagnation of the format. I seem to hear more often that Legacy is about drinking beer then playing games. God I wish I lived in Texas sometimes. Not just for Legacy but still.
But hey, let's all sit around in a circle and talk our feelings out. It's not like remembering what we have lost isn't as depressing as fuck. Oh wait. I need a beer.
I have, as you know being in the Lands Channel, not wanted DRS gone over other more egregious (imo) creatures. So what do you label those of us who held this view months before the ban?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Do a thought experiment where every one of those cards is banned every month. How long do you think it would take to arrive at a format where there are only literal Grizzly Bears legal?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
It's an absurd proposition that is a race to the bottom (which you allude to). It's why a data-only driven model is certainly a poor implementation if your intent is to have a sustainable format. See my post above for my expanded views.
It's been more than a month, pretty sure it's been two. But I said it before the ban and I'll still say it now, until something demonstrates to me otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Don't imagine I am the kind of person to not change my mind when presented with reasonable cases. Once upon a not so long time ago, I was even a post-Modernist like most everyone else here. But I realized it was a trap. And so I changed my position.
*checks calendar* huh, guess I should cut back on the rum then. That said, I think it's a matter of perspectiveQuote:
Originally Posted by H
You certainly aren't wrong, however, it homogenized the format tactically. Strategically the format was very diverse, except all the games played out the same way. Almost every deck went underground sea>ponder, or underground sea>deathrite shaman. While games certainly ended differently (be it, getting beat to death via delver, exceedingly large walking ballista, the same parasitic strix cast multiple times, etc), how they got there was exceedingly similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
Misguided. DRS made cards like Leovold and your favorite merfolk much more castable than they would otherwise. Turn 3 TNN/Leo is much easier to handle than turn 2. True Name still sees play, but Leovold has almost disappeared from the format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Admittedly this is only a couple of months out and Legacy moves at a snails pace so that is liable to change in a year.
Nah, lay it on man. :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
But you are absolutely correct. It is a matter of perspective. Because what inevitably does define Legacy is not set in any sort of stone. I don't preface all that I wrote above with the fact that it is solely my opinion, but it indeed is.
Indeed a fact. However, minus Deathrite, we've extingiushed that line, but not the root cause of it. Delver decks are still a thing, just in non-BUG colors. Food Chain and Alluren are simply not particularly competitive things now, seemingly. So, in reality, we actually have less diversity, if we look at it this way. Which is to say, really, that this is also a matter of perception.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
I can't pretend that Leovold was probably a good idea to print, as is. However it still then saddens me to have lost Deathrite for keeping TNN/Leovold (which are, by my arbitrary metric, more degenerate and less of a positive for the format) then. Your second point though is what I point out though, that there is very little upside now to splashing Green over Red, which is why you see so few Leovold around. Simply, without Deathrite, Green has very little to offer, so the format now homogenizes around Grixis, since the pay-off of Red is better, for 'Blasts and Bolt. Again, you are correct that the format homogenized around Deathrite, but now it just homogenizes around the next best option, so where have we really gotten? Time will tell, I guess.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Mine was exactly the same. I simply chose, for once, not spending too many words in mocking your whining.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
It's not like that specific post of yours was particularly rich in content, it was just you crying and complaining. On the contrary, after me being a dick, you immediately spent a few words more and made a very interesting meditation.
Wait. Are those pillars of the legacy community worldwide? USA wide? The legacy is dead if they are gone? OHHHHH MY GOOOODQuote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
So sorry for you guys. But if instead you are referring to TheSource users, and that means that THE FORUM is dying, well, good luck have fun to you all and goodbye.
It just so it happens that in Italy the forum dedicated to eternal died three years ago (by the way I suspect Ehineriar came here from there when that one closed), and the legacy scene is still alive and kicking. Try to understand the difference between the forum and the format, the internet and the real life. And while you're there, as I already said, try to understand USA is not the fucking center of the world.
Regards.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
I am talking about the format, not the site. I would be shocked if about 70% of Legacy based communication is not done though Facebook/Discord/other direct points of contact these days. (The rest on Twitter, Reddit or other public facing sites.) Facebook itself is so omnipresent now that there is no longer dedicated Aus eternal forums any more. I'm not complaining about that, it's the way of the internet now.
Also you say "Whining" I say answering a question asked.
Question: Hey, why ain't you all bitching about this T16 finish.
Answer: Becouse it wasn't news and Legacy is ecpected to be stale. You all already knew that and why.
You: You where whining.
Me: Nope, just answered a question about why I didn't bother to bitch about a T16 with 13 decks that all are built around the same ideal and thus are not shockingly unexpected in the T16.
You: Hey you said something else.
Me: Nope, still just rehashing old shit that I have said before.
