I am going to open this thread up for a trial run. The purpose of this thread is to allow discussion about the benefits of Modern and Legacy in reference to each other.
Format Bashing is still considered trolling, and Flaming is still considered Flaming, so don't do either.
Edit: Updated the Title to reflect other potential comparisons that often come up (Standard).
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I'm a proud member of the Online Campaign for Real English. If you believe in capital letters, correct spelling, and good sentence structure, then copy this into your signature.
If that's your "casual," what on earth is required for "formal," a butler in livery shuffling the decks whilst a pianist plays Brahms in front of a tapestry?
I don't really thing trying to warp a format around preventing kills before T4 and destroying decks with bans every set release is a good model. WOTC is trying to be far too aggressive with the format instead of letting a meta develop.
Legacy checks and balances everything with the huge card pool and incredible options available, however modern keeps shaving powerful cards and as a result ties deck designers hands.
Additionally I'd be far more inclined to play Legacy than Modern because I don't know if the deck I want to pick up is going to get smashed by the next block release. I almost made U/R Storm before the Seething Song banning and I had almost all of Eggs put together before the Sunrise banning. I appreciate that rounds might go long but that's a product of slow less experienced players using the deck who should have a judge called on them 5 minutes into the round. I've had opponents in legacy like Spiral Tide who literally took 40-45 minutes of the round trying to combo off, it sucks but it's a problem with the players not the decks.
Pox takes forever to kill you and doesn't let you do much of anything in the meantime. Tide takes forever in one turn to kill you. The endgame is that one player isn't doing much and the easiest way to avoid a draw is often to just concede the game unless you're holding a solid answer.
I don't really thing trying to warp a format around preventing kills before T4 and destroying decks with bans every set release is a good model. WOTC is trying to be far too aggressive with the format instead of letting a meta develop.
Legacy checks and balances everything with the huge card pool and incredible options available, however modern keeps shaving powerful cards and as a result ties deck designers hands.
Additionally I'd be far more inclined to play Legacy than Modern because I don't know if the deck I want to pick up is going to get smashed by the next block release. I almost made U/R Storm before the Seething Song banning and I had almost all of Eggs put together before the Sunrise banning. I appreciate that rounds might go long but that's a product of slow less experienced players using the deck who should have a judge called on them 5 minutes into the round. I've had opponents in legacy like Spiral Tide who literally took 40-45 minutes of the round trying to combo off, it sucks but it's a problem with the players not the decks.
Pox takes forever to kill you and doesn't let you do much of anything in the meantime. Tide takes forever in one turn to kill you. The endgame is that one player isn't doing much and the easiest way to avoid a draw is often to just concede the game unless you're holding a solid answer.
I'm going to take this chance to disagree with the ongoing sentiment and say I actually prefer Modern to Legacy. While yes, Modern's banlist may be centered around preventing Turn 4 kills, I prefer this to Legacy where your deck has to actively prevent a Turn 3 kill, commit a Turn 3 kill, or just lose (other than trying to attack a metagame of decks built to prevent Turn 3 kills).
There is no way for a judge to "stop" a player from comboing off. As long as they aren't taking OBSCENE amounts of time (and I mean, 5-10 seconds just to draw a single card every card), there's not much a judge can do. A player has every right to take their time making difficult plays that advance the boardstate.
I just see two different approaches to the overall setup of a format; you have Legacy, where the format is centered around Force of Will and Wasteland to prevent decks from being obscene, and you have Modern where Wizards constructs the legality list to prevent decks from being obscene. I dislike how omnipresent those two cards in every aspect of the format; in Modern, I feel there is generally so much more.
And good deck designers are good deck designers regardless of the card pool. In fact, when staples are banned, it takes better deck designers as those are no longer the go-to cards in the format.
The turn 4 rule is Modern's Force of Will. It prevents broken combo decks from dominating.
The alternative (printing Force for use in Modern and unbanning all the combo cards) would lead to Modern becoming blue-dominated. The only options you'd have are play combo, play Force to beat combo, or play a nonblue deck and hope to dodge combo matchups.
I'm just going to make 2 points and then I'm out of here because I don't see any good coming of this thread. Eventually tempers will get heated the moment somebody says something derogatory about THEIR format.
So here goes.
1. This all comes down to what you're looking to get out of your Magic playing experience. Because Legacy has a larger card pool, including many cards that were printed during the days when R&D really didn't have a clue about what was "broken" you do have some potentially nasty interactions out there. The kind that Modern absolutely could not deal with. And that's fine. Modern isn't meant to be Legacy as much as some players, like myself, would like it to be. But that's not going to happen. So in short, Modern is for those who want a slower, more forgiving format and Legacy is for those who want a faster, less forgiving format.
2. To set the record straight about Legacy, because it's the only format I play besides Standard, it is not built around FoW and Wasteland. That is just one of those stereotypes that gets blown out of proportion and it really bothers me. There are plenty of decks in the format that do not run either of these cards.
Belcher
Spanish Inquisition
ANT
Doomsday
Combo Elves
Goblins
Look Ma No Lands
TES
Cheeri0's
Enchantress
Dredge
And then there are plenty of decks, some tier 1, that don't run FoW.
Jund
Pox
Aggro Loam
So the stereotypes being perpetrated throughout the Magic community regarding Legacy really bug the hell out of me. It needs to stop. If we're going to have a fair comparison of Modern to Legacy, we need to stick to facts and not to stereotypes and preconceived notions. Otherwise, we're never going to have a fair comparison of the formats if everybody goes around thinking that you play FoW and Wasteland or lose. That's just flat out absurd, wrong, and an insult to the format itself.
I'm not going to get into which format is "better." As I said, it all depends on what you're looking for. Modern is slower. Modern is not as powerful simply because it doesn't have the card pool. It's not supposed to be as powerful. If that's what you're looking for, play Modern.
If you're looking for a format with more powerful cards, a bigger card pool, more viable archetypes and a slightly faster pace (in general) then Legacy might be for you.
Cost? Of course Legacy is more expensive. And with the rising cost of staples, it's probably only going to get worse. So if budget is a prime concern, Modern is probably your only choice unless you save up your pennies and, over time, invest in Legacy. That is always an option.
