[Article] Eternal Europe: What Legacy Needs

[xfxf]

By looking at the responses in the thread it seems that what Legacy and Legacy players most need is good reasons to play non blue colors more. Despite being a blue player and an avid defender of Brainstorm I can agree with this. If you take a look at the most consistent DTBs since the banning of Mental Misstep you have these decks:

Maverick
UWx Stoneblade
RUG
Dredge
Sneak&Show
Reanimator
BUG variants
ANT

There's only Dredge and Maverick being non blue. If I leave Dredge out since it is its own unique thing the only non-blue deck which is consistently good in Legacy is Maverick. In that regard I agree with the need for more diversity in the format. All the black decks, red decks are Tier 2 and lower. If I have the cards or the means to acquire the cards why would I stick to any other deck other than these usual suspects from a competitive point of view? Yes there have been other DTBs in the past 12 months like Nic Fit, Goblins, Merfolks etc. but their success is meta dependent whereas decks with blue cores are always there, adapting and evolving.

It would be exciting to see a, say black control deck or red combo/aggro deck like Painter, establish itself in the upper Tiers just like Maverick over time and become a staple strategy in the format.

[Lemnear]

By looking at the responses in the thread it seems that what Legacy and Legacy players most need is good reasons to play non blue colors more. Despite being a blue player and an avid defender of Brainstorm I can agree with this. If you take a look at the most consistent DTBs since the banning of Mental Misstep you have these decks:

Maverick
UWx Stoneblade
RUG
Dredge
Sneak&Show
Reanimator
BUG variants
ANT

There's only Dredge and Maverick being non blue. If I leave Dredge out since it is its own unique thing the only non-blue deck which is consistently good in Legacy is Maverick. In that regard I agree with the need for more diversity in the format. All the black decks, red decks are Tier 2 and lower. If I have the cards or the means to acquire the cards why would I stick to any other deck other than these usual suspects from a competitive point of view? Yes there have been other DTBs in the past 12 months like Nic Fit, Goblins, Merfolks etc. but their success is meta dependent whereas decks with blue cores are always there, adapting and evolving.

It would be exciting to see a, say black control deck or red combo/aggro deck like Painter, establish itself in the upper Tiers just like Maverick over time and become a staple strategy in the format.

As long as WotC considers Black the Color of discard, creature removal and overcosted drawback demons i doubt it's going to be more than a Splash-Color. The last remarkable Black creatures were tombstalker, griselbrand and confidant.

WotC stripped Black from rituals, tutors and the "Life for Profit"-philosophy for years and every time they use those concepts again something strong appears (Bob, griz, infernal Tutor, ad nauseam).

Don't see WotC trying to Explore the Edge between overcosted crap and awesome in black

[Aggro_zombies]

That's useful, seriously, my point was if you're going to complain about color balance and power creep in legacy leaving red and black behind as colors then you need to find the design elements that actually address the issue instead of bitching. If you have any better suggestions I'm all ears, I just don't see any point in bringing attention to an issue we're all already aware of unless you're going to put something forward to correct the problem.

So what is red and black missing in legacy that you could print in standard and address the issue for legacy without imbalancing standard?

See, the problem is, it's easy to say, "We need in-color counterparts to things like Brainstorm for non-blue colors," but it's very difficult to implement them in practice. On the one hand, your solutions need to be comparable in power to Brainstorm in power, or else it's better to just run blue for Brainstorm; on the other hand, they can't be too good in blue decks, or they'll suffer from the Mental Misstep problem. GSZ is certainly a start, but it's a dead end since you don't want to have your environment be rife with tutoring. Furthermore, GSZ is not really comparable at all to Brainstorm/Ponder in terms of function: GSZ is a build-around card while Brainstorm and Ponder are cheap, one-shot smoothing effects, something basically no other color has.

Red is the closest with Faithless Looting, but the template for that is currently discard then draw, which is so much worse than the blue options as to be nigh unplayable in decks that aren't some sort of combo variant. Black's cantrips have all cost two or more mana in addition to life, and are thus unplayable, but it's pretty clear to me that the specter of Necropotence haunts the color and WotC is afraid to push the envelope too far there lest it come back to life. However, without good, cheap filtering, the other colors are pretty doomed to marginalization. That means you pretty much have to break color pie to give it to them, which is ultimately bad for the game.

Also, some of the suggestions people have been floating in this thread have already been shot down by MaRo on his tumblr - red counterspells, for example.

[nedleeds]

By looking at the responses in the thread it seems that what Legacy and Legacy players most need is good reasons to play non blue colors more.

It would be exciting to see a, say black control deck or red combo/aggro deck like Painter, establish itself in the upper Tiers just like Maverick over time and become a staple strategy in the format.

