Thing is you can jam Key/Vault or Tinker/Robot basically into anything, even control. Re: storm, I'm not sure how by switching a few cards makes it a different deck. Gush was unrestricted, it makes perfect sense to use the card in storm, for example, but giving the deck a new name or simply because a few cards were left out i.e. Y. Bargain/Necropotence is beyond me.
Re: fetchlands define the format? Onslaught fetchlands were reprinted and reprinted again, officially. Welcome to 2014.
Originally Posted by GoblinSettler
First and foremost,
1). Access to a card pool extending back to Alpha - including sets such as P3K, Conspiracy, Commander, etc.
2). A banned list not exclusive to Ante or physical dexterity cards such as Chaos Orb.
3). No restricted list.
Meta defining characteristics include:
1). Combo - Possibility of a turn 1 kill.
2). Counter Magic - Force of Will.
3). Mana acceleration - Dark Ritual, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith, Metalworker, etc.
4). Mana Fixing - Duals and Fetches.
5). Lock pieces - Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Thalia, Gaddock Teeg.
6). Discard - Thoughtseize, etc.
7). Consistency - Brainstorm, Green Sun's Zenith.
(I would have made a shorter list but I didn't have enough time)
In my opinion, the health of legacy (any format for that matter) relies on being rewarded through skillful game play and knowledge of the meta as well as a variety of deck options, which I think is prevalent at the moment.
Gush is unrestricted in Vintage, so I don't understand your point.
You are saying these are not different decks? How are these decks less differentiated than say TES and ANT are in Legacy?
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Yeah, Duals + Fetches define all of Legacy's manabase and make 3-/4-colored decks and cherrypicking options no matter the color possible. Neither Modern or Standard can provide such mana-flexibility without mayor drawbacks (unlike Shocklands).
That was not that hard to get, no?
For some people only black and white exist, I guess ;)
www.theepicstorm.com - Your Source for The Epic Storm - Articles, Reports, Decktech and more!
Join us at Facebook!
Gush was unrestricted and it makes perfect sense to use it in Storm. Gush Storm is basically an updated TPS.
I should have said Gush Storm, TPS is pretty much dead. Oath is still Oath whether you kill via beatdown or storm.
How do you define something? When you define something it should be a unique feature right? What differentiates Vintage from any other format? They rely heavily on fetchlands too, is Vintage defined by fetchlands? Onslaught fetchlands were unique to Vintage and Legacy pre-2014.
Both Ferrari and Lamborghini, or any car for that matter have doors, but how do you define a Lamborghini? It has "scissor" doors also called lambo doors. It's part of what makes a Lamborghini a Lamborghini.
Sometimes things can be quite as simple as black and white.
Sorry again, I played a great deal of Oath in my time and both decks play out quite differently. Indeed, my good friend Greg is the man responsible for the Oath build which won Vintage Champs this year and a top 8 last year, he knows Oath and I've worked with him before and since. I would not call myself an Oath expert (that is Greg) but I do have enough reps to know how different builds play out.
Gush storm does not play out like TPS does. TPS is also not dead. It's not well positioned, but it is still an absolutely playable archetype if you can dodge Workshops/craft a good enough sideboard. I also didn't mention other Gush based storm decks like those that use Doomsday, but I have a feeling you'd just look to discredit those on some arbitrary basis too. I really hope your Vintage experience is more than you reading decklists on a forum, because I am starting to get a feeling it might be.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Legacy is where you can play with any card ever printed, except for a reasonably short list of banned cards that are deemed so powerful that each of them, if unrestricted, would single-handedly 'break' the format and lead to an undesired state by forcing everyone to either play 4 of that card, or play some anti-deck that specifically 'hates' the card.
What I didn't know is that deck names in Vintage are a huge deal maybe because of its entry cost or the amount of ego attached to decks. Every Survival deck plays quite differently but it's really not a BFD just sticking with its namesake.
In my own opinion, whether it's ICBM, GWS, Tyrant Oath, Rune-Scarred, Griselbrand or Burning Wish Oath.. it's still an Oath deck.
They do play out differently, only slightly. Both utilize the same "storm" mechanic. Re: Doomsday, if we're talking about Menendian's Lab Maniac build then that would be an entirely different deck, and it's not quite dead yet like TPS.
Your original point was that there was a critical lack of diversity in Vintage because of Pillars. I was arguing that there was still a good deal of diversity between and amongst them. You've actually just proved my point for me by describing all the different types of Oath decks, plus admitting that although decks may rely on Storm mechanic, they are not all the same, so I thank you for thinking progressively.
As a final point, there are more Doomsday decks than just ones that use Laboratory Maniac.
To progress this past arguing the Vintage decks are not all the same, for those who feel that Legacy is defined by the banned list, I want to follow that logic through. If the banned list defines Legacy, what defines the banned list? Not simply, "cards that are too good" because there are some really debatable choices on there that do not seem to follow that logic at all.
Last edited by H; 01-02-2015 at 04:05 PM. Reason: Me fail English...
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
So how do we decide what the reasonable constraints are? The argument usually used in support of Brainstorm is that it enables decks to be highly consistent, so that it drives decks that don't run it and aren't either highly redundant (Death and Taxes, Burn) or capable of running a different consistency engine (Elves) out of competition. But there are a lot of decks that would be better positioned/put up more results if they weren't constrained in some other way by another card or archetype. Fast combo for instance drives out tons of consistent midrange decks. I don't have a clear answer to these questions myself, but I'd like to hear what you think.
I think part of this is the format's half-breed history coupled with Wizards' slowness in catching up to where Legacy actually is. You highlighted some of this in your initial post, but obviously your quotes are from ten years ago. I do think that Legacy has moved beyond being defined solely by the ABUR duals, though. They're an essential ingredient, but we also have cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Lion's Eye Diamond (as a 4-of) that separate the format from both Modern and Vintage.