As much as I love Legacy, it would be unfair of my not warning you about one thing should you decide to invest in the format. With the RL in place, someday (it could be 20 years from now for all I know) Legacy will be, for all practical purposes, dead. Eventually, cost and card availability will make it so that only the very rich will be able to afford it. And that's if SCG and other places even support it anymore. I don't have a crystal ball and I can't predict the future. But please go into Legacy knowing that, unlike Modern which WotC plans to support heavily with reprintings, it has a limited card pool and may not last forever.
Having said that, I will play Legacy until they bury it or me. I like the faster pace, the ability to play all my cards, and the bigger card pool allowing for more decks.
Having said that, Modern is not a bad format. You can play aggro, control and some forms of combo, though not in the abundance that you'll find in Legacy. If you're cool with that, you'll enjoy Modern. WotC will use the banned list to keep the format in check whereas Legacy is basically self regulating with bannings only made in dire cases, such as when MM almost ruined the format.
I think I've been very fair with my assessment of both formats. If you want to bet on future of either format, I think, if WotC handles Modern correctly, it has a better chance to survive the long haul than Legacy. Of course we all know what happened to Extended so who knows.
But make no mistake about it. If you're betting on a format that has an RL, you're betting on the long shot.
Enjoy the rest of this thread and please keep it civil.
To set the record straight about Legacy, because it's the only format I play besides Standard, it is not built around FoW and Wasteland. That is just one of those stereotypes that gets blown out of proportion and it really bothers me. There are plenty of decks in the format that do not run either of these cards.
You can word it however you want, but you can't deny this: Legacy would be broken without Force and Waste. No Force, combo dominates. No Waste, color becomes a non-issue.
How does this compare to Modern? For starters, there is no one card that, if removed, would destroy Modern. Lightning Bolt is the most-played card in Modern. What would happen if it was removed? Decks would just play one of the many substitutes for it - Burst Lightning, Rift Bolt, Seal of Fire.
How does Modern survive without Force? The turn 4 rule. If a combo deck wins too fast, it gets axed.
How does Modern survive without Waste? Shocklands deal 2 damage to you if you want them to ETB untapped. Fetch too many untapped shocks and you leave yourself open to an alpha strike.
Legacy is a format full of completely varied and interesting strategies that punished mistakes, and punishes them hard.
Modern is Rock mirrors until the cows come home (apparently some people really like this), just about everything else has been banned, or is excluded from the modern card pool.
Bashing the format is not allowed. While this thread is open to comparing the formats, it is not so for bashing it. ~Lantern
I'm just going to make 2 points and then I'm out of here because I don't see any good coming of this thread. Eventually tempers will get heated the moment somebody says something derogatory about THEIR format.
I'd put money on it.
So here goes.
1. This all comes down to what you're looking to get out of your Magic playing experience. Because Legacy has a larger card pool, including many cards that were printed during the days when R&D really didn't have a clue about what was "broken" you do have some potentially nasty interactions out there. The kind that Modern absolutely could not deal with. And that's fine. Modern isn't meant to be Legacy as much as some players, like myself, would like it to be. But that's not going to happen. So in short, Modern is for those who want a slower, more forgiving format and Legacy is for those who want a faster, less forgiving format.
I mildly agree with this but I feel it has less to do with broken and more to do with simply playing a different game of magic.
Legacy has a curve of 1-2 with bombs like jace at 4 a few cards at 3 and one or two combo targets at 5-6. With an average CMC of castable spells somewhere around 1.5.
Modern has a curve of 1-4 with high impact bombs at 5. It has an average CMC of around 2.5.
As a result you can play more spells in legacy. (Not trying to be insulting just the facts of deck construction) Legacy is a format for people who like constant interaction and high skill level cantrips that allow for more consistent use of those cantrips.
2. To set the record straight about Legacy, because it's the only format I play besides Standard, it is not built around FoW and Wasteland. That is just one of those stereotypes that gets blown out of proportion and it really bothers me. There are plenty of decks in the format that do not run either of these cards.
While I agree in spirit that it is a stereotype the part about wasteland is sort of true. Force of will has the sole purpose of keeping combo from overrunning the metagame and it does a good job of it. On the other hand THE format defining spell doesn't get the credit/stereotype it deserves. Brainstorm. Try and tell me it's not true. That card feels good to cast, is balanced, is high powered, and very skill testing. The entirety of the blue shell is format defining.
That said modern has format defining cards as well. The primary one's being Dark confidant and DRS. Modern is a format where slow incremental advantage cards are inherently better.
So the stereotypes being perpetrated throughout the Magic community regarding Legacy really bug the hell out of me. It needs to stop. If we're going to have a fair comparison of Modern to Legacy, we need to stick to facts and not to stereotypes and preconceived notions. Otherwise, we're never going to have a fair comparison of the formats if everybody goes around thinking that you play FoW and Wasteland or lose. That's just flat out absurd, wrong, and an insult to the format itself.
You don't need to play them or lose (similar to lightning bolt) but they are the best answers in the format objectively speaking. (Well those daze, and stifle)
I'm not going to get into which format is "better." As I said, it all depends on what you're looking for. Modern is slower. Modern is not as powerful simply because it doesn't have the card pool. It's not supposed to be as powerful. If that's what you're looking for, play Modern.
If you're looking for a format with more powerful cards, a bigger card pool, more viable archetypes and a slightly faster pace (in general) then Legacy might be for you.
I believe this is largely accurate but would like to add legacy lets you play more cards while modern plays bigger spells.
Cost? Of course Legacy is more expensive. And with the rising cost of staples, it's probably only going to get worse. So if budget is a prime concern, Modern is probably your only choice unless you save up your pennies and, over time, invest in Legacy. That is always an option.
I don't get this. I never have. My magic cards substantially outperform my bank account.
As much as I love Legacy, it would be unfair of my not warning you about one thing should you decide to invest in the format. With the RL in place, someday (it could be 20 years from now for all I know) Legacy will be, for all practical purposes, dead. Eventually, cost and card availability will make it so that only the very rich will be able to afford it. And that's if SCG and other places even support it anymore. I don't have a crystal ball and I can't predict the future. But please go into Legacy knowing that, unlike Modern which WotC plans to support heavily with reprintings, it has a limited card pool and may not last forever.
