All B/R update speculation.

[iatee]

It's true that people want different things out of a format, and that's ultimately at the root of all the disagreements in this thread. I think if your idea of good magic is dropping a turn 1 prison piece and winning while your opponent casts literally 0 spells, playing Vintage is just a better way to achieve that. Vintage players seem to enjoy those games more and the format provides you with better cards to do it.

[Finn]

You are correct, Dice. And you are correct to say so. But you should not have to. This position should be the obvious ground upon which all the rest of these arguments are built.

Here's some more of that wisdom:

-Decks do not have a right to exist. Every complaint about card x hosing deck y is foolish.

-All combo decks seek to reduce interactivity. You are really complaining that the deck is too good at what it does. Complaining that it is not your idea of fun is just foolish.

-I should know better than to get involved in here. Commenting on these emotion-laced arguments is equally as foolish.

[Dice_Box]

Oh I do both. My plan for GP Brisbane is:
Friday, Legacy: Stax.
Saturday, Modern: Lantern.
Sunday, Vintage: Rich Shay's Stax.

I enjoy Prison. If you don't have an answer, that's on you. If you do have an answer you should win easily. I don't play Prison because it's the best option, I play it because I like it. No one I know will argue Stax is a T1 deck.

[l33twash0r]

Oh I do both. My plan for GP Brisbane is:
Friday, Legacy: Stax.
Saturday, Modern: Lantern.
Sunday, Vintage: Rich Shay's Stax.

I enjoy Prison. If you don't have an answer, that's on you. If you do have an answer you should win easily. I don't play Prison because it's the best option, I play it because I like it. No one I know will argue Stax is a T1 deck.

This is wrong place to ask this, but why Stax over Pox?

[iatee]

I enjoy Prison. If you don't have an answer, that's on you. If you do have an answer you should win easily.

I don't think it should be that difficult to understand that many people don't like playing this style of magic - whether they win or lose. I typically play decks that aren't soft to Trinisphere style prison but I still don't like being paired against it because even beating it is boring way to spend 50 minutes. Our cards play themselves, nobody makes any meaningful decisions. We're playing the card game 'War' but with fancier pictures on the cards.

[Lemnear]

I am a Prison enthusiast, so from my point of view Chailce is fine.

Except its current, and primary use (The cards primary function in Legacy is just the same which got it restricted not too long ago in vintage) isnt within a prison deck which usually have to combine several elements, but in an aggro deck. No judgement, just observation on that part. I have no problem with Chalice per sé as non 1cc removal is available.

wht you seem to seek is an idealised format where there are no Prison elements and no one is seeking to shotgun their opponent. (Not seeking to put words in you mouth Lem, just the impression I get from your posts.)

I have no problem with prison elements as I played Uba Staxx in Vintage at its time and it needed several parts to lock out an opponent which was a nice dance. What we currently have in Legacy with TKS+Chalice+Thorn is no different from the MUD vintage variant which got Chalice restricted and given the playable Legacy cardpool, its as devaststing as Workshop into Trinishphere for most decks.

As mentioned in the past with Terminus as a potential ban, I have no trouble with Chalice + Counterbalance in the metagame as long there is a balancing factor like viable aggro(-control) decks, but as long as Terminus and turn 2 4/4 eldrazi keep any aggro(-control) deck on the side lines and the only cards to remove Counterbalance through a potential FoW being Decay/Grip, it is tad ridiculous to talk about an open metagame.

Its disturbing that people welcome that Delver & Co get pushed out, with the result of more blowouts in form of Chalice/Countertop/Terminus/S&T/SneakAttack and call that "interactivity". The fact of matter is that the omnipresence of these lockout components did not cause people to "adapt", but to switch decks for a further streamlining of the metagame.

Especially you should know what I am talking about if you look at the DtB data every month.

but there is not a format in existence that is like that. There will always be a group who shew interactive play for something like Combo or hard control.

