[Free Article] The Best Card in Legacy

[voltron00x]

In which the author lists the 10 best cards in Legacy in order, with special attention to number 1 and why it is number 1, and the next 10 in no order, leaving your favorite off the list and provoking your wrath.

Also some additional thought on Mental Misstep. This article was written and submitted before BoM and the SCG Open this past weekend, and I hope to write something additional given those results.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...In_Legacy.html

[Michael Keller]

I think it is a crime you not only left Dark Confidant off that list, but neglected to even mention it in the "Honor Roll" category.

No excuses.

[luckme10]

Needs more Bob.. honorable mention at least. Actually, just look at the source's banner.






Edit: So Hollywood beat me to the above remark (by 1 minute), and I thought about taking it out. But then I thought, "Naw, just leave it up there to reiterate its emphasis of importance."

[voltron00x]

Bob has 16 Legacy Open top 8s this year. It's a pretty solid number for this year, and a good resurgence, but not overwhelming. There were long chunks of time where Bob wasn't that relevant, to be honest; card was mostly MIA for 2010 (trumped by Mystical Tutor and Survival).

Anyway - What would you cut? I mean, I obviously didn't craft this list to provoke actual, honest-to-God conversation, right?

It's not about me making "excuses" for MY list, it's about you rationalizing yours.

Sheesh, the Internet, am I right?

In any case, I'm cool with Bob in the top 20, but probably doesn't make the cut for top 10.

[bakofried]

PM'ed you for Elves commentary.

While I agree with a good bit of your list, I think that a top-ten list right now is either bad or perfect timing. It's perfect because it captures the meta prior to this momentous change that is New Phyrexia, and it's bad timing because the meta will immediately change.

[Michael Keller]

Bob has 16 Legacy Open top 8s this year. It's a pretty solid number for this year, and a good resurgence, but not overwhelming. There were long chunks of time where Bob wasn't that relevant, to be honest; card was mostly MIA for 2010 (trumped by Mystical Tutor and Survival).

Anyway - What would you cut? I mean, I obviously didn't craft this list to provoke actual, honest-to-God conversation, right?

It's not about me making "excuses" for MY list, it's about you rationalizing yours.

Sheesh, the Internet, am I right?

In any case, I'm cool with Bob in the top 20, but probably doesn't make the cut for top 10.

Dark Confidant has a more wide utility in a variety of decks and doesn't require a list to be exclusively built around it, like Counterbalance would necessitate. It serves as the premiere source of card advantage and its cost makes it splashable in just about any deck seeking an edge with the aforementioned. It sees a wide variance of inclusion in more competitive decks in today's meta, and quite frankly the whole "MIA" for 2010 thing doesn't mean a thing considering where the format is today.

2010 is nonexistent and cannot be used as a tool for discussion as that era is now ancient in terms of comparability to today's general meta. The premiere decks of 2010 are effectively dead, so that is negligible. You've placed Mental Misstep on your list, so we can assume you are referencing today's meta and not yesterday's - yesterday's being last year (or month, for that matter).

Look, if you post an article and advertise your writing, you're going to experience a level of feedback criticizing some of your points - or lack thereof. No one is being confrontational, but in all fairness you are the one who needs to rationalize your choices a little more decisively because, well, you wrote the article. I think you overlooked this card (come on now, you would have honestly placed it in the Honor Roll category if you gave it consideration; no one in their right mind would leave this card out without giving it at least a nod as it is arguably the most powerful stationary draw engine in Legacy and has been for quite some time).

You're entitled to your opinion, but you should think in terms of where your validity is flawed in respect to these cards' own meta value as opposed to where people think they belong on the list. Dark Confidant has shown - and placed - in mass quantities and has nearly doubled in value over the course of a few months. It has found homes in decks ranging from Combo sideboards all the way to general Mono Black variants.

Putting up a wall to try and force me to rationalize why Bob deserves to be in the Top Ten cards in Legacy is effectively ludicrous; I challenge you to explain more in depth why you feel as though the now-absentee Counterbalance deserves a spot in your list.