Revised more or less prevents this from happening until the magic community hits some number of millions of people more than it is now. An unlikely situation. (and one that if it happens is self defeating.
I saw this post in the last banning thread in the rumour mill:
Quote from Mild Wongrel »
I think the problem with Modern is that there are 2 kinds of people interested in modern:
- Those that want it to be like legacy but cheaper. Powerful card manipulation, combo and control decks are both viable but in check, super-competitive, and a fast but HIGHLY interactive format.
- Those that want it to be like standard with more cards. Combo decks are there but not competitive, a bit more casual/easy to get into, cheaper, everyone should be playing mid-rangey creature decks, only a bit faster/stronger than standard, instead of keeping unfair in check with other unfair - just zero unfair.
I have been thinking the same thing for a little while now. I think that when people showed all that interest in "Over Extended", what they imagined was a deeper, non-rotating version of Extended.
On the other hand, I think there are a lot of players who got interested after Modern was officially announced. I think a lot of these players were closer to the Standard side of the spectrum and saw the format as a way for them to keep playing their standard cards in a more diverse field.
At this stage it seems like Wizards is catering more to the latter group.
Do you think this is an accurate description of the state of Modern? Are you happy with the direction it is going?
Personally, I lament the fact that old extended/over extended is now dead. That is the format I was gunning for. As things stand now, Modern is fun but I am just biding my time until I have enough "assets" magic wise to trade in to Legacy. I don't think I would have felt that way playing Overextended.
I'm getting really annoyed with the whole "No free counters=less interactive!" line of gibberish that people keep spouting. I'm now convinced that most people have no idea what constitutes "interaction" and are just using it as a meaningless buzzword to say "I want an excuse to pretend that the format I like is superior to the format you like, so that I can pretend to be superior to you by extension."
I like Modern because it is not like Standard, and is not like Legacy, neither of which are formats that I enjoy. It has elements of both, but is its own animal, and it would be really nice if people would quit saying "Hurr Modern is just *Other format* with *more/less* of *durr*."
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
*Insert giant block of annoying garbage that no one cares about but you have to scroll past anyway here*
Those that want it to be like standard with more cards. Combo decks are there but not competitive, a bit more casual/easy to get into, cheaper, everyone should be playing mid-rangey creature decks, only a bit faster/stronger than standard, instead of keeping unfair in check with other unfair - just zero unfair.
I don't see these two phrases as being synonymous and I think it's unfair to put them together in one qualifying statement. There is nothing that says taking "unfair" cards out has to mean people play only creature decks.
I applaud their idea of not using unfair cards to battle unfair cards. That only does one thing, makes every deck play the unfair cards. That severely limits creativity when the same cards have to be jammed in every deck simply because that's the only way to win. There is nothing keeping people from playing combo decks and highly interactive decks. They just can't consistently win before turn 4. It's not all of a sudden unfair and irrational to put the same rules on all decks. Just because you are a combo player doesn't give somebody the inherent right to play by different rules for the format.
It's been said since day 1. If you don't like the turn 4 rule don't play modern.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern xWBreakfast at Urza'sxW UWGBantUWG GWRNaya ZooRWG
Legacy has a curve of 1-2 with bombs like jace at 4 a few cards at 3 and one or two combo targets at 5-6. With an average CMC of castable spells somewhere around 1.5.
Modern has a curve of 1-4 with high impact bombs at 5. It has an average CMC of around 2.5.
As a result you can play more spells in legacy. (Not trying to be insulting just the facts of deck construction) Legacy is a format for people who like constant interaction and high skill level cantrips that allow for more consistent use of those cantrips.
Am I misreading, or does this literally say "Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what spells are playable, therefore you can play more spells"?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
*Insert giant block of annoying garbage that no one cares about but you have to scroll past anyway here*
i believe he means lower cmc = more spells can be cast in one turn cycle. like you have 3 lands out. you can cast 3 1cmc spells vs 1 2cmc spell and 1 1cmc spell.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
Who cares? Modern is what Modern is. The general player mentality, at least who WotC is catering to with this game in general, falls into the "I want to play creatures and I don't like having my spells countered or playing against a deck that kills me before I even get to do anything" (referring mostly to the storm mechanic but not relegated to.)
That's the bottom line. The days of Stasis, Stax, whatever, are over unless you play Vintage and Legacy. WotC is catering to the new player mentality. I'm not saying this is good or bad or right or wrong. It just is what it is.
So if you want to play Modern, you need to accept the new design philosophy. It's that simple. Don't like it? Play something else. That's what I've done.
But you're never going to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Revised more or less prevents this from happening until the magic community hits some number of millions of people more than it is now. An unlikely situation. (and one that if it happens is self defeating.
I wouldn't put my faith in an argument made here. He may have some solid stuff but he also has a whole section saying modern is a bad format. Poisoning the Well fallacy and all. And people on the legacy sub have said the same.
Am I misreading, or does this literally say "Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what spells are playable, therefore you can play more spells"?
Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what is playable, therefore you can CAST more spells per turn/game which translates to more interaction (More spells cast able translates to more options and more interaction increasing the skill level). Not "More spells are available" although it is true that legacy has more playable spells (due to larger card pool).
For example even if only 10% of cards are playable in legacy they have 13,000 which makes 1,300 playable while 7500 or so modern cards at 15% playable (a fair estimate given the relatively narrow archetypes compared to legacy) leaves 1125. So yes legacy has more playable in addition to having cheaper and more interactive spells.
Let me have an example. Turn 3 if you have tundra, underground sea, fetchland and a hand consisting of stoneforge mystic, brainstorm, swords to plowshares, and inquisition you have substantially more options (At least 10 lines of play I can think of which are valid depending on the situation).
Compare to modern. Can you find a turn 3 that has as many lines of play as a hand like that? More options isn't more power, it's more consistency. Consistency is only power when there is something powerful to do.