I like to think that the most important thing I do is is fail to update the DTB correctly, not converse over this shit. But hey, who knows.
He's just mad his ancestors got sent to Australia and not the other, more free, british colonyQuote:
Originally Posted by talpa
It's always those pesky ancestors!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Just like those jerks who thought Brainstorm was a good idea!
https://i.imgur.com/wv571I6.gif
To quote my uni professor: They got the Puritans, we got the Convicts. We got the better end of the deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
We don’t have a witchcraft problem at least
FtfyQuote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Another noticeable difference between former British colonies, the Americas do not attempt to kill humans with fauna and flora at every turn.
Hey, they try and kill us, not the other way around.Quote:
Originally Posted by ahg113
So you guys aren’t trying to weaponize your plant and wild life?
It's a trade off, we have less strategic diversity, but the decks are much more distinct from one another. They don't have deathrite to enable the extreme flexibility they once had to play seemingly any role they needed to. Sure Grixis Control/Delver/etc are going to have flexibility with cantrips but they won't have the mana flexibility to be able to play anything they need/want. I'd argue for as much that was loss strategically (basically all the creature-combo decks), the decks have become far more distinct. The format can be as strategically diverse as you want, but it means little if the games themselves all play out the same regardless of what the deck wants to do overall.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
I also suspect there is likely a food chain/aluren shell out there that is decent but the relative obscurity of those decks means they are going to be developed much more slowly.
Why would we need to, come here they will kill you for us.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEeq5qGh8I
Good news, after about 3 years of consistently firing every week I heard the local event this week has dwindled to 4 people. Format is alive and skill intensive thanks to brainstorm!
OH no! What happened once in Kennesaw (less than 30k people?) is surely representative of a worldwide tendency that will last forever!Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Please continue with the USA vs Australia I was having fun (as for my ancestors I am simply happy they weren't British at all)
@dice sorry if I misunderstood, still thinking you were attributing an effect (less people) to the wrong cause (metagame instead of card costs and people aging). Which seems awfully like whining just because every occasion is good to complain about blue (even when the metagame is not stale)
Double posting: since everyone likes to share his own personal statistic, I'll write down mine.
In my city we have a weekly saturday afternoon event in a local shop with numbers ranging from 15 to 30 players. Every thursday evening a group of 15 people (only partially overlapping with the first one) goes to a pub for beer and legacy testing.
We have two cities in the range of an hour car drive who helds "leagues" of monthly legacy tournaments.
Last sunday we had an event with legacy and modern tournaments on a span of two days. Legacy main event reached higher numbers than modern; even if the timing of the tournament wasn't optimal (plenty of people still on holidays here) and there was some fear of failure, more than 140 people showed up for legacy.
I couldn't go there but a friends of mine shared (via whatsapp) the whole collection of each player, deck and their results.
Metagame considerations: the first in the swiss portion of the tournament was a Lands deck (they split in top8, I suppose in order to go have a beer).
My friend also calculated the "average tournament points" for each archetype (in order to have an idea of "the deck" strength in the metagame, trying to separate it for the single player performance). You know what the best deck was? Lands. The two worst? Miracle and Grixis Control. So much for the blue dominance.
The second best positioned deck? UB Death Shadow. Ok, this one plays blue: but it's a relatively new deck (so much for the metagame being stale) and a cheap one in comparison to others (so much for the format cost entry barrier). We also saw on coverage a budget turbo depths deck (no abu duals) who was on 5-0 at the moment (and depths on the average resulted the best performing combo deck, again so much for the blue dominance).
Finally I can't understand how you can complain when you have a circuit like SCG, which I'd love to have in Europe. Here we have MKM Series but they hold way fewer events... and personally, from my place in Italy, I think it's more difficult to fly to those locations.
Let's have a bit more optimism, please.
LEGACY
IS
NOT
"THE" (NOR "A")
DEAD
FORMAT
(at least not until it encounters some of the australian flora and fauna :tongue:)
PS:
Quote:
I went into Grand Prix Richmond believing that Legacy was a diverse and balanced format. The tournament results bore that out, with seven distinct archetypes appearing in the Top 8
Reid Duke, today on CFB
And the issue, of course, is that I don't really value "distinction" as a realistic achievable goal. Consider how many decks begin with 4 Force, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder and go from there. The singled out issue though is that many also had 4 Deathrite. That is where the line was somehow passed? To me, the answer is no. You are free to disagree, but I'll still say that nothing of Deathrite moved it from simply exceptionally good to degenerate and ban-worthy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Well brainstorm and ponder are "pillars of the format" and no one wants fow banned. So yes, drs in 40% of placing decks (per mtgtop8) was the line. Numbers that high suggest the card is objectively better than the rest of the cards in the format, as people are prepared for it but still can't beat it consistently. The same logic is used to break up monopolies or stop mergers in order to maintain acceptable levels of competition.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
My perspective is that the format is currently less healthy than it was before the bans. Diversity seems to be down even further. We used to play unlimited proxy Legacy since only a couple of us had the cards. It just doesn't fire anymore. So I don't think it's a format cost issue, and instead has to do with the format itself... it's just not something people want to play, while they're happy to play proxy Modern all day long.
