MTG Salvation

Your definition of the top decks in Legacy is accurate, but Legacy still has a lot of diversity. Nic Fit, Maverick, Sneak Attack, and many more. Those decks might not be tier 1, but they're still competitive in the metagame and the reason they can function is because Legacy has extremely strong answers, and almost every color has access to relevant answers. So, as long as you play the cards you need to play to interact with the metagame, you can fill the rest of your deck with whatever you find to be fun or interesting.

Modern is in a similar spot these days, except our answers aren't as widely available, or as powerful. In Modern, you need to answer your opponent, but you also need to be running only the most efficient threats, because we're still very much a threat vs threat format rather than a threat vs answer format, though things are gradually moving in that direction. Especially now that Wizards has fixed their development philosophy and started actually printing answers again (Standard primarily, but some of that naturally comes to us), which is something that was ignored for all of Moderns life until very recently.

Quote from Worldsaverinc »

I think Modern has changed significantly from even 2 years ago. For a lot of people, I think modern has finally become the pro-format that they prefer. Pros really like formats that are smaller in scopes to leverage deck decision and sideboards. Modern has finally shrunk what is good to be able to do that compared to before. There are a lot less random decks out there. You still see them on occasion, but I think the TIER 2 and 3 plethora of decks which defined Modern for years are essentially shoved down thanks to Humans, Phoenix, Hogaak, Jund, UW Control, and an artifact deck and some variations inbetween.

It is really tough to play a brew anymore or a tier 2 net deck and win more and having trouble competitng. The velocity of deck search, the power, and the amount of removal have drastically impacted what could be played, especially for decks with little interaction such as Merfolk, Elves, Mono-Green devotion, Ponza, and all the rest of the tier 2 and 3 decks that are played.

It is fine to modern to be this way for the pros. Professionals LIKE smaller fields of play. This way they can leverage game skill, deck building, and all the other tiny skills that make you have percentage win chances against the field. it is why standard is generally well liked by pros let alone the generally money and attention lavished on it.

Modern has finally become that pro-format that really competitive pros wanted it to be.

I just don't like it. I liked the more casual 60 decks a week modern. It really isn't that anymore I don't think. There might be non-games due to the deck style of modern, but there really is a tightening of what is good or bad or what works or doesn't. Winning a couple games here or there and spiking a tournament with a deck just doesn't work as much if you aren't playing the clear best decks. It is much much harder to take a wierd brew or a tier 3-4 deck and do well. There is a much smaller tier 2 and tier 3 list. Staples on that list are no longer as good. They can still win and occasionally spike, but I bet it is less before.

I completely disagree. Modern is a lot like Legacy these days in my opinion. You can play basically anything you want, but you need to respect the constraints of the format and make sure that what you play includes ways to interact with the powerful things your opponents are doing.

Quote from Depian »

Initial? Was it decreasing after people started adjusting to it? Remember MH1 was released less than 1 month ago so taking the initial results before people adapted to it seems intentional to put more emphasis on how dominant it is. If it was still 60% I am pretty sure they would have told us but they didn't

I think it was falling slightly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly meaningful. For starters, the deck hadn't really evolved to deal with any hate yet. Second, it was effectively tier 0 so everyone was gunning for it, and despite that it was still over 50% (even if not over 60% anymore). Third, in order to get it's win rate down slightly, and not even below 50% people were mainboarding 4 pieces of GY hate and having another 6 to 8 in the SB.

That is unhealthy for the meta no matter how you cut it, because it then means every deck is either SB'ing specifically for Hogaak and losing to everything else, or SB'ing for everything else and losing to Hogaak.

It was definitely a very quick ban, I think that's the fastest they've ever taken action on a ban outside of emergency bans. Mental Misstep lasted 3 or 6 months (I don't remember) and Treasure Cruise lasted 3 months. Hogaak lasted 3 weeks. Definitely controversial as to what should be banned, but I think everyone agrees the deck was too good in it's current incarnation.

Quote from gkourou »

My world is the real one. Just look at Reid Duke's today's stream. Full of interesting, interactive decisions.