Could your bias be based on your style of play or preference of deck choice?

What makes it so good on its own merit (as you've explained) to make it worthy of a spot that high?

[clavio]

Who is the target audience? I dont really see anybody from the eternal community giving a crap about this and its not too helpful for new players.

I know I certainly didnt give a crap. Brainstorm gets played alot? Wasteland is good against greedy manabases? Fuck me sideways!

[voltron00x]

Dark Confidant has a more wide utility in a variety of decks and doesn't require a list to be exclusively built around it, like Counterbalance would necessitate. It serves as the premiere source of card advantage and its cost makes it splashable in just about any deck seeking an edge with the aforementioned. It sees a wide variance of inclusion in more competitive decks in today's meta, and quite frankly the whole "MIA" for 2010 thing doesn't mean a thing considering where the format is today.

2010 is nonexistent and cannot be used as a tool for discussion as that era is now ancient in terms of comparability to today's general meta. The premiere decks of 2010 are effectively dead, so that is negligible. You've placed Mental Misstep on your list, so we can assume you are referencing today's meta and not yesterday's - yesterday's being last year (or month, for that matter).

Look, if you post an article and advertise your writing, you're going to experience a level of feedback criticizing some of your points - or lack thereof. No one is being confrontational, but in all fairness you are the one who needs to rationalize your choices a little more decisively because, well, you wrote the article. I think you overlooked this card (come on now, you would have honestly placed it in the Honor Roll category if you gave it consideration; no one in their right mind would leave this card out without giving it at least a nod as it is arguably the most powerful stationary draw engine in Legacy and has been for quite some time).

You're entitled to your opinion, but you should think in terms of where your validity is flawed in respect to these cards' own meta value as opposed to where people think they belong on the list. Dark Confidant has shown - and placed - in mass quantities and has nearly doubled in value over the course of a few months. It has found homes in decks ranging from Combo sideboards all the way to general Mono Black variants.

Putting up a wall to try and force me to rationalize why Bob deserves to be in the Top Ten cards in Legacy is effectively ludicrous; I challenge you to explain more in depth why you feel as though the now-absentee Counterbalance deserves a spot in your list.

Could your bias be based on your style of play or preference of deck choice?

What makes it so good on its own merit (as you've explained) to make it worthy of a spot that high?

My point was that, as a long-time contributing member of the Source, you could offer something better to an open discussion than a snide "no excuses" in your initial post. Or, am I expecting too much?

EDIT: To expand on this, I find "No excuses" to be, in fact, quite confrontational, which makes your quoted post somewhat amusing to me in that I guess my response hit home. I also assure you that 2010 did, in fact, exist.

[Michael Keller]

My point was that, as a long-time contributing member of the Source, you could offer something better to an open discussion than a snide "no excuses" in your initial post. Or, am I expecting too much?

If I was explicit in my response because you invoked a "snide" response out of me, you should be proud of yourself for eliciting such a response out of someone; it certainly means you've got at least one reader's attention.

Perhaps as a contributor to the premiere source of competitive Magic that is Star City Games, maybe you could elaborate a little more on your choices and the ones you decided to leave out on such a bold topic for the community to see. You've basically gone into a one-dimensional mode of thinking and writing with this article without explaining why you left a great portion of some of the best cards in Legacy out of the discussion without so much as a single reason why, other than this:

...You might challenge me on some, especially Glimpse of Nature, but I think time will only increase that card's power. I mean, Wizards is going to print more creatures, right? They're going to print more Elves?

Ancient Tomb should definitely be on the list, but it isn't, so complain about it in the forums.

Annnnnnnnd...that's about it in terms of "post-Honor Roll" discussion. It just makes me cringe that articles like this are not given enough thought with so much complexity and parity involved that you didn't even give a single reason why any of the cards you left out weren't included. What's worse is you never once mentioned (arguably) the best draw engine in Legacy - in a TOP TEN article!