I wouldn't put my faith in an argument made here. He may have some solid stuff but he also has a whole section saying modern is a bad format. Poisoning the Well fallacy and all. And people on the legacy sub have said the same.
To be fair, most of the readers of that were already 'poisoned'. However there are some more valid points to why legacy will not go the way of vintage due to the reserved list (Revised having a MUCH larger print run than ABU combined at least 10 times as much.)
That said the statements that legacy is land locked are true. It cant get bigger than X. Modern has room for arbitrary expansion BUT the players who like legacy largely hate modern for its very conservative banned list and visa versa.
Pros tend to like legacy more than modern on a whole but to me ptq's seem like a poor venue for something like legacy due to complex interactions (Just try explaining to the humility player when he judge calls that a mishra's factory doesn't die to blocking a magus of the moon.) indirect or inaccurate card text (Have you ever read chains of Mephistopheles) and other factors.
I don't want to bash modern and "better" is depends on the player, but I too think that Modern is less interactive than Legacy. When you don't take into account the library manipulation, I still think that Moderns decks play somewhat past each other, because you can't beat Rock decks in atrition battles.
All I can say, then, is to try actually playing Modern or watching some Modern professional games that aren't Eggs, because the only time you'll see two Modern decks "Play past" each other is in combo matchups. The vast majority of decks in the format are stuffed to the gills with removal, hand manipulation, and yes, sometimes countermagic. That it is not free countermagic taking out the key piece of a turn two engine combo win does not make it any less "interactive".
Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what is playable, therefore you can CAST more spells per turn/game which translates to more interaction (More spells cast able translates to more options and more interaction increasing the skill level). Not "More spells are available"
This makes more sense. That likely would result in more spells being cast per turn (If not in total per game, and even if I disagree that that results in "increasing the skill level"). I retract my incredulity.
Quote from Undone »
although it is true that legacy has more playable spells (due to larger card pool).
This, however, I find unlikely.
For example even if only 10% of cards are playable in legacy they have 13,000 which makes 1,300 playable while 7500 or so modern cards at 15% playable (a fair estimate given the relatively narrow archetypes compared to legacy) leaves 1125. So yes legacy has more playable in addition to having cheaper and more interactive spells.
I highly, highly doubt that 10% of Legacy cards are actually playable in the context of the format, though determining that would require quite a bit more work than I am willing or able to do at the moment.
However, even if we just look at the "curve" example from earlier, Legacy's curve of 1-2 CMC spells results in nearly 1000 less spells than Modern's curve of 1-4 CMC spells. Add in the vastly more restrictive power level requirements and that Modern is much less hostile to the good cards that DO fall outside the format's curve, and Legacy almost certainly has a smaller effective card pool.
I also doubt that Modern actually has fewer viable archetypes than Legacy. It appears to, because Legacy has had a much longer period of time to discover its archetypes, and has less support from Wizards resulting in a format that deckbuilders have less incentive to break.
Quote from Undone »
Let me have an example. Turn 3 if you have tundra, underground sea, fetchland and a hand consisting of stoneforge mystic, brainstorm, swords to plowshares, and inquisition you have substantially more options (At least 10 lines of play I can think of which are valid depending on the situation).
Compare to modern. Can you find a turn 3 that has as many lines of play as a hand like that? More options isn't more power, it's more consistency. Consistency is only power when there is something powerful to do.
A hand with Hallowed Fountain, Watery Grave, a fetchland, Snapcaster Mage (Because there really isn't a good Stoneforge equivalent in Modern, for good reason), Serum Visions, Path to Exile, and, well, Inquisition? It's entirely possible to play decks with a billion cheap options in Modern, it's just that it's also entirely possible to play decks with a more defined curve and more expensive spells. Nothing says you have to t1 Deathrite into t2 Loxodon Smiter into t3 Thrun. That's a good plan, but not the only one, and if you want your deck to be cheap and fiddly there are plenty of viable decks that do that.
I would love to play legacy but the price restrictions keep me out for now. I love modern because of all the interactions (and I can play with Lightning Bolt :))
I saw this post in the last banning thread in the rumour mill:
I have been thinking the same thing for a little while now. I think that when people showed all that interest in "Over Extended", what they imagined was a deeper, non-rotating version of Extended.
On the other hand, I think there are a lot of players who got interested after Modern was officially announced. I think a lot of these players were closer to the Standard side of the spectrum and saw the format as a way for them to keep playing their standard cards in a more diverse field.
At this stage it seems like Wizards is catering more to the latter group.
Do you think this is an accurate description of the state of Modern? Are you happy with the direction it is going?
Personally, I lament the fact that old extended/over extended is now dead. That is the format I was gunning for. As things stand now, Modern is fun but I am just biding my time until I have enough "assets" magic wise to trade in to Legacy. I don't think I would have felt that way playing Overextended.
Merged with Compare Modern to Legacy Thread t_c
What about people like me that want everything except for annoying solitaire combo (eggs / storm)?
In Modern I play mostly DnT, Tokens and diverse kinds of Martyr and in Legacy I play most of the time DnT and sometimes Burn and Enchantress. When I play Tokens for example my gameplan is to make tokens, which are hard to interact with the removal that is played and the flying makes them hard to interact with creatures. And it is most of the time pretty clear what I have to play. Martyr is the same. When I don't play against combo I often don't really interact with them on the first three or four turns. When you have learned the basic rules of the deck the strong lines of play are easily evaluated. Even the DnT deck, that has many lines of playes in modern, feels much less interactive than the Legacy counterpart. And look at the UWR Midrange decks: They all dodge the common removal to make it harder to interact with them.
That a deck is attempting to be hard to interact with does not mean that:
1: It is impossible to interact with or
2: That all decks in the format are hard to interact with.
I won't argue D&T since I haven't played it or played against it much (Though the version I've seen played seemed like an exceedingly uninteractive lockout deck), but honestly your personal feelings are irrelevant. Every deck *I* play in Modern feels extremely interactive, and I have to massively change my game plan depending on what I'm playing against. Do your personal feelings trump my personal feelings? No.