Just watched the stream of his first league today. The ending of the final game of round 5 was insane, great example of where skill+luck can win you games that you should otherwise lose.

Plus that whole league was amazing.

Quote from Deadkitten »

Remember way way back when we were asking if Modern was going to be Little Legacy or Big Standard? At this point I think it is fair to say that Modern is Little Legacy. Historic is going to be Big Standard. It will be a lower powered non-rotating format post New World Order.

At the time, Modern was big extended. Consider though that Modern today has a larger card pool than Legacy had when Modern released. With more cards comes a higher power level. Arenas power level will go up over time.

Time for my Leyline of Anticipation planeswalker deck to see some play.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

MTG got WAY better with Sam gone. Standard was a hot garbage mess for years thanks to him.

Nothing against Sam as a person, but he was an absolutely horrible developer. I still remember his article where he claimed the problem with Mirrodin standard was that there was too much removal in the format (especially Shatter), and that kept all the cool decks from being able to do anything.

He’s the reason there was a span of about 5 years in Standard where there was almost zero playable removal. From all accounts, he seems to have been very good at getting power level right, but his views of what made for a good format were completely warped. Magic is a much better game without him.

Paying 2WW over 2 turns (and it being vulnerable to removal halfway through), for a 1/2 plus a Batterskull is in no way all that powerful. TKS already comes down on the same turn (and sometimes earlier), and plays with far more synergies. Tasigur and Angler also come down that early.

I do think Jitte is a card that shouldn't be in the format, but I have a hard time agreeing that SFM is doing broken things.

Quote from Couver »

Quote from Yandere Sliver »

I think he somehow manages to switch Liliana's contract with his invulnerability. The question would be if that is a permanent upgrade to Lili.

I'm curious about that as well. Could be get an orzhov Liliana then?

This is sad though. I liked Gideon. Not a huge Liliana fan so I would have preferred her story end here but that seemed highly unlikely.

WOTC could never really win since all of the Gatewatch have fans. Characterwise at least it makes sense for Gideon to do this.

Maybe, they've been trying to make Liliana less of a pure black character for the past several sets now. Probably because black gets seen as evil and they want her to be seen as a hero for marketing reasons.

Quote from Flamebuster »

Maro is excited about every product he's worked on. I'd be hilariously surprised if he wasn't -> "Yeah this product I helped design, but it's alright I guess. I wouldn't waste your money on it to be honest."

Although I think people would probably be appreciative of his blunt honesty. WOTC Board of Directors/shrareholders not so much.

'buster

Ya, he's the hype man. It's like when you watch a late night show and in the opener they always tell you they have a really good show that night.

He probably is excited, the guy seems to like Magic a lot. That's not a guarantee that the product is any good though.

Quote from cfusionpm »

And if that's truly the case, then Twin NEEDS to come off

Are you ever going to let this go? This is a perfect example of why ban discussion on this forum goes nowhere. People like you have these ridiculous and irrational infatuations towards cards that are never going to be unbanned. How many times are you going to keep bring up "Unban Twin"? I'm surprised more people here haven't gotten sick of it because it's gone on for countless threads.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as sounding crass or as a jerk, but it's the truth. People need to look at the ban list in an objective manner and not through the lens of wanting to play with their pet cards.

Quote from The Greendale Human Being »

Second, I don't recall seeing a pro list that eschewed the Probes pre ban. If you're calling them poor to mediocre then I've no clue what to say in response.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=3652&d=221918

Ari Lax played infect without probes from the start.

