I find formats like Vintage and Commander to be tougher to play because tutors open more lines of play and the singletons make the decks less consistent with more lines of play since there is more cards to worry about.
+1 To this. I'll also point out that the singleton rule in commander opens up more deck building challenges. You can't just jam playsets of the best stuff, you legitimately need to find 30-40+ unique cards that fit your game plan.
Understand, Dredge is not really a Magic: The Gathering deck. When a card is playable in it, it doesn't mean it's a tournament playable card. It means it's playable in whatever crazy fantasy world that Dredge operates in.
I would say a harder format is a format were taking the optimal play is harder. Those decision includes metagame calls and in-game calls as well. I would consider modern generally easier then standard because everything seems to have a easy answer, so the game is too reliant on tempo. In standard the reaction are a lot weaker then the action, meaning you have to jump hoops to answer some cards.
Why do you think luck has more effect in vintage than any other format? The cards in vintage are more powerful but everyone is playing the same format and the powerful cards have answers.
Because the existence of a restricted list rather than a ban list makes the format more about naturally drawing those 1 of's that make the deck function so much better.
Certainly booster draft, I don't think it's remotely close. There are so many more decisions to make and so many more areas to make those decisions than in any other type of magic - you have to make the right picks, read signals and pass signals in the drafting portion, have to build your deck correctly (which you can but don't have to do in constructed) and have to play around a very wide variety of cards in each of your matches as it's a lot harder to predict what your UW opponent has in draft than in constructed.
As far as constructed formats, there's a strong case here for legacy which I'd generally agree with.
I've recently gotten into Pauper and I've found that on average it requires more in game decision making than any other format I've played, even Legacy, which I've been playing for a long time.
With the bannings of uninteractive cards like Temporal Fissure, the format should become even more fun and challenging in the future.
That said, for me nothing can really compare to piloting Legacy Dredge, Storm, or Doomsday (and a handful of other very complex Legacy decks). Those decks have so many decision trees and require such good knowledge of the format to do well with. However, for every complicated deck in Legacy there is one that does not require very much skill and just wins on the back of broken/bomb spells. Show and Tell and Stoneblade to a lesser extent fall into this category.
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Current Modern decks BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam UB Reanimator
"Skill" is such a tenuous word to use. There are so many different ways you can choose to define it.
If we're going with "in which format do the players make the most game-impacting decisions while playing?" I'm pretty certain thats Legacy.
A lot of people always bring up the skill involved in Limited play. But thats really just comparing apples to oranges. There are two parts of a Limited event. Drafting and building a deck, and then actually playing Magic afterwards.
If someone else were allowed to stand in for you while actually drafting and then just hand you a premade limited deck, would anyone really consider Limited a "skill-intensive" format?
I'll be the first to say that there is no truly definitive answer. Based on posts (and potential polling), many would vote for Legacy, but that doesn't prove anything.
Modern, my personal favorite, is edging closer and closer to being what I consider the most skill-intensive. You can win or lose quickly, but there is virtually no way to (reliably) kill someone before turn 3. Thus, there is more time to interact, disrupt and make decisions. And yet those decisions still have huge value, as the games aren't meant to go longer than 4 to 6 turns.
In Legacy, a well-tuned deck can reliably kill on turn 2 and slay the field, even in tournaments with 1000+ participants. Sure, stack interaction (via Force of Will, etc.) can disrupt these decks somewhat, but I wouldn't call those types of games skill-intensive. (Player A tries to win on two 2 with a combo she could play in her sleep, player B plays a spell that prevents this; so much skill!)
And yes, there's far, far more to Legacy than turn 2 kills. Still, I feel the potential to win or lose that quickly (and the ability to win or lose whole matches based on sideboarding playets of a certain Leyline) undermine the claim that it's skill-intensive. Heavily mixed and very resistant to being solved? Hell yes. Requiring players to make a multiple difficult decisions every game? Not necessarily.
Vintage is just a faster version of Legacy, so all the two 2 wins become turn 1s. How skill-intensive is it to play with your self until you kill your opponent? (And how much skill is said opponent using, assuming they don't have the means to stop you?) Again, the "I FoW or a I lose" scenario isn't the pinnacle of a skill-tester, IMHO.