I think the judgement of either case is tied to the question of what they wanted to achieve. If neutering Miracles and breaking the BUG control/aggro-control/tempo circlejerk was the idea ans they just wanted to "reset" the cantrip shell like they did with the banning of DTT/TC, then they succeeded. However if anyone thought it's going to weed out the cantrip shells dominance, then he/she is plain naive.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
P.S.
It might me only loosely related to the current topics here, but it's quite interresting to see how the shares within the blue shell moved around among supertypes since '11. The amount of combo and control supertypes seems to constantly get lower compared to aggro-control (aside from the outliners within these years like Miracles or Omnitell)
DRS enabled unquestionably degenerate and colour-greedy manabases (I've seen 4C Deathblade with Wasteland, and seen Deathrite Shaman make it work), and made one of the format's safeguards against such abominations (Wasteland and Moon effects) much, much less effective. All while making x/1 attackers useless, and providing late-game inevitability, and casually pissing over graveyard-base strategies. If that little ugly fucker wasn't to eventually get the axe, I wasn't sure what would.
Plausible, but my feeling is still that such a breaking up was unnecessary. Mainly because it now puts most decks in the position of simply having no reason to run Green at all. In other words, if you were running UBX before, Green was a reasonable consideration. Now, the default choice is clearly Red. I'd rather have a more homogeneous format where more choices are viable, than a less homogeneous format where less choices are viable. Obviously some other people disagree. They aren't wrong, but neither am I.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
A result of creatures simply getting better and better?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I don't think is a problem of aggro\control tempo control control\combo nomenclature and percentage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Is a problem of how big is the pool of cards and why people chose always the same shell of 8 blue cards in multiple copies.
Is pretty obvious that a shell that is dominating the format since '11 is overpowered compare to others, infact the others shell are build to restrain the blue one.
And also most of the deck, combo control or aggro control, use the same shell: brainstorm + ponder + fow + finisher (jace, show and tell, delver and tnn etc) + eventualy creatures. (Yes because good blue creatures now exists)
This is obvious because everyone wants to control what they draw (brainstorm+ponder) and prefer to have a counter against fast threat (fow)
To play fow 12 blue cards (minimum) are needed.
12 blue cards are 4 brainstorm + 4 ponder + or 4 creature that remove other creature (snapcaster or baleful strix) + finisher.
Those are the best all around cards in the pool.
So if Hasbro wants to hit the diffusion of blue shell have to hit the blue shell, not the other cards.
By the way:
Mtg, and legacy in particulare are like sports-
In American Sports (i have in mind NFL) there are some dinasty, but things changes quickly and everyone can find the right way to win.
In European SOccer there are always the same 2 team winning in their own nationals competition (Juventus\ Milan in italy, Barcelona\Real Madrid in spain, PSg in France, Bayer in Germany...)
At the moment the Legacy is more like European soccer than like NFL- The blue shell is the dominant team since years.
No doubt about that point. I just took a quick look at the data and wondered if the cantrip shell getting more and more of a synonym of aggro-control rather than fueling a wider range of supertypes, is another integral factor of peoples "fatigue" im regards to the metagame.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
Well, I actually think it has less to do with cantrips, that has been the "best" shell pretty much forever, but it's the result of them actually printing more playable cards in general. Which in turn, of course, get naturally adopted by cantrip shells. This isn't "ideal" but it is better than the opposite, where they print nothing but garbage and Legacy is truly stagnant. There is an alternative, where they print things that are playable, but antisynergistic with cantrips, but that is much more difficult and resultantly far less common.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I actually don't think the "average" Legacy player is fatigued by cantrips. In fact, I think it's plausibly just the opposite, the very reason for Legacy is to have a high-power, low-variance Eternal Format (where Vintage is a high-powered, high-variance and Pauper is low-power, low-variance (all relatively speaking, of course)). Cantrips actually fuel innovation, from enabling Tempo, to facilitating various Midrange combinations, to making many Combo decks viable. Again, it's a feature that Legacy is homogenous, not a bug. How homogenous it should be though is a qualitative subjective measure to which there isn't going to be a quantitative magical number though.
It is interesting indeed. Where does the data come from? Care to share?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Not to say I disagree, I actually have a similar impression: I think both pure control and pure aggro are in bad shape, and then midrange aggro-controls arise. I don't see a combo decline (except maybe for the here and now, since a couple of months at most).
