That's crazy. Why would anyone ever play MODO?Originally Posted by Meekrab
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
Because their collections are on there? *shrug*
Not really. You need duals in order to make fetches any good, and if more people pick up fetches there will be more demand for duals. Limited access to Reserved List-protected cards is still going to be a problem.
It is probably going to be exactly like Dragon's Maze. They said the basic land slot may contain non-basics, which suggests to me that they'll use the common-uncommon-rare frequency when distributing these, except it'll be basic-gainland-fetch instead. If they do that, fetches will be about as rare as DGM shocks were.
Fetches are pretty solid fixers in two color lists with basics. They're not ideal, but they enable things like Brainstorm+Fetch and lower the barrier to entry into Modern, which is probably going to be important to Legacy's long term growth. A deck like UR Delver can run reasonably well on something like 2 Steam Vents, 1 Volc, 1 (additional) basic, so a modern UR player can port their tier 1 deck into a tier 1 Legacy deck for ~$500-550 (1 Volc, 4 FoW) which is a much less scary amount than full freight on a Legacy deck. It's not a huge boost for Eternal formats, but I'll take what I can get.
Ugh, I feel like I retell this every time it comes up, but I've tried the 'Modern mana in Legacy' thing and it is disastrous. Forget Wasteland for a second; if you Conley Woods your way through the first three turns that's 9 life. Maybe a newer two-color deck wouldn't need to punch itself in the face like my old GRW Zoo deck did, but it's wishful thinking to suggest that shocklands and fetches get along well in Legacy. There really is no besting that 1 life payment for fixing your land without strings attached.
I do think that two vs. three colors is significant for the reason that a two color deck can usually get by (at least initially) on two basics. Zoo is/was relatively color and land type (for Nacatl and Kird Ape) intensive relative to something like UR which can run (albeit with some difficulty) on Island + Mountain or off of Volc + either basic. It's not great in the face of Wasteland, but it's also a bridge proposition.
More generally, I think that we'll only continue to grow the format by getting Modern players into Legacy as they stay in the game longer and decide they want the things that Legacy provides that Modern doesn't (more brokenness, larger card pool, a more traditional sort of Magic), so anything that helps Modern (which I'm sure is/was one of the big drivers of the Onslaught fetch reprints) will hopefully help Legacy in the long run. Anything that isn't a substitution of Modern for Legacy, anyway.
More cheap decks would help the growth of Legacy as long as they're interesting to play - Burn is cheap, but miserable for both parties.
Basically decks that don't have to heavily rely on duals or other RL staples.
I agree with the sentiment if not the specifics, which is why I like UR Delver so much. It buys people into the most versatile staple in the format (Force) without requiring 6-10 duals or other pricey doodads like Show and Tell.
Dragon's Maze had, I think, one shock every 20 boosters; I would expect the same here. Just enough so that people get them but not as much as Khans.
There are plenty of cards Wizards could re-print (Force, Waste, Port, Karakas) to make entry into Legacy fairly cheap. Until that point all they are really doing is pushing Modern which has the benefit of making cross format staples cheaper. There will always be a bottleneck around duels but you can make decks that do not use many or even any; for example Gamble Lands only has a couple of Taiga (Tabernacle could be a problem though) and D&T has no dual lands. Counter-burn decks could be constructed to run off a single Volcanic and make more use of Blood Moon. None of them might be ideal decks but if the key non-reserve cards were reprinted it would make entry to Legacy better.
My Legacy Decks of choice: Pox, Miracles, D&T or Lands.
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I played BUG Delver (No Basics) with 3 Wastelands, 2 Watery Graves, and an Overgrown Tomb. Against Burn I went T1 Grave Delver, Daze, Grave untapped, and won. My opponent got a free Fireblast. I played UW Control with Fountains over Tundras and ended up T8ing at 4-1, losing to Jund in the T8. It really doesn't matter. I might play Storm now that I have my Deltas.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
Bad example to prove that Shocklands are decent substitutes. Try play control or Storm with Shocks and see how Shocks affect your ability to use life as a resource for additional turns or Ad Nauseam
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Any deck playing Daze is unplayable without real lands, Yes, the poor player may return the basic Island, and keep the Steam Vents in play, but this is pretty often impossible due to the several factors like low lands count (and thus a need to play w/e the lad I got here and now), color requirements (and thus need for a dual to have both Bolt and Daze), anything else.
There are definitely lists that might operate on shocks maybe even supporting three colors, and those are called Nic Fit. I'm not exactly sure about the power level of that archetype, but looking at what the deck plays, I think that it might pretty well work with as little as one each of GB, WB and GW shock, not to speak about plaing green-black that maybe doesn't even need a dual/shock at all. Yes, it'll be limited, and it will be weak, but if the challenge is to build viable multicolored deck without duals, then Nic Fit might be solid, right? And yes, I know that there are monocolor or "colorless" decks like Burn or Affi, ones that are maybe even better than Nic Fit. My point is that IF there's a Legacy viable deck with nowadays cardpool that can work without ABU duals, than GB Explorer might be the one.
A small remark: I wouldn't call the post-Khans meta with its predictable decks and robotic gameplay "a more traditional sort of Magic", but it's a nitpick, I know...