Standard: Rotation is just too relevant within this format. The limited card pool makes it inherently more solvable than non-rotating formats. Yes, it's a new thing every year, but solving a set (and its impact on a the existing pool) doesn't take more than a few months. After that, you just pick the strongest deck on the field (or, if you're really good, you build the strongest on intuition). And then you win. There's a reason G/R(/x) aggro was the dominant force in Standard for roughly 6 to 9 months this year.
Granted, sometimes Standard is more fluid and numerous types of decks can function successfully. However, even then, the format still doesn't put that much emphasis on skill, IMHO. Example: Jon Finkel loses to Brian Kibler at Worlds (Pro Tour Dark Ascension) because of a bad match-up. Literally, just that simple. He wins 2 out of 5 games, and 1 of those wins was primarily due to Kibler mulling twice. Two of the greatest players ever, and skill was secondary to archetype choice.
Why not? I, for one, welcome it.
That's one way of looking at it, sure. I tend to see all the formats as having merits outside of their relative skill-intensity.
Have you ever played legacy or vintage? There are less turn 1 kills in vintage than legacy.
Because the existence of a restricted list rather than a ban list makes the format more about naturally drawing those 1 of's that make the deck function so much better.
There are banned cards in vintage, and they aren't all anti.
Certainly booster draft, I don't think it's remotely close. There are so many more decisions to make and so many more areas to make those decisions than in any other type of magic - you have to make the right picks, read signals and pass signals in the drafting portion, have to build your deck correctly (which you can but don't have to do in constructed) and have to play around a very wide variety of cards in each of your matches as it's a lot harder to predict what your UW opponent has in draft than in constructed.
As far as constructed formats, there's a strong case here for legacy which I'd generally agree with.
Deck building and deck piloting are two different things. Constructed is more about playing the decks, while draft is about building the deck.
And its not that hard to know what cards are coming in a draft. Smallest pool of cards of any sanctioning type, makes it fairly easy to know what the good and bad cards of each color, and whats likely to be in a decent drafters pool.
No, I'm the type of person who would talk of their rear end about this game (as you're so nicely implying with this question). ~ Sarcasm
I played Vintage casually for a season, played Legacy competitively for about a season. I'm a metagamer, so I studied thoroughly throughout this time.
My statement was heavily qualified as being personal opinion, not fact. If you disagree, fine. However, I strongly resent the implication that I don't know what I'm talking about. Your opinion isn't any more valid than mine.
There are less turn 1 kills in vintage than legacy
You'll need to expand upon this if you want it to sound remotely accurate, though. That statement, in a vacuum, is simply wrong. A slower format cannot, logically, have "less turn 1 kills". What you're saying is akin to "combo is stronger in Standard than in Modern".
Now, if your argument is that games don't always end on turn 1 in Vintage, I can personally attest to this. Disrupt is just as good in Vintage if not better than Legacy. However, the ability to go off on turn 1 is still very real and much more viable in Vintage than Legacy. If you can't see that, I'll need you ask YOU if you've actually played the format.
There are banned cards in vintage, and they aren't all anti
The word is "ante". And whilst your statement here is technically accurate, the point you're trying to argue (that cards are banned in Vintage for reasons of power) is simply false.
"Philosophically, the difference is that in Vintage, no cards are banned for power-level reasons. In fact, cards are banned only for causing logistical problems. For example, Chaos Orb requires manual dexterity, Contract from Below discusses ante, and Shahrazad creates subgames." - Tom LaPille
So, again, remind me who's lacking format knowledge.
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
There are banned cards in vintage, and they aren't all anti.
There are also the physical dexterity cards, but in general cards aren't banned specifically from Vintage so much as they're banned from sanctioned play on the whole.
@OP: Didn't you guess that this thread would straightaway turn into "my favorite format is the most skill intensive! Bow before my overwhelming smartness!"?
@OP: Didn't you guess that this thread would straightaway turn into "my favorite format is the most skill intensive! Bow before my overwhelming smartness!"?