Thats why its important to keep adding anti-combo tools to the metagame. On the other hand (and as mentioned) it would be handy if there would be also added anti-Chalice/-Counterbalance options which are NOT green.

answers are often picked for their resistance to interaction. Grip is picked because of Split Second, Decay because of its inability to be counted, same for Cavern. If I want to kill a problematic permanent, I don't wish to let you decide if that permanent sticks around. As options increase, people will move to what works.

At this point we are playing Black Jack looking for cards our opponent can simply not trump by any realistical means, which brings me back to the "ideal format" which goes forth and back between players instead of "trumping" 4/4 Eldrazi with 15/15 ones and call that "interaction"

The thing is, it's not like we are talking about some massive shift in the way the format is played. For a very long time one of the top decks, Thresh, was made to remove the opponents choices and interactions. Stifle, Waste, Daze and Force used to keep the opposing player from doing anything of value.

There is a mayor difference. Thresh has always traded 1-for-1 and opted to gain strategic advantage with those trades. Countertop and Chalice trade 1-for-20 against most decks preboard and make me wonder why WotC even bothered to ban Mental Misstep which countered just ONE 1cc card instead of ALL FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

and again, I do not see why the bitching about it now. Chalice was printed more than a decade ago, Sol lands were around before then, Stompy was a deck long before Though-knot was spoiled and played to much the same plan.

For the same reason Chalice was fine in vintage before Lodestone and Thorn... or CounterTop was before Terminus.

to put it simply, I don't know what golden age of interaction your after. The age where Goblins Wasted and Ported you while ignoring everything else you did, the time Thresh was Wasting, Stifling and Dazing you out or the time Maverick was looping Wastelands and killing you with a 12/12? I don't see it. I guess at some point Iggy Pop did give you 4 cards back as they tried to kill you. Interactive.

I hope you dont seriously compare the slow KotR Wasteland-lock of Maverick with Loam+GhostQuarter or T1 chalice, T2 TKS with the old Goblin Port-Tricks

Not everyone enjoys playing with Force, Daze and Brainstorm. That means we are not going to seek massive stack fights and will find answers elsewhere.

Sure. We DO need alternatives to the cantrip galore. The current path however has lead us down the road into:

Player A: "Tomb, chalice @ 1! GG? LOL"
Player B: "Nah. Petal, Tomb, S&T. EMRAKUL! GG? LOL"
Player A: "GG"

Sorry, that as dumb as Vintage was at MUDs prime

[AznSeal]

I think the main issue here is people want to be able to play their own decks, and want their own decks to be "tier 1", but are unwilling to adept. I can only speak from an Elves perspective, but with the inclusion of Caverns, Planeswalkers, and "Chaos" elves, it made the miracles matchup more bearable.

Likewise if Chalice aggro decks ever became omnipresent, I would have no problems playing maindeck Reclamation Sage or Abrupt Decays. People just need to adapt IMO.

[Lemnear]

Adapting to the current metagame means Decay or playing something that dodges Chalice/Counterbalance like S&T. The first option locks you into (black&)green decks and the second into an even less interactive deck.

In any case the valid deck options in the metagame got narrowed down. Seemingly people welcome it simply because among the top performing decks there is only 1 blue one, which of course doesnt stop certain people to yell for a Brainstorm ban

[Fox]

I think the main issue here is people want to be able to play their own decks, and want their own decks to be "tier 1", but are unwilling to adept. I can only speak from an Elves perspective, but with the inclusion of Caverns, Planeswalkers, and "Chaos" elves, it made the miracles matchup more bearable.

Likewise if Chalice aggro decks ever became omnipresent, I would have no problems playing maindeck Reclamation Sage or Abrupt Decays. People just need to adapt IMO.

There is a difference between adapting and making a strictly worse deck, except when it's up against CB. When decks like R/G Lands and SnT are running maindeck Boseju, everything BG and fair on maindeck + postboard Decay, Cavern/Vial spam...there is a problem. This isn't adapting, it's maladapting, to a card that shouldn't be in the format.

You either have absurd mana costs, or you're don't playing magic if CB lands. In terms of the Time Vault~CB analogy, "adapting" to it as you have described is akin to having wincons designed to function without receiving turns.

[Ronald Deuce]

I think the main issue here is people want to be able to play their own decks, and want their own decks to be "tier 1", but are unwilling to adept. I can only speak from an Elves perspective, but with the inclusion of Caverns, Planeswalkers, and "Chaos" elves, it made the miracles matchup more bearable.

Likewise if Chalice aggro decks ever became omnipresent, I would have no problems playing maindeck Reclamation Sage or Abrupt Decays. People just need to adapt IMO.

That's a good point, but I feel like there's been a really long stretch in which the Legacy top slot's been held by a specific pair of cards: Counterbalance and Sensei's Divine Topdecks. And I know that those can't pull shenanigans without other cards (Miracles, Force, cantrips, etc.), but there's been ample time for decks to adapt to that pair—many have, and some haven't needed to—yet they're still the cornerstone of what is far and away the strongest deck in the format. So I guess my question is what to do when one's faced by a pair of cards that blanks so many strategies. This, I think, speaks to Lemnear's point, which is that a lot of decks' only option is to run Abrupt Decay or lose. I think the format's beginning to see the same problem with Chalice of the Void, though not to the same extent because more decks are live against T1 Chalice and/or have answers to Chalice's followup.

I'm relatively new to Legacy; three years ago, I never would've dreamed I'd own quad-LED, quad-Force, and a number of dual lands. I'm not particularly sentimental about specific decks, and I'm reaching the point that I have the card-base to vary my strategy by playing substantially different decks (largely tied together by Lion's Eye Diamond), but I don't think it's realistic to just say that all people need to do is adapt when there's been a whole lot of time (years longer than I've played the format) and energy devoted to adapting and it still hasn't dented the top slot. Hell, for a short while, I was hopeful that [EDIT: Miracles; hoping contextually that the point still came across] had met its match in Non-Grixis Tentacles, even though said Tentacles dump on my preferred Tentacles.

So should I just run Dredge at every tournament because it scoffs at CounterTop and Chalice? Should I start #YOLOing again because there's no hope (and because, on occasion, it can be friend-losing levels of fun)? How is slotting in a quad of the silver bullet for Counterbalance and Chalice (mostly Counterbalance) ideal? Sure, it's adaptation, but is that really what we want to see going forward? Feels like a winnowing of the metagame to me, and though I don't necessarily have a problem with that, it's got to stop somewhere, and I've always thought greater vibrancy made the format more interesting—nowhere but Legacy can you win by playing no lands and milling yourself out, or a mono-red control deck can win the game by making all the cards in the game blue. If we end up losing that stuff to adaptation, I don't think that's a good direction for the game to go.

Still opposed to bans and in favor of better design going forward; I'm trying not to be too partisan, but nobody's perfect.

[Zombie]

Better design doesn't solve existing binary effects: The correct approach is to ban the binary shit and print more Goldberg-esque lock pieces and hate cards and combo engines.

[Lemnear]

...Goldberg-esque...

I am not familiar with that term :/

[Ace/Homebrew]

I am not familiar with that term :/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Goldberg

[AznSeal]

There is a difference between adapting and making a strictly worse deck, except when it's up against CB. When decks like R/G Lands and SnT are running maindeck Boseju, everything BG and fair on maindeck + postboard Decay, Cavern/Vial spam...there is a problem. This isn't adapting, it's maladapting, to a card that shouldn't be in the format.

You either have absurd mana costs, or you're don't playing magic if CB lands. In terms of the Time Vault~CB analogy, "adapting" to it as you have described is akin to having wincons designed to function without receiving turns.

But is it actually objectively worse if the meta game calls for it? In vintage, oath and dredge is a real thing that some hatebear decks run maindeck containment priests. Objectively speaking, cards like SFM or something is a "better card" but in the context of the meta, priest is the right choice.

