[Article] Unlocking Legacy - A History of the Flash Fiasco

[Tom LaPille]

I think the basic thing here is that you seem to want to judge the "health" of the metagame somehow, and I feel that doing so is not useful. Is vintage healthy? I think so, and the fact that I can't play Nimble Mongoose in my deck doesn't take away from that for me. Essentially, I feel that you are imposing yourself and your ideas about what a "healthy" metagame is on the format, and I think that is presumptuous and meaningless.

[Bryant Cook]

What he said

Why not just play type two? I mean you just killed combo, control sucks, and aggro is overly dominate. Very much like type two, combo is healthy for the format, allowing a rock, paper, sissors triangle.


I'm all down for the unbanning of Yawgmoth's Will. We had a serious discussion on it on the way to ohio, the only decks that would really abuse it would be combo decks and gifts. Control -> Flashback Wrath it might as well say. Aggro -> DOUBLE LIGHTNING BOLT! Combo - Insert 10,000,000 possibilies. TES would never leave the LMF.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Acceptable reasons for banning a card are for it being so good that fully zero other strategies could be correct, or that the legality of the card hurts magic in the long term (see Ravager and artifact lands in standard).

However, that's not actually material to my point. The main point that I have is that when something new and broken happens in vintage, the reaction is normally "Man, this is new and crazy and interesting! what happens now?" as opposed to "the format is suddenly awful! someone ban something!"

Basically what I'm saying is, playing a format with a giant card pool leads to some crazy things happening. I don't understand why this is embraced rather than hated.



Vintage is essentially a fight between blue/black decks, artifact decks, and decks that don't spend mana, and it's still interesting. Why couldn't legacy be the same way? In fact, with so many cards and so many potential combos, doesn't it strike you as odd that it wasn't already a fight between blue and black decks? I personally think it's pretty amazing that basic mountains get played in legacy still.

Not really. It would be hard to over-state how different Vintage is than Legacy; something a ton of Vintage players don't get. Yes, a ton of the defining cards are one-ofs, but moving from one-ofs to zero-ofs drastically alters the nature of the beast. Without broken one-ofs, Black really isn't that strong.

The format with five colors is just more interesting to me. There's a lot more possible answers to the metagame and a lot more correct strategies. Combo is weak enough against certain archetypes that it's actually a viable strategy to lose to combo and beat other things.

Vintage has never seen such a radical shift in it's metagame. Any card that doesn't win the game all by itself for one or two mana is another splash in the pool to Vintage. In Legacy, any of a dozen decks legal in Vintage would completely warp the environment- and Hulk-Flash is and was arguably stronger than any of those Vintage decks. It's all well for Vintage players to talk about how well they adjust to change, but in proportion they're simply not the same. The only apt recent comparison is the addition of Skullclamp to Type 2, which did completely destroy the format and make many people quit said format.

[kirdape3]

He didn't address that point at all.

What he's saying is that eventually Legacy will be a battle of degenerate decks versus anti-degenerate decks (the final form of which I speak). Flash jumped that process and is itself overpowered, but that Grand Prix? That's what he's saying was inevitable anyways. Goblin Lackey and Lion's Eye Diamond are obscenely powerful accelerants that have been constrained in other formats and break the hell out of this one. That trend is liable to continue simply because the degenerate cards are THAT GOOD. I simply see Legacy ending up as a format that's simply natural deck versus anti-strategy deck.

4 Gush GAT and anything during the first couple of months of Mirrodin asploded the Vintage metagame completely. Long.dec, GAT, $T4KS (the original variation on a theme with 4 Trinispheres), Psychatog, and other decks simply took what was known and destroyed it.

[hi-val]

What Flash did was make it so the only disruption that mattered was countermagic, or discard. Basically eliminating three other colors from the game.

Actually, I saw Tom almost bubble to day 2 on the backs of Goblins, which runs neither discard nor countermagic. The fact that Goblins made second place opens up so many questions that I don't even know where to start.

[Mad Zur]

The main point that I have is that when something new and broken happens in vintage, the reaction is normally "Man, this is new and crazy and interesting! what happens now?" as opposed to "the format is suddenly awful! someone ban something!"