There's nothing wrong with this, per se. The problem starts when people think that a question like this can be definitively answered.
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
I would say if cost of cards is taken out of the mix, and both players play decks of equal power level, even then I would put each format on pretty equal footing with each other.
It basically comes down to how familiar you are with each respective format. Obviously playing mostly standard is gonna hone your skills for Standard more so than Modern etc.
Also I would argue that the faster a format is, the less skill it takes to play it in regards to actually games played. For example, the longer a game goes, the more decisions have to be made, and therefore more skilled players have a better chance to edge out an advantage over a less skilled player, and less skilled players have more chances to make play errors.
Just my 2 cents
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Your deck STILL needs more than 20 lands!
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No, I'm the type of person who would talk of their rear end about this game (as you're so nicely implying with this question). ~ Sarcasm
I played Vintage casually for a season, played Legacy competitively for about a season. I'm a metagamer, so I studied thoroughly throughout this time.
My statement was heavily qualified as being personal opinion, not fact. If you disagree, fine. However, I strongly resent the implication that I don't know what I'm talking about. Your opinion isn't any more valid than mine.
You'll need to expand upon this if you want it to sound remotely accurate, though. That statement, in a vacuum, is simply wrong. A slower format cannot, logically, have "less turn 1 kills". What you're saying is akin to "combo is stronger in Standard than in Modern".
Now, if your argument is that games don't always end on turn 1 in Vintage, I can personally attest to this. Disrupt is just as good in Vintage if not better than Legacy. However, the ability to go off on turn 1 is still very real and much more viable in Vintage than Legacy. If you can't see that, I'll need you ask YOU if you've actually played the format.
The word is "ante". And whilst your statement here is technically accurate, the point you're trying to argue (that cards are banned in Vintage for reasons of power) is simply false.
"Philosophically, the difference is that in Vintage, no cards are banned for power-level reasons. In fact, cards are banned only for causing logistical problems. For example, Chaos Orb requires manual dexterity, Contract from Below discusses ante, and Shahrazad creates subgames." - Tom LaPille
So, again, remind me who's lacking format knowledge.
It is possible for combo to be more powerful in standard than modern.
Sure, in vintage you can get a godhand of 3 moxen, lotus, sol ring, tinker and fling, but you probably still wouldn't win on turn one, you'd probably just lose on turn 2.
Vintage decks are most certainly not legacy decks plus power to generate turn 1 kills as you implied by your first post, something so factually wrong it could no way be called opinion and would make the asking of 'have you played either format' a relevant question.
Of course, Shahrazad, falling star, and chaos orb are banned for a differed reason, but they are non ante cards that are banned--something people tend to forget.
There's nothing wrong with this, per se. The problem starts when people think that a question like this can be definitively answered.
You know, I think you could come pretty close -- take a look at tournament data for each format, and examine how predictive a player's win record is. The more someone's history can be used to predict future performance, the more skill intensive the format overall.
No format is going to have just skill. I brought Imperial Painter to a small 17 person Legacy tournament without any knowledge of the meta there and finished 5-0. I won 2 matches where the opponents had Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in their decks. Some of the easiest wins were playing a Blood Moon on turn 1, while preparing for Simian Spirit Guide beatdown, and having my opponent concede.
And don't even talk to me about Standard. Some of my best PTQ finishes have been when I didn't play test and some where I play tested a bunch and had meta knowledge, I finished 6-3 or even 5-4.
I hope this doesn't come across as just a rant, but my point is that you can only minimize the luck factor involved. You will never be able to erase it completely from this game, Miracles or not.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Legacy is clearly the most skill intensive format.
Don't get offended modern and standard players! It is the most skill intensive format INHERENTLY because there are so many more decks you could face, and so many cards available.
Vintage I find more fun then legacy, but since it's almost impossible to actually play vintage in my area, cost or logistics-wise, I wouldn't really know.