I think the banned list serves four purposes: first, it should be used to keep any single deck from being dominant (i.e., Hulk Flash). This usually takes the form of banning combo pieces/enablers. The second is making it possible to run events smoothly. Aside from obvious problems like Shaharazad and dexterity cards, there are things like Worldgorger Dragon and Goblin Recruiter that aren't there for power reasons, but are likely to remain there because they create the potential for serious abuse, especially in the case of Worldgorger. The third is keeping Legacy a distinct format, so banning things like SoLoMoxen while leaving Stoneforge Mystic untouched allows it to be differentiated from Vintage and Modern, respectively. The fourth is tricker, and that's keeping the format fun. This is the category into which all the judgement calls go, and why I think B/R debates become ao rancorous. Unfortunately, I don't think there are likely to be objective, one-size fits all criteria for this category because we all value different aspects of the game. There are some decisions im this category that have very broad-based support (Mental Misstep) but there are also much more comtroversial bans out there like Survival pf the Fittest.
legacy is defined by the delicate balance that exists between cards being efficient but no so efficient that they warp the format, such as the power 9 and the cards on the banned list.
Play 4 Card Blind!
Currently Playing
Legacy: Dark Depths
EDH: 5-Color Hermit Druid
Currently Brewing: [Deck] Sadistic Sacrament / Chalice NO Eldrazi
why cards are so expensive...hoarders
His answer is flippant, but essentially correct. Legacy provides something unique from WotC's PoV:
1) It has a deep card pool spanning the game's history, unlike Modern or Standard;
2) It excludes some of the more truly egregious power level mistakes, unlike Vintage;
3) It gives players who want to play a fast-paced, low-variance format someplace to play.
The thing that sets Legacy apart from all of Wizards' other tournament formats is that it's up to its eyeballs in cheap card advantage without also being broken beyond repair. Brainstorm is of course the poster child for this, though Ponder, Preordain, and now Treasure Cruise contribute to it. Basically, if you want to play a format where cheap, powerful cantrips allow you to execute a single game plan very well, Legacy is your format.
I think that saying that the format is defined and balanced around Brainstorm/Force of Will is fair to say. Those two cards interact in many different ways, to countless different things in the format, creating several different decks that live and die on them, and those cards have an impact even on builds that don't run them.
That logic also applies fairly well to Wasteland. In a broader sense, the number of all-in combo decks in the conceptual way is also a factor, since they tug at the use of Force of Will.
That logic is pretty narrow and one-sided. How about decks that don't really care about countermagic? Like Dredge, all it cares about is generating tokens with Bridge from Below, Breakthrough and loot cards are just icing on the cake.
Dredge, Affinity, and MUD also don't play fetchlands, do they not count as part of legacy? MUD and Stax play redundant lock pieces, Chalice/3Sphere, these ignore cards like Brainstorm and FoW, but are not necessarily their main goal.
Nope the logic is correct. it is neither one sided nor narrow. To define a format you look for iconic cards and strategies. This means you look for things which are played by the most people in the format. Because most of the time these are the most popular cards and well known to everyone and therefore representing the format to the outside world. Also you look for unique things in the format.Death
That logic is pretty narrow and one-sided. How about decks that don't really care about countermagic? Like Dredge, all it cares about is generating tokens with Bridge from Below, Breakthrough and loot cards are just icing on the cake.
Dredge, Affinity, and MUD also don't play fetchlands, do they not count as part of legacy? MUD and Stax play redundant lock pieces, Chalice/3Sphere, these ignore cards like Brainstorm and FoW, but are not necessarily their main goal.
So just looking into Legeacy under this circumstances, Brainstorm, FOW, Duals and Fetchlands are the cards which come to my mind. The reason for that are the unique ways of interaction they provide and ofcourse the number of times they are played in the different decks. Also we can take into concideration that Legeacy is the only format were you can play Brainstorm as 4 off.
In contrast to that you can play dregde in 2 formats and not only one. Also while the decks are exsisting they are less popular than any deck with FOW and Brainstorm.
So in fact his logic is not saying that the decks you mentioned are not part of the format but not popular enough to count as defining elements of the same.
In that context you are right. But is it correct that an eternal format is defined by only 2 cards sharing one color?
I think that it's not true that dredge don't really care about countermagic because the main reason behind the creation of manaless dredge is to minimize the impact of Daze and Force of Will on dredge's gameplan.
I agree with those who say that Force of Will is the "glue" that holds legacy together. For me it's the only real pillar of the format, without it legacy would collapse into something completely different and unrecognizable.
Next is Wasteland, but this is debatable. Otoh, it's the main and quite often the only card that holds the lands in check.
Thanks for opening this topic H, and trying to lead it in a smart way.
The question about what defines the ban list (as this ban list defines legacy) is very interesting.
1 - It's diversity and probably your most valid point. WotC would not let Legacy have a dominant deck, even if the format could maybe adapt to this deck on the long run. That explains SotF. I personally think this is WotC priority, way before power level (hello Show and Tell), to a point that I wonder if they want Legacy to have a metagame at all. Imo they want people to play a lot of different cards in this format, even if they're all backed up by brainstorm and FoW. This may be influenced by the economics of the game (sellers need volumes). This may also explain to some extend why Misstep was banned as it was killing fast strategies.
2 - Ok but it's quite narrow. It has been an argument to ban Sensei top for a while.
3 - This is highly subjective and not my interpretation at all tbh.
4 - Again highly subjective and I doubt that WotC think in these terms when it comes to banning. It's more an R&D thing, ie for new prints/mechanics. At best we could say that they monitor the number of legacy events/players and might take action if they drop.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote