Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Fuck the bannings and unbannings. That would require them to actually pay attention to the formats, which we know isn't happening anyways given they can't even be assed to invest time to test new sets. We can only hope their testing for T2 is getting so bad that new Legacy playables shake up the meta
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Originally Posted by Echelon
They did make eternal masters, so I wouldn't say they don't pay attention/care. Actually, I'd say this is fairly in character with the way they've handled the format, content to let legacy do it's thing.
Edit: I've edited this post 4 times to fix grammar/omitted words, man I suck.
Last edited by Lord_Mcdonalds; 03-13-2017 at 03:28 PM.
Also, depending on ones optimism one could also read into some of the comments about Vintage what they intend to do with Legacy? I.e. didn't want to shake up things right before Eternal Weekend (although I think it would be super cool to play against a bunch of random Survival/Earthcraft decks during my 9 rounds there, having no idea yet how to properly beat them and while all tier decks are still struggling to adapt to no longer having access to their usual Ponder consistency)
R&D has more people who care about Vintage than Legacy. Unless a ton of pros who are buddies with the R&D people speak out on Twitter in regards of Legacy, we can expect jackshit for changes.
That's the sad reality.
I've said for years that we lacked any appreciable voice for Legacy and it's still true.
I think Adam Prosak used to like Legacy a good bit IIRC, so hope shouldn't be lost. But unless we garner some attention somehow, the situation of overlooking Legacy is not likely to change.
Legacy also has something of an "identity problem" that doesn't seem be the case for other formats. Considering that, I don't know that Wizards ever had a solid idea on what should really define Legacy. I started a topic a few years ago, that Karsten used as a basis for some SCG articles, but I don't know that we really made heads or tails of a real answer to the question of what should define Legacy.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I remember Prosak being an excellent Legacy Storm player, but wasn't he also into Vintage?
As for defining the format, it's pretty much cantrips, Wasteland, Miracles, and the BUG shell, aka DRS + AD, with sprinkles of CotV here and there.
Living in the Seattle area, I recognize quite a few of the names in R&D, and many of them play Legacy (and I would speculate that the majority of them even regard it as their personal favorite constructed format). As such, I assume that the omission of any Legacy mention in the B&R announcement to mean they think the format is healthy as is, particularly as it would be strange for them to mention an even less supported format in Vintage otherwise. I do not follow Standard, Modern, or Pauper enough to comment on the health of those formats on a comparative level.
On Adam, I'm not sure, I know he used to play ANT, but I don't recall, or never heard of him playing Vintage.
That's what does define it at the current moment, but what, beyond a couple of card choices should define it? That was the point of the thread I had made.
For example, Vintage is pretty easy to define: what decks can leverage the most broken cards in Magic's history? So, the Restricted List along with (the somewhat outdated) Pillars of Mana Drain, Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad and then the much less broken, but still necessary Null Rod(s) define the format.
Modern, as they have nudged it, is more of a mid-range slug-fest format. Any combo that is too fast, or consistent will get banned and Control is a border-line option. Basically the format is fast-aggro versus Mid-range aggro.
Standard is obviously just defined by whatever is legal.
There is a fair amount of questions as to what should define Legacy. Should it a "cantrip format?" Should it be a fluid exchange between Control, Combo and Aggro? Should it be defined by Blue decks of a large variety, or not? Should it be fast, or slow?
It's easy to give flippant answers to all of these, but most of them come down to personal preference. I think good answers are hard to come by and that is part of the "problem" with Legacy.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Yeah, this is great. No changes is ideal for eternal formats.
As long as they can resist printing ridiculous cards like Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise then wotc shouldn't try to control how the formats develop.
Magic would die if wotc liberally banned and unbanned the way people online want them to. Suck it up, most people's pet deck will not be the best deck and "the best deck" changes over time.
I'd say that Brainstorm is Legacy's identity. That and it's eternal (all sets are legal) without having the fast mana and most broken cards from Vintage. Being able to play with almost all of the cards in mtg history has its appeal and defines the format.
Something something gentlemens agreement something practice room.
Personally, I really liked Carsten Kotter's think piece on this topic a couple years back:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...cy-Part-1.html
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...cy-Part-2.html
It's also fitting that his ruminations were inspired by your thread:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-Legacy-format
This sounds correct... Any way you try to break it down, it comes back to Brainstorm.
I would argue that island is legacy's true identity and without one of those your not getting past round five in a larger scaled tournament.
Argument is biased. Elves? Eldrazi Aggro (in a meta not so much BUG)? BR Reanimator?
These are decks that remain fringe, besides elves the other two (especially Eldrazi) seem to be a "flash in the pan", we have yet to see with Reanimator. Arguing that Legacy has been dominated and therefore defined as blue is not bias, it's actually quite spot-on. I'm not into the whole cantrip/blue debate but denying that legacy is blue is a little naive. Larger events most often have a saturation of 100% of the decks containing the same 12 blue cards, am I wrong?
Technically only 87.5% like the top 32 of the GP, but otherwise, yes.
If wotc doesnt want to touch brainstorm, then they need to find a way to make other strategies (or engines) viable. Outside of cantrips, the only other card advantage/ selection engines are loam and elves, both strategies being comparatively narrow, which means they generally benefit from niche cards, whereas cantrips has been the main beneficiary of the overall creature power creep. Not to mention all the graveyard hate the wotc has printed, which makes loam/graveyard strategies much more of a meta choice. Outside of these, you are playing with the 'heart of the cards' either in combo or hatebears.
Green Sun exists for Maverick and like you said, Elves, but yes. The creature power creep has given us Thalia and Prelate to fight cantrips, but has given us more often shit like Delver, Pyromancer, Mentor, Delve men, True Derp, and other such things
You're touching on what I mentioned earlier in the thread, which is that more recent printings have been causing problems in concert with the cantrips, not that the cantrips are causing problems.
Regarding card advantage engines, you forgot Golgari Grave-Troll and pals, but your point stands because Dredge is even more narrow and easily blindsided than the other two.
Grave-hate really irks me. It's been free since 1994.
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Painful Truth has been a great add in term of card advantage. We shouldn't also forgot about Bob.
But yeah, in terme of draw manipulation, it is go blue or STD. I would like to see more Red draw manipulation.
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