Yes. Shocklands in Legacy are STRICTLY inferior. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary does nothing to change the obvious. There are simple ways to print lands that largely alleviate that issue without violating either the spirit or the letter of the reserved list. Annoyingly, Wizards has shown no interest in exploring these options. Doing such a thing would make Legacy far more accessible. Modern continues to get clear help in improving accessibility. One can draw but a single conclusion as to the intentions of the company.
With the infuriating practice of working hard to make this a monochromatic environment, I am rather sick about it all.
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You can't port the shocklands into Legacy and have the lists they're in do anything well. The only exception I've seen was a mediocre Death's Shadow list that wanted to hit itself hard for life early on.
There are a couple of people who occasionally play their Modern UR Delver lists in the Legacy locals and after I realize what they're doing I let them play the Steam Vents as Volcanic Islands because otherwise they lose the race every time.
I tried playing UR Delver with only 2 Volcanics some time ago and it was horrible. I faced Wasteland all day and it came to the point where I couldn't fetch the lands I needed and couldn't cast all the spells in a single turn because I had a bunch of basics in play.
Later on I added a shockland to it, and it was even worse as I drew that crap every game and had to take 2 every time.
Nobody likes to play budget decks. That is no long term solution for anything.
My point about UR was an aside at best. Also, I think your experience isn''t really representative, but again, an aside. That being said, aside from The Source's chronic malcontents and (apparently) conspiracy theorists, what's good for Modern is (in the long run) good for Legacy, and more fetchlands are good for Modern.
Yep. I still believe that the only possible solution is a reprint of the duals at the very least, anything else than that will simply spell a death sentence over the format in years to come. Otoh, except for the staples lost in shuffle, there's no way how the number of cards in existence will dramatically decrease over the time of our lives, so it's not like we should be extremely caring about the future of the format. I mean: yes it sucks that the prices are absurd, but we used to bitch back when duals were for 12 bucks each and look, the game still exists, something something 4000 ppl GP.
Legacy will become a special people's affair, that's for sure. As long as you got your cards, you should be doing fine. The only thing that really matters is that the old gentlemen will vanish en masse (family issues, death of an old age, shitty gameplay, etc.) while there will be very few new players who can afford the crazy Eternal stuff. Legacy turns back into the state of cca mid-2000's and the lgs evenings (probably held by casual-competitive crowds) will sport as many as twelve particiants, "Just like the good old times, man," or any other Tsumi-like comment. :-)
For the most part of the last two years I firmly believed that WotC already spotted the issue and that they'll try to fix this. Never I believed that they're either ignorant of or even actively encouraging this state of affairs. This led me to a decission to "sell the RL stuff while it is still expensive, omg sky is falling!" and to rebuy it further down the road once the post-reprints prices hit the bottom.
A silly idea, yes, have all the fun you wish to. In return I'd be laughning while the format dies; if I cannot have fun (oh, thanks for Treasure Cruise, btw), then nobody will.
And speaking of reprints: they've done that with the fetches, so maybe I wasn't THAT wrong. Still shame the lost money...
Tin foil hat aside, what's your opinion on why WotC do not reprint their ABU money?
WotC supporting Modern to a greater extent is a mixed bag for Legacy. On the plus side, it provides a good stepping stone format between Standard and Legacy, which both aids in player retention while easing people into this format. On the other hand, it also provides people an outlet who feel like Legacy is too expensive; I've personally seen several people cash out of Legacy for Modern in part because the high cost of this format locked them into decks that fell out of being competitive, or because they didn't have enough staples to build fully optimized versions of good decks. While there are many good Legacy cards that Wizards could reprint to support Modern (Delver, Thoughtseize, Snapcaster, etc.), many of the most expensive Legacy cards - the ones that really limit what decks you can build - either aren't Modern-playable (Force, Wasteland, Port, etc.) or are Reserved List protected (duals, LED, niche cards like Cradle, Tabernacle, etc.). Reprinting cards out of the first group in a Legacy Masters-type set only really enables you to build some Tier II or III decks like Death and Taxes, Burn, or Merfolk; for decks like XBlade, Delver, control, and most combo you will still need to acquire duals and possible other cards WotC won't reprint because of the Reserved List. Because of that, a Legacy Masters could very well make the format more expensive as people try to chase cards with a finite supply and no chances of reprints. As the financial barrier to entry goes up, more people will stay in Modern rather than progressing on to Legacy.
Shocks won't be competitive as long as duals are in the format. You could take the drastic action of banning the duals to make the mana cheaper, but that would have a bunch of drastic effects that would necessitate further bannings (have you ever Wastelanded a shock after someone took two? Feels good, man). As long as the cost to running additional colors remains low, mono-color decks will usually be at a disadvantage to multicolor decks, which means you'll still need duals if you want to be truly competitive.
The letter, maybe. What ways would there be to fix it without violating the spirit of the Reserved List? Even cards like Reverberate are now apparently considered against the spirit, as are gold-bordered cards.
All BS anyways. If they hated the reserved list as much as they claim & consider it a mistake as is often stated, they wouldn't have a problem violating the spirit. The "spirit" claim is just Wizards talking out of their ass. At the end of the day, they could easily support Legacy if they wanted to. It all comes down to money and they've decided that supporting Legacy is not the way to go.
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