Your credibility is on the line here, not mine. Again, your opinion is fine, but your article needs some serious explaining if you're going to market yourself and your beliefs to some very impressionable people reading them, so be a little more courteous to those who already have a strong grasp on the format and a little more informant to the people who don't know what Brainstorm even is yet.

Or, are we expecting too much?

[clavio]

I think a mich better article would have been something along the lines of the ten best cards nobody is running right now. It wouldnt even have to be cards never played, some of them could be cards that just sort of drifted away. Throw some experimental deck lists in and bam! Article is a billion times better.

[menace13]

Great article. I always read your articles but this one felt too short. Only because I wanted to keep reading.

FoW in every winning GP deck is not a surprise although I hadn't known prior.

Deckcheck was great for things like this in terms of stats. Top 50 played cards by Year/ Month/Week breakdown. FoW is always number 1 on that list and was also for Vintage. Wish that was still available(haven't checked since it went down, don't know where to). Wasteland and Brainstorm were the others along with Dual lands(Tropical Island for Legacy and U. Sea for Vintage).

Misstep was a good inclusion. It will maintain a high level of use and I think it gets on to the Most played top 5 card list.

Jace, Bob, Stifle(you did name Nought), Ponder and Dual/Fetches all belong on the honor list.

[voltron00x]

Honor Roll list was another 10, in case you're wondering. Limiting yourself to 10 cards is hard. If I said, Honor Roll: Half the format! that'd be really quite easier to do.

Ponder was on my list of 20ish that I cut to 10 for the ones in the article beyond the top 10, as was Bob, Hymn, Ancient Tomb, GSZ, and Lackey. I considered Stifle, but it had been running cold; definitely on the upswing, it seems, as is Bob.

FWIW, if Zoo or GSZ decks don't heat back up for awhile, then its easy to argue from some of the other hot cards (Metalworker, Ancient Tomb, Stifle, Bob),whereas if you're looking back for the last couple years, you have to balance past performance against what's doing well now. No one is arguing for Goblin Lackey, for example? That's astounding to me, even if the deck is admittedly quite weak atm. Or, how about GSZ?

[Michael Keller]

Limiting yourself to 10 cards is hard.

That about sums it up. I did like the article, in all honesty.

[Koby]

I enjoyed the read, but it felt like you were gushing more about Brainstorm than anything else. The card is amazing no doubt, and probably not enough strategy articles have been written maximizing its use.

That being said, thank you for continuing to offer free articles to the community. For that, we salute you Matt!

[bakofried]

I'd argue for Goblin Lackey if WotC gives me 1 more good Goblin at 2. We have Warren Instigator, who is way stronger than people give him credit for, but I need 1 more to have a strong follow-up play for getting my bomb countered.

[rufus]

I'd argue for Goblin Lackey if WotC gives me 1 more good Goblin at 2. We have Warren Instigator, who is way stronger than people give him credit for, but I need 1 more to have a strong follow-up play for getting my bomb countered.

Unban Goblin Recruiter (just kidding.)

[evanmartyr]

Worth noting that the two cards you named that trumped Bob are now banned.

[voltron00x]

So one could argue that, say, LED, Entomb, and Vengevine are theoretically more powerful than Bob. That's what makes this so hard.

Anyway, Brainstorm is the bees knees, show it some love. Peace out!

[voltron00x]

I think a mich better article would have been something along the lines of the ten best cards nobody is running right now. It wouldnt even have to be cards never played, some of them could be cards that just sort of drifted away. Throw some experimental deck lists in and bam! Article is a billion times better.

Here: Peacekeeper, Ensnaring Bridge, Nihil Spellbomb, Propaganda, Counterspell (called on Twitter before this past weekend), Trinisphere, Vendilion Clique, The Abyss, Lim-Dul's Vault, Genesis Wave.

[evanmartyr]

Not to nitpick here, but Trinisphere and Clique are both played a fair amount. I'd say Living Wish and Standstill, but after this weekend I dunno if Standstill is a fair pick :P