Quote from Ignithas »
It doesn't make sense for you. When you are on the draw and you have two one drops, two two drops and two three drops and the rest are lands, you had 8 lines of play (not considering the decision to not play anything).
When I have a hand of one one drop, one two drop, two three drops and two four drops, I only had four lines of play on T3.
I said nothing that refuted the statement you are making, and in fact agreed with it. I disagreed with the idea that the statement you made results in more spells being cast PER GAME, and that it requires more skill to play those decks.
Quote from Ignithas »
It's hard to evaluate and it depends what the people think is playable. I have seen very strange decks in Modern that utilize cards that I don't think are playable, but the deck made results due to luck/good player. For example a Modern Highlander Bant deck or a Pod Midrange deck. Same goes for Legacy with a Knight deck, WW aggro with Lions etc. All in all I personally think that Legacy has more cards that see consistently play.
My argument is that Modern has more potential to explore those "strange" decks. Modern cards don't have to compete with turn 2-3 combos, free spells, or general nonsense that should never have been printed. I only play Modern at all because it's as friendly to weird homebrew as it is, because those are the decks I like to play.
Quote from Ignithas »
Legacy has also a 1-4 CMC curve, but the 2 CMC slot is the most important one. I have never seen a Legacy deck (outside of Burn) curving out at 2CMC.
So Legacy both has the same curve as Modern and is more interactive and skill intensive than Modern because of its lower curve?
Quote from Ignithas »
When you take into account combo decks in Legacy, I would say that there are more 4+ CMC cards playable than in Modern. And while it's true that it is easier to slot a 4+ CMC card into your deck and you can find more room for them, you will only find the same cards in those slots.
A card that gets run in a combo deck is not really a "Playable" card, it's a card that fits into a combo. Mana eggs get run in combo, a billion awful elves get run in combo, a billion awful Dredge cards get run in combo, Omniscience gets run in combo... And none of them are actually good, or playable outside of that one exceedingly narrow application. Combo isn't really Magic, it's an alternate universe where atrocious cards can pretend to be good.
Quote from »
That is simply not true. The people try to brew in Legacy all the time. Blueses for example made first place at a GP, half of the Show and Tell decks are very new, we had Zombie Bombardment placing high on a GP, the winning DnT list ran Crussader and Fiend Hunter, which weren't run before, the Goblin lists splashed W for Thalia.
I never said that new decks weren't brewed or that innovation never happened, I said that Legacy is a less supported, less played format that does a worse job of winnowing out its bad decks, yet has had a longer time to accumulate them. There are no Legacy MTGO dailies or PTQs to create massive datasets from which to evaluate what the better decks are, so it's harder to determine what's good in the metagame. Add in the much higher price of Legacy cards keeping decks that are no longer good around longer and encouraging budget construction, and Legacy starts to look like it has more viable archetypes than it actually does. The massive cherry on top, of course, is that Legacy has existed for several times as long as Modern, and therefore has had more time to figure out what to do with its card pool in a much more gradual fashion.
Modern, on the other hand, is swamped with constant MTGO play, is a PT format, has lower prices and more available cards that players are more likely to already have, and had nearly its entire pool dumped on it all at once less than two years ago. The longer Modern continues to exist, the more of those "strange" decks we talked about earlier will become major decks in the metagame.
Quote from Ignithas »
Don't understand me wrong, Modern has many lines of play. Otherwise pros wouldn't make it consistently into T8 at GPs. It's only that I don't think they are as many and as punishing as they are in Legacy (Pod as the exception). And yeah, you can play decks that use a low mana curve. But when you take the Legacy counterpart, the manacurve will be more expansive in Modern most of the time.
Again, I don't doubt that most Legacy decks tend to run a lower curve and therefore have more early options than most Modern decks. I disagree that this equates to more choices being made throughout the entire course of a game, more spells being cast throughout the entire course of a game, or a more skill-intensive format in general. I don't even agree that being more forgiving makes Modern require less skill: If you make more mistakes, you still lose. You just don't immediately lose on the first one. Arguably it even results in requiring more skill to be successful, since the game is decided by who makes the fewest bad plays, rather than who makes the first one.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
*Insert giant block of annoying garbage that no one cares about but you have to scroll past anyway here*
A card that gets run in a combo deck is not really a "Playable" card, it's a card that fits into a combo. Mana eggs get run in combo, a billion awful elves get run in combo, a billion awful Dredge cards get run in combo, Omniscience gets run in combo... And none of them are actually good, or playable outside of that one exceedingly narrow application. Combo isn't really Magic, it's an alternate universe where atrocious cards can pretend to be good.
For the most part, I'm not going to argue with the rest of your post. But this? Cards that pretend to be good? Narrow application? That is what makes these cards so wonderful and makes this game so amazing.
Lion's Eye Diamond, for the longest time, was a dollar rare. Now look at it.
It's WHY I love Legacy so much because you can essentially take crap cards in a vacuum and make them amazing.
And let's be honest. A lot of cards are crap in a vacuum.
Delver is crap in a vacuum. Without a deck filled with instants and sorceries, he's a 1/1 for 1. In fact, without Ponder and other deck manipulation, he's still a crap card. Why is it he's not a force in Modern? Because you have nothing in the format that made him good.
So let's be fair here. I could apply your argument to a lot of cards that you would call good. Delver is one of the prime examples of this.
I was trying to compare Modern to Extended, not Legacy.
The original extended, not double standard which we have now. It seemed like a beast unto itself, unlike Modern or Legacy and I wish it could exist as well, in the form of Overextended. (Mercadian Masques or Invasion forward).
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Ux Whirza Rb Goblins
Legacy U Urza Stompy
Duel Commander
Sai, Master Thopterist
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Format Bashing is still considered trolling, and Flaming is still considered Flaming, so don't do either.
Edit: Updated the Title to reflect other potential comparisons that often come up (Standard).
Modern:
More GP/PTQ support
Less expensive
Much more "forgiving" than legacy; if you make a misplay, you're much less likely to lose because of it.
Legacy:
More skill intensive (just my opinion)
More diverse
Less aggressive bannings (this is probably debatable)
I prefer modern much more than legacy, mostly because of the greater number of competitive events.