These two reactions are not mutually exclusive. Most people I know thought Flash was very interesting but believe that it is broken and needs to be banned.

This format has gone through a lot of changes with few to no people calling for bannings. I think it's ridiculous to call Legacy players xenophobic because they reacted this way to one specific change, particularly when the card fits your own criteria for banning.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

He didn't address that point at all.

What he's saying is that eventually Legacy will be a battle of degenerate decks versus anti-degenerate decks (the final form of which I speak). Flash jumped that process and is itself overpowered, but that Grand Prix? That's what he's saying was inevitable anyways. Goblin Lackey and Lion's Eye Diamond are obscenely powerful accelerants that have been constrained in other formats and break the hell out of this one. That trend is liable to continue simply because the degenerate cards are THAT GOOD. I simply see Legacy ending up as a format that's simply natural deck versus anti-strategy deck.

You've described every metagame ever, including every iteration of Legacy. Of course it comes down to proactive decks versus reactive decks. What else is there? Offense versus defense, with every variation in between. What are the strongest threats? What are the strongest defenses? What beats the field? This isn't the final state of anything; this is the only state that a metagame can take.

[Finn]

Vintage is essentially a fight between blue/black decks, artifact decks, and decks that don't spend mana, and it's still interesting. Why couldn't legacy be the same way? In fact, with so many cards and so many potential combos, doesn't it strike you as odd that it wasn't already a fight between blue and black decks? I personally think it's pretty amazing that basic mountains get played in legacy still.

Don't you get it? That is why we like Legacy so much. The decks are powerful, and yet you can actually explore deckbuilding. Until you move away from "Legacy should be OK about being Vintage Lite", you never will.

[Tacosnape]

Why not just play type two? I mean you just killed combo, control sucks, and aggro is overly dominate. Very much like type two, combo is healthy for the format, allowing a rock, paper, sissors triangle.

How exactly does banning Flash and Empty the Warrens equate to killing combo? Iggy Pop, Aluren, Gamekeeper Salvagers, Solidarity, Belcher, and more all existed and thrived before these two cards were introduced to the format.

The problem with your assessment is that Legacy is nothing at all like a Rock-Paper-Scissors triangle. Aggro is overly dominant? Hardly. Only two aggro decks have consistently posted numbers in Legacy: Goblins and Affinity. Cases can be made for Goblins being strictly because it's the most played deck in Legacy, and Affinity thrives when people forget that being able to kill an artifact is a good thing.

Several control decks have risen and fallen from Landstill to Rifter to Loam Control, and more combo decks than you can shake a stick at post numbers as well. Aggro control decks like Threshold and Fish and Deadguy Ale show up their fair share as well. Prisony-decks like Stax, and whatever you classify Enchantress as, even show up.

Flash needs to be banned, obviously.

As for Empty the Warrens, I personally think it makes too many Turn 1-2 kill combo decks too hard to stop. If they don't ban it, Legacy will go on. It's not in the tier of Flash, by any means whatsoever. But it's forcing decks to dedicate anywhere from 8 to 11 sideboard cards specifically for combo due to the lack of cards that can work against every combo deck in the format. It's also putting people in holes they can't get out of before they've had their first turn, which I find unhealthy.

And Yawgmoth's Will? I don't think reshaping the format to make your personal pet deck Tier 1 constitutes as a valid argument.

[kirdape3]

I don't mean 'proactive versus reactive' so much as 'stupid silly things versus things that beat the stupid silly things that happen'. Extended this last season had tons of both proactive and reactive decks, but there wasn't any real completely degenerate action in the entire format. Standard has a lot of decks, but you don't see any real deck whose sole focus is to beat the degenerate ones lying around. Vintage certainly has decks that aim solely to beat the stupid natural decks. Legacy does too to a large extent - Threshold isn't nearly as ridiculous unless there are combo decks to feast on.

If Will gets unbanned, I'm immediately Burning Wishing for it and cracking Lion's Eye Diamond in response. Thanks for the games!

[JACO]

Vintage has never seen such a radical shift in it's metagame. Any card that doesn't win the game all by itself for one or two mana is another splash in the pool to Vintage.

Umm, yeah, that's why Vintage is a dumb format that no one plays.