Why play Painter without Brainstorm? It's a 2 card combo deck and Brainstorm is (given that Demonic Tutor / Consultation are banned) the best salve for any 2 card combo. Shuffle back redundant pieces and extra lands.

Cards that punish the cantrips might do it, but if they aren't carefully designed they'll just end up being used in the same decks.

Priest of Mephistopheles - Human Cleric - B

If an opponent has drawn more than one card this turn you may play Priest of Mephistopheles as though it had flash.

When Priest of Mephistopheles enters the battlefield target opponent discards a number of cards equal to the number of cards he has drawn this turn.

1/1

So as a dry 1/1 played during your main phase, he doesn't have much applicability. He can't be Spell Pierced.

You say this guy is a good anti-ponder / brainstorm cards, but he'll just end up in a blue deck.

[xfxf]

Imperial Painter utilizes Moon effects, that's why splashing blue might not be the best idea in that particular deck but that's not the point, I wasn't talking about the current Painter deck rising up to Tier 1 anyways. It was just a hypotethical example.

[Ignithas_]

Why play Painter without Brainstorm? It's a 2 card combo deck and Brainstorm is (given that Demonic Tutor / Consultation are banned) the best salve for any 2 card combo. Shuffle back redundant pieces and extra lands.

Cards that punish the cantrips might do it, but if they aren't carefully designed they'll just end up being used in the same decks.

Priest of Mephistopheles - Human Cleric - B

If an opponent has drawn more than one card this turn you may play Priest of Mephistopheles as though it had flash.

When Priest of Mephistopheles enters the battlefield target opponent discards a number of cards equal to the number of cards he has drawn this turn.

1/1

So as a dry 1/1 played during your main phase, he doesn't have much applicability. He can't be Spell Pierced.

You say this guy is a good anti-ponder / brainstorm cards, but he'll just end up in a blue deck.

You could use the phrase "The controler of xy can't play U sorceries or instant spells".

[Mr Miagi]

@ Mon,Goblin Chief: I think the last 4 pages of this thread is why Wizards shouldn't take notes from the MtG players

[Ignithas_]

@ Mon,Goblin Chief: I think the last 4 pages of this thread is why Wizards shouldn't take notes from the MtG players

I think the last post of this thread is why some people believe that magic player are nerds that don't get women

[Darkenslight]

I suspect that what Red needed was for the Instant/Sorcery shenanigans of the past ten years to have been fully in Red. So, no Twincast, no Delver of Secrets and no Snapcaster Mage in Blue. Red should have mastery over spells, rather than Blue, which gets to counter anything. So Red gets all the Fork-type spells, gets cards similar to Envelop, and gets more cards like Kiln Fiend.

White should get the "imposition of law" cards, with Black as a secondary, for different reasons: White gets them as the Justice color, and Black gets them as "imposition of power" effects.

Green should be predominantly the color of mana-ramp and Undercosted fatties, and have absolute control over creatures. So, in my opinion, it should have cards that counter creature spells, cards that can destroy other creatures (the flavor being that Green is putting the thing down, rather than the callous murder of Black and the defensive nature of White's removal currently). IT should also have the "Best" creatures. Like, for example, Thrun, the Last Troll and Troll Ascetic.

Blue should ideally stick to being the color with the best control elements but not the best of everything. So it should be the mastery of general permission and bounce, and have generally "weak" creatures excepting the tribal synergies of, for example, Merfolk.

Black should become the color of "it can get everything....at a cost". Whether that cost is in permanents, life or cards is determined by the surrounding environment. IT should have access to a Channel-like effect. Cards like Reprocess fit in with this flavour, as do cards like Diabolic Intent.

IT's an interesting long-term design plan, to be sure. But there should be rare times when this bleeds over: for example, [cards]Gelectrode[/card] would be a good example of a reprint under this design policy.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

That means you pretty much have to break color pie to give it to them, which is ultimately bad for the game.

Cycling, Scry, Urza's/Mishra's Baubles, and Top. Look at things like Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library...the precedent and design for card selection exists, all that needs to occur is some good development of cards that use these mechanics to give other colors more ability to combat variance. It might not be as good as Blue's, but at least some playables could give rise to new brews that don't go Blue.

Plus, the color pie is already broken in Legacy. Blue does everything. Aggressive critters, card draw, countermagic, cheat-into-play-effects, hand disruption, tribal aggro, and more. And thanks to fetch/dual manabases and a huge catalogue of cards from the ages, it can easily splash to shore up anything it's only "okay" at.

Also, some of the suggestions people have been floating in this thread have already been shot down by MaRo on his tumblr - red counterspells, for example.

So? This discussion is already in magical fantasy land because Wizards doesn't give two shits about Legacy and would never implement any ideas, no matter how good, because there is little incentive for them to push Legacy as a format. This is all hypothetical.