[thefringthing]

The worst thing about this thread is that it's making me agree with Lemnear about anything. Ugh.

Also, Ronald Deuce is a good person with good ideas and you should listen to him.

[Lemnear]

The worst thing about this thread is that it's making me agree with Lemnear about anything. Ugh.

Also, Ronald Deuce is a good person with good ideas and you should listen to him.

You can still hate me. I am however glad that you differ between the arguments and the Person behind. :)

[Stevestamopz]

I enjoy Prison. If you don't have an answer, that's on you. If you do have an answer you should win easily.

I don't think it should be that difficult to understand that many people don't like playing this style of magic - whether they win or lose. I typically play decks that aren't soft to Trinisphere style prison but I still don't like being paired against it because even beating it is boring way to spend 50 minutes. Our cards play themselves, nobody makes any meaningful decisions. We're playing the card game 'War' but with fancier pictures on the cards.

Last I checked you played DnT. What do you think Mother of Runes, Thalia + 8 manadenial lands and now my new favourite abortion in Sanctum Prelate do? DnT is the best prison deck of all time.

There is a difference between adapting and making a strictly worse deck, except when it's up against CB. When decks like R/G Lands and SnT are running maindeck Boseju, everything BG and fair on maindeck + postboard Decay, Cavern/Vial spam...there is a problem. This isn't adapting, it's maladapting, to a card that shouldn't be in the format.

The same argument could be applied to every good card ever printed. Griselbrand, Emrakul, DRS, Delver, SFM, hell, even Goyf! Where do you want to draw the line?

Its disturbing that people welcome that Delver & Co get pushed out, with the result of more blowouts in form of Chalice/Countertop/Terminus/S&T/SneakAttack and call that "interactivity". The fact of matter is that the omnipresence of these lockout components did not cause people to "adapt", but to switch decks for a further streamlining of the metagame.

If you think Delver is being pushed out by the deck that has 1 party trick in it's entire game, you are mistaken.
DnT is the deck that will push out Delver (if such a thing is possible), not Eldrazi or Miracles. I had a t2 TNN against DnT on the play in the semifinals of a tournament last weekend. I still lost and of course I did, when I was playing DnT I equated playing against Delver to be a bye.

Player A: "Tomb, chalice @ 1! GG? LOL"
Player B: "Nah. Petal, Tomb, S&T. EMRAKUL! GG? LOL"
Player A: "GG"

Show and Tell should've been banned years ago. IIRC you told me to move on and play a better deck because show and tell.dec wasn't doing anything.

[Lemnear]

Show and Tell should've been banned years ago. IIRC you told me to move on and play a better deck because show and tell.dec wasn't doing anything.

Can not comment on that in detail, but I am convinced that there are more (different) options to fight S&T than fighting countertop.

Am I mistaking if I suspect that most arguments against S&T would also fit for CounterTop and Chalice?

[btm10]

But is it actually objectively worse if the meta game calls for it? In vintage, oath and dredge is a real thing that some hatebear decks run maindeck containment priests. Objectively speaking, cards like SFM or something is a "better card" but in the context of the meta, priest is the right choice.

That's true, but only up to a point. They aren't contorting their whole strategy to beat those decks, they're making a judgement about the relative need for supremacy in "normal" creature matchups and the need to have game 1 plans against Dredge and Oath. You can imagine (somewhat) plausible meta shifts where those decks make up a small enough portion of the meta where a hatebears player opts for some number of Stoneforge Mystics and additional equipment.

The difference between that meta call and the one that the combination of Chalice and CounterTop poses is that there are more Legacy decks that punish running the second-best (or second-most-efficient) spell to achieve something than there are Vintage decks that punish running a hatebear over SFM. We're also talking about two fundamentally different metagame adaptations. One is deliberately slowing yourself down to the point where you might not be able to compete against Chalice or CounterTop decks' non-lock game plan anymore, another is hedging against what would otherwise be particularly bad matchups preboard at some cost to your more even matchups.

