Dreadstill? Anything Painter-Stone?
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
What makes you think that playing a gimmicky win condition that happens to work under Blood Moon is a better plan than just fixing your mana base?
Props for running Gifts, though. I'm not sure this is the deck, but it's been begging to be used somewhere for a long time.
I think articles about new decks in legacy should have a big tournament win behind them because what would make a better point then a win.
I think at that point, more people would take the article and the deck more seriously, especially when your trying to convince the hard core legacy community here on The Source.
~Shriek~
Jesus Christ. There was an "I think" thrown in the middle of that overly maligned sentence.
I don't know that it's the best deck of its type in the format. I also don't know that it isn't, and neither do any of you. I do know I've seen enough of it to know that it's somewhere in the vicinity of good.
I'm all for constructive criticism and "accountability from writers" and all that. I just think that some of you are coming from more of an "I'm the cool kid who likes to trip the unpopular kid in the hall and then laugh at him with all my cool friends" place than an "I'm going to demand accountability from you" place.
@Tool: Jerk. That link was epic.
Team Info-Ninja: Shhh... We don't exist.
Do you mean that any deck that is written about should have won a large tournament? That seems like a particularly high standard. No decks would be basically written about until it was obvious that they were very good.Originally Posted by nickrit2000
New decks should be greeted with skepticism, but also with an open mind. The problem isn't writing about new decks, but the way in which we discuss them. If we observe their strengths and weaknesses and stray away from simple conclusions then we all can evaluate the deck in a realistic way. To do otherwise just obscures the deck's actual potential.
IMO
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Posting garbage like the afore mentioned article (not that I have tried to do better) in well traveled public forums like SCG scares me. People complain about the neglect our format receives. If I were new to Legacy and took this article at face value, which someone who is new to the format may - as being posted on SCG it should contain some amount of valuable material, I would be rather put off. Seriously Demigod of Revenge? With our card pool seems rather unoriginal and boring. For it to be a dominant force in the format, epic fucking fail.
IMO
Actually, I was objecting to your attitude.
EDIT: and you're fun to troll.
info.ninja
I love how two people genuinely criticized the deck, and then the thread degenerated into "lol anusien". That said, I read the thread first and then went to the article, which was fortunate because skipping the first section altogether and just starting at the list made the article much less controversial.
That said...
No Aggro-Loam testing? It seems like that matchup would be really bad for you because they're playing a deck that can do a lot of what your deck can do, except it's faster and hits harder in a relevant time frame (and can disrupt you along the way). Actually, I'm suspicious of the general lack of mention of Loam decks, and the relatively light of mention of control decks like Standstill. In fact, while we're on the subject, that list of test decks looks slightly outdated...not unlike what I used to test against when I last played Legacy seriously - a year ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
I also don't like how the numbers are all over the place. I can see why you'd want a lot of outs, and you are running tutors, but I'm inclined to think that a Wishboard would be the better solution, especially given that a lot of the one- and two-of "solutions" your deck runs eat up a lot of space and aren't universally useful. Seems like classic Cunning Wish fodder to me.
Stronghold is nice, but you know what's really retarded with Intuition if you're looking for creature recycling? Genesis. They give you a 4/4 beatstick, or they give you an unlimited creature recursion engine that doesn't eat a draw step. And just to head this off at the proverbial pass: if you're so fucking paranoid about Extirpate, don't fucking play a deck that uses the graveyard as a resource. If you're using Stronghold just to put a Demigod on top as your last card to smash for fifteen, you really need to do your play testing under a fifty minute time limit. Cute tricks are cute, but [snip because I was an ass].
All told, I'm incredulous about a deck that's been worked on primarily by two people, with no strong tournament showing and with an outdated matchup list posted. As far as I was able to tell, the deck only does exceedingly well in the Threshold matchup, but since Thresh seems to be the worst deck in the format now in terms of its matchups, I'd say that this would seem a pretty poor choice. All the other matches seem to be prefaced with "Slightly," which is never a good sign. Furthermore, I don't buy the argument that you'd win enough after sideboarding to swing a significant number of matches in your favor. If you lose game one, you have to win two more games, whereas they only need to win one. With that kind of math, I'd really want to see "post-board is exceedingly favorable" to "post-board is a total blowout," ESPECIALLY if the first game is so close.
All told, 7/10.
EDIT: Okay, maybe I was a bit harsh. I still want to see more testing against a broader array of decks, though.
Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 12-04-2008 at 02:45 AM. Reason: Things seem better in hindsight...
I am interested in other Intuition targets for fatties; namely, Gigapede (IBA is grinning here), Graveshell Scarab (now IBA is insatiable) or something else along those lines. I meaaaan, if repeatedly pounding someone with Gigapede is wrong...
I'm also interested in cooking up an Intuition/Demigod/Magus of the Moon/THE BLOODENING deck to utilize all those red mana symbols.