[Jenni]

Cycling, Scry, Urza's/Mishra's Baubles, and Top. Look at things like Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library...the precedent and design for card selection exists, all that needs to occur is some good development of cards that use these mechanics to give other colors more ability to combat variance. It might not be as good as Blue's, but at least some playables could give rise to new brews that don't go Blue.
Plus, the color pie is already broken in Legacy. Blue does everything. Aggressive critters, card draw, countermagic, cheat-into-play-effects, hand disruption, tribal aggro, and more. And thanks to fetch/dual manabases and a huge catalogue of cards from the ages, it can easily splash to shore up anything it's only "okay" at. .

The problem with using all those other mechanics and ideas to help other colours, though, is that blue gets all these things too... brainstorm, fetches, and duals, basically means blue can splash for whatever it wants, unless they cost it at, like double-colour or something (which, alone, makes it rough compared to blue's cheap cantrips and filtering). They would definitely help, a lot, but blue still wins in the end.

I love legacy, but I do not play it for the colour balance.
I think, at this point, there is no way for the other colours to catch up to blue, other than a mass of bannings, which would be worse for the format than just letting blue reign. Over the years, blue has found it's way into every facet of magic, to some extent, and the things it doesn't do well, it can splash easily through draw manipulation and the powerful mana available in the format. Blue has the best card quality spells, the best draw, now it has one of the best aggressive creatures(delver), it has most (all?) of the stack-based control worth using, now it has snapcaster, to get more use out of all their already great spells, and it has the best way to cheat something rediculous into play (show and tell)... what does it actually need? removal, easy - splash swords off fetches and tundras. Bigger creatures to cast fairly? Toss in a goyf splashed off tropical islands + fetches.
Weather blue should have all those things, I don't think so, and I REALLY hope they fix the colour-pie violations in standard (blue should not have a 3/2 flyer for 1, or the best grave recursion (snapcaster) available to standard.), but it's too late to fix the shattered remains of the colour pie in the world of legacy.

As I said earlier in the thread, though, I think the imbalance is a bit overstated - there are solid, playable decks without blue, they typically aren't "as good" as the blue decks (some arguably are on the same level, though), but for those of us who get bored playing forces and brainstorms in every deck, there are other options, and with some skill and metagaming they can win sometimes.

[Namida]

As I said earlier in the thread, though, I think the imbalance is a bit overstated - there are solid, playable decks without blue, they typically aren't "as good" as the blue decks (some arguably are on the same level, though), but for those of us who get bored playing forces and brainstorms in every deck, there are other options, and with some skill and metagaming they can win sometimes.

I think that it's a bit odd that you think that the perception of the color imbalance is overblown, yet you also seem to believe that the main reasons *not* to play blue are because you've gotten bored of playing blue/want to win tournaments with the difficulty cranked up to "hard mode" or something.

You seem to be resigned to the fate of blue reign, and you might be right for doing so since it appears that R&D is either lazy or just downright inconsiderate. I don't want to just say "Blue gets it all," but every time I get attacked by Insectile Aberration on turn two, I just have to wonder why this Aberration saw print.

[Jenni]

You seem to be resigned to the fate of blue reign

About sums it up, yes.
I say it's overblown, because if, for whatever reason, you chose not to play blue, you still have options, which a lot of people seem to ignore or not acknowledge. Blue is still pretty far ahead of the other colours though.

you might be right for doing so since it appears that R&D is either lazy or just downright inconsiderate

I don't know if I would say they are lazy or inconsiderate. At this point, I don't think they could reasonably fix the colour imbalance in legacy. They could potentially go on a banning spree, but I think doing that would cause too many problems in the format... blue is the strongest colour, but, without blue in it's current seat of power.. what happens? Blue keeps players fair - Force of will especially is a huge part of keeping the "I win" decks in check. Brainstorm helps dig for answers as often as it helps dig for combo pieces. Delver and snapcaster we could do without, since the format was fine before them, but I don't know that the format gets any better without them, they're powerful cards, but given the power level in legacy already, they aren't really breaking the format, and even without them blue was ahead of the other colours.
So, it's not unreasonable for them to just count legacy as a blue format, and focus on trying to balance Standard, Extended(if that's still a thing), and modern.

Regarding stuff like delver and snapcaster, though, I think those were pretty serious mistakes for colour balance in standard, moreso than here in legacy, and I really expect more from wizards R&D in terms of keeping things fair in standard. Since that is a format that is correctable - stuff rotates out, mistakes get buried in the past, and the format refreshes itself every couple months - there is a lot of room for R&D to realize they messed up, and correct those problems in the future, but I don't really see much from them in terms of recognizing delver as a bad idea (really.. an aggresive 3/2 flyer for 1, that gets better from instants... in blue? how was that not a bad idea for standard? -.-).

[Namida]

The issue that I'm having about your opinion is that you seem to be thinly veiling a belief that it's almost idiotic to opt *not* to play blue, despite trying to argue that non-blue decks are a viable choice.