Legacy players tend to have been playing longer than many folks, that's how many of them have access to all the old cards. They've seen the ups and downs throughout Magic's history and are somewhat jaded to them and have suffered through some absolute torturoues errors like Academy decks, Trix, Necropotence, and later on Affinity. They are used to and accepting of strategies that WoTC does not make viable today because it would make standard "unfun"; like low-cost Land Destruction, Stax, fast combo, low cost hard countermagic, heavy hand destrcution, and similar stuff. Due to their experience playing in a format with a huge number of different decks at any given time and access to some very powerful cards and interactions, they tend to have a more technical understanding of the rules than the average standard player. As an end result, they tend to be highly competitive players. This can create a perceived issues with people who are new to magic not really grasping what "legacy" is. I'll tell a story from an experience I had a few years back at a pre-release. Might have been New Phyrexia, I dunno. Anyway:

I'm between rounds and doing pretty well, so I'm chatting with some of the new faces that have shown up at the store, looking to see if anyone wants to trade, blah blah blah. And I end up talking to this dude who asks me what formats I play and I mention Legacy. He's instantly like "OH MAN, I LOVE legacy!" So I ask him if he's got a deck and wants to throw down real quick, I'm pretty excited to meet another Legacy player! Dude is like "sure!" and pulls out a doublesleeved deck, and I'm thinking "oh man, double sleeved, bet I'm gonna get to see some dope stuff, cool!"

So we sit down to play our game, and I'm playing TES, which, for those of you unfamiliar, is basically the faster cousin of ANT, a storm based combo deck that is fairly complex to the uninitiated. And I open up my 7, and it's a pretty strong 7, the kind that goes T1 make you discard your countermagic, T2 kill you. You basically need a handful of countermagic to not die on T2.

He gets to go first, and throws down a basic 4th edition Island, which I find a little strange. What decks runs a basic island out T1? Fish I guess? Is he one of those guys with a foiled out Fish deck and playing beat up 4th edition islands because they think it's funny? He taps it and throws down a Merfolk of the Pearl Trident. Ok, so I guess it is Fish, but why is he playing Pearl Trident? Budget version and maybe Merfolk of the Pearl is his 4th Cursecatcher he hasn't picked up yet? No matter, I stop trying to think too much about it, I'll know all my answers will come when I fire off the Duress.

I start my turn and draw a Cabal Therapy, the perfect card to followup my Duress with on my combo turn! I play a Polluted Delta and think a little about breaking it into Underground Sea and walking into Wasteland, but I decide even if I do, it's not going to stop me from going off, and if he does have wasteland to drop, that means he can't cast Spell Pierce if he happens to have multiple countermagic, so I'm actually OK with this. Plus I want to know what he's playing. I crack the Delta into the Sea, and fire off the Duress.

It is as Duress resolves I realize what a horrible misunderstanding has transpired here and what an awkward position I'm now in.

The Duress shows me 4 more islands like the first, a Flight, and two other highly forgettable blue cards. It then dawns on me as I look as his hand that his cards aren't doublesleeved, this is just a 100+ card deck. Oh. Crap.

My new Legacy player has confused "Legacy- the Competitive Format" with "Legacy-the Kitchen Table Format Where Anything Goes and You Can Play All Your Old Cards"

My choices now get super awkward. I have a turn to think about my options which are as follows:

1) I can go ahead and fire off a complex combo involving rules this guy probably does not understand, like holding priority as I cast Infernal Tutor and crack Lion's Eye Diamond in response, while I dig up Ad Nauseum and fire off Burning Wish and retrieve the kill card (Tendrils of Agony) from outside the frikking game (well, sideboard anyway). This would straight up would look like flat out cheating to someone who's never been exposed to Magic on this level and has no clue what's going on and is now dead.

2) I can throw the game and let him win. Trouble here is that TES doesn't really do much aside from the handful of discard spells until it just flat out kills you. And at the rate this guy's deck is moving, it's going to become pretty obvious I'm throwing the game, which is super patronizing. That Merfolk of the Pearl is gonna take a while to get there. If he becomes aware, this might be a worse option and the longer the game goes the more likely he is to realize I'm punting it. There's not a real good way for me to look like I'm putting up a fight.