I think that this list looks very good and i really like how intuition is being used in here. i have not seen it used very often, besides in counter control(many variants but all have samebasic gameplan). To downgrade this deck is not giving it a fair chance. on paper it looks really good, and obviously they wrote an articale on it so it can't be that bad. I highly suggest playing a few games with this before saying whether it is good or bad.
Strange. I thought this was a good article and one of the better Kevin has written. The writing is fine, the sections have headings and it doesn't randomly jump around like some of Kevin's other article (which personally bug me). Once you get past the "premier" fuck-up and get into the content, it's a fine Legacy article (though a bit sloppy in the "combo" section). I find it weird that it's getting such a shitty response.
(Comments in chronological order, since I'm in that kind of mood.)
"Dragon" is a generic term for a 5-power flier; like a "bear" is a 2/2 for 2 and a "gray ogre" is a 2/2 for 3.
Ditto. :/
'Tis the season and apparently the fashionable thing to do.
Except for the "premier" thing (which people totally need to untwist their panties about), it was not "grossly misleading," and if it was, I still believe no press is worse than bad press. At least bad press gives people something to talk about.
Erm, I should have read this before I wrote what I wrote above, Chris. :) Still, I'll let it stand, though it isn't directed at you any longer.
It would be nice, but a lot of perfectly fine decks have been built by writers/pundits and "thrown out there" for further tuning and development. Big 1.5 tournaments are few and far between (unless you live in a couple of pretty specific geographical locations or are willing to drive like a mad-man to get to them) and this seems like an unreasonable standard to achieve, well-meaning as it may be.
I'll give you the first paragraph, but the article was not garbage. It was actually quite fine, in my opinion.
As for the deck, it looks fucking awesome. I have no idea how well it plays, I'm concerned about the low number of blue cards, the manabase concerns me, I'm not sure Demigod is worth it (though, it is completely sweet as hell in theory (to me)), but again, it's a Swiss Army Knife of Awesome Stuff. I dig it.
Everyone's a critic, don't let it get to you, Kevin. Keep up the good work.
I don't have an opinion on this deck as a whole really because I have never in my life seen it or played against it, despite all of my random matches on mws and so forth. I didn't really learn anything from the article either, considering the deck seems strikingly similar to ITF at a glance.
One thing I did notice that I hadn't noticed before is that Anusien is easily shortened to "Anus". I laughed at this because it seemed so obvious and for those guffaws, I am happy that this article came about.
The article in question was at least well-written though. I enjoyed reading it.
-It could be about four of anything and I would agree.
What the shit, "premier" does not mean what I had in mind (which was something like "headlining" or "popular and a big deal" sorts of assumptions).
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=premier
Using "premier" as a synonym for "new and emerging" makes that a little easier to accept. So, nevermind, good article. :)
Bardo: Just to be clear, those quotes you attributed to me aren't mine.
Sorry, it was IBA. I have no idea how or why I confused the two of you. - Bardo
Team Info-Ninja: Shhh... We don't exist.
yep
That's results oriented thinking which is a fairly bad thing. Winning a tournament generally doesn't prove anything.
fixedUnfortunately, Legacy players are like the players of every other format, except they're worse at magic and don't have enough meaningful tournaments to prove they know what they are talking about.
I thought the article was pretty good. The sentence in question about premier was him just trying to make a decent hook. I do think that READERS should have some accountability and understand that the opening paragraph needs some controversy and not to take it too seriously.
I do think that the first paragraph was a real bag of shit, though, even without the premier fiasco.
Seriously? I can't believe I didn't stop reading right there. You might as well have said, "I woke with a start, covered in sweat. Peering out my window, I could see the dawn breaking and the dew drops glistened on the lawn. Nestled between two blades of grass, I saw a dumb fucking cliché." Anyway, the rest of the article is a really solid primer.Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles. I didn't intend much with the Demigod of Revenge deck but it became, [a good] deck in Legacy because of the multiple avenues of both attack and defense.
It keeps the general strategy of the matchups in focus while also digging down to some intricate expert tricks like using Stronghold to combo with Counterbalance to counter Force of Will or some of the more obscure Intuition piles and the situations where you'd look for them. Combining the two while keeping it interesting is pretty difficult, and you did a really good job Anusien.
What I really wished the article had were more headers. No heading (intro) --> The Deck --> Matchups --> Tricks (tiny section at the end). If I ever go back and want to find something out of the article, or even want to get up to take a piss halfway through, I'll be SOL finding where I left off.
At least stuff like "Strategies" "Theory" "Card Selection" "Criticisms of the Deck" would be nice. I know you won't please everyone, but I think it'd be more readable and easier to reference with more/better headings.
I also thought there were a lot of matchups you didn't get to. The section called Combo is pretty short and only talks about Ad Nauseum decks with a mention of Belcher (which is played in some AdN, I believe).