EDIT: In the end, they're really quite different.
signature by rivenor at http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=329663
I'm a proud member of the Online Campaign for Real English. If you believe in capital letters, correct spelling, and good sentence structure, then copy this into your signature.
I hate the reserved list.
Mythic rares are fine.
Legacy checks and balances everything with the huge card pool and incredible options available, however modern keeps shaving powerful cards and as a result ties deck designers hands.
Additionally I'd be far more inclined to play Legacy than Modern because I don't know if the deck I want to pick up is going to get smashed by the next block release. I almost made U/R Storm before the Seething Song banning and I had almost all of Eggs put together before the Sunrise banning. I appreciate that rounds might go long but that's a product of slow less experienced players using the deck who should have a judge called on them 5 minutes into the round. I've had opponents in legacy like Spiral Tide who literally took 40-45 minutes of the round trying to combo off, it sucks but it's a problem with the players not the decks.
Pox takes forever to kill you and doesn't let you do much of anything in the meantime. Tide takes forever in one turn to kill you. The endgame is that one player isn't doing much and the easiest way to avoid a draw is often to just concede the game unless you're holding a solid answer.
I'm going to take this chance to disagree with the ongoing sentiment and say I actually prefer Modern to Legacy. While yes, Modern's banlist may be centered around preventing Turn 4 kills, I prefer this to Legacy where your deck has to actively prevent a Turn 3 kill, commit a Turn 3 kill, or just lose (other than trying to attack a metagame of decks built to prevent Turn 3 kills).
There is no way for a judge to "stop" a player from comboing off. As long as they aren't taking OBSCENE amounts of time (and I mean, 5-10 seconds just to draw a single card every card), there's not much a judge can do. A player has every right to take their time making difficult plays that advance the boardstate.
I just see two different approaches to the overall setup of a format; you have Legacy, where the format is centered around Force of Will and Wasteland to prevent decks from being obscene, and you have Modern where Wizards constructs the legality list to prevent decks from being obscene. I dislike how omnipresent those two cards in every aspect of the format; in Modern, I feel there is generally so much more.
And good deck designers are good deck designers regardless of the card pool. In fact, when staples are banned, it takes better deck designers as those are no longer the go-to cards in the format.
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
The alternative (printing Force for use in Modern and unbanning all the combo cards) would lead to Modern becoming blue-dominated. The only options you'd have are play combo, play Force to beat combo, or play a nonblue deck and hope to dodge combo matchups.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
So here goes.
1. This all comes down to what you're looking to get out of your Magic playing experience. Because Legacy has a larger card pool, including many cards that were printed during the days when R&D really didn't have a clue about what was "broken" you do have some potentially nasty interactions out there. The kind that Modern absolutely could not deal with. And that's fine. Modern isn't meant to be Legacy as much as some players, like myself, would like it to be. But that's not going to happen. So in short, Modern is for those who want a slower, more forgiving format and Legacy is for those who want a faster, less forgiving format.
2. To set the record straight about Legacy, because it's the only format I play besides Standard, it is not built around FoW and Wasteland. That is just one of those stereotypes that gets blown out of proportion and it really bothers me. There are plenty of decks in the format that do not run either of these cards.
Belcher
Spanish Inquisition
ANT
Doomsday
Combo Elves
Goblins
Look Ma No Lands
TES
Cheeri0's
Enchantress
Dredge
And then there are plenty of decks, some tier 1, that don't run FoW.
Jund
Pox
Aggro Loam
So the stereotypes being perpetrated throughout the Magic community regarding Legacy really bug the hell out of me. It needs to stop. If we're going to have a fair comparison of Modern to Legacy, we need to stick to facts and not to stereotypes and preconceived notions. Otherwise, we're never going to have a fair comparison of the formats if everybody goes around thinking that you play FoW and Wasteland or lose. That's just flat out absurd, wrong, and an insult to the format itself.
I'm not going to get into which format is "better." As I said, it all depends on what you're looking for. Modern is slower. Modern is not as powerful simply because it doesn't have the card pool. It's not supposed to be as powerful. If that's what you're looking for, play Modern.
If you're looking for a format with more powerful cards, a bigger card pool, more viable archetypes and a slightly faster pace (in general) then Legacy might be for you.
Cost? Of course Legacy is more expensive. And with the rising cost of staples, it's probably only going to get worse. So if budget is a prime concern, Modern is probably your only choice unless you save up your pennies and, over time, invest in Legacy. That is always an option.
As much as I love Legacy, it would be unfair of my not warning you about one thing should you decide to invest in the format. With the RL in place, someday (it could be 20 years from now for all I know) Legacy will be, for all practical purposes, dead. Eventually, cost and card availability will make it so that only the very rich will be able to afford it. And that's if SCG and other places even support it anymore. I don't have a crystal ball and I can't predict the future. But please go into Legacy knowing that, unlike Modern which WotC plans to support heavily with reprintings, it has a limited card pool and may not last forever.
Having said that, I will play Legacy until they bury it or me. I like the faster pace, the ability to play all my cards, and the bigger card pool allowing for more decks.
Having said that, Modern is not a bad format. You can play aggro, control and some forms of combo, though not in the abundance that you'll find in Legacy. If you're cool with that, you'll enjoy Modern. WotC will use the banned list to keep the format in check whereas Legacy is basically self regulating with bannings only made in dire cases, such as when MM almost ruined the format.
I think I've been very fair with my assessment of both formats. If you want to bet on future of either format, I think, if WotC handles Modern correctly, it has a better chance to survive the long haul than Legacy. Of course we all know what happened to Extended so who knows.
But make no mistake about it. If you're betting on a format that has an RL, you're betting on the long shot.
Enjoy the rest of this thread and please keep it civil.
But Force and Waste are among the 3 most played cards in Legacy.
You can word it however you want, but you can't deny this: Legacy would be broken without Force and Waste. No Force, combo dominates. No Waste, color becomes a non-issue.
How does this compare to Modern? For starters, there is no one card that, if removed, would destroy Modern. Lightning Bolt is the most-played card in Modern. What would happen if it was removed? Decks would just play one of the many substitutes for it - Burst Lightning, Rift Bolt, Seal of Fire.