I agree with you in that I'm not sure there's not much to be done about it at this point, but I think it's folly to say "The notion of color balance is overblown" only then to go "And blue is by far the best color" in the same breath.

The reason I was being critical of R&D here is that blue is already the best color, yet they just can't seem to put a cork in the fountain that is ridiculous blue cards. Delver is an abomination that I don't think should have seen print. I'm willing to forgive Snapcaster to some extent only because it's an Invitational card, but they definitely expressed concerns about it's power level. Another example is Temporal Mastery--it turned out to be a dud, but they were expressing that they had serious concerns about the card's power level, as well.

You may be correct in that the aforementioned cards may not be format breaking because blue's dominance has reached a level where it doesn't even matter...but when you have a dam and it breaks, I don't think the next move should be to just say "fuck it" and go play in the water. I dislike your approach on the matter because it gives WotC free reign to actually not care at all about how the blue cards they print affect other formats, and that is my main criticism about how they design cards right now. I don't advocate the bannings that you assume would be required to actually bring blue back down to earth, but I also don't advocate giving up on gradually working toward actually trying to make some sort of balance happen.

[Lord Seth]

(really.. an aggresive 3/2 flyer for 1, that gets better from instants... in blue? how was that not a bad idea for standard? -.-).

If Standard didn't happen to have Ponder and Mana Leak in it at the same time, I don't think Delver would have had much of an impact. For example, Delver had very little impact in Block. Delver of Secrets (for Standard) by itself is honestly not that amazing of a card.

Another example is Temporal Mastery--it turned out to be a dud, but they were expressing that they had serious concerns about the card's power level, as well.

Where?

[Darkenslight]

If Standard didn't happen to have Ponder and Mana Leak in it at the same time, I don't think Delver would have had much of an impact. For example, Delver had very little impact in Block. Delver of Secrets (for Standard) by itself is honestly not that amazing of a card.

And yet, Delver/Snapcaster is probably the most potent creature 1-2 since Ravager/Disciple in Block.

Where?

In the preview article for the card. That's why it costs so damn much vanilla (5UU).

[Kich867]

I'm highly dubious about this card. Even if you consider Reverberate to be overcosted, you're still taking an already-existing card considered to be fair, making it cost less, and then adding a 2/1 creature on top of that. It all seems a bit much.

How is it a bit much?

Dark Confidant is literally Dark Tutelage that costs less and has a body, the whole "copy/steal something for a turn" is a pretty sweet aspect of Red that needs some serious attention. Standard has the right moves with Zealous Conscripts and similar effects, but a legacy-playable reverberate would be pretty god damn awesome.

I also don't see the point to make cards so heavily biased against blue, Goyf, Bob, SFM, they can all be (and are) played in blue decks while still being absurdly good in non-blue decks...

Could a blue deck run this theoretical wizard? Yes. But it would give non-blue decks a serious answer to a lot of Blue's answers. You now have a creature that can counter other counters, it can double up on your burn and put a body down, there's a nearly unlimited list of absurd things you could do with that card that don't even involve blue. Hell a card like that may almost make some kind of Team Italia land destruction deck viable between Raze and Sinkhole..

[FieryBalrog]

Wizard's meticulous concern for the color pie goes out the window when it comes to Blue more than any other color.

Why does Blue have the best tribal aggro in Eternal? And I mean there's only two other tribes that even comes close. Isn't blue supposed to be the WORST tribal aggro color and white the best; what's white's best tribe, soldiers? (lol)

Why did they print Insectile Abberation? Time to give the best aggro one drop in the game to blue! Roll over, Wild Nacatl.

Also, Show and Tell? Is this the least blue card ever? There was a time in the game when Wizards almost literally threw up their hands and went, "this card is kinda weird, so, uh, it's blue I guess." Especially Urza's block, Jesus Christ. Show and Tell is especially stupid since the effect was pretty obviously already in green.

[rufus]

Why does Blue have the best tribal aggro in Eternal? And I mean there's only two other tribes that even comes close. Isn't blue supposed to be the WORST tribal aggro color and white the best; what's white's best tribe, soldiers? (lol)

Blue doesn't have strong tribal aggro. Merfolk is an aggro/control deck that preys on decks which use islands.

Why did they print Insectile Abberation? Time to give the best aggro one drop in the game to blue! Roll over, Wild Nacatl.

The theory that makes the most sense to me is that it was printed to push transform cards on competitive players. (Have any of the other transform cards made a splash?)

[Koby]

The theory that makes the most sense to me is that it was printed to push transform cards on competitive players. (Have any of the other transform cards made a splash?)

Huntmaster of the Fells, but your point is still valid. Transform is just a gimmick in most players' eyes. It was forced and everyone knows it.