Mechanically, each game takes similar amounts of thinking. But the farther back you go, the more knowledge you need to keep at the same level. In Standard you don't have to think too hard about what your opponent is playing, or could play, but it doesn't make a win any less meaningful than in older formats. You still have to work with what you have, against what your opponent has. In older formats, you don't have (strictly) more complicated situations, just more risk assessment.
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"If you don't wear your seatbelt, the police will shoot you in the head."
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
Everyone knows that good luck and good game are such insincere terms that any man who does not connect his right hook with the offender's jaw on the very utterance of such a phrase is no man I would consider as such.
No format is going to have just skill. I brought Imperial Painter to a small 17 person Legacy tournament without any knowledge of the meta there and finished 5-0. I won 2 matches where the opponents had Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in their decks. Some of the easiest wins were playing a Blood Moon on turn 1, while preparing for Simian Spirit Guide beatdown, and having my opponent concede.
And don't even talk to me about Standard. Some of my best PTQ finishes have been when I didn't play test and some where I play tested a bunch and had meta knowledge, I finished 6-3 or even 5-4.
I hope this doesn't come across as just a rant, but my point is that you can only minimize the luck factor involved. You will never be able to erase it completely from this game, Miracles or not.
When you go w/o knowing the meta you're gambling. You might do well or might not.
Seriously if you meta knowledge is giving worse results you must rethink your meta crush strategy. On that regard, i would PTQs are almost impossible to predict. If you think 'the meta is x, i will go y' there will be people who predict your predict and will get a z that crush your y. Other people will predict the prediction that predicted your prediction and so on. It's nearly impossible to know were the majority of the meta will be sitting.
The best strategy is always bring a deck with balanced match ups and more important that you have a lot of practice with.
You'll need to expand upon this if you want it to sound remotely accurate, though. That statement, in a vacuum, is simply wrong. A slower format cannot, logically, have "less turn 1 kills". What you're saying is akin to "combo is stronger in Standard than in Modern".
you're out of touch man. vintage isn't all turn 1 kills, not at all. (it isn't mostly turn 1 kills either) even the non-blue decks play disruption that can prevent them.
Legacy is clearly the most skill intensive format.
Don't get offended modern and standard players! It is the most skill intensive format INHERENTLY because there are so many more decks you could face, and so many cards available.
Vintage I find more fun then legacy, but since it's almost impossible to actually play vintage in my area, cost or logistics-wise, I wouldn't really know.
In Legacy, if you mess up your turn 1 brainstorm you can potentially cause yourself to lose the game.
In no other format (outside vintage, I guess) can you lose yourself the game because you messed up on turn 1.
The larger card pool and diversification of playable cards means that meta gaming is harder.
Think about inquisition of kozilek and thoughtseize. Both are very, very good in legacy, and it's possible for someone to choose NOT to run thoughtseize over inquisition, despite the '3 cmc' rule of inquisition despite having playsets of both cards. There are a NUMBER of cards like this that can be meta dependent.
If I know the room is full of goblins, then **** yeah inquisition is better, but normally thoughtseize is better, but in a room full of combo duress can be the right answer, too.
That's 3 cards that fulfill the same function differently, with different drawbacks, so how do you know which one to play against?
There are more decks, meaning it's very possible to enter a tournament after having played legacy for some time and not face a deck you've ever heard of.
And then there are different types of the same deck, too!
There are 5 different storm decks that I know of.
There are 3 different Delver decks that I know of.
There are 3 different ways to build goblins that I know of.
There's only one merfolk deck that I know of, but that doesn't mean there aren't more.
1) The number of angles you can be attacked on is greater than for any other format with the possible exception of vintage (though I don't know much about vintage, so I could be wrong here). You need to worry about the correct sequencing of your lands to avoid losing to wasteland and stifle, you need to assess your threats versus your opponent's threats, and you need to be mindful that your opponent can steal the win out of nowhere if you read the situation wrong. Keep in mind that in other formats you tend to have a very obvious clock that is represented by whatever threat is on the board, plus whatever potential damage they are holding in their hand. In legacy, the clock exists, but it may not exist on the board, meaning you have to correctly assess how long you realistically have on very little information, or interact with their hand directly to find out.