How does Modern survive without Force? The turn 4 rule. If a combo deck wins too fast, it gets axed.
How does Modern survive without Waste? Shocklands deal 2 damage to you if you want them to ETB untapped. Fetch too many untapped shocks and you leave yourself open to an alpha strike.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Modern is Rock mirrors until the cows come home (apparently some people really like this), just about everything else has been banned, or is excluded from the modern card pool.
Bashing the format is not allowed. While this thread is open to comparing the formats, it is not so for bashing it. ~Lantern
I'd put money on it.
I mildly agree with this but I feel it has less to do with broken and more to do with simply playing a different game of magic.
Legacy has a curve of 1-2 with bombs like jace at 4 a few cards at 3 and one or two combo targets at 5-6. With an average CMC of castable spells somewhere around 1.5.
Modern has a curve of 1-4 with high impact bombs at 5. It has an average CMC of around 2.5.
As a result you can play more spells in legacy. (Not trying to be insulting just the facts of deck construction) Legacy is a format for people who like constant interaction and high skill level cantrips that allow for more consistent use of those cantrips.
While I agree in spirit that it is a stereotype the part about wasteland is sort of true. Force of will has the sole purpose of keeping combo from overrunning the metagame and it does a good job of it. On the other hand THE format defining spell doesn't get the credit/stereotype it deserves. Brainstorm. Try and tell me it's not true. That card feels good to cast, is balanced, is high powered, and very skill testing. The entirety of the blue shell is format defining.
That said modern has format defining cards as well. The primary one's being Dark confidant and DRS. Modern is a format where slow incremental advantage cards are inherently better.
You don't need to play them or lose (similar to lightning bolt) but they are the best answers in the format objectively speaking. (Well those daze, and stifle)
I believe this is largely accurate but would like to add legacy lets you play more cards while modern plays bigger spells.
I don't get this. I never have. My magic cards substantially outperform my bank account.
I direct you to this http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/blog.php?b=8635.
Revised more or less prevents this from happening until the magic community hits some number of millions of people more than it is now. An unlikely situation. (and one that if it happens is self defeating.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
I have been thinking the same thing for a little while now. I think that when people showed all that interest in "Over Extended", what they imagined was a deeper, non-rotating version of Extended.
On the other hand, I think there are a lot of players who got interested after Modern was officially announced. I think a lot of these players were closer to the Standard side of the spectrum and saw the format as a way for them to keep playing their standard cards in a more diverse field.
At this stage it seems like Wizards is catering more to the latter group.
Do you think this is an accurate description of the state of Modern? Are you happy with the direction it is going?
Personally, I lament the fact that old extended/over extended is now dead. That is the format I was gunning for. As things stand now, Modern is fun but I am just biding my time until I have enough "assets" magic wise to trade in to Legacy. I don't think I would have felt that way playing Overextended.
Merged with Compare Modern to Legacy Thread t_c
Ux Whirza
Rb Goblins
Legacy
U Urza Stompy
Duel Commander
Sai, Master Thopterist
I like Modern because it is not like Standard, and is not like Legacy, neither of which are formats that I enjoy. It has elements of both, but is its own animal, and it would be really nice if people would quit saying "Hurr Modern is just *Other format* with *more/less* of *durr*."
I don't see these two phrases as being synonymous and I think it's unfair to put them together in one qualifying statement. There is nothing that says taking "unfair" cards out has to mean people play only creature decks.
I applaud their idea of not using unfair cards to battle unfair cards. That only does one thing, makes every deck play the unfair cards. That severely limits creativity when the same cards have to be jammed in every deck simply because that's the only way to win. There is nothing keeping people from playing combo decks and highly interactive decks. They just can't consistently win before turn 4. It's not all of a sudden unfair and irrational to put the same rules on all decks. Just because you are a combo player doesn't give somebody the inherent right to play by different rules for the format.
It's been said since day 1. If you don't like the turn 4 rule don't play modern.
Modern
xWBreakfast at Urza'sxW
UWGBantUWG
GWRNaya ZooRWG
Am I misreading, or does this literally say "Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what spells are playable, therefore you can play more spells"?
That's the bottom line. The days of Stasis, Stax, whatever, are over unless you play Vintage and Legacy. WotC is catering to the new player mentality. I'm not saying this is good or bad or right or wrong. It just is what it is.
So if you want to play Modern, you need to accept the new design philosophy. It's that simple. Don't like it? Play something else. That's what I've done.
But you're never going to fit a square peg into a round hole.
I wouldn't put my faith in an argument made here. He may have some solid stuff but he also has a whole section saying modern is a bad format. Poisoning the Well fallacy and all. And people on the legacy sub have said the same.
Legacy has more restrictive requirements for what is playable, therefore you can CAST more spells per turn/game which translates to more interaction (More spells cast able translates to more options and more interaction increasing the skill level). Not "More spells are available" although it is true that legacy has more playable spells (due to larger card pool).
For example even if only 10% of cards are playable in legacy they have 13,000 which makes 1,300 playable while 7500 or so modern cards at 15% playable (a fair estimate given the relatively narrow archetypes compared to legacy) leaves 1125. So yes legacy has more playable in addition to having cheaper and more interactive spells.
Let me have an example. Turn 3 if you have tundra, underground sea, fetchland and a hand consisting of stoneforge mystic, brainstorm, swords to plowshares, and inquisition you have substantially more options (At least 10 lines of play I can think of which are valid depending on the situation).
Compare to modern. Can you find a turn 3 that has as many lines of play as a hand like that? More options isn't more power, it's more consistency. Consistency is only power when there is something powerful to do.
To be fair, most of the readers of that were already 'poisoned'. However there are some more valid points to why legacy will not go the way of vintage due to the reserved list (Revised having a MUCH larger print run than ABU combined at least 10 times as much.)
That said the statements that legacy is land locked are true. It cant get bigger than X. Modern has room for arbitrary expansion BUT the players who like legacy largely hate modern for its very conservative banned list and visa versa.