For someone who mentions Vintage multiple times, you don't seem to have a clue what you are talking about. Vintage tournaments regularly draw more people than any Legacy tournaments aside from the Grand Prixs. If you would like to argue this point, please do so I can make you look even more foolish. Vintage has seen many radical shifts, mainly at the advent and success of decks such as TNT, Chapin's original Gro deck from GenCon, GroATog, T1T, Long, Stax (both the original MUD lists from Europe, as well as the unrestricted Trinisphere laden variants a bit later), Pitch Long, as well as all of the Gifts variants. When great new decks appear they tend to push out weaker strategies altogether. That is how Magic works in all formats.

I actually agree wholeheartedly with Tom's assessment, if not the severity of it. What Flash did was evolve the format into it's final form multiple years earlier than was likely (even at the Grand Prix level) otherwise. There were inklings of this before Flash was broken; the GPT (singular only because Flash was the next weekend and why play strictly a combo deck when you can play the best combo AND the best control deck?) where Belcher was the best deck by far due to Empty the Warrens is an example of how the format was liable to evolve anyways. We have seen increasing numbers of broken silly decks across the board anyways - Belcher's liable to be very good still, and that's just the first deck that I can think of (Aluren's on the rise but was not so much more degenerate in terms of raw power than say, High Tide and is devilishly hard to play) that is possible.

I also agree with Tom LaPille's sentiments here. The thing that most Legacy players don't seem to understand is that THIS IS NOT YOUR FORMAT. Type 2 isn't the Standard players' format, and Block Constructed isn't either. The reality is that the DCI can do whatever they want, and they will take their sweet time in cleaning up the format, and providing whatever support they want. You didn't see a lot of Pros bitching about Flash, did you? That's because they understand that it's their job to break formats and come up with effective strategies and counter-strategies, while some of you just can't get over the fact that you can't play your crappy Mono White Control, Faerie Stompy, or Enchantress decks competitively in big time tournaments.

For all the people bitching about how Flash was so bad for the format, look back and ask yourself when was there a time in recent Legacy history when there was any motivation for people to play Fish with any seriousness, or MONO BLACK with fucking PUMP-KNIGHTS. To me, that is insanely cool. In a format without decks like Flash, Belcher, and other powerful cards, you're left with Goblins and Threshold again. I guess now you guys can have your same boring format back.

I think the basic thing here is that you seem to want to judge the "health" of the metagame somehow, and I feel that doing so is not useful. Is vintage healthy? I think so, and the fact that I can't play Nimble Mongoose in my deck doesn't take away from that for me. Essentially, I feel that you are imposing yourself and your ideas about what a "healthy" metagame is on the format, and I think that is presumptuous and meaningless.

You and I don't belong on this website apparently. We're too forward thinking.

[Tom LaPille]

<borat> high five? </borat>

By the way, JACO said everything I wanted to say way more elegantly with this:

The thing that most Legacy players don't seem to understand is that THIS IS NOT YOUR FORMAT. Type 2 isn't the Standard players' format, and Block Constructed isn't either.

You don't own your format. Wizards does. If you are acting and thinking that way, stop, because it is stupid and quixotic.

[Bryant Cook]

How exactly does banning Flash and Empty the Warrens equate to killing combo? Iggy Pop, Aluren, Gamekeeper Salvagers, Solidarity, Belcher, and more all existed and thrived before these two cards were introduced to the format.

The problem with your assessment is that Legacy is nothing at all like a Rock-Paper-Scissors triangle. Aggro is overly dominant? Hardly. Only two aggro decks have consistently posted numbers in Legacy: Goblins and Affinity. Cases can be made for Goblins being strictly because it's the most played deck in Legacy, and Affinity thrives when people forget that being able to kill an artifact is a good thing.

Several control decks have risen and fallen from Landstill to Rifter to Loam Control, and more combo decks than you can shake a stick at post numbers as well. Aggro control decks like Threshold and Fish and Deadguy Ale show up their fair share as well. Prisony-decks like Stax, and whatever you classify Enchantress as, even show up.

Flash needs to be banned, obviously.