2) The presence of fast combo forces you to interact early and often, resulting in more decisions for both players, and a greater number of chances to lose the game for yourself. If your opponent is capable of going off turn three, you need to interact with them by turn two at the latest, or have a viable means of interacting with their win condition when it goes off (FoW, Daze, Flusterstorm, etc.). Note that while many legacy combo decks are capable of going off on turn one, most don't, because the probabilities are almost never favourable. If you have Force, they essentially lose. The result is that legacy as a format plays out slower than modern (and recently, even standard) because the quality of the answers and possible interactions is so high.
3) There are more viable decks and archetypes than in any other format. Tournament top 8 lists routinely feature eight completely different decks (not "different" different like modern Jund and GB/x, which both use the same shell), meaning you need knowledge of a huge number of deck types and possible interactions in order to perform optimally. The format rewards knowledge and research more than any other, since at any given time there can be between 30 and 50 different lists that can reasonably take out a tournament, and many more that are dangerous, but a require a bit more luck and skill to do well with.
4) The decks themselves are complex enough that you need to spend time learning them. You can pick up a deck in standard or modern, and once you know how it works, you can probably do okay. This isn't necessarily the case in legacy, especially for combo decks like TES, ANT, DDFT, etc. You need to know not just how to win, but things like knowing how to protect your hand, correct mulligan technique, drawing out counters, knowing exactly when you should go off, what doomsday piles will win the game, etc. Even things like knowing when to wasteland their land to power up your daze, or force them to shuffle away the top cards of their library can win games. You can and will lose games to poor understanding of your own deck when you first start playing, and this is one of those things that just takes time to learn. As the saying goes, "I've goldfished Doomsday 50 times, and I've yet to win a game."
So yeah, I would put legacy as the most skill intensive of the regularly played constructed formats.
I would argue for Vintage, since it inherently has the most complexity due to the large card pool. Each game has at least as many critical decisions as a game in any other format, and these decisions are massively compressed into the first few turns. The power level of the cards also means that you are rarely really ahead, and thus every decision remains critical.
A good argument could be made for a limited format such as booster draft, and I would have no beef with someone who argued for such a format. They'd still be wrong though. I'm partial to Vintage though so there's that.
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+1 To this. I'll also point out that the singleton rule in commander opens up more deck building challenges. You can't just jam playsets of the best stuff, you legitimately need to find 30-40+ unique cards that fit your game plan.
All constructed formats. Stop constantly blaming luck and start trying to improve yourself as a player.
Modern:
Something new every week
Legacy:
Something new everyweek
Yeap... this my view on things as well.
I would say a harder format is a format were taking the optimal play is harder. Those decision includes metagame calls and in-game calls as well. I would consider modern generally easier then standard because everything seems to have a easy answer, so the game is too reliant on tempo. In standard the reaction are a lot weaker then the action, meaning you have to jump hoops to answer some cards.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Because the existence of a restricted list rather than a ban list makes the format more about naturally drawing those 1 of's that make the deck function so much better.
As far as constructed formats, there's a strong case here for legacy which I'd generally agree with.
Draft it on Cubetutor!
With the bannings of uninteractive cards like Temporal Fissure, the format should become even more fun and challenging in the future.
That said, for me nothing can really compare to piloting Legacy Dredge, Storm, or Doomsday (and a handful of other very complex Legacy decks). Those decks have so many decision trees and require such good knowledge of the format to do well with. However, for every complicated deck in Legacy there is one that does not require very much skill and just wins on the back of broken/bomb spells. Show and Tell and Stoneblade to a lesser extent fall into this category.
BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks
BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam
UB Reanimator
If we're going with "in which format do the players make the most game-impacting decisions while playing?" I'm pretty certain thats Legacy.
A lot of people always bring up the skill involved in Limited play. But thats really just comparing apples to oranges. There are two parts of a Limited event. Drafting and building a deck, and then actually playing Magic afterwards.
If someone else were allowed to stand in for you while actually drafting and then just hand you a premade limited deck, would anyone really consider Limited a "skill-intensive" format?
Have you ever played legacy or vintage? There are less turn 1 kills in vintage than legacy.