Pros tend to like legacy more than modern on a whole but to me ptq's seem like a poor venue for something like legacy due to complex interactions (Just try explaining to the humility player when he judge calls that a mishra's factory doesn't die to blocking a magus of the moon.) indirect or inaccurate card text (Have you ever read chains of Mephistopheles) and other factors.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
All I can say, then, is to try actually playing Modern or watching some Modern professional games that aren't Eggs, because the only time you'll see two Modern decks "Play past" each other is in combo matchups. The vast majority of decks in the format are stuffed to the gills with removal, hand manipulation, and yes, sometimes countermagic. That it is not free countermagic taking out the key piece of a turn two engine combo win does not make it any less "interactive".
This makes more sense. That likely would result in more spells being cast per turn (If not in total per game, and even if I disagree that that results in "increasing the skill level"). I retract my incredulity.
This, however, I find unlikely.
I highly, highly doubt that 10% of Legacy cards are actually playable in the context of the format, though determining that would require quite a bit more work than I am willing or able to do at the moment.
However, even if we just look at the "curve" example from earlier, Legacy's curve of 1-2 CMC spells results in nearly 1000 less spells than Modern's curve of 1-4 CMC spells. Add in the vastly more restrictive power level requirements and that Modern is much less hostile to the good cards that DO fall outside the format's curve, and Legacy almost certainly has a smaller effective card pool.
I also doubt that Modern actually has fewer viable archetypes than Legacy. It appears to, because Legacy has had a much longer period of time to discover its archetypes, and has less support from Wizards resulting in a format that deckbuilders have less incentive to break.
A hand with Hallowed Fountain, Watery Grave, a fetchland, Snapcaster Mage (Because there really isn't a good Stoneforge equivalent in Modern, for good reason), Serum Visions, Path to Exile, and, well, Inquisition? It's entirely possible to play decks with a billion cheap options in Modern, it's just that it's also entirely possible to play decks with a more defined curve and more expensive spells. Nothing says you have to t1 Deathrite into t2 Loxodon Smiter into t3 Thrun. That's a good plan, but not the only one, and if you want your deck to be cheap and fiddly there are plenty of viable decks that do that.
XXXX
Modern
URTwinRU R.I.P.
EDH
WUGRoon of the Hidden RealmWUG
What about people like me that want everything except for annoying solitaire combo (eggs / storm)?
What category do I fall into?
That a deck is attempting to be hard to interact with does not mean that:
1: It is impossible to interact with or
2: That all decks in the format are hard to interact with.
I won't argue D&T since I haven't played it or played against it much (Though the version I've seen played seemed like an exceedingly uninteractive lockout deck), but honestly your personal feelings are irrelevant. Every deck *I* play in Modern feels extremely interactive, and I have to massively change my game plan depending on what I'm playing against. Do your personal feelings trump my personal feelings? No.
I said nothing that refuted the statement you are making, and in fact agreed with it. I disagreed with the idea that the statement you made results in more spells being cast PER GAME, and that it requires more skill to play those decks.
My argument is that Modern has more potential to explore those "strange" decks. Modern cards don't have to compete with turn 2-3 combos, free spells, or general nonsense that should never have been printed. I only play Modern at all because it's as friendly to weird homebrew as it is, because those are the decks I like to play.
So Legacy both has the same curve as Modern and is more interactive and skill intensive than Modern because of its lower curve?
A card that gets run in a combo deck is not really a "Playable" card, it's a card that fits into a combo. Mana eggs get run in combo, a billion awful elves get run in combo, a billion awful Dredge cards get run in combo, Omniscience gets run in combo... And none of them are actually good, or playable outside of that one exceedingly narrow application. Combo isn't really Magic, it's an alternate universe where atrocious cards can pretend to be good.
I never said that new decks weren't brewed or that innovation never happened, I said that Legacy is a less supported, less played format that does a worse job of winnowing out its bad decks, yet has had a longer time to accumulate them. There are no Legacy MTGO dailies or PTQs to create massive datasets from which to evaluate what the better decks are, so it's harder to determine what's good in the metagame. Add in the much higher price of Legacy cards keeping decks that are no longer good around longer and encouraging budget construction, and Legacy starts to look like it has more viable archetypes than it actually does. The massive cherry on top, of course, is that Legacy has existed for several times as long as Modern, and therefore has had more time to figure out what to do with its card pool in a much more gradual fashion.
Modern, on the other hand, is swamped with constant MTGO play, is a PT format, has lower prices and more available cards that players are more likely to already have, and had nearly its entire pool dumped on it all at once less than two years ago. The longer Modern continues to exist, the more of those "strange" decks we talked about earlier will become major decks in the metagame.
Again, I don't doubt that most Legacy decks tend to run a lower curve and therefore have more early options than most Modern decks. I disagree that this equates to more choices being made throughout the entire course of a game, more spells being cast throughout the entire course of a game, or a more skill-intensive format in general. I don't even agree that being more forgiving makes Modern require less skill: If you make more mistakes, you still lose. You just don't immediately lose on the first one. Arguably it even results in requiring more skill to be successful, since the game is decided by who makes the fewest bad plays, rather than who makes the first one.
For the most part, I'm not going to argue with the rest of your post. But this? Cards that pretend to be good? Narrow application? That is what makes these cards so wonderful and makes this game so amazing.
Lion's Eye Diamond, for the longest time, was a dollar rare. Now look at it.
It's WHY I love Legacy so much because you can essentially take crap cards in a vacuum and make them amazing.
And let's be honest. A lot of cards are crap in a vacuum.
Delver is crap in a vacuum. Without a deck filled with instants and sorceries, he's a 1/1 for 1. In fact, without Ponder and other deck manipulation, he's still a crap card. Why is it he's not a force in Modern? Because you have nothing in the format that made him good.
So let's be fair here. I could apply your argument to a lot of cards that you would call good. Delver is one of the prime examples of this.
The original extended, not double standard which we have now. It seemed like a beast unto itself, unlike Modern or Legacy and I wish it could exist as well, in the form of Overextended. (Mercadian Masques or Invasion forward).
Ux Whirza
Rb Goblins
Legacy
U Urza Stompy
Duel Commander
Sai, Master Thopterist