There's not a real good way of handling this without coming off as condescending and I didn't want to be a negative experience at this guy's prerelease. As he passed turn back to me (island, cast flight on Merfolk, attack for 1), I figured I owed the guy the respect to die the same way I'd kill anyone else with that hand. So I took a deep breath and preface my turn with an apology, and an explanation that there had been a misunderstanding, that there is a format called Legacy, that it was highly competitive, and that I was going to proceed through a combo turn and kill him this turn, but I figured he'd rather I do that then let him win or something. He agreed and I walked him through the combo slowly enough. He was still confused at the end of it, but at least didn't think I was cheating. I helped him tweak his sealed pool a little and gave him some general tips, which he seemed to appreciate, and that was the last I ever saw of the guy.

The moral of the story is that while I'm pretty sure I handled this encounter the best I possibly could, this is not always true of every encounter a new player has when they meet a Legacy player for the first time. And I've had other encounters where I could have probably chosen to put more effort into it than I did. It's an intimidating format with an intimidating barrier to entry. Not every Legacy player exercises the same amount of caution in situations similar to mine, and some are downright jerks, though they tend to be few and far between. However, Legacy's pool of players is smaller, and as a result, jerks tend to be more noticeable, particularly when they play into perceived stereotypes of Legacy players being elitest. Overall though, most of us aer always excited to see new players that have the skill and desire to break through a very tough entry barrier to play.

Watch the card between Sneak Attack and Sulfuric Vortex end up being Steamflogger Boss as a form of karmic justice for the buyout crowd.

Right now the one deck I want to play the most is clue stones. Those just seem like they are the perfect fodder for an aggressive goblin grenade style deck.

Sunscour is the one Wrath effect that's fast enough to matter against the various Eldrazi decks (and is far from blank against the rest of the field). Squadron Hawk helps cast it. Not sure what the exact shell should be.

As weird as it may seem, the various 1 mana deathtouch creatures work well against them too, but are almost blank against Affinity.

Quote from Deckerator »

It sounds like you wanna play a deck thats weak against Tron and now you take the reason of the eye ban to justify that to play your deck.... Thats sad....

Here's the thing: Tron actively makes the format worse from an objective standpoint. Do you generally agree with the idea that in competitive Magic the Gathering, the better player should generally win? Obiviously, variance exists in the game from mana screw/mana flood. However, if you agree with this principle, you can't support the existence of Tron in this format.

The deck is incredibly simple to play and thrives on these 90/10 matchups. It has matchups with a 10% chance of winning and matchups with a 90% chance of winning. The only reasonably balanced matchup it had was Twin at 40-60. Placing in an event with Tron involves either dodging those matchups or winning those 10% games out of luck.

Tron is all just giant permanents and land fetchers, neither of which take any skill to play. If you can look at a hand consisting of Urza's Mine and Urza's Power Plant and figure out which one is missing, you can play Tron. There is no complicated combat math with Wurmcoil Engine or Newlamog. Karn is a literal silver bullet against your enemy's best permanent, which is glaringly obvious most of the time. There is no spell sequencing because everything they do is at sorcery speed. There are no manlands or decisions on which land to fetch.

It's not just that Tron is easy, though: Tron preys on actual skill-intensive decks. Its midrange and control matchups are all very positive, and it drives these decks from the format in favor of stuff like Affinity, which while skill-intensive, is not as fun to watch for spectators. Your average FNM grinder can play Tron and be favored against the best Jund and Abzan players on Earth, and that shouldn't happen. If you devote 4 sideboard slots against it, you stand a chance, but that's about 30% of your sideboard devoted to beating one archetype, and there are dozens of archetypes in this format. In an ideal format, Tron would not be viable. If Wizards cared about the format being skill-testing, they would actively take steps to get rid of the deck, but they know they can use it to sell giant mythics to Timmy. This sort of stuff needs to be relegated to Commander.

I like how the lore describes the tournament. The Gatewatch consisting of Arcbound Ravager, Wild Nacatl, Glistener Elf, and an animated Inkmoth Nexus are the last hope defending our world from the Eldrazi swarm. Tarmogoyf and Snapcaster are already dead. Urza's Power Plant has burned to the ground.

"Through all the terrors we face, I hold on to the memory of the world before the Eldrazi came. I'd like to see that world again." -Deceiver Exarch

Greatness at any cost.

Batterskull is unplayable in Modern. SFM is a very safe unban.