There are banned cards in vintage, and they aren't all anti.
Deck building and deck piloting are two different things. Constructed is more about playing the decks, while draft is about building the deck.
And its not that hard to know what cards are coming in a draft. Smallest pool of cards of any sanctioning type, makes it fairly easy to know what the good and bad cards of each color, and whats likely to be in a decent drafters pool.
No, I'm the type of person who would talk of their rear end about this game (as you're so nicely implying with this question). ~ Sarcasm
I played Vintage casually for a season, played Legacy competitively for about a season. I'm a metagamer, so I studied thoroughly throughout this time.
My statement was heavily qualified as being personal opinion, not fact. If you disagree, fine. However, I strongly resent the implication that I don't know what I'm talking about. Your opinion isn't any more valid than mine.
You'll need to expand upon this if you want it to sound remotely accurate, though. That statement, in a vacuum, is simply wrong. A slower format cannot, logically, have "less turn 1 kills". What you're saying is akin to "combo is stronger in Standard than in Modern".
Now, if your argument is that games don't always end on turn 1 in Vintage, I can personally attest to this. Disrupt is just as good in Vintage if not better than Legacy. However, the ability to go off on turn 1 is still very real and much more viable in Vintage than Legacy. If you can't see that, I'll need you ask YOU if you've actually played the format.
The word is "ante". And whilst your statement here is technically accurate, the point you're trying to argue (that cards are banned in Vintage for reasons of power) is simply false.
Per this article:
"Philosophically, the difference is that in Vintage, no cards are banned for power-level reasons. In fact, cards are banned only for causing logistical problems. For example, Chaos Orb requires manual dexterity, Contract from Below discusses ante, and Shahrazad creates subgames." - Tom LaPille
So, again, remind me who's lacking format knowledge.
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
There are also the physical dexterity cards, but in general cards aren't banned specifically from Vintage so much as they're banned from sanctioned play on the whole.
There's nothing wrong with this, per se. The problem starts when people think that a question like this can be definitively answered.
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
It basically comes down to how familiar you are with each respective format. Obviously playing mostly standard is gonna hone your skills for Standard more so than Modern etc.
Also I would argue that the faster a format is, the less skill it takes to play it in regards to actually games played. For example, the longer a game goes, the more decisions have to be made, and therefore more skilled players have a better chance to edge out an advantage over a less skilled player, and less skilled players have more chances to make play errors.
Just my 2 cents
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It is possible for combo to be more powerful in standard than modern.
Sure, in vintage you can get a godhand of 3 moxen, lotus, sol ring, tinker and fling, but you probably still wouldn't win on turn one, you'd probably just lose on turn 2.
Vintage decks are most certainly not legacy decks plus power to generate turn 1 kills as you implied by your first post, something so factually wrong it could no way be called opinion and would make the asking of 'have you played either format' a relevant question.
Of course, Shahrazad, falling star, and chaos orb are banned for a differed reason, but they are non ante cards that are banned--something people tend to forget.
You know, I think you could come pretty close -- take a look at tournament data for each format, and examine how predictive a player's win record is. The more someone's history can be used to predict future performance, the more skill intensive the format overall.
And don't even talk to me about Standard. Some of my best PTQ finishes have been when I didn't play test and some where I play tested a bunch and had meta knowledge, I finished 6-3 or even 5-4.
I hope this doesn't come across as just a rant, but my point is that you can only minimize the luck factor involved. You will never be able to erase it completely from this game, Miracles or not.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Don't get offended modern and standard players! It is the most skill intensive format INHERENTLY because there are so many more decks you could face, and so many cards available.
Vintage I find more fun then legacy, but since it's almost impossible to actually play vintage in my area, cost or logistics-wise, I wouldn't really know.
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
When you go w/o knowing the meta you're gambling. You might do well or might not.
Seriously if you meta knowledge is giving worse results you must rethink your meta crush strategy. On that regard, i would PTQs are almost impossible to predict. If you think 'the meta is x, i will go y' there will be people who predict your predict and will get a z that crush your y. Other people will predict the prediction that predicted your prediction and so on. It's nearly impossible to know were the majority of the meta will be sitting.