As for Empty the Warrens, I personally think it makes too many Turn 1-2 kill combo decks too hard to stop. If they don't ban it, Legacy will go on. It's not in the tier of Flash, by any means whatsoever. But it's forcing decks to dedicate anywhere from 8 to 11 sideboard cards specifically for combo due to the lack of cards that can work against every combo deck in the format. It's also putting people in holes they can't get out of before they've had their first turn, which I find unhealthy.

And Yawgmoth's Will? I don't think reshaping the format to make your personal pet deck Tier 1 constitutes as a valid argument.

Look at how many of those combo decks suck without LED and ETW. Iggy Pop is trash, Belcher will suck once again, Salvagers will die, Alluren is uneffected, and we get the slowest combo deck back in tier one(Solidarity).

Legacy was and still very well may be Rock, Paper, Scissors. It dates back very far as do other formats. Landstill, FCG, Dragon| Landstill, ATS, Solidarity| Landstill, Goblins, Solidarity| Threshold, Goblins, Solidarity. Very much a Rock, Paper, Scissors triangle; right now may be different who knows.

My first post on "Aggro overly powerful" was is you kill of combo as you suggested, aggro will flurish and it is no different from type two. Slow bad control decks and aggro with 0 playable combo decks.

I'm not defending flash whatsoever, "We no need no water, let the mothafucka burn."

Forcing the metagame to adapt is too much to ask for? I mean everyone was willing to do so for Goblin Lackey, what's so different about ETW? Both are answered with 1 card, neither decks pack Force or too much disruption to get them through. Recall people back when Vial Goblins first came out? "Ban Goblin Lackey!" We all learned to adapt and evolve around the card to th epoint that it is no longer the be all end all card. It's no different from what people should do for ETW.

@ Yawgwill- Only combo decks will play the card, I hardly see it as "Reshaping the format" it's just a better Ill-gotten gains.

[Bardo]

The thing that most Legacy players don't seem to understand is that THIS IS NOT YOUR FORMAT.

Between all of the debate on multiple sites about this article and similar "community issues," I think this is one of the most salient and succinct points I've read. Agreed.

[Cabal-kun]

Vintage is essentially a fight between blue/black decks, artifact decks, and decks that don't spend mana, and it's still interesting. Why couldn't legacy be the same way? In fact, with so many cards and so many potential combos, doesn't it strike you as odd that it wasn't already a fight between blue and black decks? I personally think it's pretty amazing that basic mountains get played in legacy still.

Maybe because Legacy is supposed to be a different format from Vintage? Not Neo Vintage, not Vintage Lite, not Diet Vintage, and not Vintage 2.0 Optimizer Beta. Legacy is supposed to be Legacy.

You say you don't understand why people simply don't embrace the change. I don't understand why you insist Legacy mirror Vintage. There was no fight between blue and black decks, and basic mountains are played because the format is Legacy, not Vintage It has nothing to do with which colors or cards are best. It has to do with the identity of the format. What would happen if rotations in Extended or Standard stopped, and a B&R list similar to Legacy's or Vintage's was used instead for those formats? Would they still be Extended and Standard, or would they instead mirror Legacy and Vintage?

[Tom LaPille]

Tacosnape, that kind of discussion is exactly what is stupid. Stop trying to own your world, and just play in it. Wizards is not going to listen to calls to ban random cards that you don't like for random reasons.

[Tom LaPille]

Cabal-Kun: I'm not saying that legacy "should" resemble vintage; I am saying that any value judgment about what a format "should" look like is entirely meaningless.

[hi-val]

Have you ever heard of a deck called Napster? Everything that can would run Will. Goblins would splash for Black for Will. But that's a discussion for another time. 4 Yawgmoth's Wills in a format that includes Dark Ritual, Grim Tutor and Cabal Ritual is too stupid for words.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

For someone who mentions Vintage multiple times, you don't seem to have a clue what you are talking about. Vintage tournaments regularly draw more people than any Legacy tournaments aside from the Grand Prixs. If you would like to argue this point, please do so I can make you look even more foolish.

Yeah, yeah, you're cute. Again, the comparison wasn't between Vintage and Legacy; the comparison was between Vintage and formats that encourage balance and interactivity, which can be largely summed up as: "Every single other format besides online Emperor".