Adapting to the current metagame means Decay or playing something that dodges Chalice/Counterbalance like S&T. The first option locks you into (black&)green decks and the second into an even less interactive deck.

Decay isn't the easiest card to interact with, but there are definitely responses to it: Divert and Misdirection weren't uncommon in North America in late 2013/early 2014 as tools for Delver decks to fight BUG and Jund. And even when Decay thwarts interaction, in the current meta the disease is far worse than the cure. My suspicion is that we won't see nearly as much Sneak and Show at GP Louisville as we did in Chiba. That one is probably a regional metagame fluke. This isn't to say that we shouldn't ban something from Miracles.

[tescrin]

S&T is annoying but it's easy to counter to a reasonable degree. Thalia 2.0 or Revoker + Karakas and you're done. You can do that in Maverick or Junk. You can run LotV + Needle for the same effect. Clique counters their deck. Ensnaring Bridge. Done; while countering Reanimator and Eldrazi, and in colorless.

You can counter it with garbage cards too; like Fleshbag Marauder.

Difference?
There is *one* card in magic as a whole; and it's dual colored; that deals with Countertop. A card that's almost a sideboard card at this point due to the Eldrazi/Angler/JtMS.

Playing against S&T can at least be interesting. "What do they have? What should I be searching for?" With miracles it's basically "decay. Oh. You have another CB? Gg." It comes down to whether or not they can draw one more copy of their 4-of vs. you getting enough of your 4-of to deal with it; except they get to search while you're locked out.


D&T is annoying; but at least it's a game. At least you can just win if you run various red removal (Forked Bolt, Pyroclasm, etc..) At least that *feels* like a game. It's also weak to storm like nobodies' business. Miracles shits on everything equally and to good effect.

Chalice is something that you can safely say is "just adapt" because 0 mana, 1 mana, 2 mana, and 3 mana cards, in several colors or in colorless, all deal with it. it's also not run by Blue decks which is huge. CB doesn't even allow you to FoW it 40% of the time.

CB defies the comparisons. It has less hate cards. It has no bad matchups that are worth mentioning. The ones it has Terminus bypasses all possibility of you reliably doing it. Terminus is the White Force of Will.


There is a single deck that reliably has stayed in every meta: Miracles. It survived Omni-show era of delve. It survived Viking Funeral. It survived Shardless and D&T and Eldrazi. It existed fine in ANT and against S&T.

What happens with ANT is on the rise? Reanimator enters and pummels it. What happens when Delver runs rampant? Elves laughs in it's face; as do BGx and D&T. What happens when S&T is everywhere? Reanimator and D&T show up.

What happens when Miracles appears?
It wins.

Again, at the risk of repeating myself: We get it. You like that your deck is the best and has been uncontestedly the best for years. We get that you don't want to run a deck that has bad matchups.

You know what you call units that have no good counters in an RTS? OP
You know what you call must-pick heroes in Mobas/Overwatch? OP
You know what you call the AK, AWP, and M4 in Counterstrike? OP
You know what you say to people who run the obviously-best-deck-for-years-on-end? "Lol those kids should just adapt!"

If this game was balanced/monitored hardly at all by the devs; this deck would've been banned when it first showed it wouldn't die to Eldrazi; a deck that completely ignores it's schtick, runs counterspells and hate cards for the deck in the main, etc.


There is no "Tier 1" right now; unless you say that to mean Miracles. Everything else is tier 1.5 or worse. We've known this since before TC . Cruise showed us that no matter how fast and card-drawy you got, Miracles could survive and take down tournies. DTT showed us that even a fast combo that insta-gibbed you on the stack and casted 3+ cost cards for most of it's life; yep Miracles lived just fine. Eldrazi shows us that you can ignore the deck and have reasonable interaction on the angles it attacks you on, and still go 50-50.

It's been "adapted" to for years; and has barely had to change whatsoever. Entreat->Mentor. And what.. it ran a few pyroblast for awhile?