The best strategy is always bring a deck with balanced match ups and more important that you have a lot of practice with.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
you're out of touch man. vintage isn't all turn 1 kills, not at all. (it isn't mostly turn 1 kills either) even the non-blue decks play disruption that can prevent them.
In Legacy, if you mess up your turn 1 brainstorm you can potentially cause yourself to lose the game.
In no other format (outside vintage, I guess) can you lose yourself the game because you messed up on turn 1.
The larger card pool and diversification of playable cards means that meta gaming is harder.
Think about inquisition of kozilek and thoughtseize. Both are very, very good in legacy, and it's possible for someone to choose NOT to run thoughtseize over inquisition, despite the '3 cmc' rule of inquisition despite having playsets of both cards. There are a NUMBER of cards like this that can be meta dependent.
If I know the room is full of goblins, then **** yeah inquisition is better, but normally thoughtseize is better, but in a room full of combo duress can be the right answer, too.
That's 3 cards that fulfill the same function differently, with different drawbacks, so how do you know which one to play against?
There are more decks, meaning it's very possible to enter a tournament after having played legacy for some time and not face a deck you've ever heard of.
And then there are different types of the same deck, too!
There are 5 different storm decks that I know of.
There are 3 different Delver decks that I know of.
There are 3 different ways to build goblins that I know of.
There's only one merfolk deck that I know of, but that doesn't mean there aren't more.
1) The number of angles you can be attacked on is greater than for any other format with the possible exception of vintage (though I don't know much about vintage, so I could be wrong here). You need to worry about the correct sequencing of your lands to avoid losing to wasteland and stifle, you need to assess your threats versus your opponent's threats, and you need to be mindful that your opponent can steal the win out of nowhere if you read the situation wrong. Keep in mind that in other formats you tend to have a very obvious clock that is represented by whatever threat is on the board, plus whatever potential damage they are holding in their hand. In legacy, the clock exists, but it may not exist on the board, meaning you have to correctly assess how long you realistically have on very little information, or interact with their hand directly to find out.
2) The presence of fast combo forces you to interact early and often, resulting in more decisions for both players, and a greater number of chances to lose the game for yourself. If your opponent is capable of going off turn three, you need to interact with them by turn two at the latest, or have a viable means of interacting with their win condition when it goes off (FoW, Daze, Flusterstorm, etc.). Note that while many legacy combo decks are capable of going off on turn one, most don't, because the probabilities are almost never favourable. If you have Force, they essentially lose. The result is that legacy as a format plays out slower than modern (and recently, even standard) because the quality of the answers and possible interactions is so high.
3) There are more viable decks and archetypes than in any other format. Tournament top 8 lists routinely feature eight completely different decks (not "different" different like modern Jund and GB/x, which both use the same shell), meaning you need knowledge of a huge number of deck types and possible interactions in order to perform optimally. The format rewards knowledge and research more than any other, since at any given time there can be between 30 and 50 different lists that can reasonably take out a tournament, and many more that are dangerous, but a require a bit more luck and skill to do well with.
4) The decks themselves are complex enough that you need to spend time learning them. You can pick up a deck in standard or modern, and once you know how it works, you can probably do okay. This isn't necessarily the case in legacy, especially for combo decks like TES, ANT, DDFT, etc. You need to know not just how to win, but things like knowing how to protect your hand, correct mulligan technique, drawing out counters, knowing exactly when you should go off, what doomsday piles will win the game, etc. Even things like knowing when to wasteland their land to power up your daze, or force them to shuffle away the top cards of their library can win games. You can and will lose games to poor understanding of your own deck when you first start playing, and this is one of those things that just takes time to learn. As the saying goes, "I've goldfished Doomsday 50 times, and I've yet to win a game."
So yeah, I would put legacy as the most skill intensive of the regularly played constructed formats.
A good argument could be made for a limited format such as booster draft, and I would have no beef with someone who argued for such a format. They'd still be wrong though. I'm partial to Vintage though so there's that.