YES! We can start again with the misperception and the misrepresentation of what diversity is. Apparently people will never realise that the strategy a deck implements is NOT the same thing as the cards it plays (example, you can have different kind of prisons, different kind of control elements like discard, permission, board control, ecc) and quite obviously the opposite is also true: just because two decks play a certain card doesn't mean they are doing the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zulabnar
Let's warm up our polemic skills and our weapons.
(Oh, and "my team" is Juventus -even though I don't care so much for FOOTBALL- so I don't have any problem with some teams or decks being superior to others :laugh:)
I think the words "misperception" and "misrepresentation" suggest that one person is wrong and another person is right, but this seems like too narrow a viewpoint. Imagine if the following decks reached the top spots in a tournament:Quote:
We can start again with the misperception and the misrepresentation of what diversity is. Apparently people will never realise that the strategy a deck implements is NOT the same thing as the cards it plays (example, you can have different kind of prisons, different kind of control elements like discard, permission, board control, ecc)
UBR Control
UB Death's Shadow
Omnitell
Miracles
RUG Delver
UWb Stoneblade
Person A could feel that this is diverse because combo, tempo (more than one kind), and control (more than one kind) are all represented. Person B could feel that this is not diverse because of the substantial overlap in the cards used between all the decks. To me it seems that neither person is incorrect, since these are both reasonable ways of measuring diversity,* but that the two people have different tastes. (Person B may understand Person A's preference, and understand the difference between these two ways of considering diversity, while still disagreeing with Person A.) If you'll entertain an analogy, the reason the discussion has gone in circles many times is the same reason it is difficult for a large family to order pizza. People have different ideas of what they want, but the solution that must be arrived at (a fixed number of pizzas with various specific toppings on them) is one that will apply to everyone equally. Last time, my dad surreptitiously left the room and ordered some pizzas while everyone was still deeply engaged in discussing toppings. You could say that in this analogy, my dad is Wizards of the Coast. It's not about whether my uncle or grandmother had incorrect preferences; my dad was simply the one holding the phone.
*From your posts, I gather that you feel Person B's way of measuring diversity is not reasonable. To me, agreeing with (what I interpret to be) your opinion would carry the implication that for any value of X, it is not inherently undiverse if all top decks share X cards, as long as they have different strategic aims. If this is truly your position (or a fair logical result of your position), I have to disagree. As X increases, I expect that more and more people will feel that diversity is low. If X became 30 overnight, I think the meta would not be very diverse, even if there were still Delver decks and Emrakul decks and control decks with light splashes of different colors. I am not saying that X is 30 at present, but merely speculating that a majority of players would find X to be a relevant measure in extreme cases, and that deciding whether the present real-life case is extreme is a matter of personal preference.
Side note: From a perspective of game theory, I think that X (number of cards shared across all top decks) or format penetration (however it should best be defined) is a useful quantity to consider. A lot of the fun of Magic is in deckbuilding. If you decrease the number of card slots that can plausibly be varied, along a path from 60 variable card slots to 0 variable cards slots, the fun of deckbuilding begins to suffer somewhere along that path. However, I agree that this is not the only useful way to measure diversity. Person A in my example above also has a good point. You could in theory have great diversity among cards, with 10+ tier-one, equally competitive decks that share no cards between them, and have every one of those decks be a linear aggro deck once format equilibrium was reached. At present Legacy is the reverse of that, with quite a lot of cards in common between most top decks but a respectable diversity among strategies in the top decks --- especially considering that, although we use artificial examples for argument, nonblue decks such as Lands and Death & Taxes do compete and can have very interesting methods of play. I don't think anybody wants to go straight from real-life Legacy to the linear aggro example I gave.
I just looked over the usual suspects like MtgTop8 & Co (thus only going back to 2011) and threw a quick glance at the shares in the respective years as well as over certain known combo keycards like SnT, Infernal Tutor and the likes. It's just an impression I got and wonder if I should really crunch the numbers. I also need to specify that i don't list all the BUG control stuff & Co over all these years as "control" but "aggro-control" as they imo should.Quote:
Originally Posted by talpa
LookLook at it from a modern perspective. If the format were Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, and RG tron as the top decks and there were no good ways to fight them (no ghost quarter, stone rainrain, field of ruin) then the format would be fucking miserable despite the being an aggro, control, and ramp deck as different styles being the top decks. Without a good way to fight the cantrips then you're either forced to resort to playing it or getting fucked. Chalice and Thalia are the two best ways to fight the cards. Both create miserable experiences for people (though I enjoy both personally). The format looks like the family tree of the average Crimson Tide fan. It's warped around either play thesethese cards or hate them out. I just hate when the retarded power level of cantrips is under stated because they aren't blatantly powerful to the layman. Whatever though. Format is fucking miserable. Attendance is going down while prices go up. Enjoy the shitfest while you can