Vintage has seen many radical shifts, mainly at the advent and success of decks such as TNT, Chapin's original Gro deck from GenCon, GroATog, T1T, Long, Stax (both the original MUD lists from Europe, as well as the unrestricted Trinisphere laden variants a bit later), Pitch Long, as well as all of the Gifts variants. When great new decks appear they tend to push out weaker strategies altogether. That is how Magic works in all formats.

Yeah. What doesn't happen is that one deck knocks out every other deck in the format at once. Try to find a time in Vintage where such a change occurred. Until then, you're attacking points that were never made. Again all change =/= healthy change.

I also agree with Tom LaPille's sentiments here. The thing that most Legacy players don't seem to understand is that THIS IS NOT YOUR FORMAT. Type 2 isn't the Standard players' format, and Block Constructed isn't either. The reality is that the DCI can do whatever they want, and they will take their sweet time in cleaning up the format, and providing whatever support they want.

And the players can do whatever they want, which can include either telling the DCI they're retarded or quitting Magic. What's your point, exactly? Where are you going with this? Who are you? Why are you here? Is time really real, or is this all just an illusion? Do Eric Darland's pants make me look fat?

You didn't see a lot of Pros bitching about Flash, did you?

Who cares?

That's because they understand that it's their job to break formats and come up with effective strategies and counter-strategies, while some of you just can't get over the fact that you can't play your crappy Mono White Control, Faerie Stompy, or Enchantress decks competitively in big time tournaments.

I suppose the fact that those decks actually won tournaments in the old format is irrelevant? Wait, let me guess- "That's just a sign of how undeveloped the metagame was!"

I'll never cease being amused at people who actually think that decks can be objectively good or bad. The only good deck is the deck that wins in the format it's in. The only bad decks are ones that fail to do this. That's all. Leave your preconceived notion that every deck must run Brainstorm and Force of Will at the door.

For all the people bitching about how Flash was so bad for the format, look back and ask yourself when was there a time in recent Legacy history when there was any motivation for people to play Fish with any seriousness, or MONO BLACK with fucking PUMP-KNIGHTS. To me, that is insanely cool. In a format without decks like Flash, Belcher, and other powerful cards, you're left with Goblins and Threshold again. I guess now you guys can have your same boring format back.

If you actually familiarized yourself with Legacy top 8s, you'd embarrass yourself less. Legacy tournaments routinely put up diverse results- actually diverse deck archetypes, not simply the same list of singletons with six or eight card differences with a different deckname slapped on it.

You and I don't belong on this website apparently. We're too forward thinking.

You know, I recently decided to follow Christ, and that all men are my brothers, and that I wouldn't nurture feelings of hatred and contempt and all that good jazz.. You're making this really fucking difficult. I need you to help me not hate you by not saying things that are insanely arrogant and stupid simultaneously. Pick one of those adjectives and focus on it, and we can hopefully wittle this down. We can do this. I just need you to try to be smart for a bit. I will take all necessary steps to help you.

I don't mean 'proactive versus reactive' so much as 'stupid silly things versus things that beat the stupid silly things that happen'.

To some extent, this is superfluous. The only really objective measure of such brokeness is the fundamental turn- if you don't even get one, or the other person gets twice as many as you before the game is over, there's a problem. But the fundamental turn wasn't that low in old Legacy. And decks where it was were generally easily disrupted.

If Will gets unbanned, I'm immediately Burning Wishing for it and cracking Lion's Eye Diamond in response. Thanks for the games!

Yeah, that's a little silly.




I think the problem is that a lot of the people see calls to ban Flash, and they think that that means that those making said calls are unwilling and unable to deal with decks simply because they're viewed as "cheap". This could not be further from the truth. The fastest way to summarize this argument is to advise everyone to go read this article.

Hulk-Flash is Akuma. It's not the strongest option. It's the only option.

[Cabal-kun]

Cabal-Kun: I'm not saying that legacy "should" resemble vintage; I am saying that any value judgment about what a format "should" look like is entirely meaningless.

Then why not get rid of formats all together? Why not have one giant cardpool where everything is unrestricted? Somebody somewhere decides what the formats should look like.

Also, what sense does it make to have two formats that are nearly identical in flavor? I.e., degenerate combos?