I know a big criticism of this deck's forebears was Dragon Stompy, so it was nice to see a section on that, but just talking numbers: Survival, Affinity, Dreadstill, Goyf Sligh, Wombat, Ichorid, and Loam are all undiscussed and are as common or more common than Dragon Stompy and B/x discard.
You don't have time to review all of those decks, but I feel there are a lot of questions in the air that could have been answered with a few more matchups.
as I mentioned earlier, I forgot about Painter-Stone because I typically associate it with the straight combo builds and not the EPIC Counterbalance shell. And I make fun of Dreadstill at every opportunity, so, um, yeah.
In terms of being a primer, the article was pretty good. More matchup analysis, sure, but there's so many fucking decks that it's hard to do. It was designed to fix the Dragon Stompy matchup and still beat Thresh, so that was the focus.Posting garbage like the afore mentioned article (not that I have tried to do better) in well traveled public forums like SCG scares me. People complain about the neglect our format receives. If I were new to Legacy and took this article at face value, which someone who is new to the format may - as being posted on SCG it should contain some amount of valuable material, I would be rather put off. Seriously Demigod of Revenge? With our card pool seems rather unoriginal and boring. For it to be a dominant force in the format, epic fucking fail.
If you think this is true you need to play faster.If you're using Stronghold just to put a Demigod on top as your last card to smash for fifteen, you really need to do your play testing under a fifty minute time limit.
edit:
Like, if you're slightly favorable in all three games, you're more than slightly favored in the match. Besides, it's basically ITF with a different Intuition suite. Do some extrapolation.All told, I'm incredulous about a deck that's been worked on primarily by two people, with no strong tournament showing and with an outdated matchup list posted. As far as I was able to tell, the deck only does exceedingly well in the Threshold matchup, but since Thresh seems to be the worst deck in the format now in terms of its matchups, I'd say that this would seem a pretty poor choice. All the other matches seem to be prefaced with "Slightly," which is never a good sign. Furthermore, I don't buy the argument that you'd win enough after sideboarding to swing a significant number of matches in your favor. If you lose game one, you have to win two more games, whereas they only need to win one. With that kind of math, I'd really want to see "post-board is exceedingly favorable" to "post-board is a total blowout," ESPECIALLY if the first game is so close.
also I did basically no work but I did top four a thirty person tournament with it respeck imo.
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Uhhm...whoa. I would like to think that part of the issue lies in the fact that legacy is notably more diverse than standard and extended have been in an excruciatingly long time and as a result a lot more issues fall into the category of conjecture.Unfortunately, Legacy players are like the players of every other format, except they're worse at magic and don't have enough meaningful tournaments to prove they know what they are talking about.
If legacy was a bullshit format like standard or 1.x and had extremely well-defined tiers of decks, you might find a lot less division and cynicism in the player base...I have been keeping up with extended and standard a lot, despite loathing them profoundly and the second tier of competitive decks showing for top-level tournies has been disappearing faster and faster.
The question with the most variables will earn a more lively and lengthy debate and extremely controlled formats like standard and [more recently] extended have little in this. People with the big tech in PTQ constructed formats tend to keep it to themselves as a rule. The general impression I have gotten from legacy since I started getting more into it seems to be people trying to keep tech to themselves, but more often than not, they crack and get excited and share it at one point or another.
Maybe all of this is just me because I consider most of the people on this site and the legacy format in general to be a better overall class of person and player than enthusiasts of Standard and [the more recent] Extended.
What I am getting at is that if you give some dipshit something simple to debate, chances are he will be more apt at it. Give that same dipshit something more complicated and everything goes to shit. Even randoms that I play on MWS seem to have a better grasp of rules (I know, I know) than the randoms I'd play when I used to test standard extensively in anticipation of the next PTQ.
-It could be about four of anything and I would agree.
There really aren't many big tournaments for Legacy. The best thing you can really hope for is an 1800 rating (useless) and your creation in the Decks to Beat list or maybe a quotation in someone's signature.People with the big tech in PTQ constructed formats tend to keep it to themselves as a rule. The general impression I have gotten from legacy since I started getting more into it seems to be people trying to keep tech to themselves, but more often than not, they crack and get excited and share it at one point or another.
I don't think it's because Legacy players are friendlier or something, I really think it's because there just aren't many big tournaments, so saving tech isn't a benefit. For me, anyway, I like the designing and the theory much more than I like playing, and I'm interested to find out if my creations can stand up to the rest of the format.
I like the article. Writers express their thoughts and you don't have to agree with them all the times.
Played the deck myself in a tournament and fast decks like Goyfsligh give you serious headches, so I would fix this in the sideboard with more spot removal maybe. against control this deck is a beast. Never had any problems to win against dedicated control decks due to the Raven's Crime/Loam mini-combo. I played a second Crime in the sideboard because this card performs well even without Loam.
I don't think its the best combo-control deck but